traffic. He stopped for a red light across from the Rive Gauche, a restaurant he and Gloria frequented each time they’d been reassigned briefly to Washington between foreign postings. It gave him an odd feeling to be here like this now.
He turned left up Wisconsin Avenue, the sights and sounds and smells coming back to him like an old familiar jacket one has rediscovered in his closet; oddly out-of-date, and out-of-fashion. Yet oh so comfortable and friendly. New York and especially Moscow seemed like a long way away now, not only in distance but in time.
Highnote would listen to him, would help him, if anyone would, or could. But first he had to know one thing. A couple of blocks past the Georgetown Theater he took the Street over to 31st, that ran at an odd angle up toward Montrose Park, then slowed down two blocks later, passing the intersection with Avon Lane. This was a neighborhood of three-story brownstone houses each attached to the next. His was six doors from the corner on the upper side.
McAllister had participated in enough surveillance operations over the past fourteen years to know what he was looking at. A Toyota van, its windows blocked with reflective film, was parked twenty yards beyond his house. A yellow cab was parked at the far corner. Behind it the cabby and a big burly man in shirtsleeves were looking at something beneath the raised hood of a Mercedes.
They were waiting for him. Expecting him to come here. Two hours ago when he had telephoned from New York there’d been no answer at his house, no switching equipment. If they’d been waiting for him two hours ago, the telephone would have been manned.
This surveillance had been ordered up because of what had happened on the ramp at JFK. A traitor is loose; a dangerous lunatic who has killed two of our own is heading our way.
McAllister realized that he was shaking. Violently. Sweat had popped out on his forehead and yet he was freezing cold. He turned east on R Street and a couple of blocks later pulled over across from the Oak Hill Cemetery.
Life was going forth at an ordinary speed all through the city. McAllister felt as if he were a tree limb snagged in a swiftly moving stream, the waters swirling around him. He was helpless. Once he was caught up in the swift current he would drown. There was no avoiding it.
They were waiting for him.
God in heaven what was happening? What did they think he had become?
Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. He had been to Moscow, and here he was in Washington. But look for what, for whom?
He was driving through Arlington National Cemetery across the river from the Lincoln Memorial, and there was very little traffic. It was early evening and behind him the city lights were beginning to mingle with the darkening star-studded sky. Being here like this now, he was struck with a sense of unreality, not only with what he was doing, and why, but with the fact he was doing anything at all. He was on the outside looking in. It was very strange.
If anyone had the answers it would be Highnote. Earlier he had driven out to Dulles International Airport where he had left the rental car in the long-term parking garage, because if they were expecting him to come to Washington they’d be checking with all the car rental agencies and his name would turn up.
It had taken him less than a half hour in the busy air terminal to find a man about his own height, general build and age, lift his wallet as he stood at one of the cocktail lounge bars, and using the man’s driver’s license and credit card, rent a car from the Hertz counter.
By the time he had hurried back to the cocktail lounge, the man — Thomas Hobart from Muncie, Indiana-was still at the bar. McAllister dropped his wallet on the floor, then turned and left, retrieving the Ford Taurus from where he had left it out front.
In the afternoon he had had a late lunch at a roadside restaurant south of Alexandria where he had searched the Washington and New York afternoon papers for a story about the shootout at JFK, but there’d been nothing. He would have been surprised if there had been.
At first he had watched in his rearview mirror each time he turned a corner, switched lanes, or changed speeds. But so far as he had been able to tell, no one was on his tail. They might suspect, at this point, that he was in Washington, but so far he had not been spotted. That wouldn’t last, of course. It couldn’t last. Sooner or later someone would see and recognize him, especially if he kept moving around. As it began to get dark he had driven back up past National Airport and into the cemetery where he had slowed his speed. If they got to him now and shot him to death, would he be buried here at Arlington with his father? It wasn’t likely. He was a traitor and a murderer. But was there any peace for him, could there be any peace for him even in death? Somehow he doubted that as well.
He passed through the western edge of the vast cemetery, crossed Washington Boulevard and was in Arlington Heights, a nice but unpretentious neighborhood of pleasant homes. It was dark by the time he reached Astor Avenue, parking in the middle of the block, and shutting off his lights and engine.
Highnote’s house was located at the end of a cul-de-sac. Except for a light over the garage door and another on the front porch, the place was dark.
McAllister got out of his car, walked the rest of the way down the block, and crossed the lawn between Highnote’s house and his neighbor’s, also dark. Somewhere in the close distance a dog started barking, and McAllister stopped a moment in the darkness. After a few seconds the dog stopped, and he continued around to the rear through a tall hedge, and across the patio past the swimming pool. The kitchen light was on, but Highnote’s study was in darkness.
At the study window, McAllister put his ear to the glass. He could vaguely hear someone talking, or a television set playing, and through the curtains he could see that the study door was closed.
Stepping back he took off his jacket, wrapped it around his right elbow, and using as little strength as possible, broke one of the small square windowpanes just at the lock. The noise seemed very loud in the still night air, and for several seconds McAllister held his breath waiting for the sounds of an alarm to be raised. But there was nothing. He reached inside, undid the lock, slid the window open and crawled through.
McAllister had been in this room before. Quite often. He and Gloria had been friends with Highnote and his wife Merrilee for years, despite the age difference of fifteen years. He knew the layout well. The desk was directly opposite the window, a leather couch and coffee table were to the right, and on the left was the door to the tiny bathroom. Books lined two walls, and a third held framed photographs and certificates of achievement. With the curtains open he could see well enough in the dim light coming from outside.
Sitting down at the desk McAllister opened the bottom left drawer and took out Highnote’s Walther PPK. The flat automatic, which at one time had been the weapon of choice among British Secret Intelligence Service field operatives, had been a gift from Kim Philby when the Brit was stationed here in Washington. Highnote always said the gun gave him a lot of ironic pleasure. He’d been one of those, even as a young man, who’d thought Philby was too good to be true.
He checked the action of the gun. It was well oiled and loaded. There were two telephones on the desk; one was the house line, and the other was Highnote’s private number. McAllister picked up the second one and dialed the house number. The connection was made and he could hear the telephones in the rest of the house ringing. Highnote picked it up on the second ring.
“Yes?”
“Hello, Bob,” McAllister said. The gun was on the desk in front of him. He was watching the door. “Jesus,” Highnote whispered. “Where the hell are you? Are you alone?”
Highnote said something away from the phone. “Just Merrilee and me. Are you in the city? Can I come and get you?”
“I need some answers, Bob.”
“So do I. Where the hell are you?”
“Here,” McAllister said. “At your desk in your study.”
“Good lord,” Highnote said after the briefest of hesitations. “I’ll be right in.” He hung up. McAllister put down the phone and picked up the Walther. Whom to trust? He didn’t know any longer. Perhaps he never really knew. The door opened seconds later and Robert Highnote, deputy director of operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, entered the study. He was a man of medium height, with a mostly bald head, wide honest eyes, and a manner of speaking and bearing that were almost old-worldly elegant. He was a Harvard graduate, a Rhodes scholar, and a deeply religious man. Every evening of his adult life he had spent at least one hour studying the Bible. He was