Beware the Jabberwock (Post Cold War Thrillers)

by Chester D. Campbell

When she entered the office around four-thirty, she plopped wearily into a chair beside the desk of a rosy-cheeked young blonde.

  "It's hot out there, Millie. I've really been wearing down the shoe leather. How was your day?"

  The girl gave her a thin smile and pointed to the curved cradle attached to the phone on her desk. "I've got a crick in my neck from leaning into that gadget. And I've about worn the skin off my ear. Why do people even think about going to Florida in weather like this, Miss Quinn?"

  If you only knew, thought Lori. She reached down to remove a small purse from her stuffed briefcase. "Orlando, I'll bet," she said, straightening up with a move that gave her a clear view of the sidewalk and beyond. Blue-tie leaned against a wall at the entrance to the building across the broad, busy street, giving the appearance of a young stud perusing a tabloid while waiting for his girlfriend. "With the kids out of school," she added, "everybody wants to rush off to Disney World." She took a small mirror from her purse and checked her makeup.

  "The magic mouse really lures them down there, doesn't he? For my money, I'd rather head for the mountains and find me some cool."

  Lori grinned. "You're too young to act that sensible. I'd have thought you'd be off to the beach."

  "Not everybody's the sailor you are, lady," said a low-pitched voice behind her.

  She turned to greet her manager, Marilee Breckinridge, a tall, statuesque woman with the classic lines and heroic proportions of a Greek goddess. Premature streaks of gray flecked her sculptured hairdo, a circumstance that gave her no more concern than the day's close of the Dow.

  "Hi, Marilee. I have a new prospect for you." She stood up, retrieving her briefcase. "Take care of the mouse people, Millie. They like to spend money."

  Lori walked back to a vacant desk and opened her briefcase, pulling out a sheaf of papers.

  "Why don't we go to my office?" Marilee suggested.

  "This will be okay. My feet don't want to take any more steps than necessary."

  Lori began to talk about the prospective client, keeping an ear tuned to the ring of a telephone that might be the call from Burke. She purposely remained where blue-tie could see her, hoping to discount any suspicion that she was anticipating a call.

  By six o'clock, she still sat at the desk, attempting to look busy. Everyone had left except Marilee, who was working in her office. Lori checked her watch for what seemed the hundredth time. Why didn't he call? She had understood his cryptic remark as meaning the anonymous "wealthy gentleman" referred to in her father's letter. But what could take so long that he had not yet found time to call?

  Marilee came out of her office carrying a package. "I need to get this over to my sister's. Unless you need me for something, I'm getting out of here." She laid a gentle hand on Lori's shoulder. "You look tired, boss lady. You'd better call it quits, too."

  "I won't be here long," Lori said. "Good night." She let her eyes follow the retreating figure and her gaze swept across the way. The man was no longer in sight, but she had no doubt that he remained nearby.

  The Massachusetts congressman's administrative assistant was a casual acquaintance, and through him she obtained the receptionist's home phone number. When she reached the girl, she explained who she was and asked what time Mr. Hill had called.

  "I'm sorry, Miss Quinn, but I never heard back from him. I checked with the girl who relieved me at lunchtime, so I'm sure he never called."

  Now she was genuinely concerned. For the past week, Burke had been scrupulous in keeping to their daily schedule of phone calls. What could have kept him from getting back to the congressman's office? She telephoned Cloe Brackin to warn that she was headed that way, with danger signals flying.

  Burke slipped out of his hiding place in one of the abandoned servants' rooms as soon as the glow of daylight faded from the slender window near the ceiling. The storm had passed, but a thick cloud deck remained to lower the curtain of darkness early. He had heard few sounds from upstairs for some time now, judging that it meant the search had widened into other areas or some of the men had been relieved from duty.

  He moved into the workshop, stepping carefully among the darkened shapes, then cat-like up the stairs to the outside door. He unlocked the deadbolt, eased the door open. Compared to the coolness of the basement, the air outside felt warm and muggy. Sidestepping a large puddle at the landing, he took the remaining steps with care, pausing when his eyes rose above the ground. Soft light filtered from curtained windows onto the flagstone terrace at the back of the house, but beyond it, where the lawn should have been, hung a shapeless mass that all but obscured the beginnings of the hedgerow flanking the walkway to the lake. Fog, thick and dark as chocolate mousse.

