The Zebra Network

Chapter 17

The number at her father’s house in Baltimore rang ten times before Stephanie finally hung up. She’d used the pay phone in the corridor between the cocktail lounge and the lobby.

Calls from their room could be too easily monitored by the hotel operator. Mac had told her that. She believed in him. God in heaven, she’d done everything he’d told her.

She glanced down the darkly paneled corridor toward the cocktail lounge. A couple of men sat at the bar talking with the woman bartender. Other than that the hotel was quiet at this hour.

Where is my father? she asked herself. It was a Monday night. He should have been home asleep in his bed unless there had been an emergency call to the practice. But he never got emergency calls.

And where was Mac? He had been gone nearly seven hours now. Where was he? What was happening? She had a vision of his bulletriddled body lying beside a dark road somewhere in the country.

She didn’t think she could take much more of this. Sitting alone, waiting. She’d never been very good at that. Highnote was somehow at the center of this business. In at least that much she and Mac were now in total agreement. But where he was blinded by past friendships, previous loyalties, she was able to see with an unprejudiced eye. Mac had been set up from the moment he’d been arrested in Moscow. Highnote was the logical man behind it all. He was Zebra One. He was the man in Washington who had controlled the O’Haire network… and probably still controlled whatever was left of the organization. Mac, by going to see him, had been walking into a trap.

So write him off. Turn around and get out. Run. But to where? Mac had not returned and her father did not answer her call. She was alone, and she was frightened. She walked back to the elevator and took it up to their third-floor room where she went to the window. It was snowing quite hard now.

I can’t stand by and watch you commit suicide…. It’s been Highnote all along. It has to be!

Then I’ll find that out. It’s the only way. Everything else would be meaningless. I must know.

“Must know what?” she cried to herself, laying her forehead against the cool glass. “What is driving you, my darling? What are you seeking? Who are you looking for?”

She closed her eyes and grabbed a handful of the thick drapes. Her stomach felt hollow and her legs were suddenly so weak they were barely able to support her. She’d known that she was being told lies from the moment she’d been assigned to McAllister’s house and had talked with his wife. The woman had seemed frightened… but not for her husband, rather for herself. Stephanie had not understood it at the time. It wasn’t until Mac had shown up and had confronted his wife on the steps that Stephanie had been able to give voice in her own mind to what she had instinctively felt. Gloria McAllister wanted her husband dead not because she thought he was a traitor, but because she herself was hiding something, or she no longer cared for him. She’d gone off with Highnote. Were the two of them somehow working together?

“Oh, father,” she cried softly. “I need you now. I don’t know what to do.”

McAllister parked the delivery van in front of the FBI headquarters building in the same place he had left the Thunderbird and walked back to the Best Western. It was going to drive them crazy finding the van this way. Before long they would begin searching all the hotels in an ever-expanding radius downtown. Sooner or later they would get lucky. It was time to move.

He had let the young driver off in the country between Highview Park and Cherrydale hours ago, but instead of driving directly back into the city and ditching the van, he had driven over to Arlington Cemetery where he had lingered alone with his thoughts. It was a dangerous game he’d been playing. It couldn’t have taken the driververy long to get to a telephone and report what had happened. They’d be looking for the van by now. He’d increased his risk of being taken by his delay, yet he found that he wasn’t ready to face Stephanie. For a while, sitting in the darkness smoking a cigarette, he thought about leaving her. Simply turning around and running away. But in the end he knew that was impossible. She was a part of this thing now, no matter what he did or didn’t do. Whoever wanted him dead would also be gunning for her.

As he had done the night before, he was careful with his tradecraft, making absolutely certain that he wasn’t being followed. Across the street from the hotel he held up in the darkness for a full five minutes, making sure that the place had not been staked out.

Highnote had done exactly what any good and loyal government servant should have done. The moment he had spotted McAllister he had telephoned Security. Mac had forgotten about his car phone. It had been a mistake on his part that had very nearly cost him his life.

But in the end Highnote had listened. He had admitted the possibility that something more than met the eye was going on. And in the end he had told Mac to run. He had warned him.

Run where? To whom? To what? Where else could he turn? He went around the corner and entered the hotel through the parking garage, taking the stairs up to the third floor where again he held up, studying the empty corridor before continuing. There weren’t too many options left open to them. But Highnote, he was fully convinced now, was on his side; reluctantly perhaps, and understandably so, but on his side. Stephanie would have to be made to understand that it was time for her to get clear. Not back to the Agency, of course, but she would have to go into hiding now. Somewhere out of harm’s way.

She opened the door for him, slipping the security chain and then stepping back. Her eyes were wide and shining, she’d obviously been crying. Her hand shook badly when she reached up and touched his cheek.

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” she said, her voice tremulous.

“Are you all right?” he asked, taking her into his arms, and realizingthat somehow over the past few days he had begun to care for her. “Did something happen here?”

“No,” she said. “Not really

“What do you mean by that? Stephanie, what happened?” She shook her head. “Did you see Highnote? Did you actually get to talk to him?”

