The Zebra Network

Chapter 12

“I’m sorry, Stephanie,” McAllister said. “You can’t know how sorry I am, but this has got to end right now.”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed looking up at him, her eyes filling, her face pale and drawn. “He asked somebody the wrong questions and they killed him for it. My God, it doesn’t seem possible.”

“How did Kingman know it was done by the Russians? Were there witnesses?”

“He called it a standard Center assassination.. “A mokroe deloe?”

She nodded. “Yes, those are the words he used. What does it mean?”

“Literally it means ‘wet affairs,’ the spilling of blood. Was he shot in the face?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “And now the FBI wants to talk to me. Doug wrote my name on a pad of paper by the telephone.”

“You’re going to that meeting,” McAllister said. “And you’re going to tell them that you don’t know a thing. You and Ballinger were supposed to make a day of it, just like you told Kingman.”

“I can’t.”

“You must,” McAllister insisted. “If you don’t show up, they’ll come looking for you. And when they discover that you’re with me, you’ll be a marked woman.”

“Don’t you see, Mac, I already am a marked woman. My name was lying in plain sight beside Doug’s telephone. Whoever killed him had to have seen it. If I show up for that interview they’ll kill me.”

“One doesn’t necessarily lead to the other,” McAllister said. “Unless you don’t show up for the”

“No,” she said firmly. “Whatever happens, I’m with you until this thing is settled. One way or the other.”

“Why? Can you tell me that now?”

Her lips compressed. “Because I don’t like being pushed around.”

“It’s just starting.”

“Let’s finish it!”

They used the rental car that Stephanie had picked up in Baltimore. McAllister figured this would be the last time it would be safe to use the Buick, however, because when she failed to show up at Langley they would come looking for her and it wouldn’t take long before they found out about this car.

Outside the city they stopped so that she could telephone her father and warn him that someone would probably be by to ask him some questions about her.

“What they’ll tell you won’t be true, Father,” she said. “Are you in any danger?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Are you with him?”

“Yes.”

“Take care of yourself, I’ll be all right.”

“I know you will, Father,” she said.

The day was cold and overcast. There was very little traffic on the highways so they were able to make good time along the Capital Beltway. They turned west on the Dulles Airport Access Road.

“There’d be no reason for them to go after your father,” McAllister said. Stephanie’s mood had deepened since she’d spoken with him, and McAllister was worried about her.

“It’s a chance I’m willing to take,” she said. “There’s still time to back out.”

She looked at him. “Don’t say that again, Mac. It doesn’t make this any easier for me. I’m along for the ride. Let’s just hurry.”

Since this morning a plan had begun to formulate in McAllister’s mind. It was obvious that Voronin’s warning did have a concrete meaning, and that somehow it was tied to the O’Haire spy network, or more specifically to the network’s control officer. But it was justas obvious that without more information there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. It came down to the old question: Whom do you trust when it’s impossible to separate the liars from the innocents?

He slowed down as they approached the Reston turnoff. What little traffic they’d passed was heading to the airport. He’d not seen a police car or an identifiable Agency or Bureau unit since they’d left the hotel. Of course no one would be expecting him to return to Sikorski. Not after what had happened out there that night. He glanced in his rearview mirror just before he hit the ramp in time to see a chocolatebrown Ford Thunderbird coming up behind him at a high rate of speed. He veered a little to the right to get out of its way, and the car passed them, the driver and lone passenger both intentlooking men.

“It’s them!” Stephanie cried, sitting forward. “Who? What are you talking about?”

“That car! The brown Thunderbird! It’s the same one from Dumfries!”

The car had already passed through the stop sign at the top of the hill and was racing toward the north, toward Reston, toward Sikorski. McAllister jammed the accelerator to the floor and they shot up the ramp, fishtailing a little as they hit an icy spot on the roadway. There was no other traffic so McAllister didn’t even bother slowing down for the stop sign, swinging wide through the intersection, almost losing the back end again. He had to force himself to slow down. To go off the road now would eliminate any possibility of catching up with the two assassins ahead of them.

