The Zebra Network

by Sean Flannery

  Coming back around the block, he entered the ramp, got his ticket from the machine and drove down to the lowest level, parking the Mercedes in a dark corner.

  “Now what?” Stephanie asked, her voice flat. McAllister looked at her. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know any other way to do this.”

  “You’re going ahead with it then?”

  “Yes.”

  She started to shake, and she grabbed his arm. “It’s over, David. leave it be. Please. For my sake.”

  “Then they’ll have won.”

  “So what?” she screeched, her face screwed up in a grimace of fear and anger. “You can’t go back to the Soviet Union. They’ll kill you for sure.”

  “I must,” McAllister said. “Can’t you see that, my darling? I have no choice.”

  “But you do! David, you’ve broken both networks. leave it be!”

  “No.”

  They took a cab to a small hotel just around the corner from the parking ramp, registering under their real names and surrendering their passports for the morning’s police check. They were both very red, neither of them had gotten much rest during the transAtlantic flight.

  When the bellman left them, McAllister placed the chain on the door, then pulled the bed covers back, mussed up the pillows as if they had been slept on, and in the bathroom crumpled up a couple of the towels and threw them on the floor.

  Stephanie stood in the middle of the room watching him, her arms across her chest as she hugged herself to keep from shivering. He unpacked their bags, scattering their clothing throughout the room, hanging some in the closet, laying some over the chairs, leaving hers on the floor. Next he placed their toiletries in the bathroom, squeezing a little toothpaste in the sink and dirtying a couple of the glasses.

  “Is there anything that you’re going to need over the next few days?” He asked when he was finished. What do you mean?”

  “We’re leaving everything behind.”

  She looked around the room and shrugged. “My purse.”

  “Get it and let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “Schwabing,” he said.

  Schwabing was the artist’s quarter of Munich, much like New York’s Greenwich Village and London’s Soho. After leaving the hotel, they retrieved the Mercedes and had spent the next few hours shopping various department stores, purchasing a few articles of clothing, toiletry items, and a pair of cheap nylon suitcases into which they fed their things after first removing the price tags and store labels. leopoldstrasse, the main boulevard they had used this noon, was now alive with the early evening traffic when McAllister parked the car on a side street and he and Stephanie walked back up to a small, dy-looking nightclub in the middle of the block. It was barely six o’clock, yet already the place was more than half filled, the atmospheredense with smoke, a young long-haired man sitting on a small raised platform playing a Bruce Springsteen hit on his guitar. No one seemed to be listening to him-the hum of conversation was loud. McAllister found them a small table at the rear, and when their drinks came he got up. “Stay here, I’ll be right back,” he said.

  Stephanie looked up at him but said nothing, and he turned and went to the bar where he sat down with his drink, placing a hundred-dollar bill in front of him.

  It took the bartender less than a minute to come over to him, 1 glancing first at the money then at McAllister.

  “I need an artist,” McAllister said in German. “The town is filled with them, mein Herr,” the barman said. He was a big, rough-hewn man with a beet-red complexion.

  “This one would have to be special. Someone very good. Someone most of all discreet.”

  Again the bartender eyed the money. “You are on the run?”

  “Perhaps,” McAllister said. “You need papers, is that it?” McAllister nodded.

  The bartender grinned. “Where’re you sitting?” McAllister motioned toward the back. The barman deftly slipped the hundred-dollar bill off the bar and pocketed it.

  “I’ll send him back.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I never asked,” the bartender said, and he moved away. McAllister went back to Stephanie and sat down. Her eyes were wide, but she was no longer shivering.

  “Are you all right?” She nodded.

  “Someone is coming over to talk to us. No matter what happens, don’t say anything.”

  Again she nodded.

  McAllister wanted to do something for her, something to make it easier. But there was nothing to be done. Not now.

  Five minutes later a very old rat-faced man with bottlethick glasses that made his eyes seem huge and naked, a liter stein of beer in his hand, came over and sat down. When he grinned they could see thatmost of his teeth were missing. Everything about him seemed ancient and grubby except for his hands, the fingers of which were long and delicate, the nails well cared for. They were the hands of an artist.

  “What sort of trouble are you in, then?” he asked. “You don’t want to know, my friend,” McAllister replied easily. “We need a pair of passports.”

  The old man looked appraisingly at McAllister and then at Stephanie. He nodded. “Do you have the originals?”

  “Blanks.”

  “That’ll be easy then. Photographs?”

  “No. And we’ll need to change our appearances, or at least I will.”

  “No problem. My studio is just around the corner.”

  “One more thing,” McAllister said. “I’ll need some visa stamps in my passport. A lot of them.”

  “The well-used look,” the old man said understanding. “For what countries?”

  “I’ll leave that up to you, except for one. The most current one.”

  “Yes, for what country?”

  “The Soviet Union.”

  The old man sat back in his chair, his eyes narrowed. He shook is head. “That’s the tough one,” he said. “It’ll cost you.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifteen hundred for the lady’s,” he said without hesitation. “Dolars. Two thousand for yours.”

