McAllister shivered. “Is that your advice?”
“James O’Haire was Zebra One here in Washington, and you were Zebra Two in Moscow. It’s my guess Voronin was warning you that your identity had been discovered. I looked up his track. He had been in a position to know such things.”
“That’s how you see it?”
“Yes,” Highnote said. “You got into the computer to find out if we suspected you. Well, you know by now that we did not, although sooner or later we would have caught on to you.”
McAllister’s head was spinning. Nothing made any sense. Nothing was real. Yet there was an internal logic to what Highnote was telling him. Except that the Russians had arrested him and then inexplicablyreleased him after the trial to make the CIA believe that he indeed was the O’Haires’ control officer in an effort to protect the identity of the real man or men. Still there was one man in Moscow and one here in the United States.
“The last time we talked I asked you to consider the possibility that I was telling the truth, and that I had been set up.”
“I considered it, Mac, believe me. And I came to the conclusion that you are telling the truth so far as you know it. But can you tell me exactly what happened to you every moment you were being held in the Lubyanka?” Miroshnikov’s face swam into view. The barroom suddenly seemed very warm and close.
“I can see that you cannot. They are sophisticated, Mac. You know the drill. They had you for more than a month. They could have done anything to you. Anything at all. Turn you into anything they wanted. Turn you into their creature, even.”
“But what if that’s not the case?” McAllister insisted. “Give me that much at least. Give me that consideration, just for the sake of argument.
“Go on,” Highnote said after a moment.
McAllister ran a hand across his eyes. “I was a thorn in their side in Moscow so they arrested me and subjected me to a month of interrogation. And believe me, Bob, it is an experience that you would never forget.”
“Why were you released?”
“I think there are two possibilities. The first is that they had made their point. They’d caught an American spy, they’d tried him and found him guilty, and at that point he was of no further real value to them, so they simply released him.”
“They had your confession,” Highnote said. “You named all of your old network people. Times, places, operations. Everything.”
“The second is that it was a mistake. Whoever was in charge of my case hadn’t been given all the facts. Zebra One and Two meant nothing to my interrogator. But someone else could have listened to the tapes, read the manuscripts. Perhaps too late they realized that I was being released.”
“So, thinking that you knew more than you really did, this unknownRussian ordered your assassination in New York before you could cause any damage. Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“Either that or he told his American counterpart about me, and my assassination was ordered locally. And it didn’t stop there. They were Russians waiting for me outside your house, but they were Americans at your sailboat and there were two men out at Sikorski’s. Possibly Mafia.”
“We found no bodies.”
“Someone came out and cleaned up the mess before you got there.”
“Zebra One and Two are still in place, if I’m to believe you. One man here in Washington and one man in Moscow. Probably someone within the Agency. Someone we both know, and trust.”
“That’s right,” McAllister said. “But there’s even more to it than that.”
Highnote’s eyebrows knitted. “I’m still listening, Mac.”
“I didn’t kill Janos, but neither did the two I had the shootout with.”
“Who then?”
“I don’t know. Janos had been dead for at least a day and a half. Before the snowfall. There were no tire marks in or out of his place.”
This news more than anything else seemed to affect Highnote the most. He sat back in the booth a deep, pensive look on his face. “If I believe you, Mac, and I’m not saying I do, it would mean that there is a third party at work here. Someone not connected with your penetration agent.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, can you explain the logic to me?”
“No,” McAllister said heavily. “But if I’m not telling the truth, for whatever reason, then my lies are very elaborate. Too elaborate. And for what reason?” We have made great progress together, you and I. I am so very proud of you, Mac, so very pleased.
Can you tell me exactly what happened to you every moment you were being held in the Lubyanka?
Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two. “I don’t know if there is anything I can do for you, or should. Too much has happened. If you had turned yourself in at the beginning it might have been different. But now, I just don’t know.”
“I would have been dead by now.”
Highnote shook his head sadly, and he glanced toward the door. McAllister followed his gaze.
“Is someone coming?” he asked. Highnote looked away guiltily.
“You said Dexter Kingman had the idea to flush me out. Are his people on the way out here now? Did you call them from your car?”
“Something is going on, Mac. I don’t know what it is… “You did call someone,” McAllister said, and he got up abruptly. Highnote’s eyes were round. “Run,” he whispered. “I’ll do what I can for you.”
McAllister reached into his coat pocket for his gun as he went to the entry hall. In the short space of time he and Highnote had been here the place had filled up considerably. A number of people were waiting to be seated. He came around the corner at the same moment the front door opened and two men walked in. One of them was Dexter Kingman.
“McAllister,” Kingman shouted.
McAllister pulled out his gun and fired a shot over everyone’s head, the bullet smacking into the wall above the door. Kingman and the other man fell back out the door. A woman screamed as McAllister turned on his heel and raced into the dining room, threading his way through the tables, pandemonium spreading in his wake.
A waitress, balancing a large tray of food in her right hand, was just coming through the swinging doors from the kitchen. McAllister slammed into her, sending her flying, plates crashing everywhere.
“Some maniac is out there with a gun,” he shouted, racing through the kitchen, concealing his own weapon.
“What’s going on?” one of the chefs screamed. Someone was shouting into a telephone.
McAllister reached the rear door and outside, leaped down off the delivery platform, as a panel van was pulling up. He yanked open the passenger door and jumped in even before the van had come to a complete halt. He pointed the gun at the young man’s head. “Drive away from here! Now!”
“Is this a stickup?” the frightened kid stammered. “Get us out of here, goddamnit! Move it!“ The driver slammed the van into reverse, pulled away from the loading dock, then spun around in the slippery driveway and headed out to the highway.
McAllister cranked down the window and turned the big wing mirror so that he could see the rear door of the restaurant. No one had appeared by the time they turned the corner and reached the highway, accelerating back toward Washington, sirens finally sounding in the distance.
James Franklin O’Haire had not slept well from the moment he and his brother Liam had been transferred to the federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois. The judge, out of some perverse sense of patriotism, had specified the generalpopulation prison, knowing that the O’Haires would not be well received by their fellow prisoners. “No country club incarceration for these two,” he’d said at the sentencing. Rape, murder, and bank robbery were acceptable crimes, not spying. Even criminals should feel a sense of national loyalty.