“I won’t know that until I try.”
“Don’t do it,” Highnote said earnestly. “Please, think it over.”
“I have,” McAllister said. “Is your house being watched?”
“No.”
“How about Merrilee and… Gloria?”
“After the shooting they were taken down to one of our safe houses in Falls Church. I don’t think you should go there.”
“No,” McAllister said, and he was surprised that there wasn’t as much pain thinking about his wife as he thought there should be. “But take care of yourself, Bob. Potemkin’s penetration agent will have to know that we’re on to him once he finds out his control officer is dead.”
“Don’t do this,” Highnote tried one last time. “No choice. I don’t think I ever had a choice,” McAllister said, and he hung up.
Stephanie opened the door for him, and the instant their eyes met he knew that he had come to some decision that would change everything. But she was also relieved that he had come back in one piece.
“Did he show up alone?” she asked when he was inside and the door was closed and locked.
“No,” McAllister said facing her. “He brought four others with him.
She was holding herself very still. “What happened?”
“They’re all dead.”
“Including Potemkin?” McAllister nodded. “Are you… all right?”
“No,” he said sighing deeply to relieve the immense pressure in his chest and his gut. “But I’m not hurt.”
“Oh, David,” she said and she went into his arms. He held her close while he stroked her hair, drinking in her smell, her feel. “I killed them and it was so easy. Easier than you can imagine.”
She said nothing.
After a moment he began telling her what had happened from the time he spotted the Mercedes coming from the embassy on Sixteenth Street until he’d driven back to Arlington. He left out nothing, except for the role her father had evidently played, and he did not gloss over any of the details. He felt that in some small measure she needed to hear it all from him because of what had been done to her father. Revenge, perhaps a catharsis; he thought she needed to believe that they were striking back. That they weren’t simply sitting still for the terrible events of the past days.
“Was it bad?” she asked when he was finished. “Yes.”
She was searching his face for a sign that it was over now, that they had won. But she wasn’t finding it.
“What did you do with the Mercedes?”
“I parked it in a garage downtown and took a cab back here. It’ll take them a while to find it. With any luck not until tomorrow or the next day.”
Again she looked closely at him. “There’s more.” She said it as a statement not a question.
He nodded. “I telephoned Bob Highnote at the hospital.”
“Is he all right?”
“They’ll be releasing him in a day or two. I had to warn him that when Potemkin’s body is found the penetration agent will know that we’re close.”
“He’ll run.”
“Maybe not. It depends upon how much he’s got left to protect here. Perhaps the O’Haires were just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps someone will take Potemkin’s place.”
“And what did he say?” Stephanie asked, and McAllister turned away, but she pulled him back. “What else, David?”
There was so much he wanted to tell her, and yet he simply could not. So much she deserved to know, and yet he didn’t think she could stand it.
“I’m going after General”
“In Moscow,” she said calmly. “Yes.”
“When? How?”
“Montreal in the morning where we’ll change our appearances back to match our real passports. From there to Frankfurt, then by car to Munich where I will get us new passports.” He pulled out the diplomatic blanks he’d taken from Highnote’s wall safe. “We’ll use these.”
“After Munich, what?” she asked, barely glancing at the passports. McAllister thought she was on the verge of exploding. “Helsinki,” he said. “Then Moscow?”
“You’re staying in Helsinki.”
“To do what?”
“If I’m not out in forty-eight hours, you’re going to call Highnote, and if need be our embassy, the Finnish authorities, and even the Associated Press. You’re going to put up a very big stink.” She smiled, but it was extremely fragile. “All of this while you’re somewhere inside the Soviet Union. A convicted American spy whom everyone wants dead. With no weapon, up against one of the most powerful generals in the country.” She laughed, her eyes suddenly glistening. “David, that is outside the realm of reality. For once I have to agree with Highnote, it’s insanity.”
McAllister turned away again, this time she didn’t stop him. He went across the room and stood by the window. There are demons in my head, and I cannot control them. There are forces driving me that I cannot understand. He wished that his father were here with him now; he hadn’t wished for anything so wrongly in his entire life. I’m frightened and I don’t know of what. “Stop it, my darling,” Stephanie said coming up behind him. He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. Howard Van Skike, director of central intelligence, entered the President’s study. A lot of worried people were huddled around the desk, talking with the President. One of his advisers was talking urgently on the telephone, and others had gathered in a tight knot across the room, and were deep in conversation. John Sanderson, the director of the FBI, broke away from the group at the desk and came over. “He’s got a news conference scheduled for noon.” He looked at his watch. “Gives us a bit more than three hours to come up with something for him.”
“What’s going on?” Van Skike asked, his gut aching. It was a flare up of his ulcer. He’d been taking Maalox by the bottleful for the past three days.
“We may have been wrong about McAllister,” Sanderson said. “Dead wrong. There are some questions that don’t seem to have any logical answers.”
“Does this have to do with Don Harman?”
“In a big way, Van. As it looks now, Don was meeting the O’Haire woman with the intent to kill her when they were both gunned down.”
“What?” Van Skike breathed, barely able to believe what Sanderson was saying.
“Harman may have been the penetration agent we’ve been looking for. Or at least one of them. We’re not sure, of course, but a lot of the signs are pointing his way. Remember, we had witnesses placing a tall, well-dressed man at McAllister’s house the morning of the College Park shooting?”
Van Skike nodded. The President had looked up. “Hold on for a couple of minutes, would you, Van?” he said.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“It’s looking more and more possible now that the man they saw was Don Harman.”
“Working with McAllister and the Albright woman?”
“No,” Sanderson said. “Innes had taped the proceedings, something McAllister might have guessed, but that the killers missed. One of them said two words: ‘Get him.” A man’s voice. Our lab people came up with a tape of McAllister’s voice from your Technical Services Division. Something recent, from what I understand. They ran it through their voice-spectrum analyzer. Looks like the man who spoke on the tape and McAllister are not one and the same.” Van Skike started to object, but Sanderson held him off. “It’s shaky at best, I know. Impossible to be one hundred percent accurate with two words. But it’s an indication.”
“Which still leaves us with the question of who was working with Harman, and exactly what McAllister has been doing these past weeks.”
“He was fighting back,” Sanderson said. “He evidently learned something in Moscow that pointed toward Harman… we’re just guessing now, of course. When the Russians released him Harman ad him set up for the kill. He’s been trying to protect himself ever since.”