  It was more than half the amount of money he had taken from ighnote’s safe. “We’ll need a place to stay tonight.” The old man nodded. “No problem.” He sat forward again. “Am I going to have the BND down on my neck?”

  “Not if you keep your mouth shut,” McAllister said. “Half now, alf when they’re ready.”

  The old man hesitated for a moment, but then he sighed. “It’s your skin,” he said, and he held out his hand.

  Chapter 31

  A cruel wind blew along the frozen Istra River thirty miles outside of Moscow, whipping the snow into long plumes, whining at the edges of the steep cliffs, and moaning in the treetops of the birch forest. It was early afternoon, but already the sun had sunk low in the western horizon. Darkness came early at this time of the year.

  The large, bull-necked man, bundled in a thick parka and fur-lined boots, trudged up from the river, his breath white in the subzero cold. He stopped on the rise and looked across the narrow wooded valley to his dacha, smoke swirling from the chimney.

  Someone was coming. He had felt it for several days now, though he had no real idea why. Instinct, perhaps. All he had wanted was containment. Nothing more, at least until the mistakes that had been made over the past months were rectified. But each day brought another new disaster, none of which he could understand. It was as if forces beyond his control were at work. For the first time in his long, illustrious career, he felt real pangs of fear stabbing at his gut. Explanations would be demanded. But he had none to give.

  He looked back the way he had come and clenched his meaty fists in their thick gloves. Lies within lies. He had lived the life for so long that during times such as these he had a hard time recalling the truth.

  Everything had somehow tumbled down around him because of one man-David Stewart McAllister. Only he didn’t know why, or how. Only that it had happened, was still happening.

  Turning, he worked his way down the hil
l, across the valley and finally up to his dacha which in the old days had belonged to a prince, one of the czar’s family at court. Those days were gone, but the new age had its comforts.

  Stamping off his boots in the mud room, he hung up his parka and rubbing his hands together entered the main body of the house just as his secretary emerged from the study, an odd look on his face.

  “Yes, what is it, Mikhail?”

  “It is a telephone call, Comrade General,” the younger man, Mikhail Vasilevich Kiselev, said. “From the United States.”

  Something clutched at General Borodin’s heart. “Impossible.”

  “Nevertheless it is so,” Kiselev said respectfully. Borodin brushed past his secretary and in his small study snatched up the telephone. “Yes, who is this calling?” At first he could hear nothing on the line except for the hollow hiss of what obviously was a very long-distance connection. Who knew this number? Who could possibly know it?

  “General Borodin,” a man said in English. “Listen to me.”

  “Who is this?” Borodin demanded, switching to English. Kiselev stood in the doorway, his left eyebrow rising.

  “Harman and Potemkin are both dead, and McAllister is on his way to Moscow. Do you understand me?”

  On an open line! General Borodin could hardly believe his ears. He had to hold on to his desk for support. “Who is this? What are you talking about?”

  “McAllister knows everything. He even knows your name, and he’s coming there for you. He’s coming to kill you.”

  “You’re insane,” Borodin said. He’d wanted to shout, but he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

  “If he’s arrested he’ll tell everything he knows. Everything will be ruined. You, me, everything, do you understand?”

  “No, I don’t understand,” he said for Kiselev’s benefit. The fact of the matter was he did understand now; if not the how or the why, at least the implications. But who was this fool calling him now? “You must kill him. You are the last hope.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “McAllister is coming to Moscow to kill you. There’s no one else left for me to contact. God in heaven, can’t you understand?”

  General Borodin said nothing. After a few moments the connection was broken and he slowly hung up the telephone. Kiselev was closely watching him.“What is it, Comrade General?”

  Borodin shook his head and looked up out of his dark thoughts.

  “I don’t know, Mikhail Vasilevich. He was a crazy man shouting something about spies, of all things.”

  “Spies?” the secretary asked, his eyebrow rising again. “Yes,” General Borodin said, forcing a smile. “He wanted to come to work for us. He is a cowboy, I think. Crazy.”

  “Do you wish me to make a report?”

  “No,” General Borodin said, dismissing the man. “I will take care of it myself in the morning.”

  Robert Highnote stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor of CIA Headquarters in Langley and rushed down to his office. It was Sunday noon, the building was relatively quiet.

  Dropping his overnight bag on his secretary’s desk, he went inside, snatched up his telephone, and dialed a three-digit number. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, he had a nagging headache, and the wound in his back was on fire. But he could not stop. Not now. McAllister had taken the passports and money from his wall safe and somehow he and the woman had made it out of the country. Highnote had a great deal of respect for his old friend, always had. But since Moscow he hadn’t understood a thing that Mac had said or done. Something sinister had happened to him, something totally beyond understanding. Something totally insane.

  “Duty desk,” the number was answered.

  “This is Highnote. Anything on those two diplomatic passport numbers from Helsinki?”

  “Yes, sir. We tried to reach you earlier but there was no answer at your home.”

  “I’m in my office now,” Highnote said, his chest tight. “They showed up in Helsinki all right, just a few hours ago. Both numbers are definitely confirmed.”

  Highnote was gripping the telephone so hard his knuckles were turning white. “Did you get names?”

