The Zebra Network

by Sean Flannery

  “I know. I just need that information, Douglas. Quietly.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that for you-or should. At least not until you tell me why. My ass could be hanging out on a very thin limb.”

  “I can’t. You’re just going to have to trust me. Can you help?”

  “Goddamnit, Stephanie, talk to me! I’m not kidding now! Those people were big-time traitors. They sold us down the river. Now you’re asking me about their control officer? What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m not involved with them, Douglas, I swear it to you. I just need the information.”

  “Then go to your office and punch it up on the computer. You’ve got the clearance.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “look, you either trust me or you don’t!” Stephanie snapped. “If you do, all I can promise is that you’ll get an explanation sooner or later, and then you’ll see why I had to do it this way.”

  Again there was a longish silence on the line. When Ballinger came back on he sounded cold. “Call me here in the morning. About ten.”

  “Thanks, Douglas,” Stephanie said, but the line was dead. Ballinger had hung up on her. She slowly put down the telephone.

  “He wasn’t very happy with you,” McAllister said. “No,” she said. “But he’ll do it. I’m supposed to call him back at ten.“Will he tell someone about this?”

  “I don’t think so. Like I said, he’s in love with me.”

  “Are you in love with him?”

  She shook her head. “I was, a long time ago, but not now. We were friends.”

  McAllister caught her use of the past tense. “I’m sorry, Stephanie.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  It was very late. Without turning his head to look at the clock, McAllister figured it had to be at least four in the morning. He stared at the window, the curtains partially drawn, waiting for the dawn to come. Stephanie was on the other bed.

  Their next moves depended in a very large measure on what Ballinger would come up with, because at this point he might be their only viable hope for any sort of a lead. If there was a connection between Voronin’s cryptic warning and the O’Haire spy network, and if Ballinger could provide them with a clue as to their control officer, they might be able to act.

  The answers are in Washington.

  What if Zebra One turned out to be Highnote? What if he had been the O’Haires’ control officer? How long had it been going on?

  Can you ever know anyone, really know them? In this business you can trust no one, boyo.

  The words should have been chiseled in granite on some monument somewhere, dedicated to man’s inhumanity to man; dedicated to his perfidy. MICE was an old CIA acronym for why men became traitors: Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego. Which one? Where in God’s name was it leading, and did he want to know?

  “You asked why I’m helping you,” Stephanie said in the darkness. He turned to look at her. She was staring up at the ceiling. “You should get some sleep.”

  “I think you were set up.”

  “By Highnote?”

  “Him or someone else. It doesn’t matter. Someone powerful. Someone who wanted to protect himself.”

  “But the O’Haire network has been smashed. It’s over.”

  “If that’s all there was to it,” she said. She turned and looked at him, her eyes wide and bright. “They might have been nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. There could be more, a lot more.”

  “Then we’ll find it out,” McAllister said. “In the meantime go to sleep.”

  “I’m frightened,” Stephanie said. She pushed back her covers and got out of bed, her movements soft and liquid. She was nude. In the dim light coming from outside he could see her small breasts, narrow hips, and swatch of dark pubic hair. She’d recently been in the sun, or under a tanning lamp, because he could clearly see her bikini line of white flesh against the darker tan. He didn’t know what to say.

  “Hold me,” she said, coming to his bed. “Please?” He held the covers open for her, and she slipped in beside him, her body pressed against his as he took her into his arms. He felt terribly guilty, as if he were the betrayer, the great destroyer, and yet for the moment at least, this felt somehow right.

  In the morning they both carefully avoided talking about what had happened. Around eight-thirty they went downstairs to the hotel’s coffee shop and had breakfast while they looked through the Washington and New York Sunday newspapers. Still there was nothing about the search for his body, or about the investigations into the shooting deaths of two Agency officers in New York, or the three Russians in a car in Arlington Heights.

  They were back in their room just at ten, and Stephanie dialed Ballinger’s home. His phone was answered on the first ring by Dexter Kingman.

  “This is the Ballinger residence. Who’s calling?” He sounded harried. Stephanie could hear that there were other people there. A lot of them. “Dexter? This is Stephanie. Is Doug there? Can I speak to him?”

  “I was just about to telephone you. Are you at home?”

  “No, I spent the night with a friend. What’s the matter?”

  “Ballinger is dead.”

  “Oh, my God..“He was shot to death sometime last night, or early this morning. The FBI is looking for you right now.”

  “What’s going on… why are they looking for me?”

  “Your name was written on a pad of paper beside his telephone, along with the notation ten A.M Were you supposed to meet him or something this morning?”

  “We were going to spend the day together,” Stephanie said, trying to control her voice. “Get yourself back to my office. I’ll set up your interview there.”

  “Dexter… who killed him, do you know? Have you any idea yet?”

  “It looks as if the Russians did it,” Kingman said heavily. “Russians?”

  “It’s not very pretty, Stephanie.”

  “Tell me,” she said, steeling herself.

  “It looked like a standard Center assassination. A mokrie dela. He was shot three times in the face at very close range.”

