The Zebra Network

Chapter 31

A cruel wind blew along the frozen Istra River thirty miles outside of Moscow, whipping the snow into long plumes, whining at the edges of the steep cliffs, and moaning in the treetops of the birch forest. It was early afternoon, but already the sun had sunk low in the western horizon. Darkness came early at this time of the year.

The large, bull-necked man, bundled in a thick parka and fur-lined boots, trudged up from the river, his breath white in the subzero cold. He stopped on the rise and looked across the narrow wooded valley to his dacha, smoke swirling from the chimney.

Someone was coming. He had felt it for several days now, though he had no real idea why. Instinct, perhaps. All he had wanted was containment. Nothing more, at least until the mistakes that had been made over the past months were rectified. But each day brought another new disaster, none of which he could understand. It was as if forces beyond his control were at work. For the first time in his long, illustrious career, he felt real pangs of fear stabbing at his gut. Explanations would be demanded. But he had none to give.

He looked back the way he had come and clenched his meaty fists in their thick gloves. Lies within lies. He had lived the life for so long that during times such as these he had a hard time recalling the truth.

Everything had somehow tumbled down around him because of one man-David Stewart McAllister. Only he didn’t know why, or how. Only that it had happened, was still happening.

Turning, he worked his way down the hill, across the valley and finally up to his dacha which in the old days had belonged to a prince, one of the czar’s family at court. Those days were gone, but the new age had its comforts.

Stamping off his boots in the mud room, he hung up his parka and rubbing his hands together entered the main body of the house just as his secretary emerged from the study, an odd look on his face.

“Yes, what is it, Mikhail?”

“It is a telephone call, Comrade General,” the younger man, Mikhail Vasilevich Kiselev, said. “From the United States.”

Something clutched at General Borodin’s heart. “Impossible.”

“Nevertheless it is so,” Kiselev said respectfully. Borodin brushed past his secretary and in his small study snatched up the telephone. “Yes, who is this calling?” At first he could hear nothing on the line except for the hollow hiss of what obviously was a very long-distance connection. Who knew this number? Who could possibly know it?

“General Borodin,” a man said in English. “Listen to me.”

“Who is this?” Borodin demanded, switching to English. Kiselev stood in the doorway, his left eyebrow rising.

“Harman and Potemkin are both dead, and McAllister is on his way to Moscow. Do you understand me?”

On an open line! General Borodin could hardly believe his ears. He had to hold on to his desk for support. “Who is this? What are you talking about?”

“McAllister knows everything. He even knows your name, and he’s coming there for you. He’s coming to kill you.”

“You’re insane,” Borodin said. He’d wanted to shout, but he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

“If he’s arrested he’ll tell everything he knows. Everything will be ruined. You, me, everything, do you understand?”

“No, I don’t understand,” he said for Kiselev’s benefit. The fact of the matter was he did understand now; if not the how or the why, at least the implications. But who was this fool calling him now? “You must kill him. You are the last hope.”

“What are you talking about?”

“McAllister is coming to Moscow to kill you. There’s no one else left for me to contact. God in heaven, can’t you understand?”

General Borodin said nothing. After a few moments the connection was broken and he slowly hung up the telephone. Kiselev was closely watching him.“What is it, Comrade General?”

Borodin shook his head and looked up out of his dark thoughts.

“I don’t know, Mikhail Vasilevich. He was a crazy man shouting something about spies, of all things.”

“Spies?” the secretary asked, his eyebrow rising again. “Yes,” General Borodin said, forcing a smile. “He wanted to come to work for us. He is a cowboy, I think. Crazy.”

“Do you wish me to make a report?”

“No,” General Borodin said, dismissing the man. “I will take care of it myself in the morning.”

Robert Highnote stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor of CIA Headquarters in Langley and rushed down to his office. It was Sunday noon, the building was relatively quiet.

