“Goddamnit, turn off your headlights. Now!“ She did as she was told, the road disappearing in front of them. She stabbed the brakes hard, bringing them to a sudden halt. “I can’t see anything.”
McAllister could. About fifty yards farther down the road he could just make out the dim lights from the cabin. This was close enough. There was no telling who could be waiting for him.
“Shut off the engine.”
“What?” she cried, suddenly alarmed. Her face was twisted into a mask of fear. McAllister brought the Walther over the back of the seat, pressing the barrel against her cheek. “I’m tired of arguing with you. Shut off the engine!”
“I don’t want to die here like this,” she moaned. “Nor will you if you do as I say,” McAllister said. “There’s a cabin at the end of this road. Someone is there who I have to talk to. We’re going to get out and walk down to it. Together. Now shut off the engine and give me the keys, and I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, God… oh, God…” she sobbed, but she did as he told her.
McAllister pocketed the keys, opened the side door and got out.
At first he nearly collapsed, and he had to lean against the side of the van for support until he got his balance. Stephanie Albright was staring at him through the window.
He opened the door for her, and when she got out she stumbled against him, until he took her arm and together they started down the dirt road.
Sikorski’s cabin was located in a narrow clearing at the edge of a steep wooded hill. In the distance to the north they could see the lights of the town of Reston. It was a scenic spot. An old Chevrolet pickup truck was parked at the side of the house beneath a carport. A light was on in the kitchen, the rest of the place was in darkness. McAllister angled across the driveway to the opposite side of the cabin where he’d spotted the telephone line coming in. Reaching it, he yanked the wires out of the small junction box. Whatever happened next, help could not be so easily summoned.
Around front McAllister knocked on the door and then stepped aside, shoving Stephanie Albright forward. “If he asks, tell him that you’ve come from the Agency. There are some questions.”
Moments later the front light came on. The door opened and Janos Sikorski was standing there. He was an old man, at least in his early seventies, with long, startlingly white hair, slack blue-gray skin that hung like a hound dog’s pelt around his neck and jowls, and broad, coal-black eyes. He was dressed in an open-collar white shirt and iron-gray workman’s trousers, slippers on his feet. “Hi-ho, my luck has just taken a bloody big turn for the better,” he hooted, his accent, even after all these years, Polish, but his expressions British.
“Hello, Janos,” McAllister said, stepping into the light before Stephanie Albright could speak.
The breath went out of the old man, and he staggered backward, grabbing the edge of the door so he wouldn’t fall. His complexion had turned white. “You’re a surprise, kid.”
“I need some help,” McAllister said.
“I’d guess you do,” Sikorski replied. He shook his head wryly. “I’ll take it back, the bit about my luck.” His eyes strayed to the gun in McAllister’s hand, and the blood over his neck and at his side. “You’d better come in, then, before you fall down.”
The cabin was furnished pleasantly if rustically. There were a lot of books everywhere; on shelves, on the fireplace mantel, stacked in piles here and there, on chairs, on tables, on the floor in the corners.
“I’ve already taken care of the telephone line,” McAllister said. “Naturally,” the old man replied. He eyed the woman. “What’s with her?”
“He’s kidnapped me,” she said woodenly.
Sikorski shrugged, turning his attention back to McAllister. “So, kid, what brings you out here? You do remember that I’m retired. Six years now.”
“I need some answers, Janos,” McAllister said. He stood with his back to the door. The old man had moved across the room to stand in front of the fireplace. Stephanie stood to the right, near the entry to the kitchen. She looked like a frightened doe, ready to bolt at any moment.
“I don’t know if I can help you. Have you talked to Highnote?”
“He thinks I’m a traitor.”
Again Sikorski shrugged. “I’ve heard something about it. The Russkies gave you a pretty rough bash-up, in the Lubyanka. lots of good people have fallen by the wayside.”
“Drugs,” McAllister said.
“I also heard that you wasted a couple of our boys up in New York this morning.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Have you talked to Gloria yet?” McAllister nodded.
The old man’s thick eyebrows rose. “I see,” he said. “So what in bloody hell are you doing out here like this? I’m no doctor, though from what I can see you sure as hell are in need of one, nor is this the bloody monastery-no refuge from the Philistines here.”
“Someone wants me dead, Janos, and I don’t understand why. It’s the Russians. I killed three of them in Arlington Heights a couple of hours ago. They’d been waiting for me to show up at Bob’s.”
“Pardon me, kid, if I seem a bit skeptical, but from what I understand the Russians are your pals. Too bad, ‘cause your old dad was first rate, and I always thought you were too.”
“Then why did I come out here?” McAllister snapped. He trusted Sikorski as his father had, from the very beginning. Totally unaffected by the partisan politics of the Hill, Sikorski was the Rock of Gibraltar at Langley. Always had been. A man of rare judgment, insight, and honesty, was how he’d been described.
“You tell me,” the old man said harshly.
McAllister slowly lowered his gun and slumped back against the door. He was exhausted, and he was seeing double again. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to keep his thoughts in any semblance of order. He’d been operating on adrenaline for so long that he had very little strength left. He raised his head and looked at Sikorski. He was being given his hearing. It’s all he had wanted from the start; simply to be listened to. If anyone could or would understand, it would be this one.
