Highnote picked up the telephone, got an outside line and called Operations at Andrews Air Force Base. “Major Jenkins, please,” he said.
The squadron commander came on a second or two later. “Major Jenkins.”
“Bob Highnote. Are we ready to go, Mark?”
“It’s a green light, sir?”
“Right.”
“Anytime you’re ready then, sir,” Major Jenkins said. “How’s the weather over the North Atlantic?”
“There’s a storm cell building over European Russia, but it’s heading east, so we’re in good shape.”
“I’ll be there within the hour,” Highnote said. Dexter Kingman, chief of the Office of Security for the CIA, sat across the desk from John Sanderson, in the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue at Tenth Street. He had come to a slow boil when the FBI director had finally explained what was happening.
“I don’t like this one bit, Mr. Sanderson, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Neither do I,” Sanderson replied. “The fact of the matter is, Highnote is on the move.”
“Where?”
“At the moment he’s in his office.”
“It’s your opinion that he will lead you to McAllister?” Sanderson nodded, and leaned forward. “You must understand that the two men have been friends for a lot of years. From what we can gather, Highnote has ostensibly been protecting McAllister ever since the incident in New York.”
“From everything else you’ve told me-not saying I can accept it-it’s hard to believe.”
“It’s no less difficult for us,” Sanderson said, sighing deeply. “But it seems likely that Robert Highnote is working for the Soviet government. His control officer was a man named Gennadi Potemkin whom we found dead at Janos Sikorski’s home outside of Reston. Between the two of them they ran the O’Haire network, and did a damned good job of it.”
“Why would a man like Highnote turn?”
“We don’t know that yet, we’re still working up a psychological profile on him…
“What?” Kingman, who was himself a psychologist, asked. Sanderson spread his hands. “We don’t have much to go on. His phones are constantly being swept so there has been no possibility of monitoring his calls. And when he moves, it’s often with a great deal of care so he has been difficult to tail. But our best guess at the moment is that sometime over the past five to eight years, he became unbalanced. Pressures of the job, moral dilemmas, we’re not sure. But there is enough circumstantial evidence to suppose that he has gone off the deep end. Did you know that he had become fanatical about religion?”
“Doesn’t make the man a Russian spy.”
“No,” Sanderson said.
“What about McAllister? Where does he fit?”
“We think that McAllister learned something in Moscow that might ultimately lead back to Highnote who, under the guise of helping his old friend, has in reality been setting him up for the kill. For a legitimate kill. He’s been driving McAllister like a hunter might drive a wild animal toward a dozen other hunters… us.”
“What about the massacre at College Park? McAllister couldn’t have done that.”
“No,” Sanderson said. “This is a big puzzle. But we believe that a second spy ring was in operation here as well. One in which Donald Harman was working with a so-far-unknown Russian.”
Kingman sat back, his head spinning. “Donald Harman, the presidential adviser?”
“Yes.”
“Where do I come in?” Kingman asked, trying as best he could to control himself. He was a cop, not a spy. He didn’t like skulking around behind the back of a man he had long admired.
The telephone on Sanderson’s desk rang, and he picked it up. “Yes,” he answered softly. Moments later a startled expression crossed is features. He switched the phone to the speaker so that Kingman could hear too.
“You’re there now, at Andrews Operations?”
“I’m watching them roll down the runway right now,” George Mueler said. “I can have the flight recalled.”
“Where is he going?”
“Helsinki.”
“Oh, Christ,” Sanderson said, looking at Kingman. “Shall I stop him?” Mueller was asking. “Who is on that flight?” Kingman asked.
“Highnote,” Sanderson said. “Either McAllister and the Albright woman are in Helsinki, or Highnote is trying to make a run for the Soviet border.”
“What?” Mueller shouted. “What’d you say?”
“Don’t stop him,” Sanderson said. “I’ll call the Pentagon and arange another flight for you and Dexter Kingman. He’ll be on his way out there immediately.”
“We’ll never catch up with him.”
“Perhaps not, but we won’t be far behind,” Sanderson said. “Just stand by out there.” He hung up the telephone. “Will you help now?” he asked Kingman. “If McAllister and Stephanie believe that Highnote is there to help them, he’ll be able to kill them with no problem. They won’t be expecting it.”
“Will you help?” Sanderson repeated.
“Yes,” Kingman said numbly. “They could be warned. We could get a message to them somehow.”
“I’ll call Van Skike, and he can arrange something with the Agency in Helsinki, but they’re not to be warned.” Sudden understanding dawned on Kingman. “Mac and Stephanie they’re to be used as bait.”
Sanderson nodded. “What we have on Highnote is circumstantial. Do you still want to help?”
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Kingman said, getting to his feet.
“None of us do,” Sanderson said.
Somehow, God help him, the night had passed. Lying fully clothed on his bed in the Berlin Hotel around the corner from the Lubyanka, McAllister tried to put everything into perspective as the sky outside of his window began to lighten with Monday’s dawn. He could still feel Stephanie’s touch, her body a dark warm secret enfolding him. They’d made love at their hotel in Helsinki before his afternoon flight left for Moscow. They’d been tender with each other until the end when she didn’t want to let go. He had been unable to ease her pain or his fear. “It’s crazy,” she had cried in anguish.
The last irrational act of an irrational man. But even now when he still had the ability to turn back, to check out of the hotel and take the next flight out to Helsinki, he could not do it. He was driven, there was no denying it. Even in the innermost recesses of his mind he understood that the acts he had set in motion had no basis in reality. At least in any reality that he could put into words so that he could understand. Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra one, Zebra Two. Washington was finished for him. Now it was time for Moscow so that he could complete the circle of insanity that had begun for him one evening late in October.
We have made progress together, you and I. I am so very proud of you, Mac, so very pleased.
His interrogator’s name had been Miroshnikov. He was a KGB colonel. That much McAllister knew, but very little else other than a vision of the man’s face overhead, his eyes small, narrow, close-set, but with no bottoms. He also could see Miroshnikov seated across from him in the interrogation room. He was a large man, his complexion almost yellow, an Oriental cast to his features.
You thought you could do more for your country with woros than bullets, is that it?… In the end you will talk to me, they all do.. You, my dear McAllister, are definitely a resource…. Believe me, we are going to have a splendid time together, you and I.. Bits and pieces of Miroshnikov’s words drifted through McAllister’s mind, but there was more. There had been much more between the time he had begun to disintegrate and the night his heart had stopped on the table. Wisps of something… snatches of conversations that he could not put words to… drifted just out of reach at the back of his head. Zebra One had evidently been Donald Harman, and Zebra Two was General Borodin. But who was Borodin? What was Borodin? How had he managed to get to a man such as Donald Harman and turn him? More important at this point, how was McAllister going to get to the general? He got up from the bed and walked across to the window where he looked out at Detsky Mir, the children’s department store, and beyond it toward Dzerzhinsky Square. It was past seven and traffic was beginning to pick up with the morning. It would be time to go soon, he thought.