hand, a newspaper rolled up under his right arm.
McAllister was staggered into inaction for several long terrible moments. Miroshnikov’s was the one face in all the world he’d never thought he would see again. The interrogator and his subject come face-to-face at last. He suddenly remembered the satisfaction he had gotten that last night when he’d rammed his knee into the man’s groin and driven his fist into the interrogator’s throat.
Miroshnikov looked up at the last moment, his eyes sweeping past McAllister without recognition. But then he did a double take, his eyes finding and locking into McAllister’s, and suddenly he knew. He stopped short.
Two uniformed KGB officers passed, and McAllister stepped around them, reaching Miroshnikov before the man had a chance to move.
“You…” Miroshnikov breathed, his eyes wide. “How?” McAllister smiled, although his gut was churning and his head was spinning. He took Miroshnikov’s arm as if they were old friends. “We’re going for a walk,” McAllister said in Russian, his tone even. “If you refuse, or if you call out, I will kill you here and now.”
“Insanity.”
“Yes, it is,” McAllister agreed. So far they had attracted no undue attention, but it wouldn’t last.
“What do you want?”
“Information. Now, let’s go or you’ll die right here.”
“And so will you,” Miroshnikov said, starting to pull away. McAllister tightened his grip. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have anything to lose.”
The interrogator’s expression changed all of a sudden from one of fear, to one of understanding, if not acceptance. “No, I don’t suppose you do,” he said softly.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Your car. Then someplace to talk. Someplace private.” Still Miroshnikov hesitated for a beat. Finally he nodded. “As you wish,” he said.
“You are quite a remarkable man,” Miroshnikov said.
They sat together in the front seat of his black Moskvich sedan in a parking lot off Puschechnaya Street. McAllister reached inside Miroshnikov’s coat and pulled out his pistol; it was a Makarov automatic. Standard KGB issue.
“Do you mean to kill me now?” the interrogator asked. “For everything that was done to you while you were under my care?”
“That depends on you,” McAllister said. There was a constriction across his chest, and he was acutely conscious of his beating heart. He was sweating despite the cold.
“You have come all this way for an explanation?”
“I want to know about a KGB general. Aleksandr Borodin. I want you to tell me how I can find him. Where does he live?”
Surprise spread across the interrogator’s face. “What?”
“Borodin. I need an address.”
“I don’t understand. I thought you had come here for.. McAllister raised the pistol and jammed it into Miroshnikov’s side. “I don’t have time. I want an address now, or you’ll die. Simple.”
Miroshnikov shook his head. “He has an apartment here in the city on Kalinina Prospekt, but his wife normally stays there. The general prefers his dacha.”
“Where? Exactly,” McAllister demanded. Being this close again to Miroshnikov was different than he thought it would be. He felt like a fool, or more accurately like a schoolboy who had done something naughty. Turn the gun over to him, he is your friend. Hadn’t that already been established? We are making such great progress together, you and I, Mac. Miroshnikov was watching him closely. “It’s on the Istra River. About fifty kilometers from here. Not so difficult to find.”
McAllister knew most of the area around Moscow. He’d been to the Istra River region with its Museum of Wooden Architecture onseveral occasions. An entire replica community of churches, peasant cottages, granaries, and windmills had been brought there from all over Russia.
“Is it near the village?”
“Yes,” Miroshnikov said, still puzzled. “Just a few kilometers to the north. There is a covered bridge across the river. He is first on the right.”
The parking lot was protected by a tall wire-mesh fence. One of the attendants had come out of his hut and was watching them. McAllister looked up.
“Start the car and drive out of here,” he said.
Miroshnikov saw the attendant as well. “To the general’s dacha?”
“No. Someplace private. Anyplace. Just get us out of here. Now.” Miroshnikov started the car and pulled out.
McAllister lowered the pistol so that it was out of sight as they passed the attendant who watched them leave the parking lot and disappear down the street.
Traffic was heavier than before, and for the next few minutes the interrogator concentrated on his driving. He turned right on Zhdanova Street past the Ministry of Higher and Special Education, and one block later had to stop for a red light. He refused to look at McAllister, his eyes straight ahead on the bumper of the car ahead of them. When the light changed, he pulled forward.
Look to Washington. Look to Moscow. Voronin’s words were so clearly etched in McAllister’s brain that he might always have known them. But there was something else. Still something that nagged.
“What is this general to you?” Miroshnikov asked, breaking their silence.
“Zebra Two,” McAllister said. It no longer mattered who knew. “What?”
“A spy.”
“Of course
“He was Donald Harman’s control officer. He and his people have been trying to kill me ever since I was sent home. Well, they’re all dead now, and Borodin is the only one left.“Miroshnikov was looking at him, a very strange expression on his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Zebra One was Donald Harman, an adviser to the President. General Borodin is Zebra Two, his control officer.”
“You’ve come here to kill him?” Miroshnikov asked in wonder. “Yes.”
“Why?”
McAllister started to reply, but no words came. His heart was racing now.
They crossed the Sadovaya Ring with the light, and continued north away from the city center. A banner was stretched above the broad boulevard. LONG LIVE THE SOVIET PEOPLE, BUILDERS OF COMMUNISM. McAllister struggled to maintain his control.
“Why?” Miroshnikov repeated. “You came back here at great risk. Kidnapped an officer of the KGB right in front of headquarters, and I suspect you weren’t even armed. And now you are saying that you mean to kill a very important general. I ask you again, why?”
“Because of… what he has done.”
“To you? To your country?”
“Yes.”
“You say this Donald Harman is dead. I read it in the newspapers. And so are some other very important men in Washington. You have done your job, Mac, and done it well. I am proud of you.”
“Americans,” McAllister whispered.
“And some Russians too, I think. I have seen reports. Gennadi Potemkin is missing. Presumed dead.”
“I killed him.”
“There, you see? And there have been others.” The traffic thinned out the farther they got from downtown. They passed the Riga Train Station and Dzerzhinsky Park, a big textile plant on the right after they passed beneath a railroad viaduct. Believe me, we are going to have a splendid time together, you and I. The interrogator’s words flowed around McAllister. The voice then as now, it was hard for him to distinguish which. They had left the city behind. Birch forests spread away to theundulating horizon, the highway rising and falling like swells on a vast ocean. The sky was overcast, and a wind had begun to blow snow across the road. The countryside seemed alien, as if it belonged on another planet. “You don’t understand, do you, Mac?” Miroshnikov’s patient voice came to