“I was arrested by the KGB in Moscow on October twenty-eighth,” McAllister began, and in the retelling he was acutely aware of how little he could actually recall of his interrogation. Bits and pieces of his treatment, snatches of his conversations with Miroshnikov came back to him through his drug-hazed memories. But it wasn’t enough. He could see in Sikorski’s eyes that the old man was not believing him.
We’re making progress and I feel very good about it, Miroshnikov said. And so should you. We have finally broken down the first barrier really quite excellent.
How much had he told them? Perhaps Highnote had been correct after all, perhaps the Russians had sent him back to work as a double agent. But why then had they tried to kill him?
Sikorski was talking, but McAllister was finding it difficult to concentrate.
“Again, kid, why did you come here?” the old man asked, his voice rising.
Stephanie Albright had turned her head and was looking at something in the kitchen. She was shivering.
McAllister pushed himself away from the door, and stood there wavering on his feet, the gun held limply at his side. His body seemed remote. looking at Sikorski across the room it was hard to focus.
“Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two.” They were Voronin’s words. What did they mean?
Sikorski stepped forward, his entire manner changed, his face contorted into a mask of hate and fury. “What did you say?” he growled.
McAllister’s stomach was turning over. “I heard it in Moscow. One of my madmen… I was working him “Who else have you spoken these words to?” Sikorski demanded, barely in control of his rage.
“Nobody…” McAllister started to say when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned. Stephanie Albright had disappeared into the kitchen. “Wait,” he shouted, when the kitchen lights went out, the only illumination now in
the cabin from the flickering embers in the fireplace. Sikorski had stepped over to a cabinet, yanked open a drawer, and he was turning around, a big automatic in his hand. McAllister dove to the left, below the level of the couch between them, as the old man fired, the shot smacking into the thick wood of the door.“Traitor!” Sikorski screamed in animal fury. “They’ll give me a medal for your body!”
Stephanie Albright was outside, racing away from the kitchen door when she heard the shot, and moments later Sikorski’s ragged cries. She wanted to stop, but she was professional enough to understand that unarmed there wasn’t a thing she could do for the old man. McAllister had to be stopped before he killed even more people.
As she ran full tilt back up the dirt road she fumbled in her pocket for the van’s keys that she had lifted from McAllister when she’d stumbled against him. At that instant she had known that she had been closer to death than she’d ever been in her life. He hadn’t felt a thing, but all the way up to the cabin, and inside as he was telling his insane lies, her heart had been in her throat.
Reaching the Toyota, she tore open the door, got in behind the wheel and started the engine. She had listened for more gunshots, but the cabin had been silent. Ominously silent. She imagined McAllister racing up the dark road behind her, crazy with rage.
It took her precious seconds in the darkness to get the van turned around on the narrow dirt track, and when she did she flipped on the headlights and floored the accelerator, dirt and gravel spitting out from behind the rear tires, as she careened toward the main road.
Her mind was racing to a dozen different possibilities. There wasn’t enough time for her to drive all the way back into Washington. She needed to find a telephone. Immediately, before the monster got loose again. She fixed her thoughts on Reston. It was a town of about forty thousand. There would be a service station on the highway. A telephone. Help.
She found what she was looking for less than ten minutes later on the outskirts of town. Pulling off the highway she screeched to a halt in front of the pumps, shoved open the door and leaped out. A young man in dark-blue coveralls came running out of one of the service bays, wiping his hands on a rag.
“This is an emergency!” Stephanie screamed, racing past him toward the office. “I need a telephone!”
The attendant came after her. “You need the cops?” he shouted. She rushed behind the counter and picked up the telephone on the desk.
“Hey, you can’t go back there..” the young man was saying, but Stephanie waved him off.
She dialed a Langley number which was answered on the first ring. “This is Albright,” she said, forcing herself to calm down. “McAllister is on the loose. Outside of Reston.”
“Stand by,” the Security Section OD said with maddening calmness.
The attendant was staring at her, open-mouthed. “Stephanie, is that you?” Dexter Kingman, director of security, said.
“Yes,” she cried in relief. “I’m at a Texaco station just outside of Reston. McAllister brought me out to a cabin nearby. He spoke with an old man. Janos… something.”
“Sikorski,” Kingman said. “Where is he now?”
“When I left he was still with the old man. There was a gun shot.” Kingman said something away from the telephone. When he came back he seemed out of breath. “Are you all right, Stephanie?”
“I’m fine.”
“Stay where you are, were on our way.
Chapter 7
McAllister had been lying in a heap behind the couch for how long? He realized with a terrible start that he had no idea. The sudden movement and fall had jarred something in his head. He must have blacked out.
He still had the Walther, though. He tried to push himself over with his left hand, but his arm collapsed beneath him, his entire left side ablaze in pain. He could feel blood trickling down his side.
“Janos?” he called out.
There was no answer. The only sounds in the house were the crackling of the flames in the fireplace.
