Stephanie Albright had turned her head and was looking at something in the kitchen. She was shivering.
McAllister pushed himself away from the door, and stood there wavering on his feet, the gun held limply at his side. His body seemed remote. looking at Sikorski across the room it was hard to focus.
“Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two.” They were Voronin’s words. What did they mean?
Sikorski stepped forward, his entire manner changed, his face contorted into a mask of hate and fury. “What did you say?” he growled.
McAllister’s stomach was turning over. “I heard it in Moscow. One of my madmen… I was working him “Who else have you spoken these words to?” Sikorski demanded, barely in control of his rage.
“Nobody…” McAllister started to say when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned. Stephanie Albright had disappeared into the kitchen. “Wait,” he shouted, when the kitchen lights went out, the only illumination now in the cabin from the flickering embers in the fireplace. Sikorski had stepped over to a cabinet, yanked open a drawer, and he was turning around, a big automatic in his hand. McAllister dove to the left, below the level of the couch between them, as the old man fired, the shot smacking into the thick wood of the door.“Traitor!” Sikorski screamed in animal fury. “They’ll give me a medal for your body!”
Stephanie Albright was outside, racing away from the kitchen door when she heard the shot, and moments later Sikorski’s ragged cries. She wanted to stop, but she was professional enough to understand that unarmed there wasn’t a thing she could do for the old man. McAllister had to be stopped before he killed even more people.
As she ran full tilt back up the dirt road she fumbled in her pocket for the van’s keys that she had lifted from McAllister when she’d stumbled against him. At that instant she had known that she had been closer to death than she’d ever been in her life. He hadn’t felt a thing, but all the way up to the cabin, and inside as he was telling his insane lies, her heart had been in her throat.
Reaching the Toyota, she tore open the door, got in behind the wheel and started the engine. She had listened for more gunshots, but the cabin had been silent. Ominously silent. She imagined McAllister racing up the dark road behind her, crazy with rage.
It took her precious seconds in the darkness to get the van turned around on the narrow dirt track, and when she did she flipped on the headlights and floored the accelerator, dirt and gravel spitting out from behind the rear tires, as she careened toward the main road.
Her mind was racing to a dozen different possibilities. There wasn’t enough time for her to drive all the way back into Washington. She needed to find a telephone. Immediately, before the monster got loose again. She fixed her thoughts on Reston. It was a town of about forty thousand. There would be a service station on the highway. A telephone. Help.
She found what she was looking for less than ten minutes later on the outskirts of town. Pulling off the highway she screeched to a halt in front of the pumps, shoved open the door and leaped out. A young man in dark- blue coveralls came running out of one of the service bays, wiping his hands on a rag.
“This is an emergency!” Stephanie screamed, racing past him toward the office. “I need a telephone!”
The attendant came after her. “You need the cops?” he shouted. She rushed behind the counter and picked up the telephone on the desk.
“Hey, you can’t go back there..” the young man was saying, but Stephanie waved him off.
She dialed a Langley number which was answered on the first ring. “This is Albright,” she said, forcing herself to calm down. “McAllister is on the loose. Outside of Reston.”
“Stand by,” the Security Section OD said with maddening calmness.
The attendant was staring at her, open-mouthed. “Stephanie, is that you?” Dexter Kingman, director of security, said.
“Yes,” she cried in relief. “I’m at a Texaco station just outside of Reston. McAllister brought me out to a cabin nearby. He spoke with an old man. Janos… something.”
“Sikorski,” Kingman said. “Where is he now?”
“When I left he was still with the old man. There was a gun shot.” Kingman said something away from the telephone. When he came back he seemed out of breath. “Are you all right, Stephanie?”
“I’m fine.”
“Stay where you are, were on our way.
Chapter 7
McAllister had been lying in a heap behind the couch for how long? He realized with a terrible start that he had no idea. The sudden movement and fall had jarred something in his head. He must have blacked out.
He still had the Walther, though. He tried to push himself over with his left hand, but his arm collapsed beneath him, his entire left side ablaze in pain. He could feel blood trickling down his side.
“Janos?” he called out.
There was no answer. The only sounds in the house were the crackling of the flames in the fireplace.
“Janos, let’s talk,” he called into the darkness. “It’s not what you think. I swear to God…
There was a noise. Off to his right. In the kitchen. The scrape of something soft against the floor. Sikorski’s slippers?
“Janos?” McAllister shouted, scrambling as best he could to his feet.
The kitchen door banged open.
McAllister tottered across the room as fast as he could make his legs work, his head spinning, his heart thumping raggedly in his chest. At the entryway into the kitchen he held up, listening for sounds, any sounds. There was something in the distance. Outside. Someone running.
Stepping around the corner, he rushed to the open kitchen door and stepped out into the night. At first he could make out nothing except the dark woods rising up from the clearing in front of the cabin, the dirt road leading back over the hill, and to the north the lights of Reston in the far distance. And then he saw Sikorski’s frail form disappearing over the edge of the hill, his white hair flying behind him.
Standing in the darkness McAllister wavered, trying to decide whatto do. It was hard to make his thoughts come straight. The old man had lived alone up here for the past six years. He almost certainly knew his way around these hills in the darkness. To go after him now like this would be to invite suicide. There would be any of a dozen places within a hundred yards of the cabin where Sikorski could stage an ambush. He turned and staggered around to the front of the cabin, searching the darkness up the narrow dirt road. Stephanie had to be here someplace. She couldn’t have gone far on foot. He patted his pocket where he had dropped the van’s keys, but it was empty, as were his other pockets. The keys were gone. He still had her.32 automatic, but the keys were gone. He looked back toward the cabin. He hadn’t dropped them. But how…? Then it came to him. She had fallen against him getting out of the van. They had been in close contact with each other long enough for her to have stolen the keys.
Christ. A part of him had to admire her courage. She had taken a big risk. By now she could have reached a telephone. Other men would be coming. Professionals with orders to kill him. There would be no way out for him. The fact of Sikorski’s pickup truck parked under the carport suddenly penetrated. He’d been lucky so far, too lucky. There was no reason for it to hold much longer. It was possible that the old man had the keys in his pocket, or had placed them in some obvious spot in the house that could take minutes to find-minutes he did not have.
His luck held. The keys dangled from the ignition. McAllister got painfully behind the wheel, pumped the gas pedal a couple of times and turned the key. The engine roared to life with a noisy clatter. Switching on the headlights-now was no time to run off the road in the darkness-he backed out of the carport, his left foot so numb that he jerked the clutch, nearly stalling the engine. His head was spinning badly, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to keep his head up, let alone see much more than faded double images.
Somehow he got the old truck straightened out and headed back up the dirt road. Time. He had to get as far away from this place as quickly as possible before his escape routes were completely cut off. But where?
At the base of the hill he turned left on the secondary highway, away from Reston. Traffic was light, but each time he met an oncoming car the headlights temporarily blinded him, making it almost impossible to keep the truck in a straight line. Minutes later he passed under the Dulles Airport access road, and continued south into the
