Who would have given you a medal, Janos? Goddamnit, who?
They parked the Buick in the clearing in front of Sikorski’s house and drove the Thunderbird over to Dulles Airport, where McAllister, using one of the assassin’s driving licenses and credit cards, rented a Chevrolet Celebrity from the Hertz counter for Stephanie. She followed him back into the city, and they stashed both cars in the same parking garage a couple of blocks from their downtown hotel.
It was three in the afternoon by the time they were back in their room, and Stephanie rebandaged the wound in McAllister’s side which had opened and was leaking.
She was clearly shook up. This morning she’d still had a choice: stay or go. Now it was too late for her. She had crossed over. Now it would be impossible for her life ever to return to normal.
“We’re back to square one,” she said. They were having a muchneeded drink together. “If I set up a meeting between you and Kingman he’ll have half the Agency waiting to grab you.”
“Just what I want,” McAllister said. He was staring out the window across the city. It looked as if it were going to snow again soon.
“Actually we’re worse off than before,” she said. “They’ll suspect that you killed Sikorski. And sooner or later the Mafia is going to come looking for their people. That Thunderbird is going to stick out like a sore thumb.”
McAllister turned back to her. “The only reason I took their car is because of what I found in the trunk. I need it.”
“Such as?”
“Burglar tools.”
She looked at him, her lips pursed. “For Nhat, Mac? What are you going to do?”
“First things first,” he said. “Let’s say that you call Kingman this afternoon, right now and tell him that I want a meeting. Just the two of us, tonight at ten o’clock in front of the Naval Observatory. What will he do? Exactly?”
“If you’re going to have any chance of getting in and out, without being taken, we’ll have to provide ourselves with a couple of blinds. Wouldn’t be difficult to set up. A call to a telephone booth, for example. But he would be followed. He won’t come alone.”
“No fallbacks,” McAllister said. “What if we tell him up front when and where I want the meeting?”
“Within an hour of my call he’d have his people stationed all over the place, you know that. There wouldn’t be a chance of your getting in without being spotted.”
“He’d agree to the meeting if you called him?” McAllister insisted. “Certainly. He’d try to talk some sense into me. He would be disappointed. But he’d come. I suspect you’ve become a very big prize.”
“Kingman would come in person, but so would a lot of his people.”
“Half the Agency,” Stephanie said. “And I’m sure he’d get the FBI involved. Probably even the district cops.”
“Our little meeting would draw a lot of people over to the observatory. A lot of sensation.”
“Naturally…” she started to say, but then what he had been trying to tell her began to penetrate, and her eyes opened wide. “While they’re all looking for you to show up at the meeting, you would be someplace else. A diversion.”
“Exactly,” McAllister said. “But I’ll want you nearby so that you can see who shows up and exactly what they do. Close, but out of sight.”
“The Holiday Inn,” she said. “It’s on Wisconsin Avenue just a couple of blocks from the observatory. Doug and I stayed there once.”
“You’d have a clear line of sight to the observatory grounds?”
“From the upper floors,” she said. “But what about you? Where will you be?”
“Getting us the information we’re going to need if we want to stay alive,” he said.
She started to reply, but then backed off, a wry smile on her lips. She nodded. “I understand,” she said softly.
“Call him now.”
It was snowing again by the time McAllister pulled off Georgetown Pike and parked the Thunderbird on a dark street below LangleyHill. The CIA’s grounds were just on the other side. He sat in the darkened car for several long minutes, watching for traffic, but nothing came. It was a little past nine-thirty. By now Kingman’s people would be in place around the observatory north of Dumbarton Oaks Park, and no one would be getting suspicious for at least a half hour yet. Security would still be tight, but Kingman and Highnote and the other brass who might be involved in this business would certainly be gone. He needed access to a computer terminal in one of their offices.
He got out of the car and from the trunk took out the long-handled bolt cutters and the small tool kit he had found earlier. The two assassins had come down from Jersey City well prepared for their assignment. In addition to the tools, he’d also discovered a highpowered rifle and night spotting scope in an aluminum case, a MAC 10 compact submachine gun with three hundred rounds of ammunition, and a short-handled sawed-off shotgun for close work, leaving absolutely no doubt as to exactly what line of work they’d been in.
Careful to lock the trunk, he stepped off the road, down into a ditch and then up the other side toward a line of trees at the edge of a clearing at the top of a shallow hill, scrambling on his hands and knees at times because of the slippery going.
At the top he ducked into the protection of the woods and looked back the way he had come. The snow was falling in earnest now, so it wouldn’t be too long before the marks he had made coming up the hill would be partially covered, masking his trail.
Luck, he thought, turning toward the northeast. So much of his life had depended upon it.
Within a hundred yards he came to a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. A big metal sign warned that this was government property, and that entry was prohibited.
Putting down the tool kit, McAllister quickly cut a large square opening at the base of the fence with the bolt cutters, peeled it back and crawled through. On the other side he crouched in the darkness, waiting, listening for the sound of an alarm. But the night was still, even the occasional traffic sounds from the Georgetown Pike were muffled by the trees and falling snow.
Leaving the bolt cutters behind, he hurried down into the shallow valley, and then up the other side, stopping every hundred yards orso to listen for the sound of one of the patrols that operated back here twenty-four hours per day.
But there was nothing. He could have been alone in another universe, surrounded by dark trees, slanting snow and except for the noise of his own movements and breathing, total silence.
Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two. Voronin’s words.
The O’Haires’ organization had been called the Zebra Network. The soldiers were all safely in prison. What about the generals? Zebra One and Two?
Their control officer or officers had never been named. Why? Lack of information, or were they being protected for some reason? Three-quarters of a mile from the fence he came to the first paved road. There were no tire marks in the fresh snow. He stood by the side of the road. If he crossed here the next patrol to come along would spot his footprints.
He turned and followed the road directly north for a few hundred yards, coming at length to an intersection which had been recently traveled. It was exactly what he had been looking for. Fresh tire marks led off toward the northeast, and in the distance he thought he might be able to make out the soft glow of lights. Stepping out onto the paved roadway, he walked in the tire tracks, his footfalls crunching in the snow. He could definitely see the glow of lights ahead now, almost pink in the falling snow. It would be the rear parking lot behind the construction site. A big earth mover parked beside the road loomed up ahead of him, and beyond it two cement trucks and a crane, its boom lying down on the bed of a long trailer, waited for the Monday morning shift. McAllister followed the road as it curved toward the right, finally opening onto a vast parking lot, mostly empty at this hour. In the distance was the seven-story CIA headquarters complex, with its addition under construction outlined, as if by deck lights, like a hulking ship at sea in a storm. He pulled up behind a dump truck. The questions had been posed in Moscow; were the answers to be found here, he wondered.