The Zebra Network

Chapter 14

“They’re lying,” Robert Highnote said, looking across the conference table at the other three men gathered for the early morning meeting at CIA headquarters. “Besides, as I understand the laws of evidentiary procedure, the word of a conspirator would not be valid in a court of law.” Dennis Foster, the agency’s general counsel, nodded. “We’re not talking about a court of law here, Bob. But considering everything that McAllister has allegedly done over the past week or so, it gives one pause, wouldn’t you agree?” He was a slightly built but patricianlooking man with white hair and wire-rimmed glasses that gave his face a pinched expression. His voice was soft, cultured.

“Hell, at the very least the man is a killer,” Dexter Kingman said. He was just the opposite of Foster; raw-boned, large, at times loud. More than one person had underestimated his intelligence, however, because of his outward appearance. Oftentimes to their regret. He was angry just now.

“And he was here last night,” Adam French, the director of the Soviet Russian Division added. “You can’t deny that.”

“No,” Highnote said. “But so far, all the evidence that we’ve gathered has been contradictory. You can’t deny that.”

“The man is trying to save his own ass,” Kingman said. There was a deep scowl on his face. “Now he’s snatched one of my people.” Highnote glanced at the written report in front of him. “From what I’ve read here, she could have been a willing victim.”

“Probably had a gun to her head,” Kingman growled. “She’s still alive. And so are those two guards last night. He could have pulled the trigger. He didn’t.”

“What are you trying to do, defend the bastard?” Kingman said, his voice rising. “You were friends, but let’s not carry this so far we become blinded.”

“What the O’Haires told our people does fit,” Dennis Foster interjected. “If you think about it, it does make some sense.”

“Not from where I sit,” Highnote said heavily. “None of this makes any sense. I saw him, remember? I spoke with him face-to-face the night he came out to my house. He’s confused, he’s running for his life, I’ll grant you that, but we trained him to do that. And he’s doing it well.”

“At the Russians’ behest,” Foster said.

“Is that what you think, Dennis?” Highnote asked seriously. He looked at the others. “Is that the consensus here this morning? Because if it is, I’m telling you that I just can’t go along with you.”

Kingman threw up his hands in frustration. “Then what the hell are we doing here, Bob? What do you want from us? Do we let the bastard go, let him do whatever he wants? Offer him amnesty? Forget everything that’s happened?”

“On the contrary. He has to be stopped.”

“Fine…” Kingman started to say, but Highnote held him off. “Hear me out, Dexter. All of you. We’re dealing with a highly trained operative who is obviously motivated. Simply put, McAllister is looking for something. And looking hard. I think it would be wise to find out what that might be. He didn’t have to return here to Washington. He could have taken off, hidden himself, and it would have taken us years to dig him out, if we ever did. Why has he come back? What does he want?”

“Revenge,” Kingman said simply. “For what?”

“The failure of his network.”

“We’ve not agreed that he actually worked with the O’Haires.”

“It fits,” Kingman said. “The Russians arrested him to throw off suspicion, and then they released him on the hope that he would be allowed back into the fold. When we obviously wouldn’t buy that, he ran amok. You saw the ballistics report from New York. Carrick was killed with his own gun. So was Maas. McAllister’s fingerprints were all over it.”

“What about the three Russians outside my front door?” Highnote asked.“I don’t know. A deal gone bad, perhaps?”

“And the blood all over my sailboat? McAllister was there. We found the Walther he took from my study. Who tried to kill him?”

“Again I don’t have the answers, Bob. But my guess would be the Russians themselves. Maybe they’d realized they had made a big mistake releasing him. Maybe they’re trying to stop him.”

“Now you’re trying to say that McAllister is an independent?” Highnote asked. “Trained by us and molded by the Russians? With drugs, perhaps torture? He’s a tool?”

“Gone bad,” Kingman said. “I think the man has gone over the edge. I think he is insane.”

“If that’s the case,” Highnote said sitting back in his seat, “we’re all in trouble, gentlemen. Very big trouble.”

“We trained him, it’s up to us to stop him.” Kingman replied, only the smallest look of satisfaction on his face. “The question is, how? The bastard is smart.”

“If we knew what he was looking for, it might give us a clue as to his next moves,” Dennis Foster said. “If we assume that what the O’Haires told us is true, we could start there…

“No assumptions, Dennis,” Kingman said. “I don’t think we can afford the luxury. Besides, if McAllister’s brain was altered by drugs, he wouldn’t be the same person as before. No, we’ve got to start from the beginning. From his beginning. If he has come back here for revenge… we’ve got to find the object of his revenge.” He turned to Adam French. “He broke into your office and used your computer terminal. Was there any record of what he was looking for?”

“It could have been almost anything,” French said. “All that we do know for sure was that once he got into the division archives, he evidently called for a restricted-access file, and failed three times with the password.”

“Did he get it right on the fourth try?”

“Possibly,” French said. “Tom Watson said he printed out a hard copy of something.”

“No way of retrieving that either?” Kingman asked. “No.”

“He came here at great risk to himself to find out something. Heneeded a piece of information which he evidently managed to get. What information?”

“I have a guess,” French said. He reached down to his briefcase on the floor beside his chair and brought out a buff-colored file folder with the orange diagonal stripes signifying it contained top-secret information. “Dennis and I spoke briefly this morning before this meeting, so I knew what had transpired at Marion with the O’Haires. As you may know we maintain the O’Haire Zebra Network file in our archives. I figured that if McAllister was connected with them he might have been seeking more information… perhaps he was looking to discover just how much we knew.”

He withdrew a half a dozen computer printout sheets and passed them down the table to Highnote. “No telling if that was the file he was looking for, but the connection is there, and the password is yours, Bob.”

