When she’d told McAllister’s story to her father he had not been happy that she wanted to help, but he had understood, as he’d always understood.
“He may not have known himself what is driving him,” her father had said. “And already there has been a lot of killing around him.”
“What else can I do?” she’d asked. “I’m already involved. I was from the moment I pulled him half dead out of the river.”
“I know. Just take care, Stephanie. Please. For me.” Reaching the telephones, she put her purse on the shelf and placed the call to the Soviet Embassy across the river in D.C. While she waited for the connection to be made, she turned and looked across the busy lobby. Nobody was watching her, no one seemed interested. She was merely a woman making a telephone call. Nothing more.
The number rang and she turned back.
“Cood afternoon, you have reached the Embassy of the Union ofSoviet Socialist Republics, how may we help you?” a pleasant man’s voice answered, his English nearly accentless.
“I would like to speak with Gennadi Potemkin.”
“I’m sorry, madam, but we have no person by that name here,” the embassy operator replied smoothly.
“I happen to know that you do,” Stephanie said, forcing a reasonable tone to her voice. “If you will just pass him the message that McAllister was in McMillan Park this noon, I think he’ll speak with me.”
“I am so sorry, madam, but..
“It will be the biggest mistake of your life, comrade, if you don’t pass that message.”
“One moment, please,” the operator said, unperturbed, and the line went dead.
It was possible, she thought, that she had been disconnected. The Soviet Embassy received dozens of crank calls every day from disgruntled American citizens and Soviet emigres. But she waited on the line.
A full five minutes later, another man came on, his voice much older, his accent strong. “Is this Miss Albright?”
“Yes, are you Potemkin?” Stephanie asked, startled by his use of her name, and yet not really surprised he knew it.
“Indeed it is,” Potemkin said. “I assume you are telephoning from a reasonably secure location, somewhere within the city?”
“Close,” Stephanie said. “We were in McMillan Park this morning.”
“Yes?” Potemkin said.
“McAllister would like to meet with you.”
“To what purpose, Miss Albright? What could we possibly have to say to each other?”
“Listen to me, you sonofabitch. We know about Zebra One and Zebra Two. We know about the network, and we know a lot more.”
Potemkin laughed. “My dear girl, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do, and I think you’d better agree to meet with him. Alone. Both of you alone.”
“Impossible.”
“Neither are you. I don’t know what you think you know, but it is meaningless.”
“As meaningless as McAllister’s release from the Lubyanka within hours of his trial and conviction? No explanations. No prisoner exchanges. No publicity. Nothing.”
Potemkin did not reply.
“He’s at Janos Sikorski’s house right now, waiting for you. It’s out near Reston, but I’m sure you know where it is. He wants to make a deal.”
“What sort of a deal?” Potemkin asked, his voice guarded. “His life for yours,” Stephanie said, and she hung up as Mac had instructed her to do. Gathering up her purse she turned and walked back across the lobby, her legs weak, her breath catching in her chest. She had done everything she could and now it was up to him.
McAllister sat in the Taurus parked diagonally across Sixteenth Street from the Soviet Embassy a few blocks up from the White House. He had made it down from Reston fifteen minutes ago, about the same time Stephanie had placed her call to Potemkin. He had done what little he could to even the odds after first making sure Sikorski’s place wasn’t still staked out. Now it was up to the Russian, who, if he was smart, would simply ignore the message.
Do nothing, McAllister said to himself, and you’ll be safe this time. From Kathleen O’Haire, the wife of a convicted spy, to Donald Harman, a presidential adviser. And from Harman to Gennadi Potemkin, head of all KGB operations in the United States. Where would it lead from there? How many more dark corridors would he have to travel before he made his way through the labyrinth?
“Even if he does agree to meet with you, David, he certainly won’t go out there alone,” Stephanie had objected when he’d laid out his plan.
“He’d be a fool if he did,” McAllister agreed. “Which is why I’m going to wait for him outside the embassy and see who goes with him.”
“Let me go with you.”
“No.”
“Damnit, David..
“No,” McAllister said again. “You’ll stay here and do exactly as I say. No games now. I don’t want you out there. I don’t want to have to worry about you. I know what I’m doing.” She looked at him for a long time. “If you’re spotted it will blow the entire thing.”
“Yes,” he said.
It’s tradecraft, pure and simple, and it won’t be very pleasant. It was in his family heritage, in his blood, in the training he had received and the experiences he had survived over the past fourteen years.
Once a spy always a spy, that was the old adage. But after this, if by some miracle he survived, he was through. The business no longer held any fascination for him, if it ever had.
The roof of the embassy bristled with antennae and microwave dishes that bounced signals off a Soviet communications satellite for transmission direct to Moscow. He stared at the complex electronic arrays, his brain making automatic connections, skipping like a computer down long lines of facts and figures, each one leading inexorably to the next. Anomalies, Wallace Mahoney had called the bits and pieces that didn’t seem to add up. Stephanie’s father had been tortured and killed because of a transmitter? In his mind’s eye he could see the open cabinet door, the wires emerging from the wall. He focused again on the antennae on the embassy roof. Had Albright been communicating with the Russians? Was his murder a part of some coverup as well? The same white Mercedes 450SEL sedan from the park emerged from behind the embassy, and as it passed, McAllister got a brief glance at its passengers. Potemkin was driving, the assassin from this morning beside him in the front, and three other men in the backseat.
McAllister put the car in gear, drove to the end of the block, turned the corner, and caught up with the Mercedes on H Street in front of Lafayette Park. He held back, keeping several car lengths behind the big German car, which turned south on Seventeenth Street, the White House to the left, the huge Christmas tree on the front lawn lit up already in the diminishing light as evening approached. Potemkin was driving at a sedate speed. This would be no time forhim to be stopped and issued a speeding warning. He would be careful now; so much depended upon his not being delayed. He would remain scrupulously within the speed limit.
Reaching Constitution Avenue, the Mercedes turned right toward the Roosevelt Bridge, merging smoothly with traffic as it picked up speed.
The question was, which route would the Russians take to get out to Reston? South through the edge of Alexandria then up 1-495 through Annandale; north to the Capital Beltway which crossed the Dulles Airport access road; or the shortest route through Arlington on the partially completed 1-66 that branched off north of Falls Church?
He got his answer about three miles later when the Mercedes, heading north, passed the 1-66 exit and continued toward the Capital Beltway. His luck was holding.
Swinging west on 1-66 he speeded up, the sun only a vague brightness low in the overcast sky ahead, traffic picking up, all of it running at a good speed as everyone headed home.