The Zebra Network

Chapter 19

For the first time since they’d gotten word that McAllister had been arrested in Moscow, Robert Highnote was at a loss for understanding. He’d always prided himself on his ability to see the big picture; to keep track of all the variables in any situation. Real life was fluid. There were no blacks and whites, only delicate shades of gray. Misunderstandings, coincidences, changes of plan or heart, made the complex business grist only for the man of intuitive genius. Highnote felt for the very first time in his career, that he might be in over his head.

He shoved his coffee cup away. “You’ve been in contact with him, then? He’s approached you?”

“No, nothing so dramatic as all that,” Alvan Reisberg said. He’d taken off his glasses and was polishing the lenses with his handkerchief. His eyes seemed naked.

“Then what in heaven’s name are you talking about? You say he told you that someone is trying to kill him?”

“I mean in addition to the three Russians we found in that car near your home.” Reisberg said. “The Mafia is now involved for some reason.”

“If you’re talking about the incident in New York, ballistics showed us that the murder weapon was Cariick’s own gun. We also have the testimony of the New York City cop. He saw McAllister with Carrick’s gun in his hand.”

“I’ll grant you that,” Reisberg said, putting his glasses back on. “But as I say, there is a Mafia connection here as well. A Ford Thunderbird was found parked outside our headquarters building two nights ago.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” Highnote protested, but Innes held him off.“Let him continue, Bob.”

Reisberg nodded. “We traced the car to a Jersey City Cosa Nostra family. Very big. One of our informants told us that two family members, contractors, hit men in other words, were missing after coming down to the Washington area on some assignment. He wasn’t very clear on that point. He’s frightened out of his mind that he’ll be discovered and will be murdered. But he was certain that he’d never heard the name McAllister before.”

“So what’s the point?” Highnote asked.

“McAllister’s prints were all over the car. He left it there for us to find.”

“Why?” Highnote asked. “Exactly my question,” Innes said.

“There is no doubt that he used the car on two separate occasions. We matched the tire prints in Janos Sikorski’s driveway, as well as in Langley Hill just below where he made entry onto CIA grounds.”

“Maybe he is working with them,” Highnote said. “It would explain how he’s been able to drop out of sight.”

“There were bullet holes in the side of the car,” Reisberg said. “The calibers match the casings we found on Sikorski’s property. We think McAllister went back out to Sikorski’s to talk to his old friend, and came upon the Mafia already there. Either that or the Mafia followed McAllister to Sikorski’s, though we’re betting on the former because of the arrangement of the tire tracks. The Thunderbird came first, and then another vehicle came after it. The one that was registered in Stephanie Albright’s name.”

“And you’re saying that there was a shootout there between McAllister and these Mafia people?”

“We found traces of blood-not all of them McAllister’s type and evidence that someone else had come out to clean up the mess.”

Highnote once again sat back in his chair. “Why wasn’t I told about this?” he asked. “We agreed to liaise on all aspects of this investigation.”

“The reports have been sent over to Dexter Kingman in your Office of Security,” Reisberg said. “We’re holding nothing back. His reports come to us as well, including the complete dossier on Ms. Albright.”

“We appreciate that you and McAllister are friends,” Innes said, his tone conciliatory. “We honestly do. But you must understand, Bob, what we’re dealing with here.”

“I don’t,” Highnote said angrily. “And I’m still waiting for someone in this room to explain it to me.”

“How do you see it?” Reisberg asked.

Highnote turned on him. “McAllister is a good man, one of the best.”

“I think we all agree with that statement,” the FBI cop said, his voice very soft.

“I think he was brainwashed in Moscow. I think they altered him and then sent him back here to do as much damage as he possibly could. And he’s done just that. But it’s not his fault, none of it is.”

“What is your recommendation?”

“We bring him in, of course, there’s no question of that. We must.”

“To help him?”

“Yes.”

Reisberg glanced at Innes and Quarmby, then spoke. “We’ve come to much the same conclusion, in that he must be brought in and helped, which is why the President has offered him amnesty. But we think the evidence shows something else may be occurring here. Something that has us… disturbed.”

“Go on,” Highnote said.

“First let’s go back to the beginning, if we may. To Moscow. What exactly was McAllister working on for you?”