While French was talking, Highnote quickly scanned the pages which included the coded listing of the various O’Haire files. Files that he knew only too well because it was his department that had been most deeply involved in the investigation. The connection was there. It was definitely there!

Everyone was looking at Highnote. The decision was his, and they all knew it. They also respected the fact that he and McAllister had been friends for many years. It was Highnote, in fact, who had recruited the man.

Highnote laid the computer printouts down on the table. “His father was the best in the business. Practically a legend.”

“Nobody is pointing a finger,” Kingman said gently. “Nobody is holding you accountable.”

“What I mean to say is that up to the point that McAllister was arrested by the Soviets there was nothing wrong with him. I sincerely believe that he was a good, loyal American. One of the best field men I’ve ever seen.”

“I agree with you,” Kingman said. “We all do, so far as it concerns his abilities. But the O’Haires have named him.”

“Someone told them to do it, Dexter. There has to be a conduit tothem. I’d be willing to bet anything that Mac was not involved with them.”

“Then something happened to him in the Lubyanka,” Kingman said.

“Yes,” Highnote agreed softly. “They did something to him, warped his mind, altered him somehow, and then sent him back here hoping we’d accept him. But they were too crude about it.”

“They’ve been cruder,” Adam French said. “Now they’re just as afraid of him as we are.”

“He must be stopped,” Highnote said with obvious difficulty. “Brought in, if humanly possible, but stopped.”

“He’s fighting for his life… or at least he thinks he is,” Kingman said. “He won’t be so easy to… capture.”

Dennis Foster bridled. “I don’t know if I should be hearing this.” He started to rise, but Highnote waved him back.

“We’ve haven’t crossed that line yet, Dennis. What we’re doing here is well within our charter. We’re not contemplating anything illegal. The optimum scenario is that we bring him in, and find out what happened to him.”

“I repeat, that won’t be so easy,” Kingman said. “He obviously knows what he’s doing, and just as obviously he has some plan in mind.”

“What about this woman he snatched?”

“Stephanie Albright is young, idealistic, and good,” Kingman said, his jaw suddenly tight. “You might not know, but her name was written on Ballinger’s phone pad. They were supposed to have met that morning.”

“Are you saying that she killed him?” Highnote asked aghast. “No. I’m saying that McAllister had her set up the meeting and then he killed Ballinger.”

“Why?”

French interrupted. “I know why,” he said, his complexion suddenly very pale. They all turned to him. “Ballinger telephoned me, wanted to know something about the O’Haire network. Said it was something he was working on… that he might have something new for us.”

“What’d you tell him?” Highnote demanded. “Nothing. I told him that he would have to clear it with you, or at the very least go through Dexter’s office. He said he’d do just that.”

“He didn’t call me,” Kingman said. “Nor me,” Highnote said.

“He’s definitely after the O’Haires,” French said. “If only 1 had known.

“Or someone connected with them,” Dennis Foster said. “They’re all safely in prison. But there could be others. Their control officer, for one.”

“Which means McAllister wouldn’t have murdered Ballinger,” Highnote said. “He went through the woman to get information, and when that didn’t work he went directly to the source. The Russians killed Ballinger because they wanted to stop McAllister from learning something. They must know what he’s up to. It was probably they who called security warning them that McAllister was on his way out here.”

“That’s a weak guess, Bob,” Kingman said.

Highnote slammed the palm of his hand on the table top. “We don’t have anything else to go on, goddamnit. I’m trying to save lives, don’t fight me.”

“If he’s after something or someone connected with the O’Haire network, let’s give it to him,” Kingman said.

“Bait?”

“Exactly. If he responds we’ll know for sure what he’s up to.”

“What have you got in mind? Any ideas?”

“We’ll get a message to him.”

“How?”

“There is only one way to make sure that we get his attention,” Kingman said. “We let it leak to the press that we’re on the verge of arresting the O’Haires’ control officer. We’ll even go so far as to name him as a former Agency officer: David McAllister.”

“You’re nuts,” Foster said. “Every cop in the country would be gunning for”

Kingman shook his head. “We give a bogus description. Something not even close. Different age, height, hair. McAllister will know that we’re trying to reach him, and why.”

“So will the Russians.”

“And they’ll go gunning for him, because they know what he really looks like. In the meantime we’ll be watching them. Sooner or later they’ll lead us to”

“If they get to him first they’ll kill him,” Foster said. “It’s the chance we all agreed to take when we raised our right hands, Dennis.”

“You must have taken a different oath than I took,” Foster said.

“I for one want no further part of these proceedings, and I suggest that this entire case be turned over to the Bureau. It’s in their baIliwick. let them handle it.”

The telephone at the head of the table burred softly. Everyone stopped as Highnote picked it up. They’d all heard him instruct his secretary that there were to be no interruptions of this meeting, except in an emergency. “I see,” Highnote said softly, the expression on his face impossible to read. Foster had gotten to his feet and was halfway to the door. Even he hesitated.

“This morning?” Highnote asked. “Yes, I see, thank you.” He hung up. For a long time he sat stock-still, staring at the telephone.

“What is it, Bob?” Kingman asked, the first to break the suddenly ominous silence.

Highnote looked up. “It was Janos Sikorski,” he said. “He was found tortured to death at his home outside of Reston this morning.”

“Good lord,” Foster said.

“Any witnesses?” Kingman asked, his eyes bright. Highnote shook his head. “It’s not all straightened out yet, but the killers evidently came in two cars. They left one behind. There was a lot of blood… “Any idea who the car belongs to?”

“It was a rental unit. Out of Baltimore.”

“A name?”

“Stephanie Albright.”

“Oh, Christ,” Kingman said. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”