Dropping his overnight bag on his secretary’s desk, he went inside, snatched up his telephone, and dialed a three-digit number. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, he had a nagging headache, and the wound in his back was on fire. But he could not stop. Not now. McAllister had taken the passports and money from his wall safe and somehow he and the woman had made it out of the country. Highnote had a great deal of respect for his old friend, always had. But since Moscow he hadn’t understood a thing that Mac had said or done. Something sinister had happened to him, something totally beyond understanding. Something totally insane.

“Duty desk,” the number was answered.

“This is Highnote. Anything on those two diplomatic passport numbers from Helsinki?”

“Yes, sir. We tried to reach you earlier but there was no answer at your home.”

“I’m in my office now,” Highnote said, his chest tight. “They showed up in Helsinki all right, just a few hours ago. Both numbers are definitely confirmed.”

Highnote was gripping the telephone so hard his knuckles were turning white. “Did you get names?”

“Yes, sir. Last three digits, six-five-nine, was listed as Wilson, Thomas S. The six-six-zero passport was listed to Morgan, Christine M.”

“Were you able to come up with the name of the hotel where they’re staying?”

“Not yet, sir. But Helsinki station promised they’d give us a shout as soon as they checked with the police. Shouldn’t be long now.”

“It’s early evening over there. I would have thought they’d have that information by now.”

“Sorry, sir, that’s all they came up with. Do you want us to query hem again?”

McAllister had actually made it. By now he’d probably be inside the Soviet Union. Good Lord, was it possible? “Sir?” the duty officer was asking.

“No, you don’t have to carry it any further. Thanks.”

“How do you want this logged, Mr. Highnote?”

“Keep it open for the moment, if you would. I’ll close it out myself tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” the duty officer said.

Highnote hung up. McAllister was as good as dead. The moment he set foot inside Russia they would arrest him. Short of that, if he actually reached General Borodin by another miracle, he would not survive that encounter. What Highnote knew of Borodin was that the man was incredibly tough. A fighter. Even his own people were afraid of him. No one ever got in his way and escaped unscathed. Which left Stephanie Albright, who would be toughing it out in a elsinki hotel room.

Highnote picked up the telephone, got an outside line and called Operations at Andrews Air Force Base. “Major Jenkins, please,” he said.

The squadron commander came on a second or two later. “Major Jenkins.”

“Bob Highnote. Are we ready to go, Mark?”

“It’s a green light, sir?”

“Right.”

“Anytime you’re ready then, sir,” Major Jenkins said. “How’s the weather over the North Atlantic?”

“There’s a storm cell building over European Russia, but it’s heading east, so we’re in good shape.”

“I’ll be there within the hour,” Highnote said. Dexter Kingman, chief of the Office of Security for the CIA, sat across the desk from John Sanderson, in the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue at Tenth Street. He had come to a slow boil when the FBI director had finally explained what was happening.

“I don’t like this one bit, Mr. Sanderson, I don’t mind telling you.”

“Neither do I,” Sanderson replied. “The fact of the matter is, Highnote is on the move.”

“Where?”

“At the moment he’s in his office.”

“It’s your opinion that he will lead you to McAllister?” Sanderson nodded, and leaned forward. “You must understand that the two men have been friends for a lot of years. From what we can gather, Highnote has ostensibly been protecting McAllister ever since the incident in New York.”

“From everything else you’ve told me-not saying I can accept it-it’s hard to believe.”

“It’s no less difficult for us,” Sanderson said, sighing deeply. “But it seems likely that Robert Highnote is working for the Soviet government. His control officer was a man named Gennadi Potemkin whom we found dead at Janos Sikorski’s home outside of Reston. Between the two of them they ran the O’Haire network, and did a damned good job of it.”

“Why would a man like Highnote turn?”

“We don’t know that yet, we’re still working up a psychological profile on him…

“What?” Kingman, who was himself a psychologist, asked. Sanderson spread his hands. “We don’t have much to go on. His phones are constantly being swept so there has been no possibility of monitoring his calls. And when he moves, it’s often with a great deal of care so he has been difficult to tail. But our best guess at the moment is that sometime over the past five to eight years, he became unbalanced. Pressures of the job, moral dilemmas, we’re not sure. But there is enough circumstantial evidence to suppose that he has gone off the deep end. Did you know that he had become fanatical about religion?”

