Beware the Jabberwock (Post Cold War Thrillers)

by Chester D. Campbell

  "You've got to get out of here right away. Before Allen and his goons get here."

  "What's their problem?"

  "They evidently want you out of the way, one way or the other. Langley has asked for British help with something called a Black Cloud Alert. Pack your bag and get ready. I'll call a travel agent contact and have you a ticket waiting at Northwest Airlines. We'll route you through Tokyo to San Francisco." The quick-thinking, fast-moving Lorelei Quinn of Clipper Cruise & Travel was in control.

  "If the SIS is looking for me at Kai Tak, I won't get very far."

  "Do you have that extra passport with you?" Her look said volumes.

  He broke into a smile, nodding. "I was a good boy. I followed your orders, ma'am."

  "Then get moving. You'll barely have time to shave off that beard. Try not to disfigure yourself. You need to look like the photo on that passport. By the way, what's your new name?"

  "Douglas Bell. I'm a private investigator from Atlanta. I even have business cards."

  "If you don't hurry and get out of here, you'll need more than that."

  When Burke returned to her room a few minutes later, he had changed clothes, shaved, and was carrying his bag. She stared at him open-mouthed.

  "My, you are a handsome devil, Mr. Bell," she said, breaking into a smile. "And you look years younger. I don't think there's much chance of the CIA or the SIS spotting you."

  "I left some of my clothes and toilet articles in the room in case Allen wants a look. Maybe you can delay him with the story that I've just gone up the street looking for a new hair dryer or some such."

  "Good idea. Here, take one of my bags and put yours back in there. We can change the luggage tags. That will make it look more believable."

  Burke quickly switched the bags. "Burn that letter from Cam," he said, an anxious look on his face. "And don't let Allen give you a hard time when he finds out I'm gone. Blame it all on me."

  "Don't worry, I'll be okay. You're the one I'm concerned about. I've just lost the most important man in my life. I don't want to lose another. Where will you go when you get to the States?"

  He had already thought about that. "I'll fly into Baltimore. They'll be less likely to look for me there. I hope Hawk Elliott doesn't stumble onto my Doug Bell identity for awhile."

  "Dad always kept his own counsel. I don't imagine he talked to anyone but the people who made the documents. Call me Saturday. I don't think they'd tap my line, but use the name Kennedy just in case. Say you're an old friend of Dad's from Boston and you just heard about him." Then she had another idea. "If we need it, we could use a simple code to pass short messages. It involves a short sentence, using the first two letters of each word."

  She quickly explained the procedure for using the code, and Burke nodded his understanding. "Got it. Now I'd better get out of here. I'll take the stairs down to the next floor.”

  “One other thing,” she said, grabbing her handbag off the bed and pulling out a card. She handed it to him. “This is a Clipper Travel credit card. Use it to make your phone calls. If you use your own, they can track your movements.”

  “Good thinking. Bye, Lori." He had the urge to take her in his arms, but he put it out of his mind. This was no time for indulging in fantasies.

  But when she hurried across to open the door for him, she planted a big kiss on his cheek. "Do be careful, Burke."

  He smiled and gave her a hug with his free arm. "You can count on it."

  As Burke was stepping into the taxi, Sam Allen and two younger men rushed up to the hotel entrance. Allen shot a glance in his direction, but promptly turned toward the doorway, obviously unconcerned with the clean-shaven fellow boarding the cab. Burke leaned toward the driver, barked "Kai Tak," and then settled back in the seat, feeling the perspiration trickle down inside his shirt, a circumstance not entirely attributable to Hong Kong's fiery afternoon sun.

  He hurried into the airport terminal, which appeared only a little less crowded than the sidewalks on Nathan Road. He looked about for the Northwest counter. As he was walking toward the ticket area, he noticed a conservatively dressed man standing beyond the hustle and bustle of travelers, glancing at something, possibly a folder, that he held in one hand. It might have been a travel brochure, but when he looked up, letting his gaze sweep the area like a radar beam, Burke knew he was no ordinary traveler. The eyes seemed to lock onto his own, and the man started moving toward him. Was he holding a photo, a pose that had somehow sparked a possible glimmer of recognition?

