“Somebody will be waitin’ on you. It’s all set up.”
“How about clothes?”
“Man, quit raggin’ my ass. You’ll be taken care of.”
“I want to know,” O’Haire demanded, grabbing the man’s arm and pulling him around.
Hanks shoved him up against the brick wall, his eyes suddenly wild, his muscles bunched up. “Don’t mess with me, motherfucker! I said you were going to be taken care of, and I meant it!” O’Haire spread his hands. “Sorry. My ass is hanging out here.”
“Yeah, so is mine,” Hanks said, backing off. The car was gone, and they hurried to the far end of the building, passed through a tunnel, crossed a broad courtyard and driveway, then entered the garbage-collection facility through a side door, the sudden odor of rotting food and an open grease trap assailing their nostrils.
The prison garbage was separated here into recyclable items such as cans and glass bottles which were crushed and shipped out, and paper and plastic products that were dried, shredded, and sent over to the electrical generating plant for burning. Everything else was loaded aboard trucks each morning and taken out to the country dump off prison grounds. Four big garbage trucks were parked in the main garage. Hanks led the way behind the trucks and through another steel door into the big separation room adjacent to the prison kitchen.
Jim O’Haire’s younger brother, Liam, stood leaning up against a table, his arms folded over his chest. He straightened up when he spotted his brother.
“We’re getting out of here,” he said.
“Right…” Jim O’Haire started to reply when Hanks suddenly swiveled on him, grabbed a handful of his shirt and bodily threw him up against the table. “Motherfucker,” Hanks swore.
“What the hell,” Jim O’Haire shouted, regaining his balance and spinning around.
Six black men had appeared out of the shadows, each of them armed with a knife. Hanks pulled out a switchblade and thumbed it open with a soft click.“Mother of God, what’s going on here?” Jim O’Haire shouted. “Go ahead and scream, boy, nobody’s going to hear you,” Hanks said, he and the others advancing.
“We did our part,” Jim O’Haire shouted. “Goddamnit, we did as we were told.”
Chapter 17
The number at her father’s house in Baltimore rang ten times before Stephanie finally hung up. She’d used the pay phone in the corridor between the cocktail lounge and the lobby.
Calls from their room could be too easily monitored by the hotel operator. Mac had told her that. She believed in him. God in heaven, she’d done everything he’d told her.
She glanced down the darkly paneled corridor toward the cocktail lounge. A couple of men sat at the bar talking with the woman bartender. Other than that the hotel was quiet at this hour.
Where is my father? she asked herself. It was a Monday night. He should have been home asleep in his bed unless there had been an emergency call to the practice. But he never got emergency calls.
And where was Mac? He had been gone nearly seven hours now. Where was he? What was happening? She had a vision of his bulletriddled body lying beside a dark road somewhere in the country.
She didn’t think she could take much more of this. Sitting alone, waiting. She’d never been very good at that. Highnote was somehow at the center of this business. In at least that much she and Mac were now in total agreement. But where he was blinded by past friendships, previous loyalties, she was able to see with an unprejudiced eye. Mac had been set up from the moment he’d been arrested in Moscow. Highnote was the logical man behind it all. He was Zebra One. He was the man in Washington who had controlled the O’Haire network… and probably still controlled whatever was left of the organization. Mac, by going to see him, had been walking into a trap.
So write him off. Turn around and get out. Run. But to where? Mac had not returned and her father did not answer her call. She was alone, and she was frightened. She walked back to the elevator and took it up to their third-floor room where she went to the window. It was snowing quite hard now.
I can’t stand by and watch you commit suicide…. It’s been Highnote all along. It has to be!
Then I’ll find that out. It’s the only way. Everything else would be meaningless. I must know.
“Must know what?” she cried to herself, laying her forehead against the cool glass. “What is driving you, my darling? What are you seeking? Who are you looking for?”
She closed her eyes and grabbed a handful of the thick drapes. Her stomach felt hollow and her legs were suddenly so weak they were barely able to support her. She’d known that she was being told lies from the moment she’d been assigned to McAllister’s house and had talked with his wife. The woman had seemed frightened… but not for her husband, rather for herself. Stephanie had not understood it at the time. It wasn’t until Mac had shown up and had confronted his wife on the steps that Stephanie had been able to give voice in her own mind to what she had instinctively felt. Gloria McAllister wanted her husband dead not because she thought he was a traitor, but because she herself was hiding something, or she no longer cared for him. She’d gone off with Highnote. Were the two of them somehow working together?
“Oh, father,” she cried softly. “I need you now. I don’t know what to do.”
McAllister parked the delivery van in front of the FBI headquarters building in the same place he had left the Thunderbird and walked back to the Best Western. It was going to drive them crazy finding the van this way. Before long they would begin searching all the hotels in an ever-expanding radius downtown. Sooner or later they would get lucky. It was time to move.
He had let the young driver off in the country between Highview Park and Cherrydale hours ago, but instead of driving directly back into the city and ditching the van, he had driven over to Arlington Cemetery where he had lingered alone with his thoughts. It was a dangerous game he’d been playing. It couldn’t have taken the driververy long to get to a telephone and report what had happened. They’d be looking for the van by now. He’d increased his risk of being taken by his delay, yet he found that he wasn’t ready to face Stephanie. For a while, sitting in the darkness smoking a cigarette, he thought about leaving her. Simply turning around and running away. But in the end he knew that was impossible. She was a part of this thing now, no matter what he did or didn’t do. Whoever wanted him dead would also be gunning for her.
As he had done the night before, he was careful with his tradecraft, making absolutely certain that he wasn’t being followed. Across the street from the hotel he held up in the darkness for a full five minutes, making sure that the place had not been staked out.
Highnote had done exactly what any good and loyal government servant should have done. The moment he had spotted McAllister he had telephoned Security. Mac had forgotten about his car phone. It had been a mistake on his part that had very nearly cost him his life.
But in the end Highnote had listened. He had admitted the possibility that something more than met the eye was going on. And in the end he had told Mac to run. He had warned him.
Run where? To whom? To what? Where else could he turn? He went around the corner and entered the hotel through the parking garage, taking the stairs up to the third floor where again he held up, studying the empty corridor before continuing. There weren’t too many options left open to them. But Highnote, he was fully convinced now, was on his side; reluctantly perhaps, and understandably so, but on his side. Stephanie would have to be made to understand that it was time for her to get clear. Not back to the Agency, of course, but she would have to go into hiding now. Somewhere out of harm’s way.
She opened the door for him, slipping the security chain and then stepping back. Her eyes were wide and shining, she’d obviously been crying. Her hand shook badly when she reached up and touched his cheek.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” she said, her voice tremulous.
“Are you all right?” he asked, taking her into his arms, and realizingthat somehow over the past few days he had begun to care for her. “Did something happen here?”
“No,” she said. “Not really
“What do you mean by that? Stephanie, what happened?” She shook her head. “Did you see Highnote? Did you actually get to talk to him?”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Goddamnit, David, talk to me!” she snapped. “You’ve been gone seven hours, leaving me to sit here
