The heavyset CIA legman hunched over his coffee, avoiding McAllister’s eyes. Alone now he seemed somewhat ill at ease, nervous.
McAllister studied the man’s profile for a moment or two. Something was going on. Something was definitely wrong. He had felt it at the airport in Moscow, and on the plane, but he had put his apprehensive feelings aside as simple paranoia; a mild form of drug-induced hysteria. He wasn’t so sure now.
“Excuse me a moment,” he mumbled, stepping away from the counter. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Carrick looked up startled. “I’ll go with you.” McAllister stopped and looked directly into the man’s eyes. “What the hell is going on here, Mark?”
“What do you mean?” Carrick asked. He glanced over McAllister’s shoulder into the broad concourse, evidently searching for Maas to return.
“I’m getting the impression that I’m not returning home the conquering hero. What are your orders?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. McAllister. Shit, I’m just doing my job.”
“Which is?”
“Fetch you home from Moscow.”
“And deliver me to whom?”
“We’ll be met at the airport.”
“What else?” McAllister demanded. He was beginning to feel mean. “What else were you told?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you know what I’ve gone through over the past few weeks?” A hard look came into Carrick’s eyes. He nodded, his jaw tight. “You’re in one piece.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Carrick shook his head. “Look, I don’t want to get into it with you, Mr. McAllister.”
“Go ahead, get into it.”
Still Carrick hesitated. Again he looked out into the concourse for Maas.
“If I turn around and walk out of here, are you going to stop me?”
“You’re damned right I’ll stop you. So don’t push it.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“It beats the hell out of me, McAllister. All I know is that you were with the Russians for a goddamned long time, and there are some people back home who’d like to know what you talked to them about, and why you came out in one piece, and why they decided at the last minute to release you-without a trade. They released you straight up.”
“So you think I’m a traitor?”
Carrick’s lip curled into a sneer. “Just don’t try to walk away from me. I’ve got my job to do, that’s all.”
McAllister actually got a couple of hours’ sleep on the transatlantic flight, though it wasn’t restful. After his talk with Carrick in the cafe, his two escorts had become almost surly, dropping any pretense of friendship or respect. He was a traitor returning home under arrest. As on the Air France flight out of Moscow they had first class to themselves, and McAllister sat by himself, confused and angry.
He had given everything to the Agency over the past fourteen years.
A legion of cities and faces and dark alleys and letter drops and onetime codes, and nights waiting at some border crossing for one of his madmen to show up, passed through his mind. He could picture each place and each incident in perfect clarity.
At first it had been exciting. Only later had he begun to wear down, tiring at last of the lies big and little, of the betrayals and of the fact that it had been simply impossible for him and Gloria to have real friends. They’d been able only to maintain sham relationships that if he could be honest with himself and even that had began to come apart at the seams) had began to erode the fabric of his marriage as well as his own mental well being.
Perhaps he had been ripe for an arrest. His tradecraft had been slipping.
He opened his eyes, his heart pounding, a slight sheen of perspiration on his forehead. He was returning home to what? To questions for which he had no answers. For accusations to which he had no defenses. He had been in the hands of the KGB for more than a month (God, could it have been that long?) and he had resisted to the best of his ability. But it hadn’t been enough. Not enough.
What are you doing to yourself?
He had to do something, move, anything. Unbuckling his seatbelt he got up and before Carrick or Maas could come after him he went forward to where the two stewardesses were seated across from the galley. They looked up.
“Can’t sleep,” McAllister said.
“May I get you something, sir?” one of the girls asked, concerned. “Maybe a drink. Brandy?”
“Sure,” the stew said. She got up and stepped into the narrow galley where she opened a cabinet and took out a couple of small bottles of brandy, and from another cabinet a glass.
“No ice,” McAllister said, taking the drinks from her. “May I take them up to the lounge?”
The girl looked over his shoulder. Carrick stood right behind him. “Sure,” she said.
“Thanks,” McAllister mumbled, and he turned, brushed past Carrick and went back to the circular stairs that led to the 747’s upper level.
The lounge was deserted and dimly lit at this hour. During the daytime and early evening transatlantic flights it would have been filled with first-class passengers drinking and talking. McAllister slumped down at one of the tables as Carrick appeared at the head of the stairs. Opening one of the small bottles, he poured it into the crystal glass, then sat back.
“What are you doing up here?” Carrick asked. McAllister raised his glass. “Care for a drink?”
“No. And with the shit that’s probably still in your system, you shouldn’t have another either.”
“Your concern is touching,” McAllister said. “Look, McAllister..
“No, you look. If you want to talk to me straight, then go ahead. Otherwise keep your mouth shut.”
Carrick said nothing.
McAllister swirled the liquor around in his glass. “I’ve had enough bullshit thrown at me over the past thirty days to last a lifetime. And I’m going to get more of it when I get home, so I don’t need yours now.”
“I didn’t ask for this job.”
“But I did,” McAllister said softly. He took a deep drink, the brandy rebounding in his stomach, and then settling, warmth rising up into his head. “It’s like Nam all over again. No returning hero this time either.”
