seems to have built a pretty convincing case. Trouble is how do we get to him before anything else happens.” Highnote looked away for a moment. “Could it be another trap? Lure him out of hiding and gun him down when he shows up?”
“No,” Van Skike said flatly.
“I’ve been telling you that he was innocent from the beginning. No one would listen, and now a lot of good men are dead because of it. God only knows what else he’ll do if he’s pushed.”
“Can you find him for us, Bob?” Van Skike asked after a moment. Highnote turned back. “Yes, I can,” he said. “But certainly not n time to do the President any good with his news conference today.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Not exactly, but I have a fair idea.”
“Where?”
“He’s gone to ground, Van, as I knew he would. But I’ll find him or you, only I can’t guarantee how he’s going to react. He’s got to be gun-shy by now.” Van Skike had become more of an administrator and a politician over the past years, than a spy master. The question of whom to trust ad always been uppermost in his mind; his technique however had began to slip with age.“They don’t think Don Harman was working alone,” he said. “Of course not.”
“Besides his Russian contact, whoever it is, they think he might have had help right here in the Agency.”
Highnote’s eyes were wide. He sat forward. “Is that what Sanderson told you?”
Van Skike nodded. His stomach was burning. “Drop everything else. I want you to give this your undivided attention.”
“Who is it, Van?” Highnote asked softly. “Do they have a suspect? 1 Can we nail the bastard ourselves before Sanderson and his head hunters get any further?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. It may be nobody. They might just be guessing. I hope so.”
After a beat Highnote got to his feet with some difficulty. “I’ll get on it immediately. But I’m telling you one thing, Van.”
“Yes,” Van Skike asked looking up.
“I’m not turning him over to Sanderson. I just won’t. If and when I can get to him, I’ll try to bring him in myself. Once we can get the situation stabilized, we can let the Bureau question him.”
“And the woman,” Van Skike said as Highnote reached the door. “Her too.”
It was a few minutes after seven in the morning when the Air Canada flight touched down at Frankfurt Airport, McAllister and Stephanie traveling under their real names, were among the first to get off the plane. He felt naked traveling like this, so openly, but the passport officers barely gave them a second glance, even though they didn’t look like their passport photographs.
“The purpose of your visit to Germany, sir?”
“Tourism,” McAllister said.
“How long will you be staying in the country?”
“A week, perhaps a little longer.”
The passport officer, a young stern-faced man, smiled and handed McAllister’s passport back. “Have a pleasant holiday, mein Herr.”
“Thank you, we will,” McAllister said and he moved through the line, waiting on the other side for Stephanie to be cleared. When she was passed through they took one of the green lines for customs control of hand luggage, which was all they’d taken with them, and five minutes later were downstairs where McAllister changed some money into Deutsche marks, then booked a small Mercedes sedan from the Hertz counter for one week.
They were in Europe. Highnote had been right that their passports had not been flagged. No one had paid them more than a passing interest. But then, this was the easy part.
We have made great progress together, you and I. I am so very proud of you, Mac, so very pleased. He had made progress, but even now he didn’t know toward what, exactly. Stephanie had told him to rely on his instincts, and he had. They had managed to come this far without being taken, but the cost had been insanely high, and he was not proud of what he had done; the killing, spreading death and destruction wherever he went, to whomever he made contact with. There were times, even now, when Highnote’s suggestion that it might be better if he put a bullet into his own head, seemed to be a viable option. End the pain, the struggle, finish it once and for all. But he could not do that, any more than he could turn and walk away from it. Something was driving him. It’s the business, boyo, his father would say. It gets in the blood ruining man for a regular life. It’s hard to step down with all those secrets running around in your head. For the rest of your life you would be looking over your shoulder for one of the enemies you’ve made in our career to come up behind you with your nine ounces-A Russian uphemism for a 9mm bullet to the back of the skull. Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Zebra One, Zebra Two. God help him, but he was doing just that.
The weather across Germany was clear but very cold, a lot of snow as piled up along the autobahns where traffic ran with headlights n at speeds of eighty and ninety miles per hour. He concentrated on his driving. Ever since Montreal Stephanie had fallen strangely silent, and had put a distance between them again as she had after the incident on the train in Chicago. It was fear, he supposed. And disgust with what they had done. She had killed and so had he. What did that make them? How different from the KGB were they in the last analysis?
By ten they had reached the city of Nurnberg where they turned south on the E6, sometimes passing through vast federal parklands, at other times passing quaint little villages and the matrix of welllaid-out farms, the land beginning to rise up toward the Alps at the foot of which lay the city of Munich, headquarters of the BND-the German Secret Service. He’d been here before, often, liaising with the Germans during his tenure in Berlin. But it wasn’t like coming to a familiar place for him this time. Everything had changed. He had changed.
They entered Munich from the north about eleven-thirty in the morning, driving along Schwabing’s busy leopoldstrasse lined with boutiques, restaurants, galleries, bars, and artists cellars, traffic extremely heavy, the twin towers of Munich’s landmark, the Frauenkirche rising up into the clear blue sky. Following the broad, poplarlined boulevard, he went the rest of the way into the city center, passing a big parking ramp near the ornately designed Hauptbahnhof, one of the largest train stations in Europe.
Coming back around the block, he entered the ramp, got his ticket from the machine and drove down to the lowest level, parking the Mercedes in a dark corner.
“Now what?” Stephanie asked, her voice flat. McAllister looked at her. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know any other way to do this.”
“You’re going ahead with it then?”
“Yes.”
She started to shake, and she grabbed his arm. “It’s over, David. leave it be. Please. For my sake.”
“Then they’ll have won.”
“So what?” she screeched, her face screwed up in a grimace of fear and anger. “You can’t go back to the Soviet Union. They’ll kill you for sure.”
“I must,” McAllister said. “Can’t you see that, my darling? I have no choice.”
“But you do! David, you’ve broken both networks. leave it be!”
“No.”
They took a cab to a small hotel just around the corner from the parking ramp, registering under their real names and surrendering their passports for the morning’s police check. They were both very red, neither of them had gotten much rest during the transAtlantic flight.
When the bellman left them, McAllister placed the chain on the door, then pulled the bed covers back, mussed up the pillows as if they had been slept on, and in the bathroom crumpled up a couple of the towels and threw them on the floor.
Stephanie stood in the middle of the room watching him, her arms across her chest as she hugged herself to keep from shivering. He unpacked their bags, scattering their clothing throughout the room, hanging some in the closet, laying some over the chairs, leaving hers on the floor. Next he placed their toiletries in the bathroom, squeezing a little toothpaste in the sink and dirtying a couple of the glasses.
“Is there anything that you’re going to need over the next few days?” He asked when he was finished. What do you mean?”
“We’re leaving everything behind.”
She looked around the room and shrugged. “My purse.”