  “Yes, sir. Last three digits, six-five-nine, was listed as Wilson, Thomas S. The six-six-zero passport was listed to Morgan, Christine M.”

  “Were you able to come up with the name of the hotel where they’re staying?”

  “Not yet, sir. But Helsinki station promised they’d give us a shout as soon as they checked with the police. Shouldn’t be long now.”

  “It’s early evening over there. I would have thought they’d have that information by now.”

  “Sorry, sir, that’s all they came up with. Do you want us to query hem again?”

  McAllister had actually made it. By now he’d probably be inside the Soviet Union. Good Lord, was it possible? “Sir?” the duty officer was asking.

  “No, you don’t have to carry it any further. Thanks.”

  “How do you want this logged, Mr. Highnote?”

  “Keep it open for the moment, if you would. I’ll close it out myself tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir,” the duty officer said.

  Highnote hung up. McAllister was as good as dead. The moment he set foot inside Russia they would arrest him. Short of that, if he actually reached General Borodin by another miracle, he would not survive that encounter. What Highnote knew of Borodin was that the man was incredibly tough. A fighter. Even his own people were afraid of him. No one ever got in his way and escaped unscathed. Which left Stephanie Albright, who would be toughing it out in a elsinki hotel room.

  Highnote picked up the telephone, got an outside line and called Operations at Andrews Air Force Base. “Major Jenkins, please,” he said.

  The squadron commander came on a second or two later. “Major Jenkins.”

  “Bob Highnote. Are we ready to go, Mark?”

  “It’s a green light, sir?”

  “Right.”

  “Anytime you’re ready then, sir,” Major Jenkins said. “How’s the weather over the North Atlantic?”

  “There’s a storm cell building over European Russia, but it’s heading east, so we’re in good shape.”

  “I’ll be there within the hour,” Highnote said. Dexter Kingman, chief of the Office of Security for the CIA, sat across the desk from John Sanderson, in the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue at Tenth Street. He had come to a slow boil when the FBI director had finally explained what was happening.

  “I don’t like this one bit, Mr. Sanderson, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “Neither do I,” Sanderson replied. “The fact of the matter is, Highnote is on the move.”

  “Where?”

  “At the moment he’s in his office.”

  “It’s your opinion that he will lead you to McAllister?” Sanderson nodded, and leaned forward. “You must understand that the two men have been friends for a lot of years. From what we can gather, Highnote has ostensibly been protecting McAllister ever since the incident in New York.”

  “From everything else you’ve told me-not saying I can accept it-it’s hard to believe.”

  “It’s no less difficult for us,” Sanderson said, sighing deeply. “But it seems likely that Robert Highnote is working for the Soviet government. His control officer was a man named Gennadi Potemkin whom we found dead at Janos Sikorski’s home outside of Reston. Between the two of them they ran the O’Haire network, and did a damned good job of it.”

  “Why would a man like Highnote turn?”

  “We don’t know that yet, we’re still working up a psychological profile on him…

  “What?” Kingman, who was himself a psychologist, asked. Sanderson spread his hands. “We don’t have much to go on. His phones are constantly being swept so there has been no possibility of monitoring his calls. And when he moves, it’s often with a great deal of care so he has been difficult to tail. But our best guess at the moment is that sometime over the past five to eigh
t years, he became unbalanced. Pressures of the job, moral dilemmas, we’re not sure. But there is enough circumstantial evidence to suppose that he has gone off the deep end. Did you know that he had become fanatical about religion?”

  “Doesn’t make the man a Russian spy.”

  “No,” Sanderson said.

  “What about McAllister? Where does he fit?”

  “We think that McAllister learned something in Moscow that might ultimately lead back to Highnote who, under the guise of helping his old friend, has in reality been setting him up for the kill. For a legitimate kill. He’s been driving McAllister like a hunter might drive a wild animal toward a dozen other hunters… us.”

  “What about the massacre at College Park? McAllister couldn’t have done that.”

  “No,” Sanderson said. “This is a big puzzle. But we believe that a second spy ring was in operation here as well. One in which Donald Harman was working with a so-far-unknown Russian.”

  Kingman sat back, his head spinning. “Donald Harman, the presidential adviser?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do I come in?” Kingman asked, trying as best he could to control himself. He was a cop, not a spy. He didn’t like skulking around behind the back of a man he had long admired.

  The telephone on Sanderson’s desk rang, and he picked it up. “Yes,” he answered softly. Moments later a startled expression crossed is features. He switched the phone to the speaker so that Kingman could hear too.

  “You’re there now, at Andrews Operations?”

  “I’m watching them roll down the runway right now,” George Mueler said. “I can have the flight recalled.”

  “Where is he going?”

  “Helsinki.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Sanderson said, looking at Kingman. “Shall I stop him?” Mueller was asking. “Who is on that flight?” Kingman asked.

  “Highnote,” Sanderson said. “Either McAllister and the Albright woman are in Helsinki, or Highnote is trying to make a run for the Soviet border.”

  “What?” Mueller shouted. “What’d you say?”