man hesitated, but then nodded.
McAllister pulled out the walkie-talkie and handed it to him with one hand, while raising his pistol to the man’s head with his other. “Everything is fine here,” he said.
The guard keyed the walkie-talkie. “Security four,” he said. His hands shook.
“What’s your situation up there?”
“Normal,” the guard said.
“Keep on your toes, you might have some trouble coming your way. We’ve got an intruder alert.”
“Ask them who it is and how they knew about it,” McAllister said. The guard keyed the walkie-talkie. “Who is it, Control, and how did we find out?”
“It’s McAllister, somebody apparently phoned it in a couple of minutes ago. He’s armed, so watch yourself.”
McAllister nodded, his gut tight. Who had phoned? How in God’s name had they known?
“Roger,” the guard said, and McAllister grabbed the walkie-talkie from his hand and pocketed it.
“Who else is guarding this building?”
“No one else in this wing except for Tom and me.”
“Earlier I saw a pickup truck outside in the parking lot.”
“Unit five. One of the outside patrols.”
“I hope for your sake that you’re not lying,” McAllister said. “I’m not, sir.”
The elevator was located at the end of the corridor. They took it down to the ground floor where they hurried across the mostly completedentry hall and then outside. It was still snowing. In the distance they heard the sounds of a lot of sirens. McAllister ordered the guard behind the wheel of the light-gray pickup truck, then he got in on the passenger side.
“Drive,” he said. “Where?”
“West.”
“But there’s no exit…
“Do it,” McAllister ordered, and the guard hastily complied, heading across the parking lot toward the back road that McAllister had used.
He had to have time to think. Stephanie was an intelligent woman. She knew what he had gone looking for, and she could have guessed where he would have to go to get the information. It explained her telephone call to Adam French’s office warning him that Kingman and his people had deserted the rendezvous. But she was the only one who knew that he would not be at that meeting. If she had tipped off Kingman, why had she called French’s office? None of it made any sense. It was madness.
Four names he had gotten from the computer. It was the information he had been seeking, if only he could keep alive long enough to find out what they knew.
McAllister cranked down his window. They had left the sirens far behind, back toward the headquarters building. He figured they had come nearly a mile.
“Stop here,” he said to the guard.
“Jesus, Mr. McAllister, I’ll do whatever you want,” the man said in alarm. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just stop here and I’ll let you out. You can walk back.”
The guard wanted to believe him, but it was obvious he thought he was about to be shot to death. He pulled up to a halt. “I’ve got a family…
“Get out of here, and don’t look back,” McAllister said. The guard hesitated a second or two longer, then shoved open the door, jumped out and started running down the snow-covered road, disappearing into the darkness. McAllister slid over behind the wheel, slammed the truck into gear and drove another quarter mile before pulling up, dousing the lights and shutting off the engine.
He jumped out of the truck, stepped off the road, and plunged into the forest, heading in the general direction of the place where he had come through the fence.
Twice he heard sirens in the distance, and somewhere to the north, he thought he could hear a horn honking, but for the most part the woods were silent as before.
He came to the fence five minutes later, and followed it back to the northwest for another hundred yards before he found the hole he had cut. His were the only footprints in the snow, already partially filled in. No one had discovered how he had gained entrance. Once again his luck seemed to be holding.
In another five minutes he had reached the crest of the hill overlooking the street. The Thunderbird was still parked where he had left it, no one around, though once again he could hear sirens in the distance.
He scrambled down the hill, climbed into the car, and drove off.
McAllister parked the car in front of the J. Edgar Hoover Building which houses the FBI’s headquarters on Pennsylvania at Tenth Street, leaving the walkie-talkie and the guards’ weapons under the front seat.
Sow confusion where you can; it will help mask your movements in a difficult situation. The car would create a lot of interest when it was discovered what it contained. But whom to trust?
If Stephanie had been able to guess where he had gone, others could have done the same. It wasn’t much of a hope, but it was something.
It took him almost a half hour to reach their hotel on foot. He figured she would be back from the Holiday Inn by now. There was almost no traffic, and absolutely no activity around the hotel. He waited in the darkness across the intersection for a full ten minutes to see if anyone showed themselves. If the hotel was staked out, therewould have been a movement; a slowly passing car or van, a head popping up, a cigarette lit, something. But there was nothing.
He crossed the street, entered the hotel, the sleepy clerk glancing away only momentarily from the television show he was watching, and took the elevator to the third floor.
She opened the door for him.
“Oh, God, am I glad to see you,” she cried, falling into his arms once he was inside.
The relief in her eyes, in her voice, and in the way she held him, her entire body trembling, was genuine, pushing back his doubts about her.
“They knew I was coming,” he said. “Impossible.”
“How did you know where to reach me?” Her eyes widened. “What are you saying, Mac?”
“I repeat, how did you know where I would be?”
“You wanted information about the O’Haires. About the Zebra Network. There was only one place where you could possibly get it.”
“What did you tell Kingman?”
“You were standing right behind me when I talked to him,” Stephanie flared.
“I couldn’t hear both sides of the conversation.”
“What are you trying to say?” she snapped. “Spit it out!”
“Someone telephoned them. Told them that I was coming and that I was armed and dangerous.”
“And you think I did it?”
“What did you tell Kingman? What did he ask you?”
“Nothing,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “What did you tell your friend Highnote?”
Zebra One, Zebra Two. Highnote knew nearly everything. “If I wanted you dead I could have left you in the river,” she cried.
“I could have put a bullet in your head at my father’s house, or here at this hotel, or out at Sikorski’s, any of a dozen times and places.”
“Why didn’t you?” McAllister asked miserably, his voice catching in his throat. “I don’t know…” she started to say, and she tried to pull away. He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Why, Stephanie? What are you doing here with me? Why are you risking your life to help me? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Because I love you,” she blurted.
He didn’t know what to say. It was as if the floor had opened up beneath his feet.
“There,” she said pulling away from him. “Are you satisfied, you bastard?”
The TWA flight out of St. louis was already forty-five minutes late, putting them into Washington after eleven-thirty at night. louis Jaffe, assistant general counsel for the CIA, sat back in his first-class seat and closed his eyes for a moment. John Norris, who’d flown out with him for the interview at Marion Federal Penitentiary in Southern Illinois, was sound asleep in the next seat.