“Are you certain it’s the same two men?” McAllister asked. The Ford had already topped the next rise and had disappeared beyond. The side road up to Sikorski’s cabin was barely a half a mile beyond.

“No, I didn’t get that good a look at them as they passed us. But it’s the same car. New Jersey license plates.”

He glanced at her. She had taken out a small gun from her purse.

It was another.32 automatic. “They’re on their way to Sikorski’s.”

“To kill him,” Stephanie said. “Just like they killed Doug.”

“These two are Americans. We both heard them that night on the sailboat.“Stephanie looked at him. “If you wanted to kill someone, and make it appear as if the Russians had done it, what would you do?” McAllister nodded. “The question is, where the hell are they getting their information?”

“From inside Langley. From Highnote.”

“We’ll see,” McAllister said grimly. They came over the rise and raced down the long hill, the town of Reston in the distance. The Thunderbird was nowhere in sight. The road led straight into the distance. The only place the car could have turned off that quickly was the road back up through Sunset Hills. What few lingering doubts McAllister had had, evaporated with the certainty. One by one someone was eliminating everyone he’d had contact with since his release from the Lubyanka.

Everyone, that is, except for Robert Highnote. They reached the secondary road and turned off. Sikorski’s driveway was a couple of miles farther into the hills. The snow that had fallen last night blanketed the trees and brush. The small community of Sunset Hills was to their right; he turned left and drove another mile, finally slowing and stopping at the dirt road.

One set of tire tracks led up the road, none came back. No one had been in or out since the last snowfall. Only the Thunderbird had come this way.

McAllister started up the dirt track, the trees closing in around them. A few hundred yards up, he stopped again and shut off the engine. The road was very narrow just here, the embankments on either side very high, impossible to drive up over. Whatever happened now, the Thunderbird would not be able to get back to the main road this way.

“Hide yourself in the woods,” McAllister said. “If they come back this way open fire on them, and then get the hell out.”

“I’m coming with you,” Stephanie said.

“You’ll do as I say, goddamnit,” McAllister snapped. “If something happens to me I want you to get to Kingman and tell him everything…. I mean everything. At least you’d have a chance.”

Stephanie’s eyes were wide, but she nodded in agreement. They got out of the car. For a second she hesitated, but then she climbed up over the dirt embankment where the road had beencut through the side of the hill, and disappeared into the thick woods.

McAllister started toward the cabin. The snow was soft and slushy, and within ten yards his feet were soaked. He took out the P38, switching the safety off.

The Thunderbird was parked just at the edge of the clearing that led down to the cabin. Crouching low he hurried up behind it, keeping it between himself and the house. No one was around. The cabin seemed deserted. There were no sounds or movements.

From where he hid behind the big car he could see two sets of footprints leading down the clearing where they split up, one set going left, the other right. They’d circled the cabin, coming up on it from both sides. Sikorski’s pickup truck was back in its carport, but no tracks other than the footprints led across the clearing. Nothing had moved in or out since the snow. It was that one fact that was bothersome to McAllister just now.

He moved around to the driver’s side of the car. The window was open, the keys dangled from the ignition. He reached inside, took the keys and pocketed them.

Now, he thought grimly, the odds had been evened up somewhat. Whatever happened, they wouldn’t be getting out of here so easily. They would have to stay and fight.

A man in a dark bombardier jacket came around from behind the cabin. McAllister ducked farther back behind the car, certain that he hadn’t been spotted yet. The man’s attention was toward the cabin itself.

The front door opened and the second man, dressed in a dark overcoat, unbuttoned, came out. He was stuffing his gun inside his coat. The man in the bombardier jacket said something to him, and he shook his head. McAllister could hear the voices, but not the words.

They had expected to find Sikorski at home, but evidently the old man had left with someone before the snow had finished falling. Now they would be coming back up to their car.

McAllister eased back behind the Thunderbird and then scrambled up into the woods, moving from tree to tree until he was well hiddenyet barely fifteen feet from the car. He could hear the two of them talking now, their voices much closer as they came up the hill. He still couldn’t quite make out the words, but it sounded like English.

