We’re finally making progress, and Ifeel very good about it. And so should you. They sat on a park bench next to the cement-block building. At ten minutes before twelve, a dark-blue Jeep Wagoneer, one man behind the wheel, entered the park from the east, passed Kathleen O’Haire in the Taurus, and pulled up.
“It’s him,” Stephanie said urgently. “Donald Harman.” McAllister’s hand went into his coat pocket where he had transferred his gun, his fingers curling around the grip, his thumb on the safety catch.
Stephanie started to get up, but he held her back. “Not yet,” he said, looking across the park but keeping track of what was happening out of the corner of his eye. “Give them a chance.”
Harman sat in his car for several minutes, but then the door opened and he got out. He was tall, and even from here McAllister could see that he was well dressed. He wore a dark overcoat, a scarf at his neck, his head bare.
He stood beside his car for a moment until Kathleen O’Haire got out of the Taurus and they started toward each other.
“Easy,” McAllister said softly, looking directly at them now that Harman’s back was turned this way.
They said something to each other and shook hands. Harman gestured back to his car, but the O’Haire woman shook her head and said something else.
There had been neither the time nor the equipment to provide her with a wire. Under normal circumstances he would have done that. It would be invaluable to know what Harman was saying, exactly how he was reacting to Kathleen O’Haire. She gestured back toward the park entrance, then vaguely in the direction of the city. Harman said something, and he started to turn away, but then stopped dead in his tracks. The woman said something to him, and he turned slowly back to her. It had come already. It was obvious from the way the man was holding himself stiffly erect that he was angry, but he had good control.
“Now,” McAllister said getting to his feet.
Stephanie jumped up, and together they started down the road, McAllister’s grip tightening on his pistol.
Zebra One, Zebra Two. Kathleen O’Haire would be saying those words now.
A white Mercedes entered the park from the same direction Harman had arrived. One man was driving, another sat in the passenger seat.
The car was moving fast, much too fast for the narrow park road.
Suddenly McAllister understood that the situation was about to explode! But how had they known?
“Down,” he shouted, shoving Stephanie aside. The Mercedes began to accelerate as it reached Harman and Kathleen O’Haire who both looked up in surprise. The man on the passenger side leaned out the open window and began firing a big, silenced pistol. Harman was shoved off his feet, something flying out of his right hand, blood erupting from at least three wounds, and a split instant later, Kathleen O’Haire’s head exploded in a mass of blood, bone, and white matter.
McAllister was tearing at his pocket, trying to get his pistol out as the car raced past them, neither the assassin nor the driver paying him the slightest attention, and then it was gone around the curve.
Chapter 29
McAllister raced up the road knowing that he was already too late. Harman had received three hits to his chest and one that had taken off part of his right cheek. Kathleen O’Haire’s face and the back of her head were destroyed.
But Harman had had a gun in his hand. It lay in the snow a few feet from his body; a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson Police Special, the hammer cocked. He had been ready to kill the woman.
McAllister’s breath was coming like a steam engine. What had happened? How had it happened? If Harman had been Zebra One, who were his killers?
He reached the Taurus as Stephanie hurried up past the Wagoneer, the side of her coat soaking wet from where she’d fallen when he shoved her aside.
“Move it,” he shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Potemkin… David, it was Gennadi Potemkin driving that car.
I recognized him. He’s head of KGB operations out of the Soviet Embassy here in Washington.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
He yanked open the driver’s door and climbed in behind the wheel. He had the car started when Stephanie jumped in beside him, and he pulled out around Harman’s car and raced out of the park. Traffic was normal on Fourth Street even though Howard University was all but closed down for the Christmas break. McAllister forced himself to slow down, to act and drive normally. It had been his fault. He had promised the woman he would protect her. But it had been impossible.
Zebra One was for Harman here in Washington. Zebra Two was for someone in Moscow. Who was their common enemy? Someone had signed the order releasing McAllister from a Soviet prison, and someone in Washington had ordered the assassination of Harman. Why? What was he missing?
“Where are we going?” Stephanie asked breathlessly. “I don’t know. I’ve got to have time to think.” Images and snatches of conversation were flashing through his head. He could feel blinding pain stabbing at his groin and across his chest. He could hear his heart hammering raggedly in his ears… but then it stopped! “Are you all right, David?” Stephanie asked softly. He glanced at her. She was pale and shaking. The insanities they had both endured over the past days had taken its toll.
Wherever he showed up death followed on his heels. One by one every person he’d had come in contact with since his release from the Lubyanka had been killed. Everyone except for Highnote and Stephanie. How much longer could they possibly hold out? Where were the answers?
Run. Was that the answer after all? Could they go away and manage to hide for the rest of their lives? Christ, was such a thing possible? If not that, then what were their alternatives? He’d been driving aimlessly. They reached Rhode Island Avenue and he turned right toward Logan Circle, traffic very heavy. A police car, its siren blaring, raced past them, but it was going in the same direction, not back toward the park.
Very soon the bodies would be discovered and reported. Another massacre in Washington. The press would go wild. If someone had seen the Taurus the police would be looking for it.
The only advantage they had now was their altered appearances. No one knew yet what they looked like. Potemkin and the assassin had not paid them the slightest attention, their concentration locked on their targets and then getting away. He glanced at Stephanie again. She was watching him, deep concern in her eyes.
“Harman was going to kill her,” he said.
Stephanie nodded. “I know, I saw the gun fly out of his hand when he went down.”
“Which means he was probably Zebra One.“Again she nodded. “Working for the Russians, then why did they kill him?”
“A coverup,” McAllister said. “But how did he know that Harman would be meeting with Kathleen O’Haire in that park at that moment, unless Harman told him?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s one man who does.”
“Who?” Stephanie asked, her eyes narrowing. “Gennadi Potemkin,” McAllister said. “And I’m going to ask him. Tonight.”
Stephanie walked across the lobby to the pay phones at the back. McAllister had dropped her off at the Marriott Twin Bridges Hotel, where she had checked in and had waited in their room for a full four hours to give him time enough to make his preparations. They were the longest hours of her life. She kept seeing the image of her father’s destroyed body in her mind’s eye; kept feeling his cold, lifeless flesh, barely able to look at his face for the last time as she covered him with the sheet. Zebra One, Zebra Two, obviously code names for two men who had worked at the highest levels of the Soviet and American governments for a long time. Long enough to create the O’Haires’ Zebra Network. Long enough to do what else?