“Come off it…
“In itself, the notion is a weak one. We all agree with you. But taken with everything else… well, it’s given us pause for some serious thought.”
Highnote looked from Innes to Reisberg to Quarmby and back again. “Which brings us to the actual purpose for this meeting.”
“The President is offering McAllister amnesty, and I think it’s up to us in this room to figure out how to get to him as soon as possible with the message, and without any more casualties,” Innes said.
“Because he knows something?” Highnote said. “Because he evidently learned something in Moscow that has the Russians so concerned… and possibily someone else… so concerned thatthey are willing to risk exposure in order to make sure he doesn’t talk?”
“Yes.”
“Which is?”
“We believe that there is more than a fair possibility that a Soviet penetration agent is working within the CIA at fairly high levels. We think that somehow McAllister stumbled onto this information while in the Soviet Union.”
“Good Lord,” Highnote said. “Then why did they release him in the first place?”
“An error, we suspect,” Innes said. “Once it was realized however, they tried to kill him. And they will keep trying. The Russians with their own people, and the mole using Mafia contract killers.”
David McAllister’s white Peugeot 505 sedan got off the Capital Beltway at Baltimore Avenue and proceeded south just within the speed limit. Traffic had been quite heavy from Georgetown, but Royce Todd was an excellent driver, and the directions Donald Harman had provided them were complete.
This was the big score they’d both been waiting for. After this they would be able to retire for at least a few years until the furor died down. Which it would eventually, Harman had assured them. With his help.
“Another half a mile,” Carol Stenhouse said, looking up from the sketched map.
It is essential that you not fail. It is the reason we are offering so much money. I need your assurances.
We’re here. It’s a job and we will do it.
No need for confirmations in this case. I’m sure I’ll be reading about it in the afternoon papers. The whole world would be reading about it, Royce Todd thought. And the beauty of it, is that the police would be searching for the wrong couple, giving them more than sufficient time to get out of the country.
“Are you ready?” he asked, glancing over at Carol. She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Of course,” she said softly, competently.
They turned off the main road and started up the long drivewaythrough the heavily wooded piece of property adjacent to the University of Maryland. It was quiet back here, and dark. Todd could see where other cars had already come this way this morning. He counted at least three sets of tire tracks in the snow.
Carol took out her suppressed.22 magnum automatic, levered a round into the firing chamber and switched off the safety. Todd took his out of his pocket and laid it on the seat beside his right leg.
They’d met five years ago in Honduras, where they had both been doing contract work for the CIA. He had been a graduate of the Delta Force out of Ft. Bragg, and was working with a Nicaraguan contra assassination team, and she, a former United States Army noncombat helicopter pilot, had been running arms across the border.
She had literally saved his life during a night raid in which he had gotten cut off across the border. She had spotted the intense gunfire in the hills a half mile inside Nicaragua, had choppered down to investigate, and when she had spotted him alone, had picked him up and flew him back into Honduras.
They’d gotten out of Central America when the Sandinistas began shooting down contract pilots with regularity, and the CIA, with as monotonous a regularity, began denying their own people.
Carol had changed into a short khaki skirt and blouse before they’d left McAllister’s house. As they came up over a rise that opened the last fifty yards to the large three-story Colonial, she shifted in her seat so that her skirt hiked up, exposing her thighs all the way to her lace panties. She spread her legs, the dark swatch of her pubic hair clearly visible.
The driveway circled around to the right of a big cement goldfish pond and marble fountain. A black Cadillac was parked beneath the overhang in front. As they pulled up beside it, a large man dressed in boots and a white parka came around from the side of the house. A second man appeared right behind him. They separated as they approached.
Carol powered her window down, as Todd opened the door and got out of the car. He held his gun beside his leg so that the two men could not see it. He stood just behind the open car door.
“Good morning,” the guard nearest said pleasantly. The other one angled toward the passenger side of the car.“We’re here to see Mr. Innes,” Todd said. He switched off his weapon’s safety with his thumb.
“Yes, sir,” the guard said. “If you would just step away from your car. Ask the lady to get out as well.”
“My damned seatbelt is stuck,” Carol called out her open window. Todd smiled and looked back in at her. The second guard had reached the passenger side.
“I feel like such a fool,” Carol said.
The guard bent down so that he could see into the car, his eyes automatically going to Carol’s spread legs. “What seems to be the problem?..
She raised her pistol and shot him in the forehead at point-blank range.
Todd turned back, bringing up his pistol, and fired one shot a split second later, catching the first guard in the left eye, his head snapping back, and his arms flying outward as he crumpled in the driveway. The entire time elapsed from the moment the two guards had first appeared until they lay dead, was less than ten seconds, the two silenced shots inaudible more than twenty feet away.
Carol was out of the car and across the driveway by the time Todd had reached the front door. He stood to one side as she came up onto the porch. He nodded.
Holding the gun at her side, she tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked. She opened the door and Todd slipped past her inside the main stair hall.
A woman in a pretty print dress was just coming down the stairs. Without hesitation Todd shot her, the bullet smacking into her chest just below her left breast, piercing her heart, killing her instantly. Her legs collapsed beneath her, and she tumbled halfway down the stairs, her eyes open, and her lips parted for a scream she hadn’t been able to utter.
The meeting was to be held either in Innes’s study or in the breakfast room. Both were at the back of the house, making it unlikely that anyone witnessed what had happened out front in the driveway.
Todd started down the corridor to the left of the staircase, Carol directly behind him. She did not close the door, nor had they closedthe Peugeot’s doors or shut off its ignition-all steps to save them precious seconds if need be.
The corridor was one step up from the stair hall. To the right was the living room, to the left a drawing room, its French doors slightly ajar. Todd hesitated as Carol stepped around him and ducked inside, sweeping her gun from left to right.
She shook her head and rejoined him just as the door at the far end of the corridor opened and they could hear voices.
“It’s simply a matter of procedures now, but you must understand the importance,” someone said from within the room.
A fat, academic-looking man with thick glasses stepped out, clutching a bulging file folder. He started to say something to the others in the room when he realized that someone was in the corridor. He brought up his right arm as if to fend off a blow, as Todd fired two shots, the first catching Reisberg in the face, destroying the bridge of his nose, the second hitting his chest, driving him back against the door frame.