  “They killed him,” Stephanie said hanging up the phone. “My God, they killed him…

  Chapter 12

  “I’m sorry, Stephanie,” McAllister said. “You can’t know how sorry I am, but this has got to end right now.”

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed looking up at him, her eyes filling, her face pale and drawn. “He asked somebody the wrong questions and they killed him for it. My God, it doesn’t seem possible.”

  “How did Kingman know it was done by the Russians? Were there witnesses?”

  “He called it a standard Center assassination.. “A mokroe deloe?”

  She nodded. “Yes, those are the words he used. What does it mean?”

  “Literally it means ‘wet affairs,’ the spilling of blood. Was he shot in the face?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “And now the FBI wants to talk to me. Doug wrote my name on a pad of paper by the telephone.”

  “You’re going to that meeting,” McAllister said. “And you’re going to tell them that you don’t know a thing. You and Ballinger were supposed to make a day of it, just like you told Kingman.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You must,” McAllister insisted. “If you don’t show up, they’ll come looking for you. And when they discover that you’re with me, you’ll be a marked woman.”

  “Don’t you see, Mac, I already am a marked woman. My name was lying in plain sight beside Doug’s telephone. Whoever killed him had to have seen it. If I show up for that interview they’ll kill me.”

  “One doesn’t necessarily lead to the other,” McAllister said. “Unless you don’t show up for the”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Whatever happens, I’m with you until this thing is settled. One way or the other.”

  “Why? Can you tell me that now?”

  Her lips compressed. “Because I don’t like bei
ng pushed around.”

  “It’s just starting.”

  “Let’s finish it!”

  They used the rental car that Stephanie had picked up in Baltimore. McAllister figured this would be the last time it would be safe to use the Buick, however, because when she failed to show up at Langley they would come looking for her and it wouldn’t take long before they found out about this car.

  Outside the city they stopped so that she could telephone her father and warn him that someone would probably be by to ask him some questions about her.

  “What they’ll tell you won’t be true, Father,” she said. “Are you in any danger?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Are you with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take care of yourself, I’ll be all right.”

  “I know you will, Father,” she said.

  The day was cold and overcast. There was very little traffic on the highways so they were able to make good time along the Capital Beltway. They turned west on the Dulles Airport Access Road.

  “There’d be no reason for them to go after your father,” McAllister said. Stephanie’s mood had deepened since she’d spoken with him, and McAllister was worried about her.

  “It’s a chance I’m willing to take,” she said. “There’s still time to back out.”

  She looked at him. “Don’t say that again, Mac. It doesn’t make this any easier for me. I’m along for the ride. Let’s just hurry.”

  Since this morning a plan had begun to formulate in McAllister’s mind. It was obvious that Voronin’s warning did have a concrete meaning, and that somehow it was tied to the O’Haire spy network, or more specifically to the network’s control officer. But it was justas obvious that without more information there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. It came down to the old question: Whom do you trust when it’s impossible to separate the liars from the innocents?

  He slowed down as they approached the Reston turnoff. What little traffic they’d passed was heading to the airport. He’d not seen a police car or an identifiable Agency or Bureau unit since they’d left the hotel. Of course no one would be expecting him to return to Sikorski. Not after what had happened out there that night. He glanced in his rearview mirror just before he hit the ramp in time to see a chocolatebrown Ford Thunderbird coming up behind him at a high rate of speed. He veered a little to the right to get out of its way, and the car passed them, the driver and lone passenger both intentlooking men.

  “It’s them!” Stephanie cried, sitting forward. “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “That car! The brown Thunderbird! It’s the same one from Dumfries!”

  The car had already passed through the stop sign at the top of the hill and was racing toward the north, toward Reston, toward Sikorski. McAllister jammed the accelerator to the floor and they shot up the ramp, fishtailing a little as they hit an icy spot on the roadway. There was no other traffic so McAllister didn’t even bother slowing down for the stop sign, swinging wide through the intersection, almost losing the back end again. He had to force himself to slow down. To go off the road now would eliminate any possibility of catching up with the two assassins ahead of them.

  “Are you certain it’s the same two men?” McAllister asked. The Ford had already topped the next rise and had disappeared beyond. The side road up to Sikorski’s cabin was barely a half a mile beyond.

  “No, I didn’t get that good a look at them as they passed us. But it’s the same car. New Jersey license plates.”

  He glanced at her. She had taken out a small gun from her purse.

  It was another.32 automatic. “They’re on their way to Sikorski’s.”

  “To kill him,” Stephanie said. “Just like they killed Doug.”

  “These two are Americans. We both heard them that night on the sailboat.“Stephanie looked at him. “If you wanted to kill someone, and make it appear as if the Russians had done it, what would you do?” McAllister nodded. “The question is, where the hell are they getting their information?”

  “From inside Langley. From Highnote.”

