straight up.”
“So you think I’m a traitor?”
Carrick’s lip curled into a sneer. “Just don’t try to walk away from me. I’ve got my job to do, that’s all.”
McAllister actually got a couple of hours’ sleep on the transatlantic flight, though it wasn’t restful. After his talk with Carrick in the cafe, his two escorts had become almost surly, dropping any pretense of friendship or respect. He was a traitor returning home under arrest. As on the Air France flight out of Moscow they had first class to themselves, and McAllister sat by himself, confused and angry.
He had given everything to the Agency over the past fourteen years.
A legion of cities and faces and dark alleys and letter drops and onetime codes, and nights waiting at some border crossing for one of his madmen to show up, passed through his mind. He could picture each place and each incident in perfect clarity.
At first it had been exciting. Only later had he begun to wear down, tiring at last of the lies big and little, of the betrayals and of the fact that it had been simply impossible for him and Gloria to have real friends. They’d been able only to maintain sham relationships that if he could be honest with himself and even that had began to come apart at the seams) had began to erode the fabric of his marriage as well as his own mental well being.
Perhaps he had been ripe for an arrest. His tradecraft had been slipping.
He opened his eyes, his heart pounding, a slight sheen of perspiration on his forehead. He was returning home to what? To questions for which he had no answers. For accusations to which he had no defenses. He had been in the hands of the KGB for more than a month (God, could it have been that long?) and he had resisted to the best of his ability. But it hadn’t been enough. Not enough.
What are you doing to yourself?
He had to do something, move, anything. Unbuckling his seatbelt he got up and before Carrick or Maas could come after him he went forward to where the two stewardesses were seated across from the galley. They looked up.
“Can’t sleep,” McAllister said.
“May I get you something, sir?” one of the girls asked, concerned. “Maybe a drink. Brandy?”
“Sure,” the stew said. She got up and stepped into the narrow galley where she opened a cabinet and took out a couple of small bottles of brandy, and from another cabinet a glass.
“No ice,” McAllister said, taking the drinks from her. “May I take them up to the lounge?”
The girl looked over his shoulder. Carrick stood right behind him. “Sure,” she said.
“Thanks,” McAllister mumbled, and he turned, brushed past Carrick and went back to the circular stairs that led to the 747’s upper level.
The lounge was deserted and dimly lit at this hour. During the daytime and early evening transatlantic flights it would have been filled with first-class passengers drinking and talking. McAllister slumped down at one of the tables as Carrick appeared at the head of the stairs. Opening one of the small bottles, he poured it into the crystal glass, then sat back.
“What are you doing up here?” Carrick asked. McAllister raised his glass. “Care for a drink?”
“No. And with the shit that’s probably still in your system, you shouldn’t have another either.”
“Your concern is touching,” McAllister said. “Look, McAllister..
“No, you look. If you want to talk to me straight, then go ahead. Otherwise keep your mouth shut.”
Carrick said nothing.
McAllister swirled the liquor around in his glass. “I’ve had enough bullshit thrown at me over the past thirty days to last a lifetime. And I’m going to get more of it when I get home, so I don’t need yours now.”
“I didn’t ask for this job.”
“But I did,” McAllister said softly. He took a deep drink, the brandy rebounding in his stomach, and then settling, warmth rising up into his head. “It’s like Nam all over again. No returning hero this time either.”
“None of us were,” Carrick said. “I know what you mean.” In the distance McAllister could hear the mob screaming below on the streets as they tried to break down the embassy gates. There was a lot of small-arms fire through the city, and all night the rockets had come in from every direction. One by one the choppers came in, touched down on the roof and took a load. McAllister and some of the others were among the last to leave. They’d spent most of the night destroying papers and crypto equipment, trying to swallow, as best they could, their deep sense of shame that they were leaving, that they were giving up. God, what a waste. What a terrible waste.
“What happened back there?” Carrick was asking. McAllister focused on him and shrugged. “They say they extracted a confession from me, and I signed it, but I don’t remember doing it.”
“Shit.”
“Have you ever been on an interrogation team?” Carrick shook his head. “No.”
“Neither have I,” McAllister said. “I wonder how we handle the poor bastards we haul in.”
“Better than they treated you,” Carrick said, studying McAllister’s face. “I hope.”
McAllister managed a tired smile. He’d been overreacting again of course. The KGB had had him for a month, Langley would have to know what went on; how much information had the Russians been given-inadvertantly or advertantly. He knew so many names and dates and places; knew about so many operations current as well as past. All of Moscow operations would be in a shambles now, everything would have to be changed. The fallout would already have been tremendous. It would still be happening. Someone was going to have to answer for it. The problem was that there was very little he could tell anyone because he simply could not remember the details of his questioning. They said they had his confession, but what exactly was it he had confessed to? How much information had he given them? The only things he could remember in detail were Miroshnikov’s persistent questions about the Scorpius network, and about Tom Murdock’s whereabouts these days. There’d been nothing about Voronin, or about current Moscow operations, so far as he could remember. Had Miroshnikov been clever enough to read his mind? They’d released him without a trade. A Soviet court had found him guilty of espionage. Why hadn’t he been sent to Siberia? They’d sent a message to Langley by handing him over to Carrick and Maas at the airport, but what exactly was that message?
McAllister opened the second bottle of brandy and emptied it in his glass.
“Maybe you should cool it on that stuff,” Carrick said. He glanced at his watch. “We’ll be touching down at JFK pretty soon.”
“It’d be a hell of a deal if you delivered me drunk.” Carrick sat forward. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said earnestly. “We both know that you’re going to be in for a bad time.”
“I’ll need all my wits about me.”
“Well I’ll be damned if I’m going to deliver a drunk,” Maas said at the head of the stairs, a scowl set on his face. He came across the lounge and reached over the table for the glass. McAllister held it out of his reach.
“How badly do you want it?”
“Enough to take you apart, you sonofabitch,” Maas hissed. “Then come and get it, otherwise stay the hell away from me.” Maas started around the table, but Carrick jumped up and shouldered him aside. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Tom?”
“The bastard has cut himself off. He was shaking with anger.
“Is what?” McAllister asked. He didn’t know why he was goading the man, except that he felt battered and he wasn’t going to take much more of it.
What was happening? Where had it gone wrong? Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two. He could accept his arrest and his interrogation. He could even accept the inevitability of his trial and conviction. But after that everything had been turned upside down. Had he become a traitor? Is that what had happened to him in the Lubyanka? “You know,” Maas said, backing off. Yes I do know. And yet I know nothing.
McAllister sat back and raised the glass of brandy to his lips as he stared up into the hate-filled eyes of Tom Maas, and the concerned face of Mark Carrick.
At altitude the eastern sky was already beginning to lighten with the dawn, but when they touched down at New York’s JFK Airport it was still dark, the white runway lights giving way to the blue as the giant airliner turned onto the taxiway, Manhattan beyond Queens glowing with a million pinpoints of light.
He was home. It seemed like such a terribly long time since he had been here last, and now he was anxious to get down to Washington to straighten everything out and get on with his life. He was worried about Gloria; how she had been holding up these past weeks, what she had been thinking, and what, if anything, she’d been told. It must have been hell for her. He resolved that he would try again to work on his marriage, to make it better for her.