“Doesn’t make the man a Russian spy.”

“No,” Sanderson said.

“What about McAllister? Where does he fit?”

“We think that McAllister learned something in Moscow that might ultimately lead back to Highnote who, under the guise of helping his old friend, has in reality been setting him up for the kill. For a legitimate kill. He’s been driving McAllister like a hunter might drive a wild animal toward a dozen other hunters… us.”

“What about the massacre at College Park? McAllister couldn’t have done that.”

“No,” Sanderson said. “This is a big puzzle. But we believe that a second spy ring was in operation here as well. One in which Donald Harman was working with a so-far-unknown Russian.”

Kingman sat back, his head spinning. “Donald Harman, the presidential adviser?”

“Yes.”

“Where do I come in?” Kingman asked, trying as best he could to control himself. He was a cop, not a spy. He didn’t like skulking around behind the back of a man he had long admired.

The telephone on Sanderson’s desk rang, and he picked it up. “Yes,” he answered softly. Moments later a startled expression crossed is features. He switched the phone to the speaker so that Kingman could hear too.

“You’re there now, at Andrews Operations?”

“I’m watching them roll down the runway right now,” George Mueler said. “I can have the flight recalled.”

“Where is he going?”

“Helsinki.”

“Oh, Christ,” Sanderson said, looking at Kingman. “Shall I stop him?” Mueller was asking. “Who is on that flight?” Kingman asked.

“Highnote,” Sanderson said. “Either McAllister and the Albright woman are in Helsinki, or Highnote is trying to make a run for the Soviet border.”

“What?” Mueller shouted. “What’d you say?”

“Don’t stop him,” Sanderson said. “I’ll call the Pentagon and arange another flight for you and Dexter Kingman. He’ll be on his way out there immediately.”

“We’ll never catch up with him.”

“Perhaps not, but we won’t be far behind,” Sanderson said. “Just stand by out there.” He hung up the telephone. “Will you help now?” he asked Kingman. “If McAllister and Stephanie believe that Highnote is there to help them, he’ll be able to kill them with no problem. They won’t be expecting it.”

“Will you help?” Sanderson repeated.

“Yes,” Kingman said numbly. “They could be warned. We could get a message to them somehow.”

“I’ll call Van Skike, and he can arrange something with the Agency in Helsinki, but they’re not to be warned.” Sudden understanding dawned on Kingman. “Mac and Stephanie they’re to be used as bait.”

Sanderson nodded. “What we have on Highnote is circumstantial. Do you still want to help?”

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Kingman said, getting to his feet.

“None of us do,” Sanderson said.

Somehow, God help him, the night had passed. Lying fully clothed on his bed in the Berlin Hotel around the corner from the Lubyanka, McAllister tried to put everything into perspective as the sky outside of his window began to lighten with Monday’s dawn. He could still feel Stephanie’s touch, her body a dark warm secret enfolding him. They’d made love at their hotel in Helsinki before his afternoon flight left for Moscow. They’d been tender with each other until the end when she didn’t want to let go. He had been unable to ease her pain or his fear. “It’s crazy,” she had cried in anguish.

The last irrational act of an irrational man. But even now when he still had the ability to turn back, to check out of the hotel and take the next flight out to Helsinki, he could not do it. He was driven, there was no denying it. Even in the innermost recesses of his mind he understood that the acts he had set in motion had no basis in reality. At least in any reality that he could put into words so that he could understand. Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra one, Zebra Two. Washington was finished for him. Now it was time for Moscow so that he could complete the circle of insanity that had begun for him one evening late in October.

We have made progress together, you and I. I am so very proud of you, Mac, so very pleased.

His interrogator’s name had been Miroshnikov. He was a KGB colonel. That much McAllister knew, but very little else other than a vision of the man’s face overhead, his eyes small, narrow, close-set, but with no bottoms. He also could see Miroshnikov seated across from him in the interrogation room. He was a large man, his complexion almost yellow, an Oriental cast to his features.

