“Am I understanding you correctly, Mr. President?…” Van Skike started.
“No screwing around now,” Sanderson said. “I’ve given my people explicit orders. McAllister and Albright are to be shot on sight. They can never be allowed to go to trial.”
Van Skike looked aghast at the President who looked away. He understood the logic of it, the necessity. But God in heaven, weren’t we a nation of laws; presumed innocent until proven guilty? “Gentlemen,” the President said, “they must be stopped.”
Chapter 22
McAllister sat on the edge of the bed stroking the back of Stephanie’s head with a gentle touch. They were in a nightmare that neither of them seemed able to wake up from. Yet in this dream world real people were dying. She was still shaking, her breath coming in great sobbing gasps.
“Why?” she kept crying. “There was no reason for them to have killed him… especially not like that. He didn’t know anything.”
He didn’t answer her.
It had been very difficult to pull her away from the surgery door and calm her sufficiently so that they could go upstairs to her old room, where he threw a few of the things she kept there into a small suitcase and then walked with her arm-in-arm back to Union Station, where they caught a cab to a dumpy little hotel near the State Historical Society.
“She’s not feeling well,” McAllister explained to the indifferent clerk. “She’s pregnant. It’s morning sickness.”
Upstairs in their shabby room he took off her coat and shoes and made her lie down on the bed.
“Why, David?” she sobbed. “It can’t be possible.”
“Russians,” McAllister said, staring across the room. But it hadn’t been a simple torture and killing in an effort to find Stephanie.
“What?” Stephanie asked, looking up at him. McAllister focused on her. “The Russians did it to your father.”
“How do you know that?”
Like I know a thousand other things, he thought. It’s tradecraft, part of the game, part of the knowledge that a field man needs in order to keep alive. “It’s the way they do things,” he said. “I’ve seen it before.”
“Because of you? Us? Because I’m helping you?”
“Yes,” he said. The truth was crueler than she could imagine. We are making great progress together, you and I, Mac. And I am so very pleased. It was Miroshnikov speaking to him. His face loomed in McAllister’s head. It was always there. It had always been there, and always would be. There was no escape.
“What is it?” Stephanie asked, sensing something of his pain. There was a continuing symmetry, of course, to the Zebra Network in the four names he had taken from the Agency’s computer archives. Suspects, evidently, that the investigators had no evidence to prosecute. They’d still be in place so that they could be watched.
The first, Ray Ellis, was a civilian communications expert working out of the American Embassy in Moscow. McAllister thought he might recognize the name, but he couldn’t fit a face to it. He’d be the Russian conduit. The link from Moscow through which information was passed.
The second link would be Air Force Technical Sergeant Barry Gregory, who worked as a cryptographic-equipment maintenance man in the Pentagon’s vast communications center. He would be the stateside relay point.
Some information could have come from Charles Denby, the third name on the list. He worked as an engineer with Technical Systems Industries in California’s Silicon Valley outside of San Francisco. TS Industries was one of the major contractors on the Star Wars research program.
And finally Kathleen O’Haire’s name appeared on the list of suspects by simple virtue of the fact she was the wife of James O’Haire, the head of the Zebra Network. The weak link?
“David?”
“We’ve got to get out of Baltimore,” he heard himself saying. But he was still drifting. Free associating. Thinking out the possibilities, the pitfalls, the moves they would have to make, the ramifications.
“Not back to Washington?” Stephanie was asking. “California.”
She was staring intently at him. “The list,” she said. “How will we get out there? When?”
“I’ll get our bags. We’ll take a flight out of New York. This afternoon. Tonight.”
“What about our guns?”
“They’ll get through with the checked-in baggage in the hold. It can be done.”
“Denby and Kathleen O’Haire will be watched in California.”
“Then we’ll have to be careful,” McAllister said, finally looking up out of his thoughts. “We don’t have any other choice now.”
Stephanie left their room ten minutes after McAllister had gone to take a cab back to the BaltimoreWashington Airport to fetch their bags. She had splashed some water on her face, and had paced back and forth until she could not take it anymore. It wasn’t the inactivity that bothered her, it was the fact that she knew she was never coming back here to Baltimore. Her old life was gone forever, and she couldn’t stand leaving it this way.
The clerk at the front desk didn’t bother looking up as she emerged from the hotel, turned left and walked rapidly two blocks up toward the Maryland General Hospital on Madison Street, where she caught a cab back to Union Station. Early afternoon traffic was in full swing and the snow had not let up. If anything it had increased again. The cabbie was playing Christmas music on the radio, and despite her resolve she felt tears slipping down her cheeks for all the years that were now lost. Her father had never told her in so many words that he would like to have grandchildren, but she could tell he had thought about it.
On weekends she would often come to visit, helping out in the surgery during the day, and talking until all hours of the night over dinner and a bottle or two of wine. Her father was her best friend. She told him about her work, about her day-to-day life, and about her loves… or lack of them. Always he had listened with keen interest, but never with criticism, though when she’d asked for his advice he would never hesitate to give it. Always thoughtful, always kind. She was going to miss him very badly.
