Beware the Jabberwock (Post Cold War Thrillers)

by Chester D. Campbell

  Burke drove down the tree-lined street in front of Lori's condo development just before dark. Rain danced steadily on the pavement, glistening in the headlights like bouncing crystals. A paved parking area ran in front of the complex, parallel to the roadway. Across the street toward one end of the row of townhouses sat a charcoal-colored van, resting starkly in its isolation like the fabled horse of Troy, a small antenna protruding from the top. A quick glance toward it revealed no faces, but he had no doubt that someone sat in the back compartment with field glasses and, most likely, a headset plugged into a receiver that was picking up signals from inside Lori's house. By constantly monitoring what went on inside, they probably saw no need for any additional lookout posts.

  He stopped at a restaurant about a mile away and ordered dinner. While waiting for his meal, he took out a sheet of paper and an envelope he had picked up at the motel. He wrote out a note to Lori and placed it in the envelope, then printed a brief message on the front.

  Burke drove back to the area of Lori's condo, parking on a side street on the opposite end of the complex from where the van sat. He wore black trousers and a black waterproof jacket. He had bought a tube of black greasepaint and smudged it over his face. He tugged a black rain hat down over his head until the turned-down brim was even with his eyes, then pulled on a pair of black gloves. He could have passed for a cat burglar ready to prowl.

  Removing a small black case, he locked the car and slipped into a wooded area that flanked the end of the complex. As he reached the edge of the woods, he noted a chain link fence stretching across the back end of the open area that ran along the rear of the condos. He skirted around the end of the fence to avoid the necessity of climbing over it later on. Occasional trees dotted the lawns, thick-leafed maples and tall oaks that obscured the rambling outline of the condominium structure. The fence line lay far enough away from the houses to stretch in virtual darkness. There were fifteen units. He knew Lori's was the seventh from this end.

  Burke kept a low profile and made his way cautiously along the fence line. He watched for any sign of movement, alert for any sound above the splattering of the rain. He strained his eyes to count the rear entrances as he crept past, finally reaching Lori's, where he recognized the tall shrubbery around the patio. As he moved closer, he could make out a figure standing beyond a curtained window. Picturing the layout of the house in his mind, he decided she was at the kitchen sink. Keeping away from the light of the window, he crept up to the patio and past the glass-topped table and chairs where they had dined the previous Friday.

  He checked the black wrought iron security door that led in from the patio. As expected, it was locked. He took out the envelope from inside his jacket and slid it under the door. Then he crossed over to the patio furniture and upended a chair with enough force to generate a loud metallic clatter.

  Lori heard the noise and rushed into the dining room, flipping on the outside light. Knowing the security door was locked, she opened the inside door and looked out. She was puzzled by the overturned chair. It had not likely been done by a dog, since dogs were forbidden in the complex. And the wind was not that strong. Then she noticed the small white envelope that lay just inside the door.

  Picking it up, she read: Don’t say anything. Read note inside.

  Taking another look outside and seeing no one, she pushed the door closed and ripped open the envelope.

  Dear Lori,

  There's a suspicious van down the street in front. I suspect your house is bugged. Please turn off the outside light and any lights beyond the door inside. Leave the outside door unlocked and the inside door open. See you in a minute.

  Burke

  She did as instructed and waited in the darkness. No more than seconds later, the security door opened slowly and an almost invisible black figure slipped inside. He relocked the outside door and pushed the inner one closed.

  Lori rushed over to him, wide-eyed at the bizarre sight she saw in the dim light spilling out of the kitchen. He set a small case on the floor and held a warning finger to his lips. She reached over to feel the wet jacket and the soaked trousers. Then she took his gloved hand and tugged him toward the kitchen.