“None of us were,” Carrick said. “I know what you mean.” In the distance McAllister could hear the mob screaming below on the streets as they tried to break down the embassy gates. There was a lot of small-arms fire through the city, and all night the rockets had come in from every direction. One by one the choppers came in, touched down on the roof and took a load. McAllister and some of the others were among the last to leave. They’d spent most of the night destroying papers and crypto equipment, trying to swallow, as best they could, their deep sense of shame that they were leaving, that they were giving up. God, what a waste. What a terrible waste.
“What happened back there?” Carrick was asking. McAllister focused on him and shrugged. “They say they extracted a confession from me, and I signed it, but I don’t remember doing it.”
“Shit.”
“Have you ever been on an interrogation team?” Carrick shook his head. “No.”
“Neither have I,” McAllister said. “I wonder how we handle the poor bastards we haul in.”
“Better than they treated you,” Carrick said, studying McAllister’s face. “I hope.”
McAllister managed a tired smile. He’d been overreacting again of course. The KGB had had him for a month, Langley would have to know what went on; how much information had the Russians been given-inadvertantly or advertantly. He knew so many names and dates and places; knew about so many operations current as well as past. All of Moscow operations would be in a shambles now, everything would have to be changed. The fallout would already have been tremendous. It would still be happening. Someone was going to have to answer for it. The problem was that there was very little he could tell anyone because he simply could not remember the details of his question
ing. They said they had his confession, but what exactly was it he had confessed to? How much information had he given them? The only things he could remember in detail were Miroshnikov’s persistent questions about the Scorpius network, and about Tom Murdock’s whereabouts these days. There’d been nothing about Voronin, or about current Moscow operations, so far as he could remember. Had Miroshnikov been clever enough to read his mind? They’d released him without a trade. A Soviet court had found him guilty of espionage. Why hadn’t he been sent to Siberia? They’d sent a message to Langley by handing him over to Carrick and Maas at the airport, but what exactly was that message?
McAllister opened the second bottle of brandy and emptied it in his glass.
“Maybe you should cool it on that stuff,” Carrick said. He glanced at his watch. “We’ll be touching down at JFK pretty soon.”
“It’d be a hell of a deal if you delivered me drunk.” Carrick sat forward. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said earnestly. “We both know that you’re going to be in for a bad time.”
“I’ll need all my wits about me.”
“Well I’ll be damned if I’m going to deliver a drunk,” Maas said at the head of the stairs, a scowl set on his face. He came across the lounge and reached over the table for the glass. McAllister held it out of his reach.
“How badly do you want it?”
“Enough to take you apart, you sonofabitch,” Maas hissed. “Then come and get it, otherwise stay the hell away from me.” Maas started around the table, but Carrick jumped up and shouldered him aside. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Tom?”
“The bastard has cut himself off. He was shaking with anger.
“Is what?” McAllister asked. He didn’t know why he was goading the man, except that he felt battered and he wasn’t going to take much more of it.
What was happening? Where had it gone wrong? Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two. He could accept his arrest and his interrogation. He could even accept the inevitability of his trial and conviction. But after that everything had been turned upside down. Had he become a traitor? Is that what had happened to him in the Lubyanka? “You know,” Maas said, backing off. Yes I do know. And yet I know nothing.
McAllister sat back and raised the glass of brandy to his lips as he stared up into the hate-filled eyes of Tom Maas, and the concerned face of Mark Carrick.
At altitude the eastern sky was already beginning to lighten with the dawn, but when they touched down at New York’s JFK Airport it was still dark, the white runway lights giving way to the blue as the giant airliner turned onto the taxiway, Manhattan beyond Queens glowing with a million pinpoints of light.
He was home. It seemed like such a terribly long time since he had been here last, and now he was anxious to get down to Washington to straighten everything out and get on with his life. He was worried about Gloria; how she had been holding up these past weeks, what she had been thinking, and what, if anything, she’d been told. It must have been hell for her. He resolved that he would try again to work on his marriage, to make it better for her. It was time, in any event, for him to get out of the Company. Time to try normalizing his life. Time, as she’d often said, to join the human race.
When they reached the Pan Am terminal, the aircraft’s cabin lights were switched on, the curtain separating first class from coach was pulled aside, and the other passengers began streaming tiredly by. Carrick motioned for McAllister to wait. From his window he could see the boarding tunnel that led into the terminal. A pair of ground crewmen dressed in white coveralls stood at the base of the stairs. One of them was smoking a cigarette, which McAllister found odd.
After all the passengers were gone, McAllister fell in between Carrick and Maas as they got off the plane. Instead of going down the boarding tunnel, Carrick opened the outside door and they took the stairs down to the tarmac. The air was very cold and smelled strongly of burned jet fuel. The 747’s engines had been shut down. On the opposite side of the plane the baggage handlers had opened the cargo bays and were off-loading the luggage, the engine of the baggage train clattering noisily in the crisp air.