  Burke averted his eyes and, as he did, saw a middle-aged woman holding one small child and trying to corral another who appeared determined to wander off. Burke broke into a smile and swooped down on the errant youngster, grabbing him up in his arms. He nodded at the woman, apparently their grandmother.

  "Can I help?" he asked pleasantly. "This young fellow seems bent on escaping."

  She laughed, shaking her head. "I wish I had their energy. I'm trying to keep them together while my daughter is off looking for their father."

  The small boy frowned at Burke and said with youthful indignation, "You're not my daddy."

  "You're right about that, fella," Burke said. He checked out of the corner of his eye and saw the possible pursuer had turned and was walking off in another direction. Was he letting paranoia cloud his thinking, or had his sudden inspiration defused a possibly sticky encounter? Burke put the youngster down, lifting the child's hand up to his grandmother's. "If you'll stay put here, maybe your daddy will be along in a few minutes." He smiled back at the woman. "Good luck. I'd better run."

  And with that he strode across to the shortest ticket line, moving up a few minutes later to give the clerk his name. It wasn't long before he was heading through security and into the gate area, where the flight to Tokyo was due to board in about half an hour.

  SAN FRANCISCO

  Chapter 26

  Burke checked through customs in San Francisco without incident late the same evening, California time. He walked around to the domestic terminal area and bought a ticket to Baltimore via O'Hare. It was a red-eye flight that would put him in Chicago Friday morning, with a four-hour layover. He stopped in a gift shop to pick up a newspaper, then found a table in the restaurant next door and ordered a cup of coffee. He unfolded the paper, hoping to catch up on the news. He hadn't had time to read a newspaper in days. The city's preoccupation with earthquake mania led off the local coverage, with the international spotlight focused on Europe. There was considerable space devoted to the Russians' continuing problems with growing unemployment, food shortages, and independence-minded republics. A small sidebar story dealt with the upcoming summit, with a box promoting an article on page ten that detailed plans for the big celebration in Toronto two weeks off. Fleetingly, he wondered if the CI staff had turned up any potential threats among the terrorists.

  The long flight from Hong Kong, plus the tedious wait in the San Francisco terminal, provided Burke more than ample time to sort out the facts and plan his next move. First priority was to track down whatever he could learn about Robert Jeffries. If Jeffries was the recipient of the intercepted May seventh call, which now seemed certain, he would be working now with the Jabberwock team. Consequently, when Burke reached Chicago, he had his morning coffee, wandered about the shops until time for the business day to begin, then settled down in a telephone cubbyhole and placed a call to the chief of security at the headquarters of Rush Communications in Kansas City.

  "Callahan," a bored voice answered.

  "Toby," Burke said, "this is somebody from your deep, dark past."

  "I don't play guessing games. Who the hell is it?"

  Same old Toby, Burke thought. Blunt and to the point. "Don't give me that bullshit," he said. "You played as many guessing games around old J. Edgar's office as any of us. It's Burke Hill."

  "Burke Hill. You sonofabitch, I wouldn't have thought of you for twenty dollars. I figured you'd been blown away by now. Let's see, last I heard, you had disa
ppeared while the Bureau was trying to nail your ass to a cross. They did some pretty shitty things back in those days, didn't they?"

  "I can vouch for that."

  "So what the hell happened to you?"

  "I went up to Alaska and knocked around the oil fields for awhile. The last few years I've been living up in the Great Smoky Mountains."

  "Mountains, huh? Sounds boring. Are you in town? What are you up to now?"

  "No, I'm calling long distance. What I'm up to is a bit complicated. Let's just say I've been doing some work for one of those, quote, government agencies, unquote. Do you remember a guy named Cameron Quinn calling you the middle of last month, asking about a phone call from Singapore to an unlisted number there?"

  "Sure, I remember him. Boston Irishman. With State Department Security. I checked him out."