“Janos, let’s talk,” he called into the darkness. “It’s not what you think. I swear to God…
There was a noise. Off to his right. In the kitchen. The scrape of something soft against the floor. Sikorski’s slippers?
“Janos?” McAllister shouted, scrambling as best he could to his feet.
The kitchen door banged open.
McAllister tottered across the room as fast as he could make his legs work, his head spinning, his heart thumping raggedly in his chest. At the entryway into the kitchen he held up, listening for sounds, any sounds. There was something in the distance. Outside. Someone running.
Stepping around the corner, he rushed to the open kitchen door and stepped out into the night. At first he could make out nothing except the dark woods rising up from the clearing in front of the cabin, the dirt road leading back over the hill, and to the north the lights of Reston in the far distance. And then he saw Sikorski’s frail form disappearing over the edge of the hill, his white hair flying behind him.
Standing in the darkness McAllister wavered, trying to decide whatto do. It was hard to make his thoughts come straight. The old man had lived alone up here for the past six years. He almost certainly knew his way around these hills in the darkness. To go after him now like this would be to invite suicide. There would be any of a dozen places within a hundred yards of the cabin where Sikorski could stage an ambush. He turned and staggered around to the front of the cabin, searching the darkness up the narrow dirt road. Stephanie had to be here someplace. She couldn’t have gone far on foot. He patted his pocket where he had dropped the van’s keys, but it was empty, as were his other pockets. The keys were gone. He still had her.32 automatic, but the keys were gone. He looked back toward the cabin. He hadn’t dropped them. But how…? Then it came to him. She had fallen against him getting out of the van. They had been in close contact with each other long enough for her to have stolen the keys.
Christ. A part of him had to admire her courage. She had taken a big risk. By now she could have reached a telephone. Other men would be coming. Professionals with orders to kill him. There would be no way out for him. The fact of Sikorski’s pickup truck parked under the carport suddenly penetrated. He’d been lucky so far, too lucky. There was no reason for it to hold much longer. It was possible that the old man had the keys in his pocket, or had placed them in some obvious spot in the house that could take minutes to find-minutes he did not have.
His luck held. The keys dangled from the ignition. McAllister got painfully behind the wheel, pumped the gas pedal a couple of times and turned the key. The engine roared to life with a noisy clatter. Switching on the headlights-now was no time to run off the road in the darkness-he backed out of the carport, his left foot so numb that he jerked the clutch, nearly stalling the engine. His head was spinning badly, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to keep his head up, let alone see much more than faded double images.
Somehow he got the old truck straightened out and headed back up the dirt road. Time. He had to get as far away from this place as quickly as possible before his escape routes were completely cut off. But where?
At the base of the hill he turned left on the secondary highway, away from Reston. Traffic was light, but each time he met an oncoming car the headlights temporarily blinded him, making it almost impossible to keep the truck in a straight line. Minutes later he passed under the Dulles Airport access road, and continued south into the Virginia countryside, traffic almost nonexistent now. He drove with the window down, and at one point he thought he could hear the sound of sirens, a lot of sirens, in the distance to the southeast toward Washington. He pulled over to the side of the road, shut off the truck’s engine and lights, and stepped out, cocking his ear. It was there again, faintly on the night breeze. Sirens. And low in the sky toward the east, he thought he could pick out slow-moving lights, though it was hard for him to focus his eyes. Probably helicopters. They wanted him in a very big way, and once they unders
tood he was gone the search would fan out.
He looked at his watch: It was nearly eleven. He had been running continously since early this morning when the insanity had begun at JFK Airport in New York. There was nothing much left inside of him. He needed a place to hole up; a first-aid kit, food, and sleep, in that order. He climbed back into the truck, started the engine, flipped on the headlights and pulled up onto the highway.
He could see the glow of Washington to his left, fifteen miles away. The Potomac was between him and the city. That fact stuck in his mind. The river flowing south past Alexandria and Woodbridge and a dozen quaint little towns all the way down to the Chesapeake Bay had some significance for him at this moment.
Look for the anomalies. The irregularities. The bits and pieces that don’t seem to fit the mold. Down those avenues you willfind the answers.
The Potomac. A first-aid kit. Food. Rest. The river. He was free-associating again. Each time, his thoughts came back to the river. Something about it, something remembered from a time past.
An afternoon of warmth in the sun. Drinks, food, good company. Gloria had scraped her knee on a deck fitting. They’d been on a boat, sailing down the river. Her knee had been inexpertly bandaged. They’d all laughed about it… especially Bob Highnote. She was called the Merrilee, and she was docked at a small marina somewhere south of the city.
In Dumfries. He remembered the name of the town now, because of the jokes they’d made about it, and about Gloria’s silly accident. By your tradecrafi you shall be known. Do the unexpected. Run inward when they expect you to run away. It’s the principle of the children’s game: hide-the-thimble.
He desperately needed to rest. Even more important, he needed time to think, to reason it out. Sikorski’s reaction to Voronin’s cryptic words had been immediate and swift, lending a terrible credence to the message. At this point, he knew that his only hope for survival would be in unraveling its meaning. But it was only a slim hope.
The Zebra Network Page 9