  He pulled off the hat and gloves and she almost broke into laughter at the sight of his black-smudged face. He lacked only the exaggerated white mouth to have been a character out of an old-time minstrel show. Then she helped him out of the jacket, contorting her face at the sight of the soggy pants and muddy shoes. She took a note pad off the countertop beneath the telephone and wrote, "Get upstairs and get out of those wet clothes. There should be one of Dad's robes in the closet of the spare bedroom."

  He nodded and watched as she knelt to untie the messy shoes and pull them off his feet. Then she hitched her thumb toward the stairs. After he left, she cleaned up the mess on the floor and set the case he’d carried in on the kitchen table.

  Burke walked in a few minutes later wearing a blue robe that had belonged to Cam. Opening the small case, he took out a device designed to ferret out hidden transmitters. He began a systematic sweep of each room, locating one on the phone line in the laundry room, where a block connected the incoming line with all extensions. Another had been stashed atop a picture frame in the living room. He determined it was safe to talk upstairs but carried the jamming instrument just to make sure.

  Lori led the way to her bedroom, which was frilly and pink, with a queen-size four-poster bed. She kicked off her shoes and perched cross-legged on the bed while Burke switched on the device and dropped onto a contrasting peach bedside chair.

  "Tell me what's been going on," she said. "Then I'll clean that mess off your face."

  He grinned, straightening the robe over his bare legs. "Thanks to your fast work, lady, I got out of Hong Kong with only a small glitch." He told her about the man who appeared to be approaching him at Kai Tak, admitting that it may have been merely his imagination working overtime. He related the results of his phone calls in Chicago and the call to Jeffries' room at the Acapulco Princess.

  "The next move will be to fly to New Orleans," he said. "I need to get down there and see if I can track down that Cherokee Lance."

  She had a worried look. "You'll have to watch your step, Burke. Judge Marshall asked this afternoon if I'd heard from you. He wanted me to call him first thing if I did."

  Burke raised an eyebrow. "So the Director, himself, is on my case, huh?"

  "Yes, and that means there's no telling what somebody down the line might do if they find you." She tried to push out of her mind the disturbing possibilities that had begun to creep in like unwanted visitors.

  "Which brings up what to do about those damned bugs downstairs," Burke said. "And I don't mean roaches. Obviously they're being monitored in the van out on the street. I could easily disable them, but that would signal something wrong and probably bring the Marines charging in."

  Lori thought for a moment, then broke into a diabolical grin. "I think I'll go right back to the top. The Judge should be quite embarrassed at such blatant disrespect."

  He followed her downstairs. She picked up the telephone and dialed Judge Marshall's home, the number he had left for her the night after her father's accident.

  "This is Lorelei Quinn," she said in an angry voice. "I have just discovered the most despicable thing. While I was burying my father this afternoon, your minions broke into my house and bugged it. I accidentally found one on the phone line. When I began to look around, I discovered another over a picture in my living room."

  Judge Marshall sounded shocked. "Why would any of my people want to bug your house?"

  "From what you said this afternoon, obviously you're looking for Burke Hill. Somebody, probably Hawk Elliott, apparently thinks I can lead you to him."

  The Judge's voice was apologetic. "I'm terribly sorry if that's the case. I didn't order it, believe me. I had no idea."

  "I'll take your word, Judge Marshall. But you can tell Hawk Elliott if he's left any more of his creep
y little bugs around here, I'm about to call in the exterminators."

  "You can be sure I'll talk to him, Lori. I know he means well, but I don't condone that kind of conduct. It is definitely not part of our charter. You have my sincere apology. Nevertheless, I hope you'll remember what I said this afternoon. I was really quite fond of your father. And I feel the same way about you. What I said was meant to be in your best interests, not in any way threatening. Call me any time. Good night."

  That renewed her faith in Kingsley Marshall as a fair and honest man.