“There were a number of ongoing projects,” Highnote said. “There always are. McAllister was a network man. His specialty has been setting up lines of stringers from scratch and then working them.”

“He is a people person,” Reisberg pressed.

“If you want to call it that, yes. He deals with personalities. With motivations.”

“What specifically was he doing the night of his arrest? What I mean to ask is, who was he seeing that night?”

“I don’t know,” Highnote said. “There was nothing on his day sheets, and of course he was never given a chance to tell us afterward.”

“Anything in his confession to the Russians that would indicate to you whom he had seen that night?”

“No,” Highnote said.

“Didn’t it strike you as odd that the Russians made no mention of why he was arrested on that particular night?”

“Yes, Alvan, it struck me as odd. It struck all of us as odd, but again, as I’ve said, Mac never had the chance afterward to tell us.”

“It never came up in the two conversations you had with him?” Highnote bridled. “I resent the implication. You’ve seen my reports.

“Nobody is implying anything here, Bob,” Innes broke in gently. “We’re trying to get at the truth, that’s all.”

“He’s a driven man.”

“Yes, we all agree with that. But the fact of the matter is, someone is trying to kill him. Not only the Russians, but the Mafia as well. The question is: If the Russians wanted him dead, why did they release him in the first place? And who has hired the Mafia to go after him, and why?”

“More to the point,” Reisberg interrupted, “what were the Mafia doing at Sikorski’s place… assuming we’re correct in our guess that they got there first?”

“If they were after McAllister, it would be logical that they would go after his old friends. People they might think he would try to contact.”

“Exactly,” Reisberg said. “Where are they getting their information?”

Highnote’s breath caught in his throat. “I see,” he said. “They also made the connection between you and McAllister,” Reisberg continued. “The Russians were at your house, waiting for him. And then when he ran to your boat in Dumfries they went after him there… someone did… and shot him and left him for dead. The blood we found was his type. And there was a lot of it.”

“You’re saying that whoever is after Mac is getting inside information?”

“It would appear so,” Reisberg said.

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves now,” Innes said, filling the sudden silence.

“Yes?” Highnote said, holding his temper in check.“When we first began to put this together, we came up with four areas of concern.”

“Who is we?”

“I approached Paul with this just yesterday,” Alvan Reisberg said. “Because you had questions for which there were no answers?”

“Yes.”

“The first, of course, was McAllister’s arrest and subsequent release by the Russians,” Innes said. “Naturally we weren’t involved in that business until the incident in New York.”

“Naturally,” Highnote said.

Innes ignored the sarcasm. “The second was the disturbing possibility that not only were the Russians trying to kill him, but that someone had hired the Mafia to stop him as well. In each case it appeared that someone was feeding them inside information about McAllister. The third was the apparent connection between McAllister and the O’Haires. In the first place your own people were told that McAllister had worked with them as their Russian pipeline. And in the second place, NSA intercepted the burst transmission within hours of which the O’Haires were murdered.”

“We can go two ways with this,” Reisberg interjected. “Whoever is trying to silence McAllister set up the O’Haires to implicate him on the hope that we would do their job for them. In other words, if we believed that McAllister had been the O’Haires’ control officer all along, we might not hesitate to shoot to kill when the opportunity arose. The O’Haires, of course, were then silenced so that they would have no chance to recant. Either that, or we can believe that McAllister indeed was their control officer, and still is very much in charge of the network, and had to silence them himself… or at least arrange for them to be killed.”

“Not the act of a desperate, driven man,” Highnote said. Innes shook his head. “Which brings us to Stephanie Albright, who apparently has agreed to help him.”

“I don’t think that has been established with any degree of certainty,” Highnote said.

“Forgive my skepticism,” Reisberg countered, “but I think there can be no question that she is willingly helping him. In fact it would be my guess that it was she who helped him in Dumfries.”

“What?”

“She apparently visited McAllister’s home in Georgetown on the night she managed to escape from him at Sikorski’s. It’s possible that she saw a photograph in the living room which showed McAllister and his wife aboard your sailboat. The Dumfries Yacht Haven sign is clearly visible in the background.”

“That’s quite a leap,” Highnote said. “But assuming that was the case, why would she have done such a thing? I’ve looked at her file. She is totally above suspicion.”

