“Are you alone, Mac?”
“I’m alone,” McAllister said. “And you’d better be too.”
“I won’t say a word to anyone, I swear it. Just don’t do anything foolish this time.”
“Like what, defend myself?” McAllister asked. More than seventy seconds had already elapsed.
“They were Russians in that car.”
“And Americans at your boat, Bob. I want some answers. A lot of answers.”
“I’ll do my best. But it would be a lot safer for both of us if we met at the Farm.”
“I’ll expect you in fifty minutes at the outside,” McAllister said. “And from where I’m standing I can see a long way in every direction.”
“Can I bring you anything… anything at all… The ninety seconds were up. McAllister cut the connection, then left the phone booth and walked rapidly out of the station back towhere he had left his car in the Quality Inn parking lot a block away. He had a fifteen-minute head start on Highnote, and he figured he’d need every minute of it.
Stephanie waited in her roommate’s car parked in the southbound Guilford rest area, watching the traffic. Her window was down a couple of inches so that she would be able to hear approaching sirens, if any, or the noise of helicopters coming up from the south. It had been a full thirty-five minutes since she had spoken to McAllister, and during that time she had begun to imagine all sorts of things going wrong. Highnote wasn’t home, or he had refused the meeting. Someone had spotted Mac and there had been a shootout. His telephone call had been successfully traced and he was cornered now. There were any of a dozen possibilities which plagued her as she sat in the cold car, waiting. Nothing had happened so far. Most of the traffic were semis. A dozen of the big trucks, their engines running, were parked just now in the rest area. There’d never been more than three or four cars at a time. And no car that had come in since her call to McAllister had remained for more than a few minutes.
From where she sat she could see across the wooded median to the northbound rest area several hundred yards away. Traffic had been about the same over there. Although she wasn’t able to pick out individual makes of cars because of the darkness and the distance and the snowfall, she could tell them from the trucks.
As she watched, a car backed into a parking spot, its left blinker went on, then off, its highbeams flashed once, then a second time, and then were extinguished. It was McAllister’s signaclass="underline" He had made it after all. One flash without the directional meant their plan had been aborted for one reason or the other. One flash with the directional meant Highnote was on his way. A second flash was her signal to wait an additional five minutes and then telephone him.
She looked at her wristwatch, then got out of the car and hurried through the darkness past the parked semis back to the rest area’s facility building. The men’s room was on the left, the women’s on the right, with a large map of the interstate system beneath an overhang between the two. A telephone hung on the wall next to the map. No one had shown up. No sirens. No helicopters. No strange cars with too many antennae.
She went into the women’s rest room, entered one of the stalls and sat down on the toilet seat as she nervously watched the minute hand of her watch. Still so many things could go wrong. Highnote was not to be trusted. There’d been too many coincidences around him. The Russians waiting outside his house. The assassins at his sailboat. Mac’s wife.
After four minutes, she left the stall and at one of the sinks washed her hands, and then powdered her nose.
At five minutes exactly, she stepped outside and dialed the number for the pay phone at the northbound rest area. McAllister answered it on the first ring at the same moment Robert Highnote drove up in his Cadillac.
“Yes?” McAllister said.
Stephanie turned away. “He just pulled in,” she whispered urgently. “Alone.”
“All right, get out of there now!”
“I can’t. He’s parked not more than fifty feet away from me.”
“Go into the ladies’ room. Whatever you do, don’t let him see you. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
Stephanie hung up, turned, and as she stepped back into the ladies’ room, she chanced a look over her shoulder. Highnote, wearing a dark overcoat with a fur collar was just coming up the walk, an angry scowl on his face.
His uninterested gaze flicked past her, and then she was inside, her heart hammering against her ribs. He’d seen her. It was impossible that he could have missed her. But there had been no sign of recognition on his face.
Chapter 11
McAllister reached the wooded median strip separating the northbound and southbound lanes of the interstate, and held up. From where he stood in the darkness, the snow falling all around him, he could just see the southbound rest area facility on a low rise, though it was set back in and among a stand of tall pine trees.
Highnote’s familiar figure was outlined in the lights on the building as he paced back and forth. Though he couldn’t see it, McAllister figured his old friend’s car had to be parked somewhere in front.
No sirens, no helicopters, no chase cars, no backups so far as he was able to tell. Highnote had come alone as he had promised he would. And now he was waiting for McAllister to show up.
A man came out of the restroom, passed Highnote without looking at him, and crossed the parking area to one of the big semis. He hauled himself up into the cab, and a minute later the truck’s engine roared and the behemoth started left toward the exit ramp, moving slowly. The instant the truck passed in front of the facility building, McAllister hurried out of the woods, scrambled across the depression beside the pavement, and raced across the dark highway, reaching the safety of the trees on the other side as the truck accelerated down the exit ramp.
Highnote had disappeared! From where he stood now McAllister could see the Cadillac parked just in front of the building. The car was empty. Highnote must have gone into the men’s room.
McAllister raced up from the woods, crossed the parking area, and climbed into Highnote’s car on the passenger side just as the DDO emerged from the men’s room. He pulled out the gun Stephanie had supplied him, and sat well back, away from the light spilling from the stanchions. Highnote looked at his watch, then turned and went to the telephone where he hesitated for a half minute before turning around. Shaking his head he walked down the sidewalk to his car. When he was ten feet away he spotted McAllister and stopped in his tracks for just a moment, before continuing.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Highnote said getting in behind the wheel. He glanced at the gun in McAllister’s lap.
“Are you armed?” McAllister asked. “No.”
“I’ll accept that for the moment because I’m going to have to trust you completely. Do you understand?” McAllister had watched the DDO’s eyes. They were clear and steady.
“If you’re asking for my help, I’ll do everything I can for you, Mac, starting with a piece of advice: Come with me right now. I’ll take you back to headquarters and we can start to get this all straightened out. I’ll guarantee your safety and a fair hearing.”
“That’s not within your power, Bob.”
“What are you talking about?” Highnote said, his eyes narrowing. “I’m going way out on a limb being here like this.”
“So am I,” McAllister said. “I asked you to check on ballistics for me.”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes.”
“We found the weapon that was used to kill Carrick and Maas in a trashbin at LaGuardia. It was Carrick’s weapon, and it had your fingerprints all over it.”
“That’s impossible.”