The Zebra Network

by Sean Flannery

  Four names he had gotten from the computer. It was the information he had been seeking, if only he could keep alive long enough to find out what they knew.

  McAllister cranked down his window. They had left the sirens far behind, back toward the headquarters building. He figured they had come nearly a mile.

  “Stop here,” he said to the guard.

  “Jesus, Mr. McAllister, I’ll do whatever you want,” the man said in alarm. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just stop here and I’ll let you out. You can walk back.”

  The guard wanted to believe him, but it was obvious he thought he was about to be shot to death. He pulled up to a halt. “I’ve got a family…

  “Get out of here, and don’t look back,” McAllister said. The guard hesitated a second or two longer, then shoved open the door, jumped out and started running down the snow-covered road, disappearing into the darkness. McAllister slid over behind the wheel, slammed the truck into gear and drove another quarter mile before pulling up, dousing the lights and shutting off the engine.

  He jumped out of the truck, stepped off the road, and plunged into the forest, heading in the general direction of the place where he had come through the fence.

  Twice he heard sirens in the distance, and somewhere to the north, he thought he could hear a horn honking, but for the most part the woods were silent as before.

  He came to the fence five minutes later, and followed it back to the northwest for another hundred yards before he found the hole he had cut. His were the only footprints in the snow, already partially filled in. No one had discovered how he had gained entrance. Once again his luck seemed to be holding.

  In another five minutes he had reached the crest of the hill overlooking the street. The Thunderbird was still parked where he had left it, no one around, though once again he could hear sirens in the distance.

  He scrambled down the hill, climbed into the car, and drove off.

  McAllister parked the car in front of the J. Edgar Hoover Building which houses the FBI’s headquarters on Pennsylvania at Tenth Street, leaving the walkie-talkie and the guards’ weapons under the front seat.

  Sow confusion where you can; it will help mask your movements in a difficult situation. The car would create a lot of interest when it was discovered what it contained. But whom to trust?

  If Stephanie had been able to guess where he had gone, others could have done the same. It wasn’t much of a hope, but it was something.

  It took him almost a half hour to reach their hotel on foot. He figured she would be back from the Holiday Inn by now. There was almost no traffic, and absolutely no activity around the hotel. He waited in the darkness across the intersection for a full ten minutes to see if anyone showed themselves. If the hotel was staked out, therewould have been a movement; a slowly passing car or van, a head popping up, a cigarette lit, something. But there was nothing.

  He crossed the street, entered the hotel, the sleepy clerk glancing away only momentarily from the television show he was watching, and took the elevator to the third floor.

  She opened the door for him.

  “Oh, God, am I glad to see you,” she cried, falling into his arms once he was inside.

  The relief in her eyes, in her voice, and in the way she held him, her entire body trembling, was genuine, pushing back his doubts about her.

  “They knew I was coming,” he said. “Impossible.”

  “How did you know where to reach me?” Her eyes widened. “What are you saying, Mac?”

  “I repeat, how did you know where I would be?”

  “You wanted information about the O’Haires. About the Zebra Network. There was only one place where you could possibly get it.”

  “What did you tell Kingman?”

  “You were standing right behind me when I talked to him,” Stephanie flared.

  “I couldn’t hear both sides of the conversation.”

  “What are you trying to say?” she snapped. “Spit it out!”

  “Someone telephoned them. Told them that I was coming and that I was armed and dangerous.”

  “And you think I did it?”

  “What did you tell Kingman? What did he ask you?”

  “Nothing,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “What did you tell your friend Highnote?”

  Zebra One, Zebra Two. Highnote knew nearly everything. “If I wanted you dead I could have left you in the river,” she cried.

  “I could have put a bullet in your head at my father’s house, or here at this hotel, or out at Sikorski’s, any of a dozen times and places.”

  “Why didn’t you?” McAllister asked miserably, his voice catching in his throat. “I don’t know…” she started to say, and she tried to pull away. He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Why, Stephanie? What are you doing here with me? Why are you risking your life to help me? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Because I love you,” she blurted.

  He didn’t know what to say. It was as if the floor had opened up beneath his feet.

  “There,” she said pulling away from him. “Are you satisfied, you bastard?”

  The TWA flight out of St. louis was already forty-five minutes late, putting them into Washington after eleven-thirty at night. louis Jaffe, assistant general counsel for the CIA, sat back in his first-class seat and closed his eyes for a moment. John Norris, who’d flown out with him for the interview at Marion Federal Penitentiary in Southern Illinois, was sound asleep in the next seat.

  Highnote insisted that someone from Operations be included, and in fact it had been Norris who’d asked most of the questions. It was terribly odd, Jaffe thought, this particular piece of information surfacing now. But as Norris had said in his sardonic way, they were looking for a deal… when no deals were possible. “So we send them a life jacket. We don’t have to tell them it’s full of holes.”

  Jaffe opened his eyes and switched on his pocket tape recorder, the voices in the earpiece distorted but understandable.

  the name McAllister mean to you?” Norris’s voice.