“Yes,” Reisberg said. “My thought exactly. She is a woman totally beyond reproach. We went up to Baltimore to interview her father, who told us that she is a headstrong girl, but that she is an idealist; very much in love with her country, which is why she sought employment with the CIA.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Just that we were doing a routine, prepromotion background check.”

“Had he heard from her?”

“Not for months,” Reisberg said. “But it strikes me as curious that such a patriot as Stephanie Albright should be so actively helping McAllister, that she was willing to lie to her own boss about setting up a meeting between him and McAllister, which of course gave McAllister the opportunity to break into CIA headquarters.”

“What’s your point?”

“Our point, Bob, is that Stephanie Albright wouldn’t be helping McAllister unless she believed in him,” Innes said.

“Come off it…

“In itself, the notion is a weak one. We all agree with you. But taken with everything else… well, it’s given us pause for some serious thought.”

Highnote looked from Innes to Reisberg to Quarmby and back again. “Which brings us to the actual purpose for this meeting.”

“The President is offering McAllister amnesty, and I think it’s up to us in this room to figure out how to get to him as soon as possible with the message, and without any more casualties,” Innes said.

“Because he knows something?” Highnote said. “Because he evidently learned something in Moscow that has the Russians so concerned… and possibily someone else… so concerned thatthey are willing to risk exposure in order to make sure he doesn’t talk?”

“Yes.”

“Which is?”

“We believe that there is more than a fair possibility that a Soviet penetration agent is working within the CIA at fairly high levels. We think that somehow McAllister stumbled onto this information while in the Soviet Union.”

“Good Lord,” Highnote said. “Then why did they release him in the first place?”

“An error, we suspect,” Innes said. “Once it was realized however, they tried to kill him. And they will keep trying. The Russians with their own people, and the mole using Mafia contract killers.”

David McAllister’s white Peugeot 505 sedan got off the Capital Beltway at Baltimore Avenue and proceeded south just within the speed limit. Traffic had been quite heavy from Georgetown, but Royce Todd was an excellent driver, and the directions Donald Harman had provided them were complete.

This was the big score they’d both been waiting for. After this they would be able to retire for at least a few years until the furor died down. Which it would eventually, Harman had assured them. With his help.

“Another half a mile,” Carol Stenhouse said, looking up from the sketched map.

It is essential that you not fail. It is the reason we are offering so much money. I need your assurances.

We’re here. It’s a job and we will do it.

No need for confirmations in this case. I’m sure I’ll be reading about it in the afternoon papers. The whole world would be reading about it, Royce Todd thought. And the beauty of it, is that the police would be searching for the wrong couple, giving them more than sufficient time to get out of the country.

“Are you ready?” he asked, glancing over at Carol. She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Of course,” she said softly, competently.

They turned off the main road and started up the long drivewaythrough the heavily wooded piece of property adjacent to the University of Maryland. It was quiet back here, and dark. Todd could see where other cars had already come this way this morning. He counted at least three sets of tire tracks in the snow.

Carol took out her suppressed.22 magnum automatic, levered a round into the firing chamber and switched off the safety. Todd took his out of his pocket and laid it on the seat beside his right leg.

They’d met five years ago in Honduras, where they had both been doing contract work for the CIA. He had been a graduate of the Delta Force out of Ft. Bragg, and was working with a Nicaraguan contra assassination team, and she, a former United States Army noncombat helicopter pilot, had been running arms across the border.

She had literally saved his life during a night raid in which he had gotten cut off across the border. She had spotted the intense gunfire in the hills a half mile inside Nicaragua, had choppered down to investigate, and when she had spotted him alone, had picked him up and flew him back into Honduras.

They’d gotten out of Central America when the Sandinistas began shooting down contract pilots with regularity, and the CIA, with as monotonous a regularity, began denying their own people.

Carol had changed into a short khaki skirt and blouse before they’d left McAllister’s house. As they came up over a rise that opened the last fifty yards to the large three-story Colonial, she shifted in her seat so that her skirt hiked up, exposing her thighs all the way to her lace panties. She spread her legs, the dark swatch of her pubic hair clearly visible.

The driveway circled around to the right of a big cement goldfish pond and marble fountain. A black Cadillac was parked beneath the overhang in front. As they pulled up beside it, a large man dressed in boots and a white parka came around from the side of the house. A second man appeared right behind him. They separated as they approached.

