Orchids to Die For (Jim Morgan Adventure Series)

by Catherine Burr

  Morgan packed as she talked, “That’s a funny story, Catherine.”

  “If I may ask, how much money do you make as an Engineer?”

  “Not much as an Engineer. But I’m doing well in the stock market. My personal income, my net worth, is close to seven million. But I’ll get the family business one day. I’m the sole heir...I think.” Morgan was surprised that he was divulging all his assets so candidly. “I just need my shaving kit, and we can hit the road. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “We’ll eat next. How about calling us a cab, you’re on the clock now, Miss Harris.”

  “Oh? When did I start? Do I need to keep track of my hours? Do you have a regular cab company?”

  “Yes, use my cell, it’s on the dresser, speed dial number 5, City Taxi Service. Ask for a newer town car... In five minutes. My account number is four. I play golf with the owner. They know my address.”

  Jim came out of the bathroom with his toiletries all zipped up and ready to go. He grabbed up his bags and took them to the front door.

  “The girl, Nancy, at City Taxi ... Says for me...to tell you...that, you’re nuts.”

  “Ah, she loves me like an only brother,” he yelled up the stairs. “Now hit number six and book two flights, first class, to D.C., leaving around nine in the morning.”

  “Yes sir, master.” And she poked the number six...

  “Beverly Travel Service,” came a sultry voice. “May I have your account number, please?”

  Catherine shouted down the stairs. ”What’s your account number, Jim?”

  “It’s number four. I golf with the owner.”

  “She said to tell you – she hopes your plane crashes!”

  “Yeah, she’s all talk. Tell her, “I love her like my only sister.”

  Catherine stood up from sitting on his bed. She smoothed out the bed covers where she sat. She could smell his scent. She wanted him there, with her. She reached her purse and his cell and started down the stairs.

  He bent around the corner and loudly called up the staircase, startling her, “Car’s here!”

  Their driver came up to the door and carried their bags out to the black Lincoln. The FBI tail incorrectly assumed they were leaving town and pulled away to go make his final report, get something to eat, a shot of gin, and get some sleep. Oscar Bradley knew they were going back to the Four Seasons and followed after them at a leisurely pace.

  Morgan asked Catherine, “Want to stop and eat? Or, would you like pizza up in our room?”

  “Pizza! In the room.”

  Morgan handed her back his phone, “Here, hit number one.”

  “Pizza Uno. What would you like tonight?” Catherine handed the phone back to Morgan.

  “You order. I just want cheese...and chocolate milk.”

  After ordering, Catherine heard him say, “Put this on my account, number four.”

  Catherine asked him, “Don’t you find it odd that all your accounts are the same, number four?”

  “No, not at all. I golf with these guys. My number is actually, fore, f-o-r-e.”

  “Oh, Jesus Murphy. I should have got that.” And they both laughed as their car pulled up to the Four Seasons, their staging area for an early morning departure into – pure adventure.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Eunice sent an Institute limo to pick up Morgan and Catherine. She then notified Mureatha that a friend would accompany Mister Morgan, a Miss Harris. The dinner plans were set – a catering company would serve a seven P.M. sit down meal for seven. A three-piece classical ensemble, harp, cello, and violin would entertain the evening.

  Eunice had spent her morning with her three resident psychics; the tall and very pretty Tonya, voluptuous, and in need of a man, a man that she couldn’t read like an open book. She has, as a knack, the special capacity to read one’s mind over vast distances. But she can only do this in English. She has been unable to master any other languages which, by the way, the CIA would love to see happen.

  Jackie, the bland, thirty-year-old ash blonde, had never trusted her own telepathic insights, yet she is probably the most astute of the three mind readers. She came to the Institute after reading Eunice’s books – to seek peace of mind. Eunice took her in as a research project. She learned, with the help of many volunteer psychologists to now live a fairly adjusted life. She works today as a counselor to help others cope with the problems of having ESP. Her life will never be normal, as we’d perceive normal, but she has come to terms with this, as her way of life -- and today, she functions well in a society where open thoughts are always bombarding her.

  And then there’s Lisa. All business, stoic to a fault, tattooed with a Harley Davidson symbol colorfully engraved across the top of her, chubby, ass. She joined an outlaw biker group at seventeen, smoked enough marijuana that she believed she was Cheech and Chong’s mama.

  At twenty, she joined a convent and prayed herself into a state of nirvana where she could block out the extraneous thoughts coming in from others. But the nunnery caused her problems, namely with a few of her cute, devoted, sisters. After several reprimands for testing lesbian gratifications, she was sent packing with a fear of hell and fiery brimstone clogging up her beautiful gifts of ESP and premonitions.

  At twenty-two, she escaped society and moved to the wilderness of Central Alaska. She raised Malamutes, Husky dogs, and trained them as cross-country sled dogs. Twenty-years later, she was one of the first women, as a musher, to finish the Iditarod race to Nome. During the race she picked up a book as she passed the night in Fairbanks, “ESP, Fact or Fiction” by Eunice M. North.

  Two months later, she was working for the Institute as an ESP Research Coordinator, in residence.

  The four women had gathered on the garden lanai off Eunice’s suite. Eunice had set up maps of the Amazon River Valley and showed them where they would be looking for the rare orchids.

  The rough outline of an arrow, formed by beds of medicinal flora, did indeed point toward the Nazca Plaines of Peru. This fact would dominate their morning study. Tonya suggested the Peruvian symbols were purely religious in nature. Yet confessed that she had no psychic feelings, no thoughts on them at all, none whatsoever.

  Jackie placed her index finger on the arrow and traced an imaginary line up to Peru. “This is too bizarre,” she offered, “It’s not...just a coincidence.” She placed her hand on her temple and closed her eyes, “The symbols were made over two thousand years ago. I see a group of Aztec priests picking up stones one at a time and placing them in a two-wheeled basket, a cart, an alpaca, or a llama is pulling the cart. I’m observing this from a glass window above the plain. I’m being bounced around and the priests are dressed in a lot of silver that is reflecting the sun and it’s making me squint from the brightness.” And she opened her eyes and shook her head as if to clear her external vision.

  Lisa touched Jackie on the shoulder in a comforting gesture, “I saw it too, Jackie. How about you Tonya?”

  Tonya shook her head negatively, “No. I’m not getting anything. I think I need a whiff of that new orchid.”

  Eunice redirected their thinking, “Okay ladies, we’re going out to find these orchids. Is there a link to the Nazca plains and the herbal arrow?”

  All three said yes at the same time.

  “Well, can one of you tell me what it is? Please.”

  Lisa, always the spokesperson, “There’s a connection between the two, but if we are only going after the orchids, then... The Nazca carvings are insignificant to us.”

  “What city, or village, is at the arrow tip?” Asked Tonya.

  “Rio Branco