  There was a scraping sound and a sudden loud hiss as James O’Haire lit a match and put it to his cigarette. “As in David Stewart?” he asked, his Irish accent pronounced. “You tell me,” Norris said.

  “The bastard. He was playing both ends against the middle there at the end. Last I heard he was still playing it close in Moscow. Probably skipped by now, though, if I know my man.”

  “David McAllister was part of your network?” Jaffe heard himself ask.

  “From the beginning.”

  Jaffe ran the tape forward.”… had his network people over there who’d pump him the questions that needed answering. You know, hardware, technical data, that sort of sport.”

  “And here in this country, who was your control officer?” Norris asked.

  O’Haire laughed, the noise roaring in Jaffe’s ear. “You’ve been watching too many spy movies.”

  Jaffe ran the tape forward again. “… telling you all this now because my brother and I want a deal. Not so hard to understand, is it?”

  “Do you want to go live with your pals in Moscow?” Norris asked. “Hell no,” O’Haire exploded, laughing again. “We’d be willing to tough it out here, say for a year maybe two. Until the dust settles. Then you could quietly let us out. Might go to Spain, perhaps France. Somewhere in Europe. We’re not greedy.”

  “Would you be willing to testify in court about McAllister’s involvement…?” Jaffe had asked, but O’Haire cut him off.

  “You play ball with us, Mr. Jaffe, and we’ll play ball with you. I’ll tell you this much, though, watch out for McAllister. He’s one tough sonofabitch. I always admired that one, I did.”

  Chapter 14

  “They’re lying,” Robert Highnote said, looking across the conference table at the other three men gathered for the early morning meeting at CIA headquarters. “Besides, as I understand the laws of evidentiary procedure, the word of a conspirator would not be valid
in a court of law.” Dennis Foster, the agency’s general counsel, nodded. “We’re not talking about a court of law here, Bob. But considering everything that McAllister has allegedly done over the past week or so, it gives one pause, wouldn’t you agree?” He was a slightly built but patricianlooking man with white hair and wire-rimmed glasses that gave his face a pinched expression. His voice was soft, cultured.

  “Hell, at the very least the man is a killer,” Dexter Kingman said. He was just the opposite of Foster; raw-boned, large, at times loud. More than one person had underestimated his intelligence, however, because of his outward appearance. Oftentimes to their regret. He was angry just now.

  “And he was here last night,” Adam French, the director of the Soviet Russian Division added. “You can’t deny that.”

  “No,” Highnote said. “But so far, all the evidence that we’ve gathered has been contradictory. You can’t deny that.”

  “The man is trying to save his own ass,” Kingman said. There was a deep scowl on his face. “Now he’s snatched one of my people.” Highnote glanced at the written report in front of him. “From what I’ve read here, she could have been a willing victim.”

  “Probably had a gun to her head,” Kingman growled. “She’s still alive. And so are those two guards last night. He could have pulled the trigger. He didn’t.”

  “What are you trying to do, defend the bastard?” Kingman said, his voice rising. “You were friends, but let’s not carry this so far we become blinded.”

  “What the O’Haires told our people does fit,” Dennis Foster interjected. “If you think about it, it does make some sense.”

  “Not from where I sit,” Highnote said heavily. “None of this makes any sense. I saw him, remember? I spoke with him face-to-face the night he came out to my house. He’s confused, he’s running for his life, I’ll grant you that, but we trained him to do that. And he’s doing it well.”

  “At the Russians’ behest,” Foster said.

  “Is that what you think, Dennis?” Highnote asked seriously. He looked at the others. “Is that the consensus here this morning? Because if it is, I’m telling you that I just can’t go along with you.”

  Kingman threw up his hands in frustration. “Then what the hell are we doing here, Bob? What do you want from us? Do we let the bastard go, let him do whatever he wants? Offer him amnesty? Forget everything that’s happened?”

  “On the contrary. He has to be stopped.”

  “Fine…” Kingman started to say, but Highnote held him off. “Hear me out, Dexter. All of you. We’re dealing with a highly trained operative who is obviously motivated. Simply put, McAllister is looking for something. And looking hard. I think it would be wise to find out what that might be. He didn’t have to return here to Washington. He could have taken off, hidden himself, and it would have taken us years to dig him out, if we ever did. Why has he come back? What does he want?”

  “Revenge,” Kingman said simply. “For what?”

  “The failure of his network.”

  “We’ve not agreed that he actually worked with the O’Haires.”

  “It fits,” Kingman said. “The Russians arrested him to throw off suspicion, and then they released him on the hope that he would be allowed back into the fold. When we obviously wouldn’t buy that, he ran amok. You saw the ballistics report from New York. Carrick was killed with his own gun. So was Maas. McAllister’s fingerprints were all over it.”

  “What about the three Russians outside my front door?” Highnote asked.“I don’t know. A deal gone bad, perhaps?”

  “And the blood all over my sailboat? McAllister was there. We found the Walther he took from my study. Who tried to kill him?”

  “Again I don’t have the answers, Bob. But my guess would be the Russians themselves. Maybe they’d realized they had made a big mistake releasing him. Maybe they’re trying to stop him.”