The one in the bombardier jacket came into view first on the driver’s side of the car. McAllister steadied his pistol with both hands against the hole of the tree, waiting for the second one to appear.

“Sonofabitch,” bombardier jacket swore, spinning away from the open window, his hand reaching for his gun. The second man had just come into view on the other side of the car, he looked up in alarm.

“Somebody’s got the fuckin’ keys,” bombardier jacket swore. “Hold it right there,” McAllister shouted.

Bombardier jacket had his gun out and was diving to the left. The other man was dropping down behind the car.

McAllister squeezed off a shot, the gun bucking in his hand, the bullet smacking into the driver’s side door a half a foot behind the man in the bombardier jacket, who snapped off a shot as he fell, the bullet hitting the tree inches from McAllister’s face.

McAllister fired again, this time catching the man in the throat, his head snapping back against the car’s front fender, a horrible gurgling scream coming from him as he tore at the jagged wound, blood pumping out all over the snow.

These were Americans, not Russians! He had not wanted this! Not this kind of a confrontation!

It took the man nearly a full minute to die, and then the woods were silent again, only a very slight breeze rustling the tree branches.

McAllister stood sideways to the tree, his heart hammering, his stomach heaving. The other man had not moved from behind the big car. For the moment it was an impasse.

“We didn’t kill him,” the man said, his accent New York or New Jersey. “We found him that way, I swear to God. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know who did it….” The words were almost hysterical, but the tone was too measured.

Janos dead? If these two hadn’t killed him, who had? “I gotta have a guarantee. I’m not going to get myself shot like Nick.” The voice had moved to the rear of the car. McAllister leaned forward slightly so that he could just see around the tree. The man in the bombardier jacket lay in the snow in a big puddle of his own blood.

“Throw out your gun, no one will hurt you,” McAllister called. “He’s a mess in there,” the man said. “In the back.”

“I said throw out your gun.”

The man popped up over the back of the trunk lid and fired twice, both shots coming within inches of McAllister, who ducked back behind the tree. Whoever they were, they were both good shots, professionals.

He remained hidden until he heard someone crashing through the trees and brush on the other side of the road. He looked back around the tree in time to see the man disappearing into the woods and he snapped off a shot knowing even as he fired that there was no chance of hitting him. McAllister ran through the woods back toward the Buick where Stephanie was waiting. The only way out of here was in that direction, and sooner or later the man would have to show up on the road. He was slipping and sliding all over the place in the snow. He stopped and listened. In the distance, across the driveway, he could hear someone crashing through the forest, and then the sounds were lost.

If Stephanie had hidden herself well, the man might run past her, never seeing her. If she was out in the open, she would be in trouble. McAllister redoubled his efforts, angling back toward the dirt road where he would be exposed but where he knew he would make better time.

He was in the field again; in the Rhodope Mountains just inside the Bulgarian border with Greece. He’d been running all night and now with the sun coming up he had less than a kilometer to safety across the border, but the Bulgarian Secret Police patrol was gaining. He could hear them coming, he could hear the dogs and the helicopters, still he kept running because he had no other option.

There was the distant crack of a single pistol shot, and then nothing. McAllister pulled up short just at the edge of the road and held his breath to listen. The Buick was parked twenty-five or thirty yards farther up the dirt road. Nothing moved. Again the woods were silent. His side ached, and he thought he could feel something oozing downfrom his left arm. He figured he had probably opened one of the stitches.

He slid carefully down to the road, and crouching to keep below the level of the embankment, hurried up the road to the car. He stopped again to listen, but the woods were still silent.

“Stephanie?” he called out.

“Here,” she shouted from the woods a moment later. McAllister stepped around the front of the Buick and looked up over the embankment in the direction her footprints in the snow led. He couldn’t see a thing except for the trees. He climbed up into the forest.

“Stephanie?” he called again, this time her answer seemed fainter, and to the right.

“Here,” she called. “I’m over here.”

The hair at the back of his neck prickled. Something was definitely wrong. She was in trouble. He could hear it in the few words she had spoken.

