Kathleen O’Haire who both looked up in surprise. The man on the passenger side leaned out the open window and began firing a big, silenced pistol. Harman was shoved off his feet, something flying out of his right hand, blood erupting from at least three wounds, and a split instant later, Kathleen O’Haire’s head exploded in a mass of blood, bone, and white matter.
McAllister was tearing at his pocket, trying to get his pistol out as the car raced past them, neither the assassin nor the driver paying him the slightest attention, and then it was gone around the curve.
Chapter 29
McAllister raced up the road knowing that he was already too late. Harman had received three hits to his chest and one that had taken off part of his right cheek. Kathleen O’Haire’s face and the back of her head were destroyed.
But Harman had had a gun in his hand. It lay in the snow a few feet from his body; a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson Police Special, the hammer cocked. He had been ready to kill the woman.
McAllister’s breath was coming like a steam engine. What had happened? How had it happened? If Harman had been Zebra One, who were his killers?
He reached the Taurus as Stephanie hurried up past the Wagoneer, the side of her coat soaking wet from where she’d fallen when he shoved her aside.
“Move it,” he shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Potemkin… David, it was Gennadi Potemkin driving that car.
I recognized him. He’s head of KGB operations out of the Soviet Embassy here in Washington.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
He yanked open the driver’s door and climbed in behind the wheel. He had the car started when Stephanie jumped in beside him, and he pulled out around Harman’s car and raced out of the park. Traffic was normal on Fourth Street even though Howard University was all but closed down for the Christmas break. McAllister forced himself to slow down, to act and drive normally. It had been his fault. He had promised the woman he would protect her. But it had been impossible.
Zebra One was for Harman here in Washington. Zebra Two was for someone in Moscow. Who was their common enemy? Someone had signed the order releasing McAllister from a Soviet prison, and someone in Washington had ordered the assassination of Harman. Why? What was he missing?
“Where are we going?” Stephanie asked breathlessly. “I don’t know. I’ve got to have time to think.” Images and snatches of conversation were flashing through his head. He could feel blinding pain stabbing at his groin and across his chest. He could hear his heart hammering raggedly in his ears… but then it stopped! “Are you all right, David?” Stephanie asked softly. He glanced at her. She was pale and shaking. The insanities they had both endured over the past days had taken its toll.
Wherever he showed up death followed on his heels. One by one every person he’d had come in contact with since his release from the Lubyanka had been killed. Everyone except for Highnote and Stephanie. How much longer could they possibly hold out? Where were the answers?
Run. Was that the answer after all? Could they go away and manage to hide for the rest of their lives? Christ, was such a thing possible? If not that, then what were their alternatives? He’d been driving aimlessly. They reached Rhode Island Avenue and he turned right toward Logan Circle, traffic very heavy. A police car, its siren blaring, raced past them, but it was going in the same direction, not back toward the park.
Very soon the bodies would be discovered and reported. Another massacre in Washington. The press would go wild. If someone had seen the Taurus the police would be looking for it.
The only advantage they had now was their altered appearances. No one knew yet what they looked like. Potemkin and the assassin had not paid them the slightest attention, their concentration locked on their targets and then getting away. He glanced at Stephanie again. She was watching him, deep concern in her eyes.
“Harman was going to kill her,” he said.
Stephanie nodded. “I know, I saw the gun fly out of his hand when he went down.”
“Which means he was probably Zebra One.“Again she nodded. “Working for the Russians, then why did they kill him?”
“A coverup,” McAllister said. “But how did he know that Harman would be meeting with Kathleen O’Haire in that park at that moment, unless Harman told him?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s one man who does.”
“Who?” Stephanie asked, her eyes narrowing. “Gennadi Potemkin,” McAllister said. “And I’m going to ask him. Tonight.”
Stephanie walked across the lobby to the pay phones at the back. McAllister had dropped her off at the Marriott Twin Bridges Hotel, where she had checked in and had waited in their room for a full four hours to give him time enough to make his preparations. They were the longest hours of her life. She kept seeing the image of her father’s destroyed body in her mind’s eye; kept feeling his cold, lifeless flesh, barely able to look at his face for the last time as she covered him with the sheet. Zebra One, Zebra Two, obviously code names for two men who had worked at the highest levels of the Soviet and American governments for a long time. Long enough to create the O’Haires’ Zebra Network. Long enough to do what else?
When she’d told McAllister’s story to her father he had not been happy that she wanted to help, but he had understood, as he’d always understood.
“He may not have known himself what is driving him,” her father had said. “And already there has been a lot of killing around him.”
“What else can I do?” she’d asked. “I’m already involved. I was from the moment I pulled him half dead out of the river.”
“I know. Just take care, Stephanie. Please. For me.” Reaching the telephones, she put her purse on the shelf and placed the call to the Soviet Embassy across the river in D.C. While she waited for the connection to be made, she turned and looked across the busy lobby. Nobody was watching her, no one seemed interested. She was merely a woman making a telephone call. Nothing more.
The number rang and she turned back.
“Cood afternoon, you have reached the Embassy of the Union ofSoviet Socialist Republics, how may we help you?” a pleasant man’s voice answered, his English nearly accentless.
“I would like to speak with Gennadi Potemkin.”
“I’m sorry, madam, but we have no person by that name here,” the embassy operator replied smoothly.
“I happen to know that you do,” Stephanie said, forcing a reasonable tone to her voice. “If you will just pass him the message that McAllister was in McMillan Park this noon, I think he’ll speak with me.”
“I am so sorry, madam, but..
“It will be the biggest mistake of your life, comrade, if you don’t pass that message.”
“One moment, please,” the operator said, unperturbed, and the line went dead.
It was possible, she thought, that she had been disconnected. The Soviet Embassy received dozens of crank calls every day from disgruntled American citizens and Soviet emigres. But she waited on the line.
A full five minutes later, another man came on, his voice much older, his accent strong. “Is this Miss Albright?”
“Yes, are you Potemkin?” Stephanie asked, startled by his use of her name, and yet not really surprised he knew it.
“Indeed it is,” Potemkin said. “I assume you are telephoning from a reasonably secure location, somewhere within the city?”
“Close,” Stephanie said. “We were in McMillan Park this morning.”
“Yes?” Potemkin said.
“McAllister would like to meet with you.”
“To what purpose, Miss Albright? What could we possibly have to say to each other?”