You thought you could do more for your country with woros than bullets, is that it?… In the end you will talk to me, they all do.. You, my dear McAllister, are definitely a resource…. Believe me, we are going to have a splendid time together, you and I.. Bits and pieces of Miroshnikov’s words drifted through McAllister’s mind, but there was more. There had been much more between the time he had begun to disintegrate and the night his heart had stopped on the table. Wisps of something… snatches of conversations that he could not put words to… drifted just out of reach at the back of his head. Zebra One had evidently been Donald Harman, and Zebra Two was General Borodin. But who was Borodin? What was Borodin? How had he managed to get to a man such as Donald Harman and turn him? More important at this point, how was McAllister going to get to the general? He got up from the bed and walked across to the window where he looked out at Detsky Mir, the children’s department store, and beyond it toward Dzerzhinsky Square. It was past seven and traffic was beginning to pick up with the morning. It would be time to go soon, he thought.

They’d had no problem getting out of Munich Sunday morning. The passports were perfect as were the visa stamps in McAllister’s. Their first test came in Helsinki, but on the basis of their diplomatic status hey had been given preferential treatment and had been passed hrough customs without any of the usual checks. Sunday afternoon Stephanie had taken a cab out to the airport with him, and had watched him board the Aeroflot flight for Moscow. As the plane had taxied away from the terminal he had looked for her, but she had already gone.

If he failed, he had thought at that moment, so would she. Their lives had been inextricably intertwined from the moment she had fished him out of the Potomac River in Dumfries.

Thank you for saving my life, darling, but you should have turned your back on me while you still had the chance. Now there was absolutely nothing he could do for her.

At Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport his passport had received much more scrutiny than in Helsinki, but as with the Finns, the Russian officials treated him with respect, and within twenty minutes of his arrival in customs hall, he had been cleared through passport control and had taken a taxi into the city.

He turned away from the window and tiredly went into the tiny bathroom where he looked at his haggard reflection in the mirror. His hair was extremely short and dyed jet black. His skin all over his body had been made several shades darker than his normal coloring by a dye made from almond shells. His eyebrows had been thickened, he had been given an excellent mustache and once again he wore the clear-lensed glasses Stephanie had purchased for him in Baltimore what seemed like centuries ago.

He ran his fingers across the bristle of his hair, wiped the sweat off his forehead with a towel then walked back into the bedroom. He pulled on his sport coat and then a lined nylon jacket.

Run, he thought.

KGB Headquarters was housed in a complex of unmarked buildings on Dzerzhinsky Square a couple of blocks north of the Kremlin and barely a hundred yards from the Berlin Hotel. The main building of gray stone rose nine stories from street level. Behind it one of the older sections enclosed a courtyard on one side of which was the Lubyanka Prison. It was just eight o’clock and traffic was heavy as the first of the KGB officers and clerks began showing up for work at the six pedestrian gates. From where he stood, pretending to read Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper on display in a glass-enclosed bulletin board, McAllister could see all six of the gates. The entrance to the Lubyanka Prison gate was a dozen steps away. People streamed past him, all of them in a hurry, intent on getting to work. He had been inside. Even now the thought was chillingly unreal to him. They’d held him for more than a month, feeding him drugs, depriving him of proper food and rest, relentlessly questioning him, over and over, and finally the torture. Most of it was gray or even nonexistent in his memory, exept that the experience had fostered a deep, smoldering hate in him. Except for the highest Party and government officials, parking was a premium downtown. Miroshnikov was just an interrogator, he would not rate a parking space within the complex. The KGB maintained several lots within a block or so of the square, though most ower-grade clerks and officers could not afford to maintain an automobile, so took the subway or buses to work. Standing shivering in the intense cold, McAllister knew that he was on a fool’s mission. Miroshnikov might not be coming to work this morning. Perhaps not until later. Or perhaps he had come early. Or, perhaps there were other entrances, other ways of getting into the complex.