  Burke chuckled. "Sorry to disabuse you. I guess it just shows you can't believe too much you hear these days. Cameron Quinn wasn't calling from the State Department. He was calling from Langley."

  "Langley? The CIA?"

  "You said it, not me."

  "What the hell gives, Burke? It was a call to the private line of a senior vice president of the company. Matter of fact, he's probably going to be president soon."

  "Robert Jeffries?" Burke said with interest.

  "Right, Jeffries. Only Jeffries was attending a business meeting in Hawaii the day in question."

  "So I understand. Was he in Lahaina, perhaps?"

  There was a pause, and Callahan replied guardedly, "How the hell did you know that?"

  "It ties in with some other things. Look, Toby, could Jeffries have set up his phone to forward calls to his hotel in Lahaina?"

  "Sure. We have a very sophisticated system here. It uses a small portable programmer. He could have called in and programmed it to forward only calls from certain numbers, during specified hours. What's so important about that damned call from Singapore? We've got operations all around the world."

  "Sorry, that's the part I can't talk about. As our leaders are wont to say, it's classified."

  His theory had checked out. He had no more doubts about Jeffries. As Cam had suggested, Jeffries was the key to solving the puzzle. But a key was of no value whatever unless you had access to it.

  "Listen, buddy, Jeffries is a large canine," Toby said. "You know what I mean? He's got connections in high places. I'd advise you to go slow about crossing swords with him."

  "Thanks for the advice," Burke said. "All I need now is a little more info on him. Like where is he at present?"

  "Sorry, it's against company policy to give out information on employees except for governmental inquiries. You say you're working for a government agency, apparently the CIA, though I'm sure you'd deny it if I asked. But you want me to take all that on blind faith?"

  "I stand by what I said, Toby. Look, I'm not implying that Jeffries has done anything wrong. I just need to check out a few details."

  Callahan was a cop's cop, the son of a legendary policeman on the Philadelphia force. He had worked a couple of years in the Philly department himself while winding up studies toward his law degree. Joining the Bureau at twenty-four, he had served in several field offices before being picked for Hoover's "Goon Squad." He was a tough, "by-the-book" agent, and his disagreement with the Director's penchant for sweeping potential embarrassments under the rug eventually earned him Hoover's wrath and banishment to the boondocks. Though he had been returned to good graces after Hoover's death, his reputation for independence had kept him from drawing a Special Agent in Charge assignment. He finished out the last part of his thirty years as a hard-nosed, demanding instructor of new agents.

  A square-jawed, true-blue American, Toby had no sooner taken his retirement than he was offered the position of Director of Security for Rush Communications. His responsibilities included both physical security of the firm's far-flung facilities and communications security. The latter dealt with illegal or unauthorized use or interference with the company's telephone, radio and TV transmissions, including those involving its microwave and satellite operations.

  The FBI career paths of Toby Callahan and Burke Hill had crossed on a number of occasions, and Toby had always been impressed with Burke's natural talent and his dedication to the job. He could sympathize with the way Burke had been treated by the Bureau. And though he felt it necessary to maintain his hard-as-nails image, he had no doubt that if Burke Hill said he was working for the government, that was it.

  "Okay," said Toby, "I'll stick my neck out. But you'd damned better not be giving me a bunch of crap. And make sure you're ultra discreet with what I tell you. Robert Jeffries is currently on a four-week vacation with his family. I happen to know they're in Acapulco."

  "When did he leave?"

  "Let's see, it was a Thursday, would have been the third Thursday in May. He flies his own airplane. He's a former Air Force pilot. They were to fly down to New Orleans in his Cherokee Lance and take a commercial flight from there."

  "Any idea where they're staying in Acapulco?"

  "According to his secretary, the Princess. Anything else?" He was becoming a bit testy.

  "You wouldn't happen to know the tail number of his Cherokee, by chance?"

  Callahan's voice exploded over the line. "Hell, no, I don't know the damned tail number. I know it's blue and I think I've said too much already."

