“Because someone is trying to kill me.”
“Your wife included.”
“Yes,” McAllister said softly, the pain intensifying. “Just drive me to Reston.”
“Then will you let me go?”
“We’ll see.”
Sikorski’s house was actually a large cabin at the end of a long dirt road outside of Sunset Hills southeast of the town of Reston. It took them nearly an hour in the darkness to find the place. McAllister had only been here twice before. Once with his father about fifteen years ago, and a second time six years ago when Sikorski had retired from the Agency and he’d had the crowd up for what he called a “go to hell” party.
He’d come out of Poland in the summer of 1939, a couple of weeks before the Nazi invasion, where he’d set up shop with some of the other emigres who were working with the British SIS. After the war he’d gone into semi- retirement-he’d had enough guns and fighting and killing to last ten lifetimes. But he’d been recruited in the late forties into the fledgling CIA by McAllister’s father. For twenty-five years he had run the Agency’s Records Section with an iron hand and a razor-sharp mind. It was said that whatever Sikorski didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. McAllister hoped it was true.
“What is this place?” Stephanie Albright asked nervously as they bumped slowly down the very dark, very narrow lane. The trees grew very close on both sides of the road here, forming a canopy overhead.
“Turn off your headlights,” McAllister ordered. He’d seen a flash of light at the end of the road. “What?”
“Goddamnit, turn off your headlights. Now!“ She did as she was told, the road disappearing in front of them. She stabbed the brakes hard, bringing them to a sudden halt. “I can’t see anything.”
McAllister could. About fifty yards farther down the road he could just make out the dim lights from the cabin. This was close enough. There was no telling who could be waiting for him.
“Shut off the engine.”
“What?” she cried, suddenly alarmed. Her face was twisted into a mask of fear. McAllister brought the Walther over the back of the seat, pressing the barrel against her cheek. “I’m tired of arguing with you. Shut off the engine!”
“I don’t want to die here like this,” she moaned. “Nor will you if you do as I say,” McAllister said. “There’s a cabin at the end of this road. Someone is there who I have to talk to. We’re going to get out and walk down to it. Together. Now shut off the engine and give me the keys, and I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, God… oh, God…” she sobbed, but she did as he told her.
McAllister pocketed the keys, opened the side door and got out.
At first he nearly collapsed, and he had to lean against the side of the van for support until he got his balance. Stephanie Albright was staring at him through the window.
He opened the door for her, and when she got out she stumbled against him, until he took her arm and together they started down the dirt road.
Sikorski’s cabin was located in a narrow clearing at the edge of a steep wooded hill. In the distance to the north they could see the lights of the town of Reston. It was a scenic spot. An old Chevrolet pickup truck was parked at the side of the house beneath a carport. A light was on in the kitchen, the rest of the place was in darkness. McAllister angled across the driveway to the opposite side of the cabin where he’d spotted the telephone line coming in. Reaching it, he yanked the wires out of the small junction box. Whatever happened next, help could not be so easily summoned.
Around front McAllister knocked on the door and then stepped aside, shoving Stephanie Albright forward. “If he asks, tell him that you’ve come from the Agency. There are some questions.”
Moments later the front light came on. The door opened and Janos Sikorski was standing there. He was an old man, at least in his early seventies, with long, startlingly white hair, slack blue-gray skin that hung like a hound dog’s pelt around his neck and jowls, and broad, coal-black eyes. He was dressed in an open-collar white shirt and iron-gray workman’s trousers, slippers on his feet. “Hi-ho, my luck has just taken a bloody big turn for the better,” he hooted, his accent, even after all these years, Polish, but his expressions British.
“Hello, Janos,” McAllister said, stepping into the light before Stephanie Albright could speak.
The breath went out of the old man, and he staggered backward, grabbing the edge of the door so he wouldn’t fall. His complexion had turned white. “You’re a surprise, kid.”
“I need some help,” McAllister said.
“I’d guess you do,” Sikorski replied. He shook his head wryly. “I’ll take it back, the bit about my luck.” His eyes strayed to the gun in McAllister’s hand, and the blood over his neck and at his side. “You’d better come in, then, before you fall down.”
The cabin was furnished pleasantly if rustically. There were a lot of books everywhere; on shelves, on the fireplace mantel, stacked in piles here and there, on chairs, on tables, on the floor in the corners.
“I’ve already taken care of the telephone line,” McAllister said. “Naturally,” the old man replied. He eyed the woman. “What’s with her?”
“He’s kidnapped me,” she said woodenly.
Sikorski shrugged, turning his attention back to McAllister. “So, kid, what brings you out here? You do remember that I’m retired. Six years now.”
“I need some answers, Janos,” McAllister said. He stood with his back to the door. The old man had moved across the room to stand in front of the fireplace. Stephanie stood to the right, near the entry to the kitchen. She looked like a frightened doe, ready to bolt at any moment.
“I don’t know if I can help you. Have you talked to Highnote?”
“He thinks I’m a traitor.”
Again Sikorski shrugged. “I’ve heard something about it. The Russkies gave you a pretty rough bash-up, in the Lubyanka. lots of good people have fallen by the wayside.”
“Drugs,” McAllister said.
“I also heard that you wasted a couple of our boys up in New York this morning.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Have you talked to Gloria yet?” McAllister nodded.
The old man’s thick eyebrows rose. “I see,” he said. “So what in bloody hell are you doing out here like this? I’m no doctor, though from what I can see you sure as hell are in need of one, nor is this the bloody monastery-no refuge from the Philistines here.”
“Someone wants me dead, Janos, and I don’t understand why. It’s the Russians. I killed three of them in Arlington Heights a couple of hours ago. They’d been waiting for me to show up at Bob’s.”
“Pardon me, kid, if I seem a bit skeptical, but from what I understand the Russians are your pals. Too bad, ‘cause your old dad was first rate, and I always thought you were too.”
“Then why did I come out here?” McAllister snapped. He trusted Sikorski as his father had, from the very beginning. Totally unaffected by the partisan politics of the Hill, Sikorski was the Rock of Gibraltar at Langley. Always had been. A man of rare judgment, insight, and honesty, was how he’d been described.
“You tell me,” the old man said harshly.
McAllister slowly lowered his gun and slumped back against the door. He was exhausted, and he was seeing double again. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him to keep his thoughts in any semblance of order. He’d been operating on adrenaline for so long that he had very little strength left. He raised his head and looked at Sikorski. He was being given his hearing. It’s all he had wanted from the start; simply to be listened to. If anyone could or would understand, it would be this one.
“I was arrested by the KGB in Moscow on October twenty-eighth,” McAllister began, and in the retelling he was acutely aware of how little he could actually recall of his interrogation. Bits and pieces of his treatment, snatches of his conversations with Miroshnikov came back to him through his drug-hazed memories. But it wasn’t enough. He could see in Sikorski’s eyes that the old man was not believing him.
We’re making progress and I feel very good about it, Miroshnikov said. And so should you. We have finally broken down the first barrier really quite excellent.
How much had he told them? Perhaps Highnote had been correct after all, perhaps the Russians had sent him back to work as a double agent. But why then had they tried to kill him?
Sikorski was talking, but McAllister was finding it difficult to concentrate.
“Again, kid, why did you come here?” the old man asked, his voice rising.