  “Now you’re trying to say that McAllister is an independent?” Highnote asked. “Trained by us and molded by the Russians? With drugs, perhaps torture? He’s a tool?”

  “Gone bad,” Kingman said. “I think the man has gone over the edge. I think he is insane.”

  “If that’s the case,” Highnote said sitting back in his seat, “we’re all in trouble, gentlemen. Very big trouble.”

  “We trained him, it’s up to us to stop him.” Kingman replied, only the smallest look of satisfaction on his face. “The question is, how? The bastard is smart.”

  “If we knew what he was looking for, it might give us a clue as to his next moves,” Dennis Foster said. “If we assume that what the O’Haires told us is true, we could start there…

  “No assumptions, Dennis,” Kingman said. “I don’t think we can afford the luxury. Besides, if McAllister’s brain was altered by drugs, he wouldn’t be the same person as before. No, we’ve got to start from the beginning. From his beginning. If he has come back here for revenge… we’ve got to find the object of his revenge.” He turned to Adam French. “He broke into your office and used your computer terminal. Was there any record of what he was looking for?”

  “It could have been almost anything,” French said. “All that we do know for sure was that once he got into the division archives, he evidently called for a restricted-access file, and failed three times with the password.”

  “Did he get it right on the fourth try?”

  “Possibly,” French said. “Tom Watson said he printed out a hard copy of something.”

  “No way of retrieving that either?” Kingman asked. “No.”

  “He came here at great risk to himself to find out something. Heneeded a piece of information which he evidently managed to get. What information?”

  “I have a guess,” French said. He reached down to his briefcase on the floor beside his chair and brought out a buff-colored file folder with the orange diagonal stripes signifying it contained top-secret information. “Dennis and I spoke briefly this morning before this meeting, so I knew what had transpired at Marion with the O’Haires. As you may know we maintain the O’Haire Zebra Network file in our archives. I figured that if McAllister was connected with them he might have been seeking more information… perhaps he was looking to discover just how much we knew.”

  He withdrew a half a dozen computer printout sheets and passed them down the table to Highnote. “No telling if that was the file he was looking for, but the connection is there, and the password is yours, Bob.”

  While French was talking, Highnote quickly scanned the pages which included the coded listing of the various O’Haire files. Files that he knew only too well because it was his department that had been most deeply involved in the investigation. The connection was there. It was definitely there!

  Everyone was looking at Highnote. The decision was his, and they all knew it. They also respected the fact that he and McAllister had been friends for many years. It was Highnote, in fact, who had recruited the man.

  Highnote laid the computer printouts down on the table. “His father was the best in the business. Practically a legend.”

  “Nobody is pointing a finger,” Kingman said gently. “Nobody is holding you accountable.”

  “What I mean to say is that up to the point that McAllister was arrested by the Soviets there was nothing wrong with him. I sincerely believe that he was a good, loyal American. One of the best field men I’ve ever seen.”

  “I agree with you,” Kingman said. “We all do, so far as it concerns his abilities. But the O’Haires have named him.”

  “Someone told them to do it, Dexter. There has to be a conduit tothem. I’d be willing to bet anything that Mac was not involved with them.”

  “Then something happened to him in the Lubyanka,” Kingman said.

  “Yes,” Highnote agreed softly. “They did something to him, warped his mind, altered him somehow, and then sent him back here hoping we’d accept him. But they were too crude about it.”

  “They’ve been cruder,” Adam French said. “Now
they’re just as afraid of him as we are.”

  “He must be stopped,” Highnote said with obvious difficulty. “Brought in, if humanly possible, but stopped.”

  “He’s fighting for his life… or at least he thinks he is,” Kingman said. “He won’t be so easy to… capture.”

  Dennis Foster bridled. “I don’t know if I should be hearing this.” He started to rise, but Highnote waved him back.

  “We’ve haven’t crossed that line yet, Dennis. What we’re doing here is well within our charter. We’re not contemplating anything illegal. The optimum scenario is that we bring him in, and find out what happened to him.”

  “I repeat, that won’t be so easy,” Kingman said. “He obviously knows what he’s doing, and just as obviously he has some plan in mind.”

  “What about this woman he snatched?”

  “Stephanie Albright is young, idealistic, and good,” Kingman said, his jaw suddenly tight. “You might not know, but her name was written on Ballinger’s phone pad. They were supposed to have met that morning.”

  “Are you saying that she killed him?” Highnote asked aghast. “No. I’m saying that McAllister had her set up the meeting and then he killed Ballinger.”

  “Why?”

  French interrupted. “I know why,” he said, his complexion suddenly very pale. They all turned to him. “Ballinger telephoned me, wanted to know something about the O’Haire network. Said it was something he was working on… that he might have something new for us.”

  “What’d you tell him?” Highnote demanded. “Nothing. I told him that he would have to clear it with you, or at the very least go through Dexter’s office. He said he’d do just that.”

  “He didn’t call me,” Kingman said. “Nor me,” Highnote said.

  “He’s definitely after the O’Haires,” French said. “If only 1 had known.