“Coming,” McAllister shouted, and he started noisily along the path of her footprints. After ten feet he stopped to listen, then stepped off the path and taking great pains to make absolutely no noise, circled widely to the left, moving from tree to tree as fast as he dared.

He came to a narrow clearing about twenty-five yards up the hill.

A set of footprints led from left to right, disappearing into the woods above. She had to be close, though he could not see a thing as he moved across the clearing and once again held up just within the forest.

“Where are you?” Stephanie called, her voice shockingly close. Just to the right now. “Mac?”

He searched the trees and brush out ahead of him, moving his eyes slowly, searching each square foot of dark against white. They were there. Behind a large tree. The man in the dark overcoat held an arm around Stephanie’s chest, while with his right hand he held a pistol to her head. They were barely ten yards away and slightly above, their backs to him.

McAllister got down on his stomach and crawled up the hill, keeping the trees and brush between him and them as much as possible. They were concentrating in the opposite direction, back toward the road. When he was barely ten feet away he got slowly to his feet and raised the pistol in both hands. “Stephanie,” he called out loudly.

The man in the dark overcoat, startled, looked over his shoulder and started to bring his gun around. It was all the opening McAllister needed. He fired, the shot catching the man in the forehead, taking off a big piece of his skull in the back, splattering Stephanie with blood. The man slumped down against the tree, his legs giving way beneath him and then fell face forward into the snow.

Stephanie, a horrified expression on her face, stepped back away from the man, and suddenly she leaped forward, raced down the hill and fell into McAllister’s arms.

“I heard the shots and then all of a sudden he was there behind me,” she cried in a rush. “He made me fire my gun into the ground, and call for you. We could hear you coming. I wanted to warn you. But then there was nothing. Oh, God, Mac..

“It’s all right,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the dead man. “What about the other one?” she said, suddenly stiffening in his arms, and pulling away.

“He’s down by their car. I killed him.”

She looked into his eyes. “They were here to kill Sikorski,” she said.

“He’s already dead. But this one said they found him that way,” McAllister said tiredly. His head was spinning. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “You?”

“I think so,” he said. He went up the hill and turned the dead man over. Stephanie helped him. They went through his pockets, coming up with five or six hundred dollars cash, which McAllister took, and his wallet. He was Treffano Miglione, from Jersey City; a member of the Sons of Italy and the Teamsters Local 1451. Apparently he was married. There were several snapshots of three young children and a fairly goodlooking young woman.

McAllister sat back on his heels and looked up at Stephanie. “This one wasn’t with the Agency or the Bureau.”

“No,” she said. “Mafia?”

“Yeah,” McAllister replied. “They were independent contractors. Someone hired them to get rid of me, Ballinger, and Sikorski. So, who hired them?“ The dead man’s weapon was a 9 mm SigSauer. McAllister removed the clip from the gun, ejected the shells from it, and pocketed them. He needed them for his own weapon.

He stood up. They were isolated here in the woods so that it was unlikely that anyone had heard the gunshots. But he didn’t want to take any more chances. It was time to get out.

“Where do we go now?” Stephanie asked.

It was almost axiomatic, he thought, that the further you got into an operation, the more restricted your options became. He could feel the so-called “funnel-effect” pulling him inexorably downward. But toward what?

“You’re going to arrange a meeting between your boss, Dexter Kingman, and me,” he said. “For tonight.”

Janos Sikorski’s shoeless, shirtless body lay over a pile of fireplace logs in the woodshed behind the carport. He had been dead for at least two days, his body frozen stiff in the cold. He had been beaten to death, his arms and legs broken by repeated blows from a large piece of wood.

McAllister stood just within the doorway, the dim light spilling across the floor on the old man’s half-naked body. His ribs had been broken, his teeth knocked out, and finally the side of his skull crushed.

“What did you tell them, Janos?” McAllister mumbled half to himself. Because of the cold there was no smell in the shed and yet he could imagine the odors of death, and his stomach heaved. Stephanie was right behind him. She gasped when she saw the body, and she turned away and threw up in the yard.