She wasn’t going to leave him this way. Take care of yourself I’ll be all right. I know you will be, father.
They were among the last words they had spoken to each other. There would be no more. After the cabbie dropped her off she lingered inside Union Station for another ten minutes, watching the passengers coming and going, listening to the occasional rumble below as a train arrived or departed, studying the train schedules, looking at the people in the coffee shop.
Mac had ordered her to remain in the hotel. “It’s too dangerous for you to be out on the streets now.” Can’t you see, my darling, that this is something I must do? she cried inside.
The big clock on the back wall of the main departures hall read 1 one-thirty as she finally left the station and hurried on foot up Front Street. It was very dangerous coming here like this, but nothing seemed to have changed in the few hours since she and Mac had been here. There were no police cars out front, no crowds of curious onlookers wondering what was going on, nobody waiting at the front door with a dog or a cat needing the doctor.
Her father’s station wagon was still parked in the back when she mounted the steps. The newspaper boy had brought the early afternoon edition of the paper already. It was lying on the porch in the snow. She picked it up and let herself into the house, passing through the vestibule into the stairhall where she laid the paper on the table.
The house was quiet. Mac had let the two dogs out of their cages and had opened the back door for them. Outside they’d at least have a chance for survival. Here was… only death. She went to the waiting room door and stopped. For the moment her legs would carry her no farther. She could see the blood that had seeped under the surgery door and lay now in a black, crusty patch on the tile. Her stomach turned over, and she thought she was going to be sick. Insanity. All of it was insane, including her coming back here. She forced herself across the waiting room to the surgery door, took a deep breath an
d opened it, her legs instantly turning to rubber. “Oh, Father,” she whispered.
She’d not really seen him the first time. A haze had filled her eyes, as it threatened to do now. But she made herself look at him, study his body, study the destruction that had been wreaked on him.
Russians, Mac had said. Animals.
Even now she had the crazy thought that her father was going tosit up at any moment and laugh. “It’s a joke, Stephanie,” he would say. But she pushed that macabre thought aside and went the rest of the way into the surgery where she got a pair of shears from one of the drawers and concentrating only on what her hands were doing, cut the tape that held her father’s arms and legs together beneath the table.
His body was cold but surprisingly loose. Bile rose up at the back of her throat as she lifted his legs up onto the steel table, and then his arms, folding his hands together over his chest.
She hurried upstairs, tears blinding her eyes, where she got a clean bedsheet from the linen closet and brought it back to the surgery. She draped it over her father’s body.
“I’m sorry, father,” she said staring at the bulge in the sheet where the scalpel handle stuck out of his eye. All the rest she had been able to do. That one thing was impossible.
She backed to the surgery door then hurried across the waiting room to the stairhall where she raced to the downstairs bathroom and was violently ill in the toilet.
The body in the surgery was her father’s, but it wasn’t him, she kept telling herself. The thing was flesh and bone, and fluids. Her father had been a bright, alive human being; a personality, someone who gave sage advice and warm comfort. The body in the surgery was not capable of such things.
“Father!” she screamed rising up suddenly and swiveling on her heel.
At the door she had to hold onto the wall for support lest she collapse. She was going to have to go on. There was no other possibility. Mac was everything now. There was nothing… absolutely nothing else in her life.
She staggered out into the stairhall. She could see through the front windows that the snow had intensified and that the wind had begun to rise. They were in for a full-fledged storm. She shook her head. Would it ever end? Could it ever end?
At the vestibule door she turned and looked back toward the waiting room, a sudden panic rising up in her breast. Her father was alone. He would lie there until someone came to investigate. Strangers would come, handle his body, and take him away. How could she stand it?
She took a step back when her eye fell on the newspaper lying on the table. It was folded into a plastic bag, Mac’s photograph staring up at her. With shaking hands she picked up the newspaper, pulled the plastic wrapping off and opened it to the front page. Hers and Mac’s photographs stared up at her beneath the headlines:
MASSACRE AT COLLEGE PARK SUSPECTS SOUGHT IN MULTIPLE SLAYINGS
Chapter 23
McAllister waited outside the baggage pickup area at the BaltimoreWashington Airport for the next available taxi. The airport was much busyer now than it had been earlier this morning. Some flights had already been canceled or delayed because of the deteriorating weather, and the disappointed passengers were irritable, pushing and jostling for transportation back into the city.
If this kept up, he and Stephanie would have to take the train to New York. With luck they still would be able to get a flight out to the West Coast first thing in the morning.
He glanced over at a man dressed in a business suit, an overnight bag and attache case at his feet as he got a newspaper from one of the machines lined up by the doors. For just a split second McAllister caught a glimpse of the front page and he stepped back, stunned.
The businessman folded the newspaper without looking at it, picked up his bags and came over to where McAllister was standing. “They canceled my flight, what about yours?” the man asked. “I’m waiting for someone,” McAllister mumbled, and he turned and went back into the terminal, the man staring after him.
