The Zebra Network

Chapter 33

On the morning that David McAllister awoke from his coma, sat up, and asked the startled nurse for a glass of water in a very clear voice, the sun was streaming in his fourth-floor window.

She immediately rang for the doctor and then eased him back on his pillow. “Take it easy now, Mr. McAllister.”

Her voice was soothing, and he found that he was drifting and he really didn’t want the water after all. But he was vaguely aware of his body. There wasn’t much pain, only a detached feeling. At one point he nearly panicked; this was the Lubyanka all over again, his detachment was from the drugs they were feeding him, and he expected to see Miroshnikov come through the door at any moment. But then the chief interrogator was dead, as were so many others. So many.

Over the next few days, or was it weeks? — he would never be quite sure about this period of his life-the episodes of wakefulness came more and more often, and gradually the feeling of detachment began to leave him. At times, he was dully aware that there were people around him other than the doctors and nurses; talking, looking at him, but he was never able to put their faces into any semblance of recognizable order, though once or twice he thought Stephanie might have been there, but that too was unlikely unless the KGB had arrested her.

Still at other times he was running through a dark woods, the sounds of his pursuers not very far behind him. The border was just a few hundred meters to the west, but he didn’t think he was going to make it. Helicopters were searching for him, and they had sent the dogs to pick up his trail. Once he even cried out in the night, his bed soaked with sweat, and gentle hands were touching his body, a cool cloth on his forehead. Until one night when he woke from a deep, dreamless sleep and sat up in the bed. The door to the corridor was open. A nurse stood there looking at him.

“Hello,” he said.

“Well, hello to you, Mr. McAllister,” she said, smiling. “How do you feel?”

“Thirsty,” he said. “And damned hungry.”

The doctor came before he was fed and asked him a lot of questions about his legs, about his breathing and mostly about his memory which seemed intact. As he was being examined, he thought about everything that had happened to him up to the point of General Borodin’s revelation that night at the dacha. After that there was nothing, only the vaguest of feelings and impressions floating just at the back of his brain. General Borodin was Zebra Two, and he had been working for us through a control officer here in Washington. Was it possible? Or had it been another monstrous lie? He didn’t know what was going to happen to him now, only that somehow he was back in Washington. Alive.

Dexter Kingman showed up first thing in the morning, shooing the nurse away and closing the door. He drew up a chair next to McAllister’s bed.

“They say you’ll be playing tennis within two months,” the big chief of security said, his southern accent soft.

McAllister grinned. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “I was never able to play the game before.”

Kingman laughed. “Dexter Kingman,” he said, holding out his hand.

McAllister shook it. “I figured as much. What’s my status here?”

“You’re still on the payroll, if that’s what you mean.”

“Nobody’s gunning for me?”

“Not at the moment.”

McAllister lay back against his pillow. “It’s over?” he asked. “Except for the questions, and there’s going to be a whole lot of those in the coming weeks. Once you’re up to it.”

McAllister focused on him. “What the hell happened out there?“ Again Kingman smiled. “Stephanie Albright is what happened. She doesn’t give up so easily.” He hesitated for a moment. “I think some of this is going to come as quite a shock to you.”

“I’ve had quite a few over the past few…” McAllister glanced toward the window, but he couldn’t see much except for a clear blue sky and some other buildings in the distance. “What day is this?”

“Tuesday,” Kingman said. “April fifth.” McAllister’s heart skipped a beat. He couldn’t say anything. “Yeah,” Kingman said, understanding. “Are you up to this?” McAllister nodded. “Is Stephanie all right?”

“Just fine,” Kingman said. “But she nearly didn’t make it. Bob Highnote tried to kill her. He was a penetration agent.”

I know, McAllister thought, Kingman’s words flowing around him. Stephanie had put up such a stink in Helsinki that they had no other choice but to arrange a Russian visa in the diplomatic passport she was using, and put her on the first plane to Moscow. She lit another fire under the CIA chief of the Moscow station, and they had driven out to General Borodin’s dacha that night, finding one dead Russian lying next to a nearly dead McAllister.

There was no sign of General Borodin, and no one wanted to stick around long enough to find him. They managed to get McAllister back to the embassy, where he was patched up as best as possible and flown out the next morning as an emergency medical evacuation case right under the Russians’ noses; first to Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Germany, where he’d been kept for two weeks so that they could stabilize his condition, and then here to Washington where he’d lain in a coma for more than two months. The Soviet authorities of course put up a huge stink at first, though it finally died down. A crazy American who had somehow forged a diplomatic passport which was recovered by the KGB from Moscow’s Hotel Berlin) had somehow gotten through Russian security into Mos-cow, where he shot and killed a KGB officer named Miroshnikov and another officer named Kiselev before General Aleksandr Borodin, himself gravely wounded, managed to shoot and kill the intruder. The man’s body had not been found, but it was believed that in the spring thaw it would turn up.

“Thomas Wilson,” McAllister said.” That’s right. The name you used on your diplomatic passport. A nonperson now.”

“And Highnote?”