  With a big smile on her face, she walked into the kitchen, searched a cabinet under the counter and pulled out a small cardboard box. It contained two thick pieces of molded polystyrene in which a replacement part for a can opener had been shipped. Then she went over to the phone line where the detector had identified a transmitter. Locating the tiny device clamped around the wire, she twisted it off and dropped it into the box. It had been placed where it would pick up conversations from any extension in the house. Then she placed a step-stool beneath the picture in the living room, climbed onto it and reached up to pull off the other microtransmitter. With great aplomb, she placed it in the box with the other offending gadget, sealed the box with packaging tape, then marched triumphantly out to the patio with it.

  As she came back inside, Burke shook his head with a grin. "Hell hath no fury like a woman bugged."

  "How about checking all the windows. Make sure the miniblinds and draperies are tightly closed," she said. "I'll fix us some wine and cheese."

  By the time he returned to the living room, she had placed a tray with crackers, cheese chunks, two glasses and a large bottle of wine on the coffee table. A towel lay draped across the cushions stacked at one end of the sofa where she stood, holding a jar of cold cream.

  "Lie down," she said, motioning. "Head here."

  She went to work with cold cream and tissues, rubbing away until the black was mostly gone. Then she sent him to wash his face with soap and water. When he came back after rigorous scrubbing, she reached up to his chin and pushed his face from side to side.

  "Pink as a baby's bottom," she said. "Have some wine."

  He sat beside her on the sofa and raised his glass. "To Lori," he said in a mock toast, though his voice was sincere. "A remarkable woman."

  She gave him that bewitching look. "Flattery will get you everywhere."

  He laughed. "You remind me of a teacher I had back in high school. Miss Barton. She taught ninth grade general science. She had sort of a dowager look and a really droll sense of humor. When somebody made a pun, she'd frown and say, 'Poor wit.' And when somebody stumbled around on an answer, she'd comment, 'He who hesitates is lost.’ She was a hoot."

  They sat for hours and talked and sipped wine and nibbled cheese and completely ignored the rest of the world. Lori could not remember when she had opened up like this with someone. It was exactly the therapy she needed. But it was more than mere therapy, it was sharing her innermost self with someone who obviously cared. And though Burke confessed to having held his deepest feelings in check, she soon found him revealing emotions he had likely never put into words before. Just how long they talked, neither was sure. It involved the small, mundane things that add up over the years to shape people's lives. The nudging motivation of childhood dreams, teachers who brought new perceptions of life, friends whose faith spurred hidden talents. And there was the warmth of family gatherings, such as Christmases around what were viewed, from the memory of a child's perspective, as towering, gaily-decorated trees that smelled of fresh pine and spruce.

  "You know what was the best present I ever got?" Lori asked, her eyes as bright and sparkling as a candle-lit wreath.

  Burke emptied his glass and poured more wine for both. "Tell me."

  She leaned back, clasping slim, tapered fingers behind her head, remembering. "I must have been about nine. We were in Paris that year. Dad had to go to Switzerland and didn't get back until Christmas Eve. He brought me this little music box with a compartment for rings and such. It had a ballerina on top. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. As the music played, she started to pirouette, and—"

  "What was the music?"

  "It was from Swan Lake. That's still my favorite ballet."

  "Whatever happened to it, the music box?"

  She sat up straight. "Would you like to see it?"

  He laughed. "Why not?"

  She stood up, grasped his hand and led him toward the stairs, switching off the lights as they went. She turned on a small lamp on her bedroom dresser and walked over to a chest beside the bed. She picked up the music box, stretched out across the bed, and wound it with the key on the bottom. She motioned to Burke, who was standing beside the chair. "Come here. You can't get the full effect from over there."

  He lay across the bed beside her, watching as the tinkling music began to play and the dancer started to pirouette. The tiny ballerina seemed to spin faster and faster, and then suddenly she stopped. But the music continued.

  Lori rolled over on her back, looking up at him, her eyes wistful. "That's the story of my life. I get caught up in the whirl of things, rushing ever faster, trying to make the most of every opportunity. I want to drink all the wine and smell all the roses. Then something happens to stop me cold."