For a while, surreptitiously watching the people, he was afraid that even if Miroshnikov did show up this morning, he wouldn’t recognize the Russian. He searched that part of his memory, but the only thing that stood out besides the fact that the interrogator had been a large man, were his eyes. Looking at Miroshnikov, he remembered thinking from the first days of his interrogation, you only saw the eyes and nothing else.

It was also possible, McAllister worried, that Miroshnikov would be using the prison gate to enter the complex. He might use any of the other five pedestrian entrances. Perhaps his office was somewhere within the main building that housed most of the KGB directorates.

He stepped away from the newspaper display case and stared intently down the street. He could see the other gates from here, but at this distance he surely wouldn’t be able to pick one man out of the crowd; or even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to reach him before he entered the building. Once inside he would be untouchable for the remainder of the day. In despair, McAllister turned back, and Miroshnikov was there! Barely twenty feet away. Towering over most of the people around him, he walked with his head bent, a thick leather briefcase in his left hand, a newspaper rolled up under his right arm.

McAllister was staggered into inaction for several long terrible moments. Miroshnikov’s was the one face in all the world he’d never thought he would see again. The interrogator and his subject come face-to-face at last. He suddenly remembered the satisfaction he had gotten that last night when he’d rammed his knee into the man’s groin and driven his fist into the interrogator’s throat.

Miroshnikov looked up at the last moment, his eyes sweeping past McAllister without recognition. But then he did a double take, his eyes finding and locking into McAllister’s, and suddenly he knew. He stopped short.

Two uniformed KGB officers passed, and McAllister stepped around them, reaching Miroshnikov before the man had a chance to move.

“You…” Miroshnikov breathed, his eyes wide. “How?” McAllister smiled, although his gut was churning and his head was spinning. He took Miroshnikov’s arm as if they were old friends. “We’re going for a walk,” McAllister said in Russian, his tone even. “If you refuse, or if you call out, I will kill you here and now.”

“Insanity.”

“Yes, it is,” McAllister agreed. So far they had attracted no undue attention, but it wouldn’t last.

“What do you want?”

“Information. Now, let’s go or you’ll die right here.”

“And so will you,” Miroshnikov said, starting to pull away. McAllister tightened his grip. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have anything to lose.”

The interrogator’s expression changed all of a sudden from one of fear, to one of understanding, if not acceptance. “No, I don’t suppose you do,” he said softly.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Your car. Then someplace to talk. Someplace private.” Still Miroshnikov hesitated for a beat. Finally he nodded. “As you wish,” he said.

“You are quite a remarkable man,” Miroshnikov said.

They sat together in the front seat of his black Moskvich sedan in a parking lot off Puschechnaya Street. McAllister reached inside Miroshnikov’s coat and pulled out his pistol; it was a Makarov automatic. Standard KGB issue.

“Do you mean to kill me now?” the interrogator asked. “For everything that was done to you while you were under my care?”

“That depends on you,” McAllister said. There was a constriction across his chest, and he was acutely conscious of his beating heart. He was sweating despite the cold.

“You have come all this way for an explanation?”

“I want to know about a KGB general. Aleksandr Borodin. I want you to tell me how I can find him. Where does he live?”

Surprise spread across the interrogator’s face. “What?”

“Borodin. I need an address.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you had come here for.. McAllister raised the pistol and jammed it into Miroshnikov’s side. “I don’t have time. I want an address now, or you’ll die. Simple.”

Miroshnikov shook his head. “He has an apartment here in the city on Kalinina Prospekt, but his wife normally stays there. The general prefers his dacha.”

“Where? Exactly,” McAllister demanded. Being this close again to Miroshnikov was different than he thought it would be. He felt like a fool, or more accurately like a schoolboy who had done something naughty. Turn the gun over to him, he is your friend. Hadn’t that already been established? We are making such great progress together, you and I, Mac. Miroshnikov was watching him closely. “It’s on the Istra River. About fifty kilometers from here. Not so difficult to find.”

McAllister knew most of the area around Moscow. He’d been to the Istra River region with its Museum of Wooden Architecture onseveral occasions. An entire replica community of churches, peasant cottages, granaries, and windmills had been brought there from all over Russia.