  Burke listened for human sounds, such as the furtive brush of a shoe sole against stone. He sniffed at the air for cigarette smoke, anything that might spell danger. Detecting nothing but the croaking of frogs, the chirping of crickets, and the smell of soggy, freshly-mown grass, he ventured out of the stairwell onto the soaked lawn. His body bent low, he crept through the misty curtain, moving toward the hedge.

  He nearly collided with the planted strip before it became barely visible through the fog. Following it along the side away from the walkway, he slipped quietly through the suspended mist. After passing around the curved edge of the flower garden, he became aware of a veiled glow ahead, apparently a light at the boat landing.

  When he reached the dock, he made a quick appraisal of the two boats. The large cabin cruiser was obviously out of his league. The small outboard offered no problems. There was a key-operated starter, a throttle, a steering wheel and a light switch. Among the many tricks he had mastered as an FBI agent was hot-wiring ignitions. With deft moves under the twilight glow from the light mounted on a pole overhead, he bypassed the lock. The starter made a grinding noise as it began to crank the engine. Nothing happened. Was the gas tank empty, he wondered? Then the engine coughed, caught, and began a staccato roar that echoed through the mist.

  He switched on the light, a high-intensity beam mounted on the bow, cast off the line securing the boat to the dock and shoved the throttle open wide. The boat surged forward into the fog-shrouded lake. It was literally a blind gamble. He held the wheel steady, though, counting on that to take him straight across to the other side.

  It was nearly eleven. Lori looked at the clock with a gathering sense of doom. Something had gone wrong. Badly wrong. She sipped at a glass of iced tea. Her third. The cold liquid only heightened the chill she felt. Walt Brackin sat on the sofa across from her, reading the newspaper beneath a lamp. Chloe was curled up beside him, her face darkened by a troubled frown as she watched Lori.

  After they had waited all evening for it to happen, when the phone finally rang, the sound was almost shattering. Chloe jumped as if she had touched a live wire and grabbed the instrument that sat on a table beside the sofa.

  "Hello?" she said.

  As Lori listened, her friend almost shouted. "Burke?"

  After a moment, she added, "Lori's sitting right here about to have a stroke. Just a second." She held out the phone.

  "Are you all right?" Lori's voice echoed her distress.

  "It's a long, painful tale. To keep it short, I was hijacked."

  "You were what?"

  "The guy providing the money sent a private jet to pick me up, supposedly to fly me somewhere to meet him. After we took off, they jumped me and used a knockout drug. I woke up in a big mansion on a lake, which I've learned is in a bedroom county just outside Nashville."

  "Tennessee?"

  "You got it."

  He briefly sketched out how he had escaped. After beaching the boat on the other side of what he now knew was Old Hickory Lake, he had walked to the nearest road and hitched a ride into Hendersonville, a suburban town on the northeastern edge of Nashville. He had stopped at a discount store and bought some presentable clothes. Now he was calling from an outdoor pay phone adjacent to an all-night market. Whenever a car approached, he
would turn his head away, just in case it might be one of his former captors.

  "Is your arm doing okay?" Lori asked.

  "It's fine," he said. "I hope you've got good news. What was Judge Marshall's reaction?"

  "Sorry. I haven't been able to talk to him yet."

  "What's the problem?"

  "He was out of town, due to get back tonight. Do you have the pictures?"

  "That's another disaster story. Somebody broke into Aerial Photomap, stole every damned print. Negatives, too. I don't know if it was laid on after I talked to Mr. Money Bags, or if they learned about the photos some other way."

  "I can't believe this," Lori said. "That man had helped Dad all these years, and now he's involved in this Jabberwock business. Do you think he had anything to do with sending those men into Hong Kong?"

  "I don't know. The guy sure suckered me."