“We have a car coming for us,” Carrick said over his shoulder. “What about customs?” McAllister asked. “Forget about it,” Maas said from behind him. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, McAllister looked for the two ground crewmen he’d seen from the plane, but they had disappeared.
Carrick looked at his watch. “They were supposed to be here by now,” he said. “What the hell are we supposed to do, stand out here freezing our balls off?”
McAllister glanced up at the terminal windows. Two New York City cops stood talking, their backs to the window. Something was not quite right. It was the cigarette the one crewman had been smoking. Tiredness, or his internal warning system?
He turned to say something to Carrick when the legman started to swing left as he reached inside his coat. McAllister caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and he began to turn at the same moment the two crewmen he’d seen before, came out of the shadows, big pistols in their hands, silencers on the barrels.
Both men opened fire at the same time, the noise of the silenced gunshots lost to the sounds of the baggage train’s engine.
Carrick was shoved violently back, off his feet, his head bouncing on the pavement. Maas had pushed McAllister aside, and was pulling out his gun when he went down, taking at least three bullets to the torso, his body crumpling in a heap on the boarding tunnel’s stairs.
McAllister, on his hands and knees, scrambled to Carrick’s body and pulled the dead agent’s gun out of his hand, then rolled left, snapping off two shots as he came around. He was sure that he had hit one of the assassins, but then they disappeared into the maintenance basement of the terminal.
It had all happened in a second or two, and as McAllister jumped to his feet he glanced up at the window. One of the cops was looking down at him, a walkie-talkie raised to his lips, a frantic expression on his face. McAllister stepped back a pace, realizing that he was holding Carrick’s gun, and what it must look like to the cop who could not have seen the two gunmen who had never stepped out from beneath the overhang.
His head was spinning from the remnants of the drugs still in his system, and from the alcohol he had consumed on the flight.
They thought he was a traitor, and now there was at least one witness who would swear that he was a killer.
Chapter 5
The cop with the walkie-talkie disappeared from the window; the other one was already on his way down here, probably through the boarding tunnel, and they would shoot before they stopped to ask questions.
McAllister moved quickly away from the aircraft and hurried beneath the overhang to the broad service doors leading into the Pan Am baggage handling area. He was in time to see two crewmen in white coveralls heading away in a small electric-driven cart. His eyes swept past them toward two other crewmen busy loading out-going baggage onto a train. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No one was rushing away. No sounds of alarm had been raised.
He looked again down the broad corridor in time to see one of the crewmen in the retreating cart slump forward and hold his shoulder. It was them. The assassins. And he had wounded one of them. Stay or run? The situation here would only last for a few moments longer. He could put down the gun, raise his hands and wait for the police. Or he could go after the killers.
Carrick and Maas had thought he was a traitor and now they were dead. At least two New York City cops knew that he was a murderer. They had seen it with their own eyes.
What the hell was happening?
McAllister stepped the rest of the way into the baggage-handling area, and concealing the pistol behind his leg edged away from the brightly lit central corridor into the shadows, and then raced after the slowly retreating service cart, careful to make no noise, or expose himself to the other crewmen at work.
The killers were professionals who understood that to rush away would mark
them as out of the ordinary, a force to reckon with. Because of this McAllister was able to gain on them. No doubt they had a car parked somewhere outside the international terminal area. There was possibly a driver waiting for them. The operation had been smooth. They had waited for the flight knowing that their targets would be getting off the plane last and would come down the stairs from the boarding tunnel. But Cartick had said they would be met by a car. Had the signals been crossed innocently, or had their pickup’s absence been arranged?
By whom? How? Why? A dozen dark possibilities, each more ominous than the last, crowded into McAllister’s head as he darted in and around piles of boxes and tow carts filled with baggage. The assassins passed through the Pan Am baggage area into Eastern’s, crossed a broad, well-lit tarmac, then turned sharply left through the big service doors that led back outside.
McAllister pulled up short, ducking behind a large crate as someone shouted something from behind him. The two cops had raced into the Pan Am baggage area and were questioning the two crewmen. They were obviously frantic, gesticulating and pointing first in the opposite direction, and then this way. Getting out of here was suddenly impossible. The moment he moved out of hiding he would be spotted.
The baggage train from the Pan Am flight came noisily through the service doors, passing directly in front of the two cops, momentarily blocking their view. McAllister stepped out of the shadows and walked at a normal pace into Eastern’s baggage area. To move any faster would be to attract attention to himself. So far the alarms had not spread, only the two cops behind him had taken up the hunt. So far.
Reaching the service doors, he stepped outside. A big Eastern Airlines jet was getting ready for departure. There was a lot of activity around the aircraft; last-minute fueling, baggage loading, provisioning through a rear hatch. He hung back for a few moments, searching for the killers. He thought they would be moving directly away from the terminal, so he didn’t immediately spot the service cart parked off to the right in the shadows beyond an empty baggage train. They had stopped. He stepped forward out of the shadows as two men, dressed in dark jackets and trousers stepped around from behind the baggage train, and climbed into the back seat of a black Chevrolet sedan.
The Zebra Network Page 5