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“Goddamnit, David, talk to me!” she snapped. “You’ve been gone seven hours, leaving me to sit here imagining all sorts of things.”

Tears had come to her eyes again, and her entire body was trembling.

“Easy,” McAllister said soothingly, holding her close. “I saw him and we talked. There’s not much he can do for us, but he is on our side.”

Stephanie pulled away and looked up into his eyes. “Oh, David, how can you believe that after everything that’s happened?”

“He listened to me. At first he was skeptical, but in the end he believed me. He warned me. Told me to run in the end. It saved my life.”

“Run from what?”

“He called Dexter Kingman from his car phone. It was something I hadn’t counted on. They were just showing up when I got out.”

“It would have been convenient if you’d been shot and killed trying to escape,” Stephanie said. “My darling, can’t you see what’s happening? How he’s maneuvered you? He’s given you the same advice each time you’ve talked to him. He can’t help you and he tells you to run. David, only guilty men run. How else could Dexter have seen it?”

“He could have said nothing. Kept me busy. I would have been trapped.”

“There would have been a shootout. You would have been killed.”

“That might have been the plan in the beginning, but he changed his mind.”

“What did he say?”

“They think I was working for the Russians all along, running the O’Haire network. He said they named me as their control officer.”

“Why were you arrested in Moscow? Did he have an explanation for that?”

“To throw suspicion off me, at first. But then I was brainwashed in the Lubyanka. I supposedly became one of them. But something went wrong, and they lost control of me. They decided in the end I would be better off dead.”

“All wrapped up in a neat little package,” she said disdainfully. “Too neat.” She shook her head in irritation. “That explains only why the Russians want you dead. What about the Mafia? What have they got to do with it?”

“There were no bodies at Sikorski’s,” McAllister said. “Someone cleaned up the mess out there before the FBI showed up.”

“Then they think that you killed Sikorski?”

“Yes.”

“Highnote told you that?” Stephanie asked, watching his eyes. “I convinced him otherwise. At least I got him thinking that there was another possibility.”

“Which is?”

“That there is a penetration agent in the CIA. Someone at high levels who is working with a counterpart in the KGB.”

“Zebra One and Two.”

“That’s right.”

“Your release from the Lubyanka, then, was nothing more than an administrative mistake. Crossed signals.”

McAllister nodded.

“And Highnote accepted that?”

“Only after I told him the one thing that doesn’t fit anywhere. The one thing that makes absolutely no sense. The two men I stopped at Sikorski’s hadn’t killed Janos. They found him like that. He’d been dead for at least a day and a half. So who killed him and why?”

“If not the Mafia, then the Russians,” Stephanie answered. “Can’t you see it? Zebra Two is the Russian. He has his own people working for him, probably out of their embassy right here in Washington. But Zebra One, the American, can’t use CIA people for his dirty work, so he hires professional hit men. It all still points back to Highnote.”

“You had to be there, face-to-face with him. I know the man. He genuinely wants to help, but his hands are tied.”

“Then what’s left for you, my darling?” Stephanie asked softly. “What’s left for us?”

“The list.”

She looked at him questioningly. “What?”

“The four names from the computer. I’m going after them. They’re our only leads. If there are still connections between the O’Haire network and whoever was running it, they might know.”

“Highnote knows that. He’ll have his people waiting for you.” McAllister pulled away. “Goddamnit, you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. Highnote is not Zebra One.”

“I’m sorry,” Stephanie said. “But even if you’re right, he’ll have to follow up with those four names. It’s his duty. He’ll have to go to them for the same reasons you want to go to them.”

McAllister was shaking his head, and sudden understanding dawned in Stephanie’s eyes. “You didn’t tell him, did you?” she said. “No.”

She smiled. “You held back that one piece of information. Why? Can you answer that?”

“It never came up,” he said weakly.

“Because you didn’t bring it up,” she said triumphantly. “Whatever you say you believe, there is something at the back of your head, some instinct for survival that told you to keep it from him. Just in case.”

“There’s nothing he could have done. “No,” Stephanie interrupted. “Do you know what I think? I think that something did happen to you in the Lubyanka. Something that changed you, something that made you unsure of your own abilities. But deep in your gut you know what moves to make, you know how to protect yourself. What happened in New York, and what’s been happening ever since proves that. Let yourself go, David. Let your old habits, your old instincts take over. Do what you know is the right thing. You have the tradecraft, use it.”

“We’ll have to get out of here first thing in the morning,” he said, going over to the window and looking down at the empty street.

Tradecraft was what you used against the enemy, not againstfriends. Put a bullet in your head…. End it now…. It would be for the best. Gloria has written you off”Where are we going?”

“Out of Washington,” he said. “Where? To do what?”

He focused on her pale reflection in the dark window glass. He’d lived with pain for so long he was surprised now that he wasn’t used to it. She didn’t look real to him; her hair was in disarray, and she was dressed simply in a loose sweatshirt and blue jeans, yet he knew that he wanted her. It astonished him, this sudden feeling. He’d either come a long way in the past weeks, or he had fallen-he couldn’t decide which, or if at this moment it really mattered.