  "I swear I won't breathe a word of it, especially where I heard it," Burke said. "You've been a great help, Toby. What I do for a living, or did before I got into this deal, is work as a nature photographer in the mountains. I'll send you some of my high-priced prints."

  "Something to clutter my walls with. You always were a photography nut, weren't you? Just don't call asking any more questions about the guy who'll soon have the power to fire my ass. Okay?"

  "It's a deal, Toby. See you around."

  Burke’s next call was to his mountain neighbors, Ben and Hargis Oakes. One was as thin as a fence rail, the other with the build, strength and refinement of a Brahma bull. They had a farm next to his modest plot, with a big enough tobacco allotment to eke out a living in the harsh, demanding environment of the foothills. They had agreed to keep an eye on his place while he was away.

  Clannish high school dropouts, the Oakes boys stayed close to the mountains they knew best. It was almost like they had an umbilical cord that kept them tethered to the area. Occasionally they ventured out as far as the small rural community of Cosby, once the moonshine capital of East Tennessee, or on to the county seat at Newport. They purposely avoided the man-made clutter of nearby Gatlinburg and its bumper-to-bumper tourists.

  "How's everything going?" Burke asked when he got Hargis Oakes on the line.

  "You in some kinda trouble, Burke?" Hargis asked, obviously worried.

  "Not that I know of. Why?"

  "Some fancy-dressed dudes was here yesterday afternoon. Said they was FBI men. Wanted to know if we'd seen or heard of you lately."

  So the Black Cloud had already preceded him to the Smokies. Those "FBI men" were no doubt CIA. "What did you tell them?"

  "That you left last week and we ain't heard nothing since. You don't suppose they was really ATF agents?"

  Burke laughed. "You know I don't do moonshine."

  "I ain't talking about you. There's folks around here that does, you know."

  Burke well knew because they had warned him what areas to avoid in his treks through the woods. A guy carrying a camera around there could get his head blown off.

  "Did they go over to my place?" Burke asked.

  "Yep. Me and Ben slipped through the woods and watched 'em. They walked right up and opened your door. How the hell did they get a key?"

  "They picked the lock. It's pretty easy. So they went inside, huh?" That meant they had probably bugged his telephone, maybe placed a few other tiny transmitters around the house. Most importantly, it meant they were pulling all the stops to find him. He couldn't go home.

  "What wa
s they after, Burke?"

  He thought a moment. He had to say something to keep them from worrying themselves to death, but nothing it would hurt to reveal if the "FBI" men came back. These unpolished mountain men were hardly sophisticated enough to fool a good interrogator. "They probably just wanted to ask me about a friend who's had some problems. Next time I’m home I'll look them up." Maybe that would give his Agency trackers a little false hope. "I've got to run, Hargis. Keep an eye out on the place, and I'll see you soon."

  It was shortly after noon when the plane landed at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Burke rented a car and drove to the outskirts of Baltimore, where he stopped at a motel connected to a Chinese restaurant. He hoped that would be a good omen. Recalling Lori's suggestion, he decided to register as Herbert Kennedy from Boston. Since he was paying cash in advance, he would need no identification. But as he started to write the name on the card, he hesitated, recalling the indignation he had expressed when confronting Cam that day in the Smokies. Now he was about to sign off on another lie. He had already traveled halfway around the world as Douglas Bell. Wasn't that the height of hypocrisy? No, he decided. Cam had been right. The world wasn't black and white, everything either right or wrong. It was filled with shades of gray. There were too many people like those Bulgarians running around loose, and if the system couldn't deal with them, someone who could had to step forward. What they had done to Cam Quinn was not going to be swept under the table if he could help it. Burke knew he alone held the key to something sinister that was about to take place. He had no idea what it was, but he was convinced by Cam's certainty that Jabberwock was filled with dire consequences.

  "Is something wrong?"

  Burke glanced up at the clerk and gave him a sheepish grin. "Sorry. I was just thinking about something that's been concerning me." He signed "Herbert Kennedy" and pushed the card across the counter, accompanied by a hundred-dollar bill. "I'll just be here one night."