  Burke knew what she was thinking. She was recalling that rainy cemetery this afternoon, and the flag-draped casket.

  He leaned down toward her and said softly, "Consider the bright side. As long as there's music, you can always dance again."

  He kissed her and she threw her arms around him, holding him tightly. The tinkling melody from Tchaikovsky's ballet masterpiece played on.

  Chapter 29

  Burke heard the sound of Lori's steady breathing beside him even before opening his eyes. When he saw the predominantly pink hue of the bedroom, memories of the previous evening came flooding back into his mind. He knew the feelings that had been stirring inside him since they first met at her office amounted to much more than just the affection he would have for an old friend's daughter. But that it could develop so quickly into something of such emotional depth caught him fully by surprise. He had traveled alone for so long that he'd forgotten the excitement, the passion, the electricity that two people could generate as their lives were coupled in an act of love.

  He was also aware that it added another dimension to his pursuit of the elusive Jabberwock. Quietly slipping out of the bed, he pulled on Cam's robe and padded silently across the carpet into the other bedroom, where he peeked out between the drapes. The rain had ended. In its wake, the sky appeared as a vast blue canvas that some capricious painter had daubed with a few random blotches of white. Looking out toward the street in front, he found a dark cloud on the horizon. The gray van had moved closer, so that it now sat opposite the condo next door to Lori.

  A clock on the bedside table caught his eye as he started back toward the hallway. It showed past nine-thirty. Had they slept that long? Or had it been well into the hours past midnight when the intensity of their lovemaking had given way to a warm afterglow, a languid sense of contentment bordering on exhaustion?

  Back in Lori's bedroom, he found her beginning to stir. He sat on the side of the bed as she glanced up through half-closed lids, her long, dark hair swirling about her face. She would have protested that she looked a mess, but to him, she had never looked lovelier.

  "So you're the guy I went to bed with last night," she said, smiling.

  "You were expecting maybe Paul Newman?"

  "Ha! Guys who drive race cars and make salad dressing don't do much for me." She sat up, pulling the sheet across her bare chest with a twinge of embarrassment.

  It was a female reaction that Burke had never understood, but he passed it off with a grin. "So, private eye-photographers are your thing, huh?"

  "We had something magical going last night," she said. "I've never been on such a high before, not even when I tried smoking pot in college. And I'd nev
er have thought I'd feel this way the day after burying my father. But I think he'd have approved."

  "I don't know that this is what he had in mind when he asked me to look in on you occasionally. But I agree. At least he would have understood." He took her hand and squeezed it affectionately. "At the risk of putting a downer on your reveries, I'd best give you the news. Our friends in the van have moved up for a closer look. They're parked right across the street."

  She frowned. "I'm not surprised. Since they can't hear what's going on inside, they're determined to keep a closer watch on the outside."

  "They probably have somebody posted in back, too."

  She nodded. "He'd be in the woods beyond the fence, staying out of sight."

  "They may have put a tap on your phone."

  "Very likely. With you here, who cares? Why don't you go down and put some coffee on. I'll try to get my act together, then I'll fix us some breakfast.

  They ate in the dining room. Lori opened the drapes, letting the glaring sun beam in through the sheer curtains that covered the windows. She had gone all-out on breakfast, grapefruit, eggs, Canadian bacon, hash browns, blueberry muffins.

  "No grits?" Burke asked.

  "Grits," she said with a turned-up nose. "We're in Virginia, but that's about the only Southern thing I can lay claim to."

  "Well, you can cook as good as a Southerner," he said, reaching for another muffin. "Now if we can just figure how to get me out of here."

  Right now, getting him out of there was not a subject she was anxious to pursue. They had just begun to really get to know one another. "I don't see any way you could manage it in the daylight," she said.

  "Not without running into a welcoming committee." He looked toward the door to the patio. "We don't have many advantages on our side, so we'd better make the best of what we're given."