didn’t stop there. They were Russians waiting for me outside your house, but they were Americans at your sailboat and there were two men out at Sikorski’s. Possibly Mafia.”
“We found no bodies.”
“Someone came out and cleaned up the mess before you got there.”
“Zebra One and Two are still in place, if I’m to believe you. One man here in Washington and one man in Moscow. Probably someone within the Agency. Someone we both know, and trust.”
“That’s right,” McAllister said. “But there’s even more to it than that.”
Highnote’s eyebrows knitted. “I’m still listening, Mac.”
“I didn’t kill Janos, but neither did the two I had the shootout with.”
“Who then?”
“I don’t know. Janos had been dead for at least a day and a half. Before the snowfall. There were no tire marks in or out of his place.”
This news more than anything else seemed to affect Highnote the most. He sat back in the booth a deep, pensive look on his face. “If I believe you, Mac, and I’m not saying I do, it would mean that there is a third party at work here. Someone not connected with your penetration agent.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, can you explain the logic to me?”
“No,” McAllister said heavily. “But if I’m not telling the truth, for whatever reason, then my lies are very elaborate. Too elaborate. And for what reason?” We have made great progress together, you and I. I am so very proud of you, Mac, so very pleased.
Can you tell me exactly what happened to you every moment you were being held in the Lubyanka?
Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two. “I don’t know if there is anything I can do for you, or should. Too much has happened. If you had turned yourself in at the beginning it might have been different. But now, I just don’t know.”
“I would have been dead by now.”
Highnote shook his head sadly, and he glanced toward the door. McAllister followed his gaze.
“Is someone coming?” he asked. Highnote looked away guiltily.
“You said Dexter Kingman had the idea to flush me out. Are his people on the way out here now? Did you call them from your car?”
“Something is going on, Mac. I don’t know what it is… “You did call someone,” McAllister said, and he got up abruptly. Highnote’s eyes were round. “Run,” he whispered. “I’ll do what I can for you.”
McAllister reached into his coat pocket for his gun as he went to the entry hall. In the short space of time he and Highnote had been here the place had filled up considerably. A number of people were waiting to be seated. He came around the corner at the same moment the front door opened and two men walked in. One of them was Dexter Kingman.
“McAllister,” Kingman shouted.
McAllister pulled out his gun and fired a shot over everyone’s head, the bullet smacking into the wall above the door. Kingman and the other man fell back out the door. A woman screamed as McAllister turned on his heel and raced into the dining room, threading his way through the tables, pandemonium spreading in his wake.
A waitress, balancing a large tray of food in her right hand, was just coming through the swinging doors from the kitchen. McAllister slammed into her, sending her flying, plates crashing everywhere.
“Some maniac is out there with a gun,” he shouted, racing through the kitchen, concealing his own weapon.
“What’s going on?” one of the chefs screamed. Someone was shouting into a telephone.
McAllister reached the rear door and outside, leaped down off the delivery platform, as a panel van was pulling up. He yanked open the passenger door and jumped in even before the van had come to a complete halt. He pointed the gun at the young man’s head. “Drive away from here! Now!”
“Is this a stickup?” the frightened kid stammered. “Get us out of here, goddamnit! Move it!“ The driver slammed the van into reverse, pulled away from the loading dock, then spun around in the slippery driveway and headed out to the highway.
McAllister cranked down the window and turned the big wing mirror so that he could see the rear door of the restaurant. No one had appeared by the time they turned the corner and reached the highway, accelerating back toward Washington, sirens finally sounding in the distance.
James Franklin O’Haire had not slept well from the moment he and his brother Liam had been transferred to the federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois. The judge, out of some perverse sense of patriotism, had specified the generalpopulation prison, knowing that the O’Haires would not be well received by their fellow prisoners. “No country club incarceration for these two,” he’d said at the sentencing. Rape, murder, and bank robbery were acceptable crimes, not spying. Even criminals should feel a sense of national loyalty.
Jim O’Haire raised his left arm and looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before midnight. Something had awakened him; a noise, a metallic click. He didn’t know what it was. He sat up in his cot, shoved the covers back and swinging his legs over the edge. He was a husky man with graying hair and violently blue eyes. His roommate was sound asleep in the upper bunk. The lights from the main tier hall cast shadows in the narrow cell. From somewhere he could hear music. He ‘figured one of the guards was listening to a radio.
A large black figure, dressed in prison dungarees, appeared at the cell door. “O’Haire,” the man called softly.
Jim O’Haire recognized him as George Hanks, one of the trustees from downstairs. He got up, but remained uncertainly by his bunk. Something was wrong here, drastically wrong. All the inmates were supposed to be locked down at this hour.
“let’s go,” Hanks said. He glanced over his shoulder, then eased the cell door open, taking care to make as little noise as possible.
“What is it?” O’Haire asked. “What do you want?”
“You’re getting’ out of here, that’s what it is,” Hanks said. “Now move your honky ass and fix up your bunk, we’re runnin’ out of time.“The sound he had heard was the electronic door lock. Somehow Hanks had gotten to the control board, or one of the guards was in on this. O’Haire didn’t want to get his hopes up, not this soon after talking with the two Agency pricks who had come out here the other day. Besides, this simply didn’t feel right to him. Hanks and the other prisoners had given him a lot of shit over the past week.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Shit, I’m not going to stand here all fuckin’ night waitin’ on you. We got word from the man that you’re getting’ out of here. Tonight.”
Christ, was it possible? “What about my brother?”
“He’s on his way. Now move your ass!” Hanks whispered urgently. O’Haire hesitated only a moment longer before he turned and stuffed his pillow beneath his blanket so that from the cell door a passing guard might be fooled at first glance into believing that someone was in the bunk. There was no way he was going to sit rotting in this place when there was a chance of immediate escape. No way in hell.
At the barred door, O’Haire slipped out onto the walkway three tiers up from the main floor. Hanks, his powerful muscles rippling beneath his thin prison shirt, eased the door shut, the lock snapping home, then turned and nodded silently for O’Haire to follow him.
At the end of the walkway they took the stairs down to the main floor where Hanks produced a key and opened the steel door, admitting them to a holding vestibule. On the far side was another steel door, a small square window at eye level. Hanks unlocked this door, and O’Haire followed him out into the access corridor which ran the length of the main building. A guard should have been stationed here, but his desk was empty, the corridor completely deserted. Hanks had a plan, and the organization and contacts to carry it out. They were attributes that O’Haire admired, and he allowed a faint smile as he followed the big man down the corridor and outside into the bitter-cold night.
They held up in the shadows as a light-gray station wagon crossed the prison yard from the laundry plant.
“What’s the plan?” O’Haire whispered.
Hanks looked back at him, the expression on his face unreadable. “You and your brother are getting out in the morning garbage run.”
“What about outside?”