  The old fire and determination returned to her voice. "This business has gone far enough. I'm calling Judge Marshall the minute I get home. I'll wager Hawk Elliott's people haven't come up with a tenth of what we know." She hesitated as she heard Walt's voice, then turned to see him across the room holding an extension phone. "Hold on a second," she said, "I think Walt has something for you.”

  She listened as the doctor began talking.

  "Hi, Burke. Just wanted to tell you something I finally figured out."

  "Oh, what's that?"

  "The guy who nabbed you on Oyster Island, I realized who he is."

  "Really? How'd you manage that?"

  "Since tennis is out for awhile, I've been catching up on my reading. I saw a story in the Sunday paper about the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra coming to the Kennedy Center."

  "Yeah, I know," said Burke. "Lori had invited me to the concert."

  "It mentioned that a young virtuoso cellist who was with the orchestra on their last U.S. tour wouldn't be along. She died in a building collapse in Moscow something over a year ago. She had been engaged to an American writer named Gary Overmyer, a Special Forces hero in Vietnam. I remembered reading a story about it just after she was killed."

  "You're not going to tell me that was him? Overmyer?"

  "One and the same. Did you notice the tattoo on his left arm? When I got to thinking about it, I realized it was the Special Forces' insignia. And I knew why he looked vaguely familiar. His face and hair have changed a bit, but the tattoo cinched it. And I remembered the voice. They brought him in to speak to us when I was in training at Fort Bragg. Talked about infiltration. One of my instructors knew him in Nam. Told us about the tattoo and some of his exploits. Said he was a deadly shot with any kind of weapon."

  Walt said the lean, hard-muscled figure with the predatory eyes was one of the "legends" the Special Forces not infrequently spawned during Vietnam, sometimes picked up by the press and ballooned into the popular myth that gave the Green Berets their public mystique. Occasionally, reality would match the myth. This had occurred in the case of former Captain Gary Overmyer.

  "Are you sure about this?" Burke asked.

  "Absolutely. I should have recognized him the other night, but I wasn't operating on full power at the time."

  "Anything else you remember about him?"

  "Well, the scuttlebutt was that he had left the Army after a few months in a psychiatric ward. Bad case of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder."

  "That's interesting. Any idea where he lives?"

  "The newspaper story called him a writer from Memphis."

  "You're a good man, Walter," Burke said with enthusiasm.

  By the time he hung up the phone, Burke had a plan. First priority was to get out of Nashville undetected. With the airport likely watched, he would check the bus schedules, then find a taxi to take him somewhere west of town where he could catch a bus to Memphis. That would bypass the bus station, another probable spot for surveillance. In the morning, he would visit a Memphis newspaper library to learn whatever else was available on Gary Overmyer. Then he would fly to New Orleans to retrieve his car and briefcase. Lori promised to leave word with Walt Brackin on what she had accomplished with the Director of Central Intelligence. Burke was to check the doctor's office during the day.

  Switching on a table lamp in her living room as soon as she arrived home, Lori dropped into the easy chair beside the table and lifted the phone. Since she was contacting the CIA, it made no difference that they were tapping into her calls. She dialed Judge Marshall's private home number. There was no answer. This late at night, it probably meant he was still out of town. Of course, there could be an emergency, in which case he would be in his office at Langley. She tried there, only to find the call answered by a night watch officer. She thought she recognized the voice of one of her classmates at "The Farm."

  "This is Lorelei Quinn," she said. "This wouldn't be Phillip Durand?"

  "You got it, Lori. How's it going?"

  Durand was a Californian, late thirties, drove a yellow Porche, loved tacos and hated tight collars and neckties. He had a house across the river in Maryland, Spanish style, the closest thing he could find to California. The best Lori could figure, his main goal in life seemed to be the quest to coax some innocent girl into his hot tub. She knew. She had declined more than one invitation.

  "I was hoping to find Judge Marshall." The disappointment showed in her voice.

  "And you got old Phil instead. What a comedown. The Judge is out of town. May be back tomorrow, may stay over another day. Could Hawk Elliott help? I know he's in his office."

  "What about General Palmer?"

  "Sorry. He's with Judge Marshall. I'm not at liberty to say where."

