The Zebra Network

Chapter 24

Snow streaked diagonally past the window as they slid south through the outskirts of Baltimore, the train swaying and lurching gently as they picked up speed. Several last-minute passengers had boarded, but there had been no police, no delays, no suspicious people.

Their options were fast running out. It was as if they were being directed by unseen hands toward something. But what?

McAllister stood at the window and he could see Stephanie’s reflection in the glass. She stood with her back to the door, her right hand still in her coat pocket. She was shivering. They’d not spoken a word to each other since they’d boarded. He lifted his left arm and looked at his watch; it was four-thirty. The train had departed on time, and it would take them at least overnight to get to Chicago and another two days to reach Los Angeles.

Co to ground, that was the drill. Get out of the line of fire when it becomes so intense, so well directed that there is no defense. The train was the Cardinal. Their accommodations were on the upper level, with a large window looking trackside and an even larger, curtained window looking out on the corridor. A sofa and armchair faced each other on the opposite side on which was a small door that opened onto a tiny bathroom complete with a toilet, sink, and shower.

Someone knocked on the door. McAllister spun around. Stephanie stepped away from the door as if she had been shot out of a cannon, the gun in her hand.

He motioned for her to keep silent. “Yes?” he called. “It’s the porter, sir. Will you and the missus be needing anything this evening? May I turn down your beds later?”

“No thanks,” McAllister called. “We’re just fine. I think we’ll turn in now.”

“Yes, sir,” the porter said after a hesitation.“What time will we reach Chicago?”

“Eight-fifteen, sir. In the morning.”

“Will we be on time?”

“I expect so, sir.”

“Thanks,” McAllister said.

“The dining car will be serving until ten, and the club car until two. Are you folks sure you won’t be needing anything tonight?”

“We’re tired, we’ll be going to sleep now. Thanks again.”

“Yes, sir,” the porter said, and he sounded disappointed. Moments later they heard him knocking on the door of the next cabin, and Stephanie let out the breath she had been holding.

“We’re all right,” McAllister said softly.

Stephanie glanced at him, but she cocked an ear to listen to the exchange between the porter and the passengers in the next cabin. After a while they heard him knock on the next door down the line and she finally relaxed, tossing her gun down on the couch. She looked as if she were on the verge of collapsing.

“They would have stopped the train if I’d been spotted, wouldn’t they?” she asked.

“Probably,” McAllister said, but again he was thinking ahead. They’d be in Washington within the hour where they would meet their first big test. If Stephanie had been spotted entering the station, and if the ticket clerk had remembered him, they might be putting it together now. Someone would be coming aboard when they pulled into the station and there would be no escape for them.

He looked out the window again. They had continued to pick up speed. If they were going to jump, it would have to be now. But then what? Where would they go? It was possible that one of them would be injured in the fall. If that happened they would have lost. There were four names on the list he had taken from the Agency computer. Only one of them, Kathleen O’Haire would be easily accessible. The others, by virtue of their jobs and their locations, would be difficult if not impossible to approach. Was she the weak link? Or would they have someone watching her around the clock, expecting him to show up sooner or later. It was very possible, he thought, that they could be walking into another trap.“They must have thought my father had some answers for them,” Stephanie said.

He turned back to her. “They were sending us another message.”

“What message, David?”

“Just how important they think we’ve become.”

“By killing him? By torturing him?” Her voice was rising. She was working herself up.

“let it go,” McAllister said gently. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Oh yes there is,” she said, her nostrils flared, color coming to her cheeks. “Oh yes there is, David. Only now they’re going to have to kill me, and it’s not going to be so easy.” He went across to her and tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him aside.

“Do you remember when we went to my father’s house this morning and you told me that if the FBI or the Agency or anyone in authority showed up, I was to lay down my gun and give myself up?” Her lips compressed. She shook her head. “I’m not going to do it. I’m not. Anyone who gets in my way-anyone, David-I’m going to kill without hesitation.”

“Stephanie..

“Kill or be killed, that’s the routine isn’t it? Well, I’m waiting for the opportunity. I’m waiting!” She turned away raising her hands to her face.

He took her shoulders. For a moment she resisted, but then she allowed herself to be drawn back against him, her body still tense. He thought he understood why she had gone back to see her father’s body, but it had not done her any good. She had turned her own morality corner, as a result. It was the first major crisis that any field operative had to face sooner or later. The point came when the agent suddenly saw that what he was doing, the actions he was taking fighting the enemy, were no different from the actions his enemy was taking.

There came the time when the good operative began to have difficulty seeing any difference between his country and the enemy’s. For a lot of operatives it was their first and last crisis; many of them quit at that moment. Others got past it somehow. While still othersbecame tainted. Their hands were dirty and they could never get them clean. They were the ones who ended up being fired in disgrace, committing suicide, or being shot down in some alley somewhere.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly into her ear.

She pulled away and looked at him, her eyes filled with anger. “So am I,” she said. “For you, for me, for everybody.”

“But it doesn’t change anything.”

“No,” she said. She glanced toward the window. It was already very dark outside. “We’ll be in Washington soon.”

