above. “It’s me,” he said.
Gloria’s reaction was sudden and startling. She stepped back a pace as if she had just received a stunning blow, her face screwed up in a grimace, her teeth bared. “You,” she hissed. “Gloria…?” he said, confused. This wasn’t making any sense. “You bastard! Why did you come here?” his wife shrieked. Her words were like battering rams, the blows physical. “You’re a traitor! Murderer! What do you want? There’s nothing here for you!”
“Listen to me..”
“Get out!” she screamed. “Get out… traitor! Go back to your Russian friends! Get out before I kill you myself!”
This was impossible. It could not be happening. Not like this. His vision was blurred again, and the pain in his head caused him to reel backward, almost losing his balance on the stairs.
“I’ll kill you myself…” Gloria was screeching. She’d turned away and was fumbling at the small table on the landing.
Stephanie Albright had stepped back a pace too. “Mrs. McAllister…?”
It was the gun. They’d kept a .38 revolver in the table drawer. She was actually going to try to kill him. He simply could not believe what he was seeing, what he was hearing. His entire world had suddenly been turned upside down.
Gloria’s body filled the landing, the pistol held in both outstretched hands, and she fired, the shot going wide and high, shattering the mirror on the wall halfway up the stairs.
Stephanie Albright was scrambling back down the stairs, trying to get out of the line of fire. On instinct alone, McAllister stepped to the side and backward, trying to place himself in the shadows, twisting his body sideways so that he would present less of a target.
Gloria fired a second time, and a third, this shot catching McAllister high on his left side, just beneath his armpit, the pain exploding in his chest.
He lurched away from the stairs as Stephanie reached the front door, tore it open with a crash and disappeared into the night. Gloria fired two more shots, one of them shattering the frosted-glass pane in the door and ricocheting off the pavement outside with a high-pitched whine. McAllister stood in the darkness holding his left arm tightly against his side to staunch the flow of blood. He could see his wife’s legs halfway up the stairs. She’d stopped. He stepped out of the shadows.
“Gloria?” he said.
Her eyes widened at the sight of him. She raised the pistol so that it was pointing directly at his face and without hesitation pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty cylinder. For safety he’d never loaded more than five bullets into the gun. She’d forgotten or had miscounted. Either way it was of no matter; she definitely wanted him dead.
“Why?” he asked softly. His heart was pounding. “Bastard!” she screamed, spittle flying from her lips. She spun around and raced back up the stairs. For a second he thought about going after her. But everything was changed now. The skids had been knocked out from under him. He was no longer sure of anything, including himself.
He stepped back, turned and looked outside. Stephanie Albright was clawing open the Toyota’s door. It had been a mistake on her part, locking the van. The thought registered automatically in McAllister’s brain. But it seemed impossible that he could or even should do anything other than wait right here to be taken. She would get help. They would come for him, and it would be over. He wouldn’t have to fight any longer. He was confused and hurt; it was even worse now than it had been at the Lubyanka when he’d lain, strapped to the steel table in the torture chamber, listening to his heart stopping.
The vision of Miroshnikov standing over him, smiling, telling him that they had come so far together, that he was so proud of their work came to him and he shuddered. If he gave up now they would have won… whoever they were, and whatever they wanted. He wasn’t built that way. He’d never been that way, not from the beginning.
Stephanie Albright was just climbing behind the wheel of the Toyota van when McAllister finally roused himself out of his daze, spun on his heel and without a backward glance raced out the door, down the stairs and across the street.
The van’s engine came to life. He jammed his gun against the window, aiming directly at her head.
She looked up, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift lever.
“I need your help,” he shouted.
She was shaking. Her mouth was opening and closing but no sounds were coming out. Traffic was passing normally on 31st Street. It was unreal.
“Just a little longer. Then I’ll let you go, I promise.”
“No,” she moaned.
McAllister yanked the door open. “I won’t hurt you, I swear to God I won’t.”
“What do you want?”
“Just get me out of here, that’s all I ask.”
McAllister sat directly behind Stephanie Albright as she drove. They’d crossed the Key Bridge on his instructions and headed northwest up the Washington Parkway that paralleled the river.
Once they were away from the bright city lights, he laid the gun on the seat beside him, undid his shirt and probed the wound with the fingers of his right hand. The .38-caliber bullet had entered his chest at an oblique angle a couple of inches to the left of his left breast, nicking a rib, and emerging below his shoulder blade. It hadn’t done a lot of damage, and already the bleeding had slowed to an ooze, but his entire left side was numb from his shoulder all the way down to his hip, and he felt light-headed not only from his latest wound, but from the severe blow to the back of his skull. He stuffed his handkerchief under his shirt.
He needed medical help, he needed sleep and food, but more than that he desperately needed answers.“We can’t drive around all night,” Stephanie Albright said. “They’ve got to be searching for me and this van already.”
“Just hope they don’t find us too soon,” McAllister said. “Too soon for what?” she asked, looking in the rearview mirror at him. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Not if you do exactly as I tell you.”
“Then tell me something,” she said, her voice raising. “Keep driving,” he said tiredly. He picked up the gun, and holding it on his lap laid his head back on the seat. Robert Highnote and Gloria. The two people he most trusted in the world had turned against him. They had called him a traitor, a murderer. He couldn’t get the image of Gloria’s face twisted into a grimace of hate and revulsion from his mind. It hurt him more than his wounds. You can’t trust anybody in this business, boyo. The words came back to him again. He had never understood their real significance until this moment. Despite his dangerous occupation he had led a relatively safe life. There was always Gloria, and always Langley for him to turn to for help, for comfort, for understanding, and backing. Now the very people who had loved and trusted him, meant to hunt him down and kill him.
He could run, of course. He was an expert at hiding out. Somewhere in Europe, on a Greek island in the middle of nowhere, perhaps in the Caribbean. But how long could he stay hidden? Sooner or later they would catch up with him. If the Agency or the KGB wanted it badly enough they would find you. Too many people knew his habits, knew more importantly his failings. The old sage of the Company, Wallace Mahoney, had once lectured at the Farm that”.. by your tradecraft shall you be known.” Like so much in the Agency, the litany once learned dominated your life.
In Washington were the answers. But to whom could he turn now? In this business you can’t trust anybody… unless it’s someone without an axe to grind.
But he needed answers, which meant he needed someone who knew what?
He was drifting. His brain making associations, rejecting connections. Passing over names and places and dates.
Janos Sikorski. He was the man with the answers. He sat forward. “We’re going to Reston.” She looked at him again in the rearview mirror. “Reston?”
“It’s on the way to Dulles.”
“I know where it is,” she said. “Why Reston? What’s there?”
“Answers,” he said. “I hope.”
“You’re crazy,” she snapped. Her fear was being replaced by anger. “Why don’t you let me take you to Langley?”