  Lori debated a moment. Hawk Elliott was a poor third choice, but he was the only choice now, and possibly until Wednesday. She knew he would have access to Judge Marshall. With what had happened on Oyster Island Saturday morning and now the forcible detention of Burke today, she thought it was time the Agency put its considerable resources into the fray.

  "Okay, Phil," she said, her mind made up, "put me through to Hawk."

  After a short wait, the familiar voice came on the line. "Good evening, Lorelei," he said. The tone was not exactly warm, only less cool than normal. "Are you ready to cooperate with us?"

  "I'm going to give you some information, Mr. Elliott, that I think the Agency should have and needs to act upon. But before I do, I want your solemn promise to communicate it to Judge Marshall as soon as possible."

  "It's let's-make-a-deal time, is it? Is Burke Hill prepared to come forward and tell us what he knows?"

  "With the right guarantees, yes."

  "What guarantees?

  "Judge Marshall's word that Burke will get safe passage into Langley, that he will be free to leave with no harrassment afterward."

  "I can't speak for the Director on—"

  "I don't want you speaking for him," she said. "I want to hear him say it personally."

  Hawk's voice had resumed its usual coolness. "What could I tell Judge Marshall that would make him interested in such a deal?"

  "This," she said firmly. And she launched into a brief description of the events on Oyster Island, the theft of the aerial photographs, the kidnapping of Burke Hill that morning.

  "Well, well," said Elliott with obviously increased interest. "Your friend Hill has been quite busy. So he thinks Jabberwock is right under our noses. Was he able to identify any of the people involved?"

  "Several. Two well-known businessmen named Blythe Ingram and Robert Jeffries. The intercepted telephone call from Singapore to Kansas City was actually forwarded to Jeffries in Hawaii. We've also identified one of the three Jabberwock team members, a former Army Special Forces officer named Gary Overmyer." The "we" reference had slipped in unintended, but she took pains to omit any mention of Walt Brackin's role in this. She didn't want Hawk Elliott, or anyone else in the Agency, getting onto his case.

  "Where can we reach Hill?" Elliott asked. "I'm sure the Director will want him to undergo a thorough debriefing."
<
br />   She wasn't about to divulge anything further without Judge Marshall's agreement to her terms. "I'll get in touch with Burke after I talk with the Judge."

  "Very well. I'll speak to him and get back to you first thing in the morning." He sounded resigned, rather than pleased, about the entire arrangement.

  Chapter 43

  Some days seemed made to order for significant events. This was one. A vast expanse of blue sky greeted Lori when she looked out from her bedroom. She raised the window and felt a fresh, gentle breeze that sent a pleasant shiver rippling down her arms. A front had moved through during the night, pulling cooler, dryer air in its wake. On the roof above, a pair of redbirds welcomed the morning with a colorful serenade. Lori felt relieved now that she had unburdened her conscience. She remained a loyal supporter of the CIA. Though she had readily agreed with the reasons for remaining silent, it had gone against her natural instincts, which prodded her to alert the Agency to the ominous circumstances surrounding Jabberwock, the case that had cost her father his life.

  She had just finished breakfast and was loading the dishes into the dishwasher when the phone rang. She picked up the kitchen extension. It was Hawk Elliott.

  "I've talked with the Director. He was quite impressed with the information you supplied. So much so that he's on his way back right now. He'll fly into Dulles and take a helicopter over. I'm to send a car for you. They should pick you up shortly and get you here by the time Judge Marshall arrives."

  Lori smiled. Now we're getting somewhere. "Thank you, Mr. Elliott. I'll be ready."

  Burke was waiting at the newspaper office when the librarian arrived. She was a matronly woman with gold-framed glasses tilted up and anchored in her bouffant gray hair. She sat him down at a microfilm reader, brought over boxes of film and made certain he knew how to operate the machine.

  Based on the earliest date in the file, Gary Overmyer had apparently lived in Memphis the past five years. The clippings told of his participation in Vietnam veterans' functions, the publication of a Vietnam war story in paperback, an arrest for brawling in a local bar. His opponent had wound up in a hospital in serious condition. The charge was ultimately dismissed by a judge sympathetic to the plight of Vietnam's forgotten heroes.