The two up in the woods had probably killed Ballinger, so who had done this to Sikorski? More important: Why? Was it a faction fight after all?

An organization will of necessity protect itself from any and all invasions. A basic tenet. But which organization had done this, and how far was it willing to go in its effort at self-protection?

McAllister stepped the rest of the way into the woodshed and tried to close Sikorski’s eyes, but the lids were frozen open. “Ah, Janos, what did you know about Zebra One and Zebra Two?” McAllister murmured. Traitor, Sikorski had screamed. They’ll give me a medal for your body.

Who would have given you a medal, Janos? Goddamnit, who?

They parked the Buick in the clearing in front of Sikorski’s house and drove the Thunderbird over to Dulles Airport, where McAllister, using one of the assassin’s driving licenses and credit cards, rented a Chevrolet Celebrity from the Hertz counter for Stephanie. She followed him back into the city, and they stashed both cars in the same parking garage a couple of blocks from their downtown hotel.

It was three in the afternoon by the time they were back in their room, and Stephanie rebandaged the wound in McAllister’s side which had opened and was leaking.

She was clearly shook up. This morning she’d still had a choice: stay or go. Now it was too late for her. She had crossed over. Now it would be impossible for her life ever to return to normal.

“We’re back to square one,” she said. They were having a muchneeded drink together. “If I set up a meeting between you and Kingman he’ll have half the Agency waiting to grab you.”

“Just what I want,” McAllister said. He was staring out the window across the city. It looked as if it were going to snow again soon.

“Actually we’re worse off than before,” she said. “They’ll suspect that you killed Sikorski. And sooner or later the Mafia is going to come looking for their people. That Thunderbird is going to stick out like a sore thumb.”

McAllister turned back to her. “The only reason I took their car is because of what I found in the trunk. I need it.”

“Such as?”

“Burglar tools.”

She looked at him, her lips pursed. “For Nhat, Mac? What are you going to do?”

“First things first,” he said. “Let’s say that you call Kingman this afternoon, right now and tell him that I want a meeting. Just the two of us, tonight at ten o’clock in front of the Naval Observatory. What will he do? Exactly?”

“If you’re going to have any chance of getting in and out, without being taken, we’ll have to provide ourselves with a couple of blinds. Wouldn’t be difficult to set up. A call to a telephone booth, for example. But he would be followed. He won’t come alone.”

“No fallbacks,” McAllister said. “What if we tell him up front when and where I want the meeting?”

“Within an hour of my call he’d have his people stationed all over the place, you know that. There wouldn’t be a chance of your getting in without being spotted.”

“He’d agree to the meeting if you called him?” McAllister insisted. “Certainly. He’d try to talk some sense into me. He would be disappointed. But he’d come. I suspect you’ve become a very big prize.”

“Kingman would come in person, but so would a lot of his people.”

“Half the Agency,” Stephanie said. “And I’m sure he’d get the FBI involved. Probably even the district cops.”

“Our little meeting would draw a lot of people over to the observatory. A lot of sensation.”

“Naturally…” she started to say, but then what he had been trying to tell her began to penetrate, and her eyes opened wide. “While they’re all looking for you to show up at the meeting, you would be someplace else. A diversion.”

“Exactly,” McAllister said. “But I’ll want you nearby so that you can see who shows up and exactly what they do. Close, but out of sight.”

“The Holiday Inn,” she said. “It’s on Wisconsin Avenue just a couple of blocks from the observatory. Doug and I stayed there once.”

“You’d have a clear line of sight to the observatory grounds?”

“From the upper floors,” she said. “But what about you? Where will you be?”

“Getting us the information we’re going to need if we want to stay alive,” he said.

She started to reply, but then backed off, a wry smile on her lips. She nodded. “I understand,” she said softly.

“Call him now.”

It was snowing again by the time McAllister pulled off Georgetown Pike and parked the Thunderbird on a dark street below LangleyHill. The CIA’s grounds were just on the other side. He sat in the darkened car for several long minutes, watching for traffic, but nothing came. It was a little past nine-thirty. By now Kingman’s people would be in place around the observatory north of Dumbarton Oaks Park, and no one would be getting suspicious for at least a half hour yet. Security would still be tight, but Kingman and Highnote and the other brass who might be involved in this business would certainly be gone. He needed access to a computer terminal in one of their offices.

