Selfdoubt will come to all of us at one time or another, boyo. He could almost see his father, hear the old man’s voice. But there was no reason to think they had been seen, other than the cabbie talking to the cops outside the station. He could have been talking to them about the weather, about traffic, about football scores, anything.
And what about his feeling that they were being followed now, that they were being watched? Where were the clues? Where was theout-of-place man or men on the platform, the look in the porter’s eye when they’d come aboard, the note in his voice when he had called through the door? There was nothing. It was paranoia. Just like the old days. Sofia, East Berlin, Prague, Warsaw; a dozen places, two dozen incidents ranging back over fourteen years until his tradecraft had slipped that night in Moscow. Fallbacks, don’t ever forget your back door, kiddo.
Christ, he’d known the routine. He’d known how to cover himself, yet he had become sloppy. And his lapse had caused the deaths of a lot of innocent people. The train lurched and Stephanie bumped against him. He held her with his free hand while he continued watching out of the window as the station began to slip away. No one came running at the last minute. No one. Moments later they were in the darkness again, and he let the window shade fall back, dropped his gun on the couch, and took Stephanie in his arms.
When they kissed she shuddered deeply, as if someone had just walked over her grave.
Gennadi Potemkin hunched up the collar of his charcoal-gray overcoat and adjusted the angle of his fedora as he hurried out of the lobby of the Hyatt Regency two blocks from the train station and approached the waiting Lincoln Continental.
A squat, very dangerous-looking man dressed in a sharply tailored tuxedo, a white scarf around his neck, looked out from the back seat as the driver opened the door for Potemkin, who climbed in without a word. The events of the past twenty-four hours were nearly beyond belief. Potemkin hoped against hope that this one would have good news for him now. But his hopes faded as he looked into the Italian’s eyes.
Their driver got in behind the wheel and they headed away from the hotel, plunging into the storm that made driving extremely difficult. Washington seemed, at that hour, like a city under seige.
“This weather’s a bitch, ain’t it?” the thick-waisted Italian said, his Sicilian accent heavy.
“I’ve paid you a lot of money,” Potemkin said harshly. “I didn’t come here to listen to your bullshit about the weather.“The Mafia boss turned to look at Potemkin, his eyes hooded. “You’d better listen, because we missed them.”
A sudden cold wind blew through Potemkin’s soul. “What?” he shouted.
“We weren’t sure about the train, but we didn’t miss them by much more than a half hour.”
“Where are they headed? They didn’t get off here in Washington? You’re sure?”
“Chicago.”
“West,” Potemkin mumbled, his insides like water. “Go after them.”
“Impossible in this weather, that’s what I meant. Nothing’s moving out there, and I mean nothing except for the trains.”
“Take another train.”
“Isn’t one.”
The heavy car fishtailed around the corner, but then straightened out. Potemkin tried to reason out the possibilities. He felt as if he were losing control of the situation. It was dangerous. So dangerous it was hard to keep his head on an even keel. “You’re sure it was them? No doubts?”
“Our guy drove them to the station. We had the word out. There was no doubt of it. He told the cops, just like you said to do, then he called us. They’re on that train all right. Just took us a while to find out which train.”
“No way of catching them?” Potemkin asked, struggling to maintain his control.
“Not a chance in hell,” the Sicilian said. He grinned. “But there is another possibility.”
“Yes?”
“It’ll cost you.”
Potemkin looked at the man with disgust. “Up to this point you haven’t done a thing for what you’ve already been paid.”
The Sicilian leaned forward suddenly and grabbed a handful of Potemkin’s coat. “It was my son out there in Reston. That sonofabitch wasted him. You understand, gumba? I got a stake in this now. But it’ll still cost you.”
The man’s immense greed was beyond belief. But Potemkin hadworked with this type before. Often. “You’ll get your money,” he said, changing tack.
The Sicilian let go of his coat. “You haven’t heard how much. “I don’t care what the figure is, you’ll get it,” Potemkin said, interrupting. “On one condition.”
The Sicilian nodded warily.
“You’ll get paid for success; there’ll be nothing for failure.”
“Half now…”
“No,” Potemkin interrupted sharply again. “Only for success.”
“Don’t fuck with me. One phone call to the Feds and you’d be through here.”
“Do you know what we do with traitors?” Potemkin asked conversationally, sure now for the first time that he had regained some control. “We have a thing called mokne dela. Your people shoot kneecaps as a warning, we shoot faces. Your mother wouldn’t recognize you.”
The Sicilian laughed. “This is my backyard now, gumba. My country.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” Potemkin said softly, and something in the tone of his voice backed the Mafia boss off.
They drove for a few minutes in silence, passing the Capitol building that against the backdrop of black skies and falling snow looked more like a Hollywood set than the real thing. Something was happening that Potemkin couldn’t understand. He was fighting back blindly, but fighting the only way he knew how; directly and with force.
“There is a family in Chicago,” the Sicilian said. “They owe me a favor.”
“There can be no mistakes now,” Potemkin said. “McAllister and the girl must not be allowed to get beyond Chicago. Under no circumstances.”
They swung back toward the Hyatt, again lapsing into silence, Potemkin sinking into his own morose thoughts. Control, that was everything. But his was slipping and he knew it. What he couldn’t understand, what he could not fathom, was the incident at College Park this morning. Had he underestimated McAllister that badly?
“Is this asshole one of yours?” the Sicilian asked.“No,” Potemkin replied, shaking his head. “He is definitely not one of ours.” He turned. “Kill him. This time, make sure.”
They’d come out of the storm sometime in the early morning hours. Stephanie stood at the window looking out at the passing countryside, lit now by a full moon that was so bright it obliterated the stars. She wore nothing but a long sweatshirt, her shoulders hunched forward, her forehead against the cool glass.
“You should get some sleep,” McAllister said from where he lay in the lower bunk. “You too,” she replied, tiredly, mechanically. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“You’ve already said that. But what happens if there are no answers for us in California?”
“I’ll talk to Highnote.”
“What if he dies, or if he decides there’s nothing he can do?”
“Then we’ll go to the others.”
“One of them in the Pentagon, the other in Moscow,” she said, contempt in her voice. “let’s stop kidding ourselves.”
Her skin looked pale as a ghost’s in the moonlight, but he could almost feel the heat radiating off her, as if she were an engine at idle ready to spring into motion at any moment. At one point he could have saved her life by turning around and walking away from her. That was no longer possible. He was sorry for it, and yet he wasn’t.
He could see her breath fogging the window. The train swayed rhythmically, the motion nearly hypnotic at this time of the night.