Then I’ll find that out. It’s the only way. Everything else would be meaningless. I must know.
“Must know what?” she cried to herself, laying her forehead against the cool glass. “What is driving you, my darling? What are you seeking? Who are you looking for?”
She closed her eyes and grabbed a handful of the thick drapes. Her stomach felt hollow and her legs were suddenly so weak they were barely able to support her. She’d known that she was being told lies from the moment she’d been assigned to McAllister’s house and had talked with his wife. The woman had seemed frightened… but not for her husband, rather for herself. Stephanie had not understood it at the time. It wasn’t until Mac had shown up and had confronted his wife on the steps that Stephanie had been able to give voice in her own mind to what she had instinctively felt. Gloria McAllister wanted her husband dead not because she thought he was a traitor, but because she herself was hiding something, or she no longer cared for him. She’d gone off with Highnote. Were the two of them somehow working together?
“Oh, father,” she cried softly. “I need you now. I don’t know what to do.”
McAllister parked the delivery van in front of the FBI headquarters building in the same place he had left the Thunderbird and walked back to the Best Western. It was going to drive them crazy finding the van this way. Before long they would begin searching all the hotels in an ever-expanding radius downtown. Sooner or later they would get lucky. It was time to move.
He had let the young driver off in the country between Highview Park and Cherrydale hours ago, but instead of driving directly back into the city and ditching the van, he had driven over to Arlington Cemetery where he had lingered alone with his thoughts. It was a dangerous game he’d been playing. It couldn’t have taken the driververy long to get to a telephone and report what had happened. They’d be looking for the van by now. He’d increased his risk of being taken by his delay, yet he found that he wasn’t ready to face Stephanie. For a while, sitting in the darkness smoking a cigarette, he thought about leaving her. Simply turning around and running away. But in the end he knew that was impossible. She was a part of this thing now, no matter what he did or didn’t do. Whoever wanted him dead would also be gunning for her.
As he had done the night before, he was careful with his tradecraft, making absolutely certain that he wasn’t being followed. Across the street from the hotel he held up in the darkness for a full five minutes, making sure that the place had not been staked out.
Highnote had done exactly what any good and loyal government servant should have done. The moment he had spotted McAllister he had telephoned Security. Mac had forgotten about his car phone. It had been a mistake on his part that had very nearly cost him his life.
But in the end Highnote had listened. He had admitted the possibility that something more than met the eye was going on. And in the end he had told Mac to run. He had warned him.
Run where? To whom? To what? Where else could he turn? He went around the corner and entered the hotel through the parking garage, taking the stairs up to the third floor where again he held up, studying the empty corridor before continuing. There weren’t too many options left open to them. But Highnote, he was fully convinced now, was on his side; reluctantly perhaps, and understandably so, but on his side. Stephanie would have to be made to understand that it was time for her to get clear. Not back to the Agency, of course, but she would have to go into hiding now. Somewhere out of harm’s way.
She opened the door for him, slipping the security chain and then stepping back. Her eyes were wide and shining, she’d obviously been crying. Her hand shook badly when she reached up and touched his cheek.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” she said, her voice tremulous.
“Are you all right?” he asked, taking her into his arms, and realizingthat somehow over the past few days he had begun to care for her. “Did something happen here?”
“No,” she said. “Not really
“What do you mean by that? Stephanie, what happened?” She shook her head. “Did you see Highnote? Did you actually get to talk to him?”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Goddamnit, David, talk to me!” she snapped. “You’ve been gone seven hours, leaving me to sit here imagining all sorts of things.”
Tears had come to her eyes again, and her entire body was trembling.
“Easy,” McAllister said soothingly, holding her close. “I saw him and we talked. There’s not much he can do for us, but he is on our side.”
Stephanie pulled away and looked up into his eyes. “Oh, David, how can you believe that after everything that’s happened?”
“He listened to me. At first he was skeptical, but in the end he believed me. He warned me. Told me to run in the end. It saved my life.”
“Run from what?”
“He called Dexter Kingman from his car phone. It was something I hadn’t counted on. They were just showing up when I got out.”
“It would have been convenient if you’d been shot and killed trying to escape,” Stephanie said. “My darling, can’t you see what’s happening? How he’s maneuvered you? He’s given you the same advice each time you’ve talked to him. He can’t help you and he tells you to run. David, only guilty men run. How else could Dexter have seen it?”
“He could have said nothing. Kept me busy. I would have been trapped.”
“There would have been a shootout. You would have been killed.”
“That might have been the plan in the beginning, but he changed his mind.”
“What did he say?”
“They think I was working for the Russians all along, running the O’Haire network. He said they named me as their control officer.”
“Why were you arrested in Moscow? Did he have an explanation for that?”
“To throw suspicion off me, at first. But then I was brainwashed in the Lubyanka. I supposedly became one of them. But something went wrong, and they lost control of me. They decided in the end I would be better off dead.”
“All wrapped up in a neat little package,” she said disdainfully. “Too neat.” She shook her head in irritation. “That explains only why the Russians want you dead. What about the Mafia? What have they got to do with it?”
“There were no bodies at Sikorski’s,” McAllister said. “Someone cleaned up the mess out there before the FBI showed up.”
“Then they think that you killed Sikorski?”
“Yes.”
“Highnote told you that?” Stephanie asked, watching his eyes. “I convinced him otherwise. At least I got him thinking that there was another possibility.”
“Which is?”
“That there is a penetration agent in the CIA. Someone at high levels who is working with a counterpart in the KGB.”
“Zebra One and Two.”
“That’s right.”
“Your release from the Lubyanka, then, was nothing more than an administrative mistake. Crossed signals.”
McAllister nodded.
“And Highnote accepted that?”
“Only after I told him the one thing that doesn’t fit anywhere. The one thing that makes absolutely no sense. The two men I stopped at Sikorski’s hadn’t killed Janos. They found him like that. He’d been dead for at least a day and a half. So who killed him and why?”
“If not the Mafia, then the Russians,” Stephanie answered. “Can’t you see it? Zebra Two is the Russian. He has his own people working for him, probably out of their embassy right here in Washington. But Zebra One, the American, can’t use CIA people for his dirty work, so he hires professional hit men. It all still points back to Highnote.”
“You had to be there, face-to-face with him. I know the man. He genuinely wants to help, but his hands are tied.”