Carol powered her window down, as Todd opened the door and got out of the car. He held his gun beside his leg so that the two men could not see it. He stood just behind the open car door.

“Good morning,” the guard nearest said pleasantly. The other one angled toward the passenger side of the car.“We’re here to see Mr. Innes,” Todd said. He switched off his weapon’s safety with his thumb.

“Yes, sir,” the guard said. “If you would just step away from your car. Ask the lady to get out as well.”

“My damned seatbelt is stuck,” Carol called out her open window. Todd smiled and looked back in at her. The second guard had reached the passenger side.

“I feel like such a fool,” Carol said.

The guard bent down so that he could see into the car, his eyes automatically going to Carol’s spread legs. “What seems to be the problem?..

She raised her pistol and shot him in the forehead at point-blank range.

Todd turned back, bringing up his pistol, and fired one shot a split second later, catching the first guard in the left eye, his head snapping back, and his arms flying outward as he crumpled in the driveway. The entire time elapsed from the moment the two guards had first appeared until they lay dead, was less than ten seconds, the two silenced shots inaudible more than twenty feet away.

Carol was out of the car and across the driveway by the time Todd had reached the front door. He stood to one side as she came up onto the porch. He nodded.

Holding the gun at her side, she tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked. She opened the door and Todd slipped past her inside the main stair hall.

A woman in a pretty print dress was just coming down the stairs. Without hesitation Todd shot her, the bullet smacking into her chest just below her left breast, piercing her heart, killing her instantly. Her legs collapsed beneath her, and she tumbled halfway down the stairs, her eyes open, and her lips parted for a scream she hadn’t been able to utter.

The meeting was to be held either in Innes’s study or in the breakfast room. Both were at the back of the house, making it unlikely that anyone witnessed what had happened out front in the driveway.

Todd started down the corridor to the left of the staircase, Carol directly behind him. She did not close the door, nor had they closedthe Peugeot’s doors or shut off its ignition-all steps to save them precious seconds if need be.

The corridor was one step up from the stair hall. To the right was the living room, to the left a drawing room, its French doors slightly ajar. Todd hesitated as Carol stepped around him and ducked inside, sweeping her gun from left to right.

She shook her head and rejoined him just as the door at the far end of the corridor opened and they could hear voices.

“It’s simply a matter of procedures now, but you must understand the importance,” someone said from within the room.

A fat, academic-looking man with thick glasses stepped out, clutching a bulging file folder. He started to say something to the others in the room when he realized that someone was in the corridor. He brought up his right arm as if to fend off a blow, as Todd fired two shots, the first catching Reisberg in the face, destroying the bridge of his nose, the second hitting his chest, driving him back against the door frame.

Pandemonium broke out in the breakfast room. Todd raced the rest of the way down the corridor without a word, confident that Carol was right behind him as backup.

Turning the corner he stepped over Reisberg’s body, his eyes automatically scanning the small room, right to left.

Paul Innes, his tie loose, was shouting into a telephone. Todd shot him in the side of the head, the telephone flying out of his hand as he crashed sideways into the long glass buffet table. A glass door leading out to the rose garden crashed open and Todd switched his aim left, firing one shot that went wide and to the right, just as Robert Highnote disappeared across the narrow veranda.

“Get him,” Todd whispered, and Carol stepped behind him, and rushed across the room.

Melvin Quarmby had snatched up the sterling silver coffee server and he threw it at Todd in a final desperate act. Todd easily sidestepped it, and fired one shot, this one catching the NSA counsel in the throat, destroying his windpipe and severing a carotid artery. The man fell backward as he clawed at the fatal wound.

There was an unsilenced shot outside. Todd reached the glass doorin time to see Carol sitting down hard in the snow, clutching her left shoulder with her right hand.

Highnote was racing across the rose garden with surprising speed and agility for a man of his age. Todd crouched in the classic shooter’s stance, followed Highnote’s retreating figure and squeezed off a single shot, the bullet catching Highnote high in the back, his body falling forward and lying still.

Carol was just getting to her feet when Todd reached her. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded, grim-lipped. “Are we finished here?”

“Yes,” Todd nodded. “It’s time to go.”