He got out of the car and from the trunk took out the long-handled bolt cutters and the small tool kit he had found earlier. The two assassins had come down from Jersey City well prepared for their assignment. In addition to the tools, he’d also discovered a highpowered rifle and night spotting scope in an aluminum case, a MAC 10 compact submachine gun with three hundred rounds of ammunition, and a short-handled sawed-off shotgun for close work, leaving absolutely no doubt as to exactly what line of work they’d been in.

Careful to lock the trunk, he stepped off the road, down into a ditch and then up the other side toward a line of trees at the edge of a clearing at the top of a shallow hill, scrambling on his hands and knees at times because of the slippery going.

At the top he ducked into the protection of the woods and looked back the way he had come. The snow was falling in earnest now, so it wouldn’t be too long before the marks he had made coming up the hill would be partially covered, masking his trail.

Luck, he thought, turning toward the northeast. So much of his life had depended upon it.

Within a hundred yards he came to a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. A big metal sign warned that this was government property, and that entry was prohibited.

Putting down the tool kit, McAllister quickly cut a large square opening at the base of the fence with the bolt cutters, peeled it back and crawled through. On the other side he crouched in the darkness, waiting, listening for the sound of an alarm. But the night was still, even the occasional traffic sounds from the Georgetown Pike were muffled by the trees and falling snow.

Leaving the bolt cutters behind, he hurried down into the shallow valley, and then up the other side, stopping every hundred yards orso to listen for the sound of one of the patrols that operated back here twenty-four hours per day.

But there was nothing. He could have been alone in another universe, surrounded by dark trees, slanting snow and except for the noise of his own movements and breathing, total silence.

Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two. Voronin’s words.

The O’Haires’ organization had been called the Zebra Network. The soldiers were all safely in prison. What about the generals? Zebra One and Two?

Their control officer or officers had never been named. Why? Lack of information, or were they being protected for some reason? Three-quarters of a mile from the fence he came to the first paved road. There were no tire marks in the fresh snow. He stood by the side of the road. If he crossed here the next patrol to come along would spot his footprints.

He turned and followed the road directly north for a few hundred yards, coming at length to an intersection which had been recently traveled. It was exactly what he had been looking for. Fresh tire marks led off toward the northeast, and in the distance he thought he might be able to make out the soft glow of lights. Stepping out onto the paved roadway, he walked in the tire tracks, his footfalls crunching in the snow. He could definitely see the glow of lights ahead now, almost pink in the falling snow. It would be the rear parking lot behind the construction site. A big earth mover parked beside the road loomed up ahead of him, and beyond it two cement trucks and a crane, its boom lying down on the bed of a long trailer, waited for the Monday morning shift. McAllister followed the road as it curved toward the right, finally opening onto a vast parking lot, mostly empty at this hour. In the distance was the seven-story CIA headquarters complex, with its addition under construction outlined, as if by deck lights, like a hulking ship at sea in a storm. He pulled up behind a dump truck. The questions had been posed in Moscow; were the answers to be found here, he wondered.

He was suddenly very cold.

Headlights flashed at the far end of the parking lot, and McAllistercrouched down behind the big dump truck as a light-gray pickup truck raced across the parking lot and passed him, heading down the road he’d just come up. He caught a glimpse of the driver and his passenger, who was talking into a microphone. Had the hole in the fence been discovered already? The truck’s taillights disappeared into the night, and McAllister quickly crossed the road and hurried along the edge of the parking lot.

Construction on the new addition had been started nearly a year ago. The last bulletin he’d read indicated that it would be spring before the new offices would become available, because of numerous, as yet unexplained, delays. Scaffolding rose on all three sides of the U-shaped building that butted up against the original headquarters. Construction equipment and piles of material lay everywhere.