“Is it near the village?”

“Yes,” Miroshnikov said, still puzzled. “Just a few kilometers to the north. There is a covered bridge across the river. He is first on the right.”

The parking lot was protected by a tall wire-mesh fence. One of the attendants had come out of his hut and was watching them. McAllister looked up.

“Start the car and drive out of here,” he said.

Miroshnikov saw the attendant as well. “To the general’s dacha?”

“No. Someplace private. Anyplace. Just get us out of here. Now.” Miroshnikov started the car and pulled out.

McAllister lowered the pistol so that it was out of sight as they passed the attendant who watched them leave the parking lot and disappear down the street.

Traffic was heavier than before, and for the next few minutes the interrogator concentrated on his driving. He turned right on Zhdanova Street past the Ministry of Higher and Special Education, and one block later had to stop for a red light. He refused to look at McAllister, his eyes straight ahead on the bumper of the car ahead of them. When the light changed, he pulled forward.

Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Voronin’s words were so clearly etched in McAllister’s brain that he might always have known them. But there was something else. Still something that nagged.

“What is this general to you?” Miroshnikov asked, breaking their silence.

“Zebra Two,” McAllister said. It no longer mattered who knew. “What?”

“A spy.”

“Of course

“He was Donald Harman’s control officer. He and his people have been trying to kill me ever since I was sent home. Well, they’re all dead now, and Borodin is the only one left.“Miroshnikov was looking at him, a very strange expression on his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Zebra One was Donald Harman, an adviser to the President. General Borodin is Zebra Two, his control officer.”

“You’ve come here to kill him?” Miroshnikov asked in wonder. “Yes.”

“Why?”

McAllister started to reply, but no words came. His heart was racing now.

They crossed the Sadovaya Ring with the light, and continued north away from the city center. A banner was stretched above the broad boulevard. LONG LIVE THE SOVIET PEOPLE, BUILDERS OF COMMUNISM. McAllister struggled to maintain his control.

“Why?” Miroshnikov repeated. “You came back here at great risk. Kidnapped an officer of the KGB right in front of headquarters, and I suspect you weren’t even armed. And now you are saying that you mean to kill a very important general. I ask you again, why?”

“Because of… what he has done.”

“To you? To your country?”

“Yes.”

“You say this Donald Harman is dead. I read it in the newspapers. And so are some other very important men in Washington. You have done your job, Mac, and done it well. I am proud of you.”

“Americans,” McAllister whispered.

“And some Russians too, I think. I have seen reports. Gennadi Potemkin is missing. Presumed dead.”

“I killed him.”

“There, you see? And there have been others.” The traffic thinned out the farther they got from downtown. They passed the Riga Train Station and Dzerzhinsky Park, a big textile plant on the right after they passed beneath a railroad viaduct. Believe me, we are going to have a splendid time together, you and I. The interrogator’s words flowed around McAllister. The voice then as now, it was hard for him to distinguish which. They had left the city behind. Birch forests spread away to theundulating horizon, the highway rising and falling like swells on a vast ocean. The sky was overcast, and a wind had begun to blow snow across the road. The countryside seemed alien, as if it belonged on another planet. “You don’t understand, do you, Mac?” Miroshnikov’s patient voice came to McAllister. “But of course you couldn’t.”

A narrow road, barely a track through the snow, led back up into the trees. Miroshnikov downshifted and the little car bumped its way up a shallow hill, then down the other side around a steep curve. When he stopped the car they were completely out of sight of the highway. Only the trees were visible in any direction. Not a single sign of human habitation marred the desolate landscape.

“You won’t kill me, I don’t think,” Miroshnikov said. McAllister raised the automatic. Little spots of light danced in his eyes, like flickering embers from a campfire.

“I’m going to help you, as I have from the beginning, Mac. Believe me, I will turn out to be a good friend. Your only friend.”

The interrogator opened the car door and got out. “Where are you going?” McAllister shouted, suddenly rousing himself.