“Committed suicide. That’s the official line. It was the pressures of his job.” McAllister closed his eyes and searched his mind and his gut for any signs of the compulsions that had driven him. But there was none of that, only feelings of tiredness and a sense of terrible waste for all the people who’d died.

“Are you up to this?” Kingman asked.

McAllister opened his eyes. “You want to know why I went back into the Soviet Union?”

“For starters.”

“Donald Harman was a Soviet agent working for General Borodin.”

It was a lie, but what else could he say? “What about this Miroshnikov? Did you kill him?” McAllister nodded. “Why?”

“He got in my way.”

Kingman sighed deeply and shook his head. “Well, Harman is dead, and so are Bob Highnote and his control officer Gennadi Potemkin… you killed him too?”

Again McAllister nodded.

“But your jaunt into Russia, I’m afraid, was a failure. Borodin has survived. In fact he was offered a promotion but he turned it down. Retired, from what I read.”

“Sure,” McAllister said, but he wasn’t listening any longer. Zebra One, Zebra Two. He’d found Borodin, but who was Zebra One? Or would he never know?

“You’re one amazing sonofabitch,” Kingman said, not unkindly, and he was gone.

Gloria came later that morning, looking wan and drawn out. She kept trying to smile, and failing, and she couldn’t seem to look him in the eye. “I just came by to see how you were doing,” she said. “Are you all right?” McAllister asked. “I’ll get by.”

“And Merrilee?”

“She took it hard, but she’ll survive.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

She hadn’t bothered to sit down. She stood at the end of the bed nervously fingering the strap of her purse. “I just came to see how you were doing,” she repeated herself.

“I understand,” McAllister said. “I mean about that night in our house. You had no way of knowing.”

She said nothing.

“What do you want to do now? I’ll try again if you want me to.” She looked up, her faced screwed up in an expression of surprise and even a little disgust. “What are you talking about?” she said. “I came to apologize, but nothing more. Our marriage was over years ago. I can’t take this insanity any longer. I was never able to take it.”

“Maybe if I get out of the business. “No,” Gloria said, holding up her hand as if to ward him off. “I’ve had enough. Get better soon. When you’re ready we’ll talk about a divorce. My lawyer says…” She stopped. “Just get better,” she said, and she turned and left the room.

Over the next few days Kingman and others from the Agency began McAllister’s debriefing. “We just want to cover the high points for now,” the chief of security promised. The details would come later.

John Sanderson and George Mueller from the FBI stopped by for a brief chat, and when the time came for his formal debriefing they would be included.

But Stephanie had been strangely absent. They’d not given him a telephone so he could call her, even if he’d known where she was, and each time he asked that a message be sent to her, his request was received with a promise to do so.

He began to believe that like Gloria, she too had had enough of the insanity, and no longer wanted anything to do with him. And for that he couldn’t blame her. He couldn’t blame either of them. But he just wanted to talk to her. Tell her that he understood. On the fourth day, the DCI, Howard Van Skike, showed up, hisbodyguard stationing himself outside in the corridor, allowing no one else to enter the room.

“I have an extremely tight schedule this morning, so I can only stay for a minute or two.”

“It wasn’t necessary, sir,” McAllister said. He’d only ever met the man a couple of times. Then as now he was impressed by the DCI’s gentle but intelligent nature. Van Skike had been a power on the intelligence scene for a good many years. Unlike some of his predecessors on the seventh floor at Langley, he hadn’t been a simple political appointment. He had worked his way up from the ranks. “The best man for the job,” the President said, appointing him to head the Agency.

And he was. Everyone agreed with that. It was said that he was a man blessed with the “intuitive gift for understanding the Russian mind.”

“How are you feeling?” Van Skike asked. “A lot better.”

“You’ll be out of here in a month or two. Will you be interested in coming back to work?”

“I don’t know,” McAllister said. He hadn’t faced up to that possibility yet.

“Well, just get yourself better, and when you’re ready come see me. We’ll talk.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?”

“As a matter of fact there is, Mr. Director,” McAllister said. “Could you see to it that Stephanie Albright comes by to see me?”

“Why?”

The directness of the question was startling. “Because… because I want to thank her for saving my life.” Van Skike was watching him. “And?”

Again McAllister thought that the DCI’s bluntness was odd. “I want to tell her that I love her.” The DCI smiled. “I’m sure that she’ll be delighted to hear that, Mac. She’s waiting just out in the hall.” His eyes narrowed a little. “She doesn’t know about her father… what he really was. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Yes, sir,” McAllister said. “Thank you.”

“She’s remarkable.”

“Yes, she is.”

“And so are you,” Van Skike said. There was nothing to say.

Van Skike remained standing at the end of the bed. He hesitated. “One last thing,” he said.

“Sir?”

“I have a message for you. From Moscow. Zebra Two sends regards and his thanks.”

All of the air left the room. “You?” McAllister said, the words choked in his throat.

Van Skike smiled but said nothing. He turned and went out of the room. Moments later Stephanie came through the door, a smile on her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. Zebra One, Zebra Two.

It was truly over now, and as Stephanie came into his thought that everything was going to be all right.