“Yes.”

“Go wash your hair,” she said, pulling off her coat and dropping it over the chair. “What?”

“I said wash your hair, we don’t have much time.” She opened the bag she’d brought with her and pulled out a pair of scissors, a small hair dryer, and a frosting kit.

“Now,” she said looking up at him. “Unless you want to spend all night at this.”

At that moment McAllister didn’t think he knew her.

Stephanie was in the tiny bathroom when they pulled into the station in Washington to pick up passengers. McAllister sat in the dark compartment, his gun beside him, the window shade open a crack so that he could see the platform. “Are we there?” Stephanie asked, opening the door. “Turn out the light,” McAllister said without looking up. She did it, and he felt her come across to him. She perched on the edge of the couch. “How does it look?”

“Busy, but there are no cops,” he said. “At least not yet.”

“If they had spotted us in Baltimore they would already be here.”

“You’d think so,” he said absently. There was a lot of activity on the platform, people coming and going, most of them carrying suitcases, some of them with little children, several of them military men in uniform toting duffel bags. He let the window shade fall back, picked up his gun, and moved silently to the corridor window, where he parted the curtain slightly. The porter stood with his back to the window, talking to a man and a woman. McAllister could hear the voices but not the words. They seemed to be arguing about something.

He let the curtain fall back. Everything was normal. No alarms had been raised, no men rushed across the platform, guns drawn. Nor had the platform been emptied of passengers. Was it too normal out there, or was he imagining things? Something whispered at the back of his head. Some undefined danger signal was ringing. He could see Stephanie’s silhouette outlined by the light filtering through the window shade. She was looking at him.

“What is it?” she asked softly. “I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing.”

“No one got a good look at us as we boarded,” she said. “Not even the porter. He won’t notice the change.”

The gun still in his hand, he went back to the outside window and looked out on the platform. Stephanie stood beside him. He could smell the lingering odor of the strong chemical solution she had used to streak her hair. She looked different. Aged by twenty years. She stood with a stoop and tottered a little as she walked. The change was startling in her. There’d not been enough time to dye his hair, but she had cut it very short, and with a little pancake makeup and the glasses he looked different enough from the photographs being published in the newspapers that no one would be likely to give him a second glance. Already the crowds had begun to thin out. The train would be pulling out very soon. What was it? he thought glumly. What was he missing? What if they had been spotted in Baltimore? What if it had taken this long to question the ticket clerks to find out what train they had boarded? Someone would be meeting the train farther west. As far as Chicago.

Selfdoubt will come to all of us at one time or another, boyo. He could almost see his father, hear the old man’s voice. But there was no reason to think they had been seen, other than the cabbie talking to the cops outside the station. He could have been talking to them about the weather, about traffic, about football scores, anything.

And what about his feeling that they were being followed now, that they were being watched? Where were the clues? Where was theout-of-place man or men on the platform, the look in the porter’s eye when they’d come aboard, the note in his voice when he had called through the door? There was nothing. It was paranoia. Just like the old days. Sofia, East Berlin, Prague, Warsaw; a dozen places, two dozen incidents ranging back over fourteen years until his tradecraft had slipped that night in Moscow. Fallbacks, don’t ever forget your back door, kiddo.

Christ, he’d known the routine. He’d known how to cover himself, yet he had become sloppy. And his lapse had caused the deaths of a lot of innocent people. The train lurched and Stephanie bumped against him. He held her with his free hand while he continued watching out of the window as the station began to slip away. No one came running at the last minute. No one. Moments later they were in the darkness again, and he let the window shade fall back, dropped his gun on the couch, and took Stephanie in his arms.

When they kissed she shuddered deeply, as if someone had just walked over her grave.

Gennadi Potemkin hunched up the collar of his charcoal-gray overcoat and adjusted the angle of his fedora as he hurried out of the lobby of the Hyatt Regency two blocks from the train station and approached the waiting Lincoln Continental.

A squat, very dangerous-looking man dressed in a sharply tailored tuxedo, a white scarf around his neck, looked out from the back seat as the driver opened the door for Potemkin, who climbed in without a word. The events of the past twenty-four hours were nearly beyond belief. Potemkin hoped against hope that this one would have good news for him now. But his hopes faded as he looked into the Italian’s eyes.

Their driver got in behind the wheel and they headed away from the hotel, plunging into the storm that made driving extremely difficult. Washington seemed, at that hour, like a city under seige.

“This weather’s a bitch, ain’t it?” the thick-waisted Italian said, his Sicilian accent heavy.

“I’ve paid you a lot of money,” Potemkin said harshly. “I didn’t come here to listen to your bullshit about the weather.“The Mafia boss turned to look at Potemkin, his eyes hooded. “You’d better listen, because we missed them.”

A sudden cold wind blew through Potemkin’s soul. “What?” he shouted.

“We weren’t sure about the train, but we didn’t miss them by much more than a half hour.”

“Where are they headed? They didn’t get off here in Washington? You’re sure?”

“Chicago.”