He crouched again in the darkness for a full minute, studying the building, but nothing moved, no lights shone from any of the windows. Around front the main building was brightly lit from the outside, for security’s sake, but most of the office windows were dark. Operations would be fully staffed, as would communications and a few of the other vital functions, but for the most part the building would be quiet.

McAllister worked his way around to the north side of the new building. Reaching the scaffolding he stuffed the small tool kit in his coat and started up. The windows on the fourth floor and above had not yet been installed. The canvas that covered the openings billowed and moved slowly in the light breeze.

When he reached the fourth story he was sweating lightly, and he had to stop for just a moment to catch his breath before he ducked beneath the lower edge of the canvas and stepped inside the building.

He was not alone. He stood stock-still in the nearly absolute darkness waiting for a sound, a movement, anything to accompany the cigarette smoke that he could smell. Someone was here. Very close.

Gradually his eyes became accustomed to the darkness and he was able to distinguish shapes and outlines of walls, hanging wires, and pipes and piles of construction materials. He remained standing by the canvas-covered window opening listening and watching. He was in a large, unfinished room. Directly across from him was an open doorway into a broad corridor. A man in the corridor, somewhere tothe left, coughed. McAlIister pulled out his gun and crept forward, feeling ahead with his free hand so that he would not trip over something.

At the doorway he stopped again to listen. The smell of cigarette smoke was much stronger here and he could feel the warmth of a portable heater wafting back to him. It would be a guard on duty. The new building was attached to the old just here. There would be a door. Some access from the new into the old. Someone would have to guard it. One guard or two? How much further would his luck hold? Gripping his gun a little tighter, McAllister stepped around the corner. A lone guard sat at a small table in front of a plywood bulkhead into which a padlocked door was set. A portable heater was set up at his feet. He was reading a magazine, smoke curling up from a cigarette in an ashtray in front of him. A single light bulb dangled from the ceiling.

McAllister was halfway down the corridor before the guard realized that someone was coming, and looked up, his eyes growing wide in alarm, his mouth opening. He reached for his walkie-talkie lying on the desk.

“Don’t,” McAllister said raising his pistol.

The guard hesitated just long enough for McAllister to reach him and snatch the walkie-talkie, his initial surprise turning to anger.

“Here, who the hell do you think you are?” the man sputtered jumping to his feet.

“I don’t want to have to kill you, but I will if you force me to it,” McAllister said, keeping his voice low and menacing. He hadn’t wanted this at all. There was no way he was going to kill this man, no matter what happened. Getting what he had come here to get had suddenly become more than difficult.

In the next moment McAllister’s luck completely ran out. “Raise your hands very carefully, if you please, Mr. McAllister,” someone said behind him.

McAllister stood absolutely still. He knew the voice, remembered it from somewhere years ago. He wracked his brain trying to come up with a face and name. Someone from the last time he had done desk duty here at Langley.“I asked you to raise your hands, sir, and I’m not kidding now.”

“Who is that?” McAllister said, turning very slowly. The man was very short and well-built with thick graying hair and dark eyebrows over wide eyes. The face was vaguely familiar, still he couldn’t put a name to it. “Tom Watson, sir. We were told that you might be showing up here. Now if you please, raise your hands.”

McAllister remembered. Watson had been one of the front-door guards. They’d often bantered back and forth when McAllister had come to work. He was holding a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson in his right hand. He wasn’t carrying a walkie-talkie. McAllister raised both of his hands; in one he held the walkie-talkie, in the other his gun. “Now what, Tom?”

“Disarm you, then call for help,” Watson said warily. “Get his gun, Frank.”

The other guard came up behind McAllister and reached for the gun. It was a mistake on his part. McAllister turned as if he were going to hand his gun to the guard, but then continued to swivel around until he was completely behind the man, his left arm clamped over the man’s throat, his pistol at the man’s temple.

Tom Watson moved forward, raising his gun, a frightened, uncertain look of surprise on his face.

“I don’t want to shoot him, Tom, but I will if I must,” McAllister said.

Tom Watson stopped in his tracks. “Damn you,” he said. “Do as I say for the next five or ten minutes and I promise you that no one will get hurt.”