imagining all sorts of things.”
Tears had come to her eyes again, and her entire body was trembling.
“Easy,” McAllister said soothingly, holding her close. “I saw him and we talked. There’s not much he can do for us, but he is on our side.”
Stephanie pulled away and looked up into his eyes. “Oh, David, how can you believe that after everything that’s happened?”
“He listened to me. At first he was skeptical, but in the end he believed me. He warned me. Told me to run in the end. It saved my life.”
“Run from what?”
“He called Dexter Kingman from his car phone. It was something I hadn’t counted on. They were just showing up when I got out.”
“It would have been convenient if you’d been shot and killed trying to escape,” Stephanie said. “My darling, can’t you see what’s happening? How he’s maneuvered you? He’s given you the same advice each time you’ve talked to him. He can’t help you and he tells you to run. David, only guilty men run. How else could Dexter have seen it?”
“He could have said nothing. Kept me busy. I would have been trapped.”
“There would have been a shootout. You would have been killed.”
“That might have been the plan in the beginning, but he changed his mind.”
“What did he say?”
“They think I was working for the Russians all along, running the O’Haire network. He said they named me as their control officer.”
“Why were you arrested in Moscow? Did he have an explanation for that?”
“To throw suspicion off me, at first. But then I was brainwashed in the Lubyanka. I supposedly became one of them. But something went wrong, and they lost control of me. They decided in the end I would be better off dead.”
“All wrapped up in a neat little package,” she said disdainfully. “Too neat.” She shook her head in irritation. “That explains only why the Russians want you dead. What about the Mafia? What have they got to do with it?”
“There were no bodies at Sikorski’s,” McAllister said. “Someone cleaned up the mess out there before the FBI showed up.”
“Then they think that you killed Sikorski?”
“Yes.”
“Highnote told you that?” Stephanie asked, watching his eyes. “I convinced him otherwise. At least I got him thinking that there was another possibility.”
“Which is?”
“That there is a penetration agent in the CIA. Someone at high levels who is working with a counterpart in the KGB.”
“Zebra One and Two.”
“That’s right.”
“Your release from the Lubyanka, then, was nothing more than an administrative mistake. Crossed signals.”
McAllister nodded.
“And Highnote accepted that?”
“Only after I told him the one thing that doesn’t fit anywhere. The one thing that makes absolutely no sense. The two men I stopped at Sikorski’s hadn’t killed Janos. They found him like that. He’d been dead for at least a day and a half. So who killed him and why?”
“If not the Mafia, then the Russians,” Stephanie answered. “Can’t you see it? Zebra Two is the Russian. He has his own people working for him, probably out of their embassy right here in Washington. But Zebra One, the American, can’t use CIA people for his dirty work, so he hires professional hit men. It all still points back to Highnote.”
“You had to be there, face-to-face with him. I know the man. He genuinely wants to help, but his hands are tied.”
“Then what’s left for you, my darling?” Stephanie asked softly. “What’s left for us?”
“The list.”
She looked at him questioningly. “What?”
“The four names from the computer. I’m going after them. They’re our only leads. If there are still connections between the O’Haire network and whoever was running it, they might know.”
“Highnote knows that. He’ll have his people waiting for you.” McAllister pulled away. “Goddamnit, you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. Highnote is not Zebra One.”
“I’m sorry,” Stephanie said. “But even if you’re right, he’ll have to follow up with those four names. It’s his duty. He’ll have to go to them for the same reasons you want to go to them.”
McAllister was shaking his head, and sudden understanding dawned in Stephanie’s eyes. “You didn’t tell him, did you?” she said. “No.”
She smiled. “You held back that one piece of information. Why? Can you answer that?”
“It never came up,” he said weakly.
“Because you didn’t bring it up,” she said triumphantly. “Whatever you say you believe, there is something at the back of your head, some instinct for survival that told you to keep it from him. Just in case.”
“There’s nothing he could have done. “No,” Stephanie interrupted. “Do you know what I think? I think that something did happen to you in the Lubyanka. Something that changed you, something that made you unsure of your own abilities. But deep in your gut you know what moves to make, you know how to protect yourself. What happened in New York, and what’s been happening ever since proves that. Let yourself go, David. Let your old habits, your old instincts take over. Do what you know is the right thing. You have the tradecraft, use it.”
“We’ll have to get out of here first thing in the morning,” he said, going over to the window and looking down at the empty street.
Tradecraft was what you used against the enemy, not againstfriends. Put a bullet in your head…. End it now…. It would be for the best. Gloria has written you off”Where are we going?”
“Out of Washington,” he said. “Where? To do what?”
He focused on her pale reflection in the dark window glass. He’d lived with pain for so long he was surprised now that he wasn’t used to it. She didn’t look real to him; her hair was in disarray, and she was dressed simply in a loose sweatshirt and blue jeans, yet he knew that he wanted her. It astonished him, this sudden feeling. He’d either come a long way in the past weeks, or he had fallen-he couldn’t decide which, or if at this moment it really mattered.
“He told me to send you back.” McAllister said. “In a way he was right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can’t afford you any longer. You’ll slow me down to such a degree that they’ll catch up with us, and we’ll both be dead.” His words sounded hollow in his ears. “Sooner or later they’ll get to your father and use him to pry you loose. I’m not going to wait for that to happen.”
He turned to her. Tears were slipping down her cheeks. “I don’t have anyplace to go,” she said.
“Dexter Kingman would make sure nothing happened to you.” She was shaking her head again. “I’m not going to leave you, David. Not now, not after everything that has happened.”
“You’re not listening to me,” McAllister said, his voice rising. “They’re probably going to win. There are too many of them, they’re too well organized. Sooner or later I’ll simply wear down, my luck will run out, and it’ll be over.”
“They’d hunt me as well.”
“Not if they were convinced that you knew nothing. That I’d held you against your will.”
“I’m not leaving you, David,” she said. “Whatever it is I have to do to convince you, I will.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you,” she cried. “I told you once, didn’t you hear me? Didn’t you believe me? I love you. There is no life for me without you.”