“West,” Potemkin mumbled, his insides like water. “Go after them.”

“Impossible in this weather, that’s what I meant. Nothing’s moving out there, and I mean nothing except for the trains.”

“Take another train.”

“Isn’t one.”

The heavy car fishtailed around the corner, but then straightened out. Potemkin tried to reason out the possibilities. He felt as if he were losing control of the situation. It was dangerous. So dangerous it was hard to keep his head on an even keel. “You’re sure it was them? No doubts?”

“Our guy drove them to the station. We had the word out. There was no doubt of it. He told the cops, just like you said to do, then he called us. They’re on that train all right. Just took us a while to find out which train.”

“No way of catching them?” Potemkin asked, struggling to maintain his control.

“Not a chance in hell,” the Sicilian said. He grinned. “But there is another possibility.”

“Yes?”

“It’ll cost you.”

Potemkin looked at the man with disgust. “Up to this point you haven’t done a thing for what you’ve already been paid.”

The Sicilian leaned forward suddenly and grabbed a handful of Potemkin’s coat. “It was my son out there in Reston. That sonofabitch wasted him. You understand, gumba? I got a stake in this now. But it’ll still cost you.”

The man’s immense greed was beyond belief. But Potemkin hadworked with this type before. Often. “You’ll get your money,” he said, changing tack.

The Sicilian let go of his coat. “You haven’t heard how much. “I don’t care what the figure is, you’ll get it,” Potemkin said, interrupting. “On one condition.”

The Sicilian nodded warily.

“You’ll get paid for success; there’ll be nothing for failure.”

“Half now…”

“No,” Potemkin interrupted sharply again. “Only for success.”

“Don’t fuck with me. One phone call to the Feds and you’d be through here.”

“Do you know what we do with traitors?” Potemkin asked conversationally, sure now for the first time that he had regained some control. “We have a thing called mokne dela. Your people shoot kneecaps as a warning, we shoot faces. Your mother wouldn’t recognize you.”

The Sicilian laughed. “This is my backyard now, gumba. My country.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Potemkin said softly, and something in the tone of his voice backed the Mafia boss off.

They drove for a few minutes in silence, passing the Capitol building that against the backdrop of black skies and falling snow looked more like a Hollywood set than the real thing. Something was happening that Potemkin couldn’t understand. He was fighting back blindly, but fighting the only way he knew how; directly and with force.

“There is a family in Chicago,” the Sicilian said. “They owe me a favor.”

“There can be no mistakes now,” Potemkin said. “McAllister and the girl must not be allowed to get beyond Chicago. Under no circumstances.”

They swung back toward the Hyatt, again lapsing into silence, Potemkin sinking into his own morose thoughts. Control, that was everything. But his was slipping and he knew it. What he couldn’t understand, what he could not fathom, was the incident at College Park this morning. Had he underestimated McAllister that badly?

“Is this asshole one of yours?” the Sicilian asked.“No,” Potemkin replied, shaking his head. “He is definitely not one of ours.” He turned. “Kill him. This time, make sure.”

They’d come out of the storm sometime in the early morning hours. Stephanie stood at the window looking out at the passing countryside, lit now by a full moon that was so bright it obliterated the stars. She wore nothing but a long sweatshirt, her shoulders hunched forward, her forehead against the cool glass.

“You should get some sleep,” McAllister said from where he lay in the lower bunk. “You too,” she replied, tiredly, mechanically. “I’m sorry about your father.”

“You’ve already said that. But what happens if there are no answers for us in California?”

“I’ll talk to Highnote.”

“What if he dies, or if he decides there’s nothing he can do?”

“Then we’ll go to the others.”

“One of them in the Pentagon, the other in Moscow,” she said, contempt in her voice. “let’s stop kidding ourselves.”

Her skin looked pale as a ghost’s in the moonlight, but he could almost feel the heat radiating off her, as if she were an engine at idle ready to spring into motion at any moment. At one point he could have saved her life by turning around and walking away from her. That was no longer possible. He was sorry for it, and yet he wasn’t.

He could see her breath fogging the window. The train swayed rhythmically, the motion nearly hypnotic at this time of the night.

As the dawn began to break over the Indiana countryside they made love, slowly, gently, tenderly as if they were afraid of hurting each other-which in a measure they were-and as if it were their last time-which possibly it was.

Afterward, they lay in each others arms, and she began to talk about her father; how it had been when she was a young girl and her mother was still alive, and afterward when she would come back from college to be with him. He had been her Rock of Gibraltar, her mentor, her best friend, her confidant; the one person in the world for whomshe had to put on no false face, the one person on this earth who knew and loved her for exactly what she was.

As she talked, McAllister thought about his own father, and the fact that although he had had a deep love and respect for the old man, he had felt cheated because of when and how his father had died.

It had been listed as an accident. The fact of the matter was he had simply worn out and had taken his own life.

There had been no note, no explanation, no last words. He couldn’t remember the funeral, but he could remember in vivid details the nightmares afterward in which he thought about his father lying in a dark, cold grave alone on a windswept hill.