“Listen to me, you sonofabitch. We know about Zebra One and Zebra Two. We know about the network, and we know a lot more.”
Potemkin laughed. “My dear girl, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do, and I think you’d better agree to meet with him. Alone. Both of you alone.”
“Impossible.”
“Neither are you. I don’t know what you think you know, but it is meaningless.”
“As meaningless as McAllister’s release from the Lubyanka within hours of his trial and conviction? No explanations. No prisoner exchanges. No publicity. Nothing.”
Potemkin did not reply.
“He’s at Janos Sikorski’s house right now, waiting for you. It’s out near Reston, but I’m sure you know where it is. He wants to make a deal.”
“What sort of a deal?” Potemkin asked, his voice guarded. “His life for yours,” Stephanie said, and she hung up as Mac had instructed her to do. Gathering up her purse she turned and walked back across the lobby, her legs weak, her breath catching in her chest. She had done everything she could and now it was up to him.
McAllister sat in the Taurus parked diagonally across Sixteenth Street from the Soviet Embassy a few blocks up from the White House. He had made it down from Reston fifteen minutes ago, about the same time Stephanie had placed her call to Potemkin. He had done what little he could to even the odds after first making sure Sikorski’s place wasn’t still staked out. Now it was up to the Russian, who, if he was smart, would simply ignore the message.
Do nothing, McAllister said to himself, and you’ll be safe this time. From Kathleen O’Haire, the wife of a convicted spy, to Donald Harman, a presidential adviser. And from Harman to Gennadi Potemkin, head of all KGB operations in the United States. Where would it lead from there? How many more dark corridors would he have to travel before he made his way through the labyrinth?
“Even if he does agree to meet with you, David, he certainly won’t go out there alone,” Stephanie had objected when he’d laid out his plan.
“He’d be a fool if he did,” McAllister agreed. “Which is why I’m going to wait for him outside the embassy and see who goes with him.”
“Let me go with you.”
“No.”
“Damnit, David..
“No,” McAllister said again. “You’ll stay here and do exactly as I say. No games now. I don’t want you out there. I don’t want to have to worry about you. I know what I’m doing.” She looked at him for a long time. “If you’re spotted it will blow the entire thing.”
“Yes,” he said.
It’s tradecraft, pure and simple, and it won’t be very pleasant. It was in his family heritage, in his blood, in the training he had received and the experiences he had survived over the past fourteen years.
Once a spy always a spy, that was the old adage. But after this, if by some miracle he survived, he was through. The business no longer held any fascination for him, if it ever had.
The roof of the embassy bristled with antennae and microwave dishes that bounced signals off a Soviet communications satellite for transmission direct to Moscow. He stared at the complex electronic arrays, his brain making automatic connections, skipping like a computer down long lines of facts and figures, each one leading inexorably to the next. Anomalies, Wallace Mahoney had called the bits and pieces that didn’t seem to add up. Stephanie’s father had been tortured and killed because of a transmitter? In his mind’s eye he could see the open cabinet door, the wires emerging from the wall. He focused again on the antennae on the embassy roof. Had Albright been communicating with the Russians? Was his murder a part of some coverup as well? The same white Mercedes 450SEL sedan from the park emerged from behind the embassy, and as it passed, McAllister got a brief glance at its passengers. Potemkin was driving, the assassin from this morning beside him in the front, and three other men in the backseat.
McAllister put the car in gear, drove to the end of the block, turned the corner, and caught up with the Mercedes on H Street in front of Lafayette Park. He held back, keeping several car lengths behind the big German car, which turned south on Seventeenth Street, the White House to the left, the huge Christmas tree on the front lawn lit up already in the diminishing light as evening approached. Potemkin was driving at a sedate speed. This would be no time forhim to be stopped and issued a speeding warning. He would be careful now; so much depended upon his not being delayed. He would remain scrupulously within the speed limit.
Reaching Constitution Avenue, the Mercedes turned right toward the Roosevelt Bridge, merging smoothly with traffic as it picked up speed.
The question was, which route would the Russians take to get out to Reston? South through the edge of Alexandria then up 1-495 through Annandale; north to the Capital Beltway which crossed the Dulles Airport access road; or the shortest route through Arlington on the partially completed 1-66 that branched off north of Falls Church?
He got his answer about three miles later when the Mercedes, heading north, passed the 1-66 exit and continued toward the Capital Beltway. His luck was holding.
Swinging west on 1-66 he speeded up, the sun only a vague brightness low in the overcast sky ahead, traffic picking up, all of it running at a good speed as everyone headed home.
McAllister parked his car about seventy-five yards up from Sikorski’s clearing, dousing the lights and shutting off the engine, but leaving the keys. Under the hood he pulled out the main wire from the electronic ignition system, rendering the car inoperative for the moment.
It was nearly dark now. He trotted down the road to the clearing and in the distance to the north he could see the lights of Reston.
The snow was deep up here, the only footprints were his, leading directly across to the front door of the cabin. He hurried down the same path so that it wouldn’t appear as if he had come and gone and returned again, entered the dark, silent house and crossed immediately to the kitchen where he let himself out, crossed the backyard well out of sight of the driveway, and scrambled down the steep hill to the path he’d found this afternoon. Now that the sun had gone down the temperature was dropping rapidly. Still he was sweating and the wound in his side was aching by the time he had circled around to the woods that sloped up from the house parallel to, but above, the driveway. A few snowflakes began to fall as he stopped about fifty yards from the house, cocking his ear to listen and scanning the dark woods in the direction of the driveway for any sign that Potemkin and his triggermen had shown up. But there was nothing, only the occasional whisper of a light wind in the treetops, and he continued up the hill.
For a while he was back in Bulgaria, racing for the border, the militia hot on his trail. He could hear the helicopters and from time to time the sounds of the dogs. It was winter, like now, and the snow was deep. Then, as now, he had been racing for his life.
He reached a spot directly above where he had parked his car and started down toward the driveway when he saw the flash of a car’s headlights below. He pulled up short, leaning against a tree, holding his breath as best he could while he listened.
The light flashed again, and then was gone. Moments later he heard car doors opening and closing, and the muffled sound of someone talking, issuing orders.
Still he held his position. There were five of them, all killers. He needed to even the odds before he confronted Potemkin.
The Taurus’s engine turned over, but of course the car would not start. Whoever was behind the wheel tried again, and then there were more voices, this time it sounded as if at least one of them was angry about something.
Finally the voices began to fade, moving down the driveway toward the clearing. McAllister pushed away from the tree and keeping low hurried through the woods, crawling the last twenty feet on his stomach.
They had left one man with the Mercedes. He was leaning up against the hood of the car, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, a big silenced pistol held loosely in his right hand.
McAllister took out his gun and continued crawling the rest of the way down the hill to a spot just a few feet above the driveway and ten yards behind the Mercedes. The lone man was gazing intently down the driveway in the direction the others had gone. He did not turn around as McAllister slipped out of the woods and crept forward to