“For a smoke, nothing more. We will talk, and in the end you will see that together we can kill this general of yours, and together we will run to the West. We will be heroes, you and I. Believe me, we are going to have a splendid time.”

McAllister got out of the car as Miroshnikov was lighting a cigarette. The interrogator offered it across the hood of the car, but McAllister refused. The extremely cold wind bit at his face and ears, and his bare hands began to turn numb, but his head was clearing.

“We’ll do it tonight,” Miroshnikov said. “He is a difficult man. But with you I think it will be possible. Anything is possible.”

“He’s one of yours, why would you want to kill him?” Miroshnikov scowled. “He’s Russian, not one of mine.”

“And you?”

“Siberian. There is a big and very important difference, Mac. I will explain it to you someday.”

With Miroshnikov distanced across the car, and with the cold windcontinuing to clear his head, McAllister could begin to think again. He was no longer mesmerized by the interrogator… who after all was nothing more than a man.

“What did you do to me in the Lubyanka?” Miroshnikov had started to raise the cigarette to his lips, but his hand stopped halfway. “I saved your life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were a spy. You had been caught with a weapon in your possession. You should have gotten the death penalty. I prevented it.”

“How?”

“By convincing General Suslev, the head of my division, that you would be of more use to us in the States than in a Gulag, or two meters down.”

McAllister could feel his finger tightening on the Makarov’s trigger. He had no idea how much pressure it would take before the gun fired.

Miroshnikov saw it. “What did you do to me?”

“I convinced Suslev that I had turned you into an agent for us. The chances that it would work, that you could convince your people you were legitimate, were slight. But even a small chance is better than none.”

“What did you do?” McAllister shouted into the wind. “You son-of-a-bitch, what happened?”

Miroshnikov let the cigarette fall to the ground. “I gave you. motivation.”

“What else?”

“I gave you my… hate. I gave you.. “They were waiting to kill me in New York. Who ordered that?”

“I don’t know.”

McAllister cocked the Makarov’s hammer. “Who told them I would be coming in on that flight?”

“Potemkin,” Miroshnikov cried. “How did he know?” Miroshnikov said nothing.“How?”

“I told him that someone ordered your release, and that you knew about the O’Haire network.”

“You set me up.”

“I knew he would fail. He was a fool, like the others. Not like you!

I knew that you would survive. I recognized it in your eyes the first time I saw you.”

“Why?” McAllister shouted. “Why did you do this?”

“I knew that if you survived New York you wouldn’t stop until you had found out who tried to kill you. I knew that you would discover our CIA agent.”

“Harman wasn’t CIA.”

“I didn’t know about him. I’m talking about Robert Highnote. Your friend.”

All the air seemed to be gone. McAllister couldn’t catch his breath. His hands began to shake.

“You didn’t know?” Miroshnikov cried in alarm. “Highnote?”

“He and Potemkin worked together. Have for years. I wanted to strike back.”

Highnote. The years of their friendship, their mutual trust, their assignments together, all of it came as a whole to McAllister. A huge, hurtful, impossibly heavy weight on his shoulders. He was Atlas. Only his burden was overwhelming.

“And you did it,” Miroshnikov said. “You struck back. You ruined them.”

McAllister was shaking his head. He lowered the pistol and turned away. He remembered an evening in particular; he and Highnote had gone out on Berlin’s Ku-Damm and had gotten stinking drunk. They’d been celebrating something…. He couldn’t quite remember just what. When they got back to the apartment, Merrilee and Gloria were waiting up for them, angry at first, but they’d all ended up laughing so hard that Merrilee had actually wet her pants. Good memories. Fine times.

“Now we’ll finish it, Mac. You and I. We’ve come so far together…

“It was you all along,” McAllister said, amazed.“Borodin is the last of it. We’ll kill him and then get out.”

“You,” McAllister said, his voice rising as he started to turn, bringing the gun up.

“I saved your life,” Miroshnikov screamed.

“But you took my soul,” McAllister shouted, and he fired, the shot catching Miroshnikov in the center of his forehead, and he seemed to fall backward into the snow forever.