  “We’ll see,” McAllister said grimly. They came over the rise and raced down the long hill, the town of Reston in the distance. The Thunderbird was nowhere in sight. The road led straight into the distance. The only place the car could have turned off that quickly was the road back up through Sunset Hills. What few lingering doubts McAllister had had, evaporated with the certainty. One by one someone was eliminating everyone he’d had contact with since his release from the Lubyanka.

  Everyone, that is, except for Robert Highnote. They reached the secondary road and turned off. Sikorski’s driveway was a couple of miles farther into the hills. The snow that had fallen last night blanketed the trees and brush. The small community of Sunset Hills was to their right; he turned left and drove another mile, finally slowing and stopping at the dirt road.

  One set of tire tracks led up the road, none came back. No one had been in or out since the last snowfall. Only the Thunderbird had come this way.

  McAllister started up the dirt track, the trees closing in around them. A few hundred yards up, he stopped again and shut off the engine. The road was very narrow just here, the embankments on either side very high, impossible to drive up over. Whatever happened now, the Thunderbird would not be able to get back to the main road this way.

  “Hide yourself in the woods,” McAllister said. “If they come back this way open fire on them, and then get the hell out.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Stephanie said.

  “You’ll do as I say, goddamnit,” McAllister snapped. “If something happens to me I want you to get to Kingman and tell him everything…. I mean everything. At least you’d have a chance.”

  Stephanie’s eyes were wide, but she nodded in agreement. They got out of the car. For a second she hesitated, but then she climbed up over the dirt embankment where the road had beencut through the side of the hill, and disappeared into the thick woods.

  McAllister started toward the cabin. The snow was soft and slushy, and within ten yards his feet were soaked. He took out the P38, switching the safety off.

  The Thunderbird was parked just at the edge of the clearing that led down to the cabin. Crouching low he hurried up behind it, keeping it between himself and the house. No one was around. The cabin seemed deserted. There were no sounds or movements.

  From where he hid behind the big car he could see two sets of footprints leading down the clearing where they split up, one set going left, the other right. They’d circled the cabin, coming up on it from both sides. Sikorski’s pickup truck was back in its carport, but no tracks other than the footprints led across the clearing. Nothing had moved in or out since the snow. It was that one fact that was bothersome to McAllister just now.

  He moved around to the driver’s side of the car. The window was open, the keys dangled from the ignition. He reached inside, took the keys and pocketed them.

  Now, he thought grimly, the odds had been evened up somewhat. Whatever happened, they wouldn’t be getting out of here so easily. They would have to stay and fight.

  A man in a dark bombardier jacket came around from behind the cabin. McAllister ducked farther back behind the car, certain that he hadn’t been spotted yet. The man’s attention was toward the cabin itself.

  The front door opened and the second man, dressed in a dark overcoat, unbuttoned, came out. He was stuffing his gun inside his coat. The man in the bombardier jacket said something to him, and he shook his head. McAllister could hear the voices, but not the words.

  They had expected to find Sikorski at home, but evidently the old man had left with someone before the snow had finished falling. Now they would be coming back up to their car.

  McAllister eased back behind the Thunderbird and then scrambled up into the woods, moving from tree to tree until he was well hiddenyet barely fifteen feet from the car. He could hear the two of them talking now, their voices much closer as they came up the hi
ll. He still couldn’t quite make out the words, but it sounded like English.

  The one in the bombardier jacket came into view first on the driver’s side of the car. McAllister steadied his pistol with both hands against the hole of the tree, waiting for the second one to appear.

  “Sonofabitch,” bombardier jacket swore, spinning away from the open window, his hand reaching for his gun. The second man had just come into view on the other side of the car, he looked up in alarm.

  “Somebody’s got the fuckin’ keys,” bombardier jacket swore. “Hold it right there,” McAllister shouted.

  Bombardier jacket had his gun out and was diving to the left. The other man was dropping down behind the car.

  McAllister squeezed off a shot, the gun bucking in his hand, the bullet smacking into the driver’s side door a half a foot behind the man in the bombardier jacket, who snapped off a shot as he fell, the bullet hitting the tree inches from McAllister’s face.

  McAllister fired again, this time catching the man in the throat, his head snapping back against the car’s front fender, a horrible gurgling scream coming from him as he tore at the jagged wound, blood pumping out all over the snow.

  These were Americans, not Russians! He had not wanted this! Not this kind of a confrontation!

  It took the man nearly a full minute to die, and then the woods were silent again, only a very slight breeze rustling the tree branches.

  McAllister stood sideways to the tree, his heart hammering, his stomach heaving. The other man had not moved from behind the big car. For the moment it was an impasse.

  “We didn’t kill him,” the man said, his accent New York or New Jersey. “We found him that way, I swear to God. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know who did it….” The words were almost hysterical, but the tone was too measured.

  Janos dead? If these two hadn’t killed him, who had? “I gotta have a guarantee. I’m not going to get myself shot like Nick.” The voice had moved to the rear of the car. McAllister leaned forward slightly so that he could just see around the tree. The man in the bombardier jacket lay in the snow in a big puddle of his own blood.