“He told me to send you back.” McAllister said. “In a way he was right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t afford you any longer. You’ll slow me down to such a degree that they’ll catch up with us, and we’ll both be dead.” His words sounded hollow in his ears. “Sooner or later they’ll get to your father and use him to pry you loose. I’m not going to wait for that to happen.”

He turned to her. Tears were slipping down her cheeks. “I don’t have anyplace to go,” she said.

“Dexter Kingman would make sure nothing happened to you.” She was shaking her head again. “I’m not going to leave you, David. Not now, not after everything that has happened.”

“You’re not listening to me,” McAllister said, his voice rising. “They’re probably going to win. There are too many of them, they’re too well organized. Sooner or later I’ll simply wear down, my luck will run out, and it’ll be over.”

“They’d hunt me as well.”

“Not if they were convinced that you knew nothing. That I’d held you against your will.”

“I’m not leaving you, David,” she said. “Whatever it is I have to do to convince you, I will.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you,” she cried. “I told you once, didn’t you hear me? Didn’t you believe me? I love you. There is no life for me without you.”

He turned back to the window again, unable to face her. He knewwhat he wanted to say, but he simply could not speak the words. Not now. The insanity was everywhere. With him there was death, away from him there was at least the possibility of life. Something was driving him, something had always driven him for as long as he could remember. But even now he could not give voice to the demons inside of him. “It’s the game that gets to all of us sooner or later,” Wallace Mahoney had said at the Farm. He’d lost his wife and both sons to the business, yet he’d gone on because there were no other possibilities for him.

The only reality is in continuing with your life for better or for worse. The Russians have a proverb: Life is unbearable, but death is not so pleasant either. “You have to believe me,” Stephanie said. “You cannot stay with me.”

“There is only one thing that would make me go,” she said. “Turn around and look at me!”

McAllister turned.

“Tell me that you don’t care for me. Tell me that it doesn’t matter that I love you. Tell me that you will never care for me. Then I’ll leave you.”

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

“I can’t tell you that, because I do love you. It’s why I wanted to send you away, to keep you in hiding, to keep you safe, to protect you. I don’t care what happens to anyone else, only you. If you want to stay I won’t send you away.” She took off her sweatshirt. Her shoulders were tiny and rounded, the nipples of her small breasts were erect. “I want to stay,” she said. “I’ll never leave.”

McAllister came across the room to her, and took her in his arms, his lips finding hers. She shuddered as she pressed against him, the heat of her body penetrating his shirt. He ran his hands down her back, her flanks, the mounts of her bottom, small and tight in her lue jeans. She shuddered again.

“Please, David,” she said looking into his face. “Make love to e now.“He picked her up and carried her across the room where he laid her on the bed. Undoing the waistband of her jeans, he pulled them down around her boyish hips, and peeled them off her long, straight legs. He kissed her breasts, his tongue lingering at her nipples, and then brushed his lips across her belly, the tops of her legs, her inner thighs as she spread her legs, her pelvis rising to meet his touch.

When he stepped back to get undressed, she watched him, her lips parted, a faint flush coming to her complexion. He laid his gun on the table beside the bed, and let his clothes fall where they would. “Hurry,” she said. “Hurry.”

He came to her on the bed, her legs parting for him, and he entered her without preliminaries. She opened her lips as they kissed, her fingers pulling at his back, her legs wrapped around his body, her hips rising to meet his thrusts.

“I’ll never leave you, David,” she cried softly. “I’ll never leave you.”

Later, lying beside each other, McAllister watched her breasts rise and fall with her breathing. Her odor was slightly musky and very sensuous.

“I don’t know how this is going to turn out,” he said. “But I’m not going to give it up. I don’t think I have that choice.”

She looked at him through heavy-lidded eyes, a faint smile on her lips. “Do you love me?”

The snow was falling very hard outside now. He touched her lips with his fingertips. “Yes.”

“Say it,” she said. “I love you.”

“Then nothing else matters. We’ll do it together, David.” She smiled. “Now make love to me again. I need you.”

It was very late. McAllister woke with a start, suddenly realizing that he was alone in the big bed. He sat up, shoving the covers back. The television set was still on, but the screen was blank and the sound had been turned down. The only other light came from the partially open bathroom door.

“Stephanie?” he called, getting out of bed. There was no answer. She was not in the bathroom, and her clothes and purse were gone. The clock on the nightstand read a few minutes before five. Where the hell had she gone?

He was pulling on his trousers when a key grated in the door lock. Crossing the room in two strides he snatched up his gun, slipped off the safety and spun around as the door opened.

Stephanie’s figure, backlit by the corridor lights, appeared in the doorway and she slipped inside, stopping in her tracks when she saw that McAllister was out of bed, standing in the middle of the room, the gun in his hand pointed at her.

“Oh,” she said.

McAllister’s heart had jumped into his throat. He lowered the gun with a shaking hand and stepped back. “Christ,” he said. “Where did you go?”

“It’s my father,” she said breathlessly. “I went downstairs to call from the pay phone. But there was no answer.”

“What?”

“David, he should be home. Something has happened to him. Something terrible. I just know it!”