“Who is this? What are you talking about?”
“McAllister knows everything. He even knows your name, and he’s coming there for you. He’s coming to kill you.”
“You’re insane,” Borodin said. He’d wanted to shout, but he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.
“If he’s arrested he’ll tell everything he knows. Everything will be ruined. You, me, everything, do you understand?”
“No, I don’t understand,” he said for Kiselev’s benefit. The fact of the matter was he did understand now; if not the how or the why, at least the implications. But who was this fool calling him now? “You must kill him. You are the last hope.”
“What are you talking about?”
“McAllister is coming to Moscow to kill you. There’s no one else left for me to contact. God in heaven, can’t you understand?”
General Borodin said nothing. After a few moments the connection was broken and he slowly hung up the telephone. Kiselev was closely watching him.“What is it, Comrade General?”
Borodin shook his head and looked up out of his dark thoughts.
“I don’t know, Mikhail Vasilevich. He was a crazy man shouting something about spies, of all things.”
“Spies?” the secretary asked, his eyebrow rising again. “Yes,” General Borodin said, forcing a smile. “He wanted to come to work for us. He is a cowboy, I think. Crazy.”
“Do you wish me to make a report?”
“No,” General Borodin said, dismissing the man. “I will take care of it myself in the morning.”
Robert Highnote stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor of CIA Headquarters in Langley and rushed down to his office. It was Sunday noon, the building was relatively quiet.
Dropping his overnight bag on his secretary’s desk, he went inside, snatched up his telephone, and dialed a three-digit number. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, he had a nagging headache, and the wound in his back was on fire. But he could not stop. Not now. McAllister had taken the passports and money from his wall safe and somehow he and the woman had made it out of the country. Highnote had a great deal of respect for his old friend, always had. But since Moscow he hadn’t understood a thing that Mac had said or done. Something sinister had happened to him, something totally beyond understanding. Something totally insane.
“Duty desk,” the number was answered.
“This is Highnote. Anything on those two diplomatic passport numbers from Helsinki?”
“Yes, sir. We tried to reach you earlier but there was no answer at your home.”
“I’m in my office now,” Highnote said, his chest tight. “They showed up in Helsinki all right, just a few hours ago. Both numbers are definitely confirmed.”
Highnote was gripping the telephone so hard his knuckles were turning white. “Did you get names?”
“Yes, sir. Last three digits, six-five-nine, was listed as Wilson, Thomas S. The six-six-zero passport was listed to Morgan, Christine M.”
“Were you able to come up with the name of the hotel where they’re staying?”
“Not yet, sir. But Helsinki station promised they’d give us a shout as soon as they checked with the police. Shouldn’t be long now.”
“It’s early evening over there. I would have thought they’d have that information by now.”
“Sorry, sir, that’s all they came up with. Do you want us to query hem again?”
McAllister had actually made it. By now he’d probably be inside the Soviet Union. Good Lord, was it possible? “Sir?” the duty officer was asking.
“No, you don’t have to carry it any further. Thanks.”
“How do you want this logged, Mr. Highnote?”
“Keep it open for the moment, if you would. I’ll close it out myself tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” the duty officer said.
Highnote hung up. McAllister was as good as dead. The moment he set foot inside Russia they would arrest him. Short of that, if he actually reached General Borodin by another miracle, he would not survive that encounter. What Highnote knew of Borodin was that the man was incredibly tough. A fighter. Even his own people were afraid of him. No one ever got in his way and escaped unscathed. Which left Stephanie Albright, who would be toughing it out in a elsinki hotel room.
Highnote picked up the telephone, got an outside line and called Operations at Andrews Air Force Base. “Major Jenkins, please,” he said.
The squadron commander came on a second or two later. “Major Jenkins.”
“Bob Highnote. Are we ready to go, Mark?”
“It’s a green light, sir?”
“Right.”
“Anytime you’re ready then, sir,” Major Jenkins said. “How’s the weather over the North Atlantic?”
“There’s a storm cell building over European Russia, but it’s heading east, so we’re in good shape.”
“I’ll be there within the hour,” Highnote said. Dexter Kingman, chief of the Office of Security for the CIA, sat across the desk from John Sanderson, in the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue at Tenth Street. He had come to a slow boil when the FBI director had finally explained what was happening.
“I don’t like this one bit, Mr. Sanderson, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Neither do I,” Sanderson replied. “The fact of the matter is, Highnote is on the move.”
“Where?”
“At the moment he’s in his office.”
“It’s your opinion that he will lead you to McAllister?” Sanderson nodded, and leaned forward. “You must understand that the two men have been friends for a lot of years. From what we can gather, Highnote has ostensibly been protecting McAllister ever since the incident in New York.”
“From everything else you’ve told me-not saying I can accept it-it’s hard to believe.”
“It’s no less difficult for us,” Sanderson said, sighing deeply. “But it seems likely that Robert Highnote is working for the Soviet government. His control officer was a man named Gennadi Potemkin whom we found dead at Janos Sikorski’s home outside of Reston. Between the two of them they ran the O’Haire network, and did a damned good job of it.”
“Why would a man like Highnote turn?”
“We don’t know that yet, we’re still working up a psychological profile on him…
“What?” Kingman, who was himself a psychologist, asked. Sanderson spread his hands. “We don’t have much to go on. His phones are constantly being swept so there has been no possibility of monitoring his calls. And when he moves, it’s often with a great deal of care so he has been difficult to tail. But our best guess at the moment is that sometime over the past five to eight years, he became unbalanced. Pressures of the job, moral dilemmas, we’re not sure. But there is enough circumstantial evidence to suppose that he has gone off the deep end. Did you know that he had become fanatical about religion?”
“Doesn’t make the man a Russian spy.”
“No,” Sanderson said.
“What about McAllister? Where does he fit?”
“We think that McAllister learned something in Moscow that might ultimately lead back to Highnote who, under the guise of helping his old friend, has in reality been setting him up for the kill. For a legitimate kill. He’s been driving McAllister like a hunter might drive a wild animal toward a dozen other hunters… us.”
“What about the massacre at College Park? McAllister couldn’t have done that.”
“No,” Sanderson said. “This is a big puzzle. But we believe that a second spy ring was in operation here as well. One in which Donald Harman was working with a so-far-unknown Russian.”
Kingman sat back, his head spinning. “Donald Harman, the presidential adviser?”
“Yes.”
“Where do I come in?” Kingman asked, trying as best he could to control himself. He was a cop, not a spy. He didn’t like skulking around behind the back of a man he had long admired.
The telephone on Sanderson’s desk rang, and he picked it up. “Yes,” he answered softly. Moments later a startled expression crossed is features. He switched the phone to the speaker so that Kingman could hear too.
“You’re there now, at Andrews Operations?”