He took the escalators back up to the main departures hall, his heart racing. His and Stephanie’s photographs had been plastered all over the front page of the newspaper. He hadn’t caught the headlines, but they were big.
The message had been sent two days ago with a false description of him. What had happened in the meantime to change all of that? He approached one of the magazine and smoke shops where he could see several newspapers. All of them carried the same photographs beneath similar headlines: MASSACRE IN COLLEGE PARK. The clerk behind the counter was reading a newspaper. McAllister backed away without going in, turned and hurried across the terminal to thefront doors where cabs and buses were drawing up dropping off anxious people still hoping to catch a flight out.
Massacre-the word kept running through his head. Massacre of whom, and when? On the way up they’d heard a lot of sirens: Had that something to do with this?
He dug some coins out of his pocket, and before he caught one of the departing cabs, bought a newspaper from one of the machines. “The Historical Society,” he told the driver, avoiding any eye-to-eye contact.
“You got it,” the cabbie said, and pulled away from the curb. “Some weather, huh?”
“Right,” McAllister said absently, his eyes riveted on the front page of the newspaper.
The photographs looked like standard Agency head shots out of their files, Stephanie’s more recent than his, but both of them very recognizable except for the fact that his hair was much shorter now, and he still wore the clear-lensed glasses Stephanie had bought for him. He quickly scanned the lengthy article with a growing disbelief. Innes and Reisberg had been killed outright. Quarmby was in critical condition at Bethseda Naval Hospital where he was not expected to live, and Highnote was in guarded condition, but was expected to recover.
Highnote was not Zebra One. He was not a part of the network after all.
Look to Washington. Look to Moscow.
The penetration agent was not Highnote. Whoever he was, the mole was still in place. Highnote had tried to help and he had nearly lost his life for his effort. Carrick and Maas had been killed in New York, then Sikorski in Reston, Ballinger in Washington, and Stephanie’s father here in Baltimore. Now Innes, Reisberg, and probably Quamnby. It was nearly beyond belief. The story had been released just a few hours ago by a spokesman for the FBI, who reported that the meeting had been called at the home of Paul Innes, associate deputy attorney general, because of the overnight slaying of James and Liam O’Haire at the federal penitentiary outside of Marion, Illinois. “See related story on page 2A.“McAllister turned the page. The O’Haires had been found very early this morning stabbed to death. There were no clues as to the identity of the murderers, but prison officials said they believed that there had been trouble between the two brothers and some of the other prisoners.
Back on page one, McAllister continued with the main article. “Neighbors of the McAllisters, in their posh Georgetown neighborhood, reported seeing McAllister and a woman matching the description of Stephanie Albright, leaving in a white Peugeot sedan registered to McAllister. Tire tracks at the scene of the multiple slayings matched those of the Peugeot.
“In addition to the four government officials, also killed were two FBI officers, as well as Caroline Innes, wife of the associate deputy attorney general.”
McAllister, the article went on, had been named in connection with four other recent murders; two in New York, one in Washington, and the fourth near Reston.
According to an “unnamed source within the CIA,” McAllister, who had recently returned from assignment in Moscow, had worked with the Russians as a source for the O’Haire’s spy network. It was believed that McAllister and Stephanie Albright were still at large in the Washington area, and were to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.
McAllister let the paper drop to his lap. There was no going back for either of them now. Whatever faint hope he had held for using Stephanie as a backup should he fail-having her approach Dexter Kingman with the entire s
tory-was completely shattered now. According to the article, two weapons had been used in the massacre. The implication was that both McAllister and the woman had participated in the killings.
Stephanie, he thought, what in God’s name have I done to you?
The lobby of their hotel was mostly deserted, and no one paid the slightest attention to McAllister as he crossed to the elevator. He could not hide this from her, of course, but he had no idea how she was going to take the news that she was wanted for murder. If she folded on him it would make things impossible. Coming so soonon the heels of the shock of seeing her father’s mutilated body, however, he was worried about her.
Stephanie opened the door for him, her eyes going from his face to the overnight bags he was carrying, and then to the newspaper folded under his arm.
“You’ve seen it, then,” she said. She was pale and obviously frightened.
“Was it on the television?” he asked coming in and putting down the bags. But then he spotted the newspaper spread out on the bed and he turned on her. “Christ, I told you to stay in the room. I told you not to leave the hotel under any circumstances.”
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “But it was something I had to do.”
“What was so important?” he asked, raising his voice. “My father,” she replied, turning away. Her breathing was erratic, and she was holding her hands together to stop them from shaking.
“What about him?” McAllister snapped, realizing the moment the words escaped his lips how callous and insensitive he must sound to her. “Listen, Stephanie, I’m sorry…
“Don’t be, you were right. I shouldn’t have left the hotel. But I didn’t know about this.” She turned to face McAllister. “I couldn’t just leave him like that, David. I don’t know if you can understand, but he was alone, and when someone shows up at the house, I didn’t want them to see him like… that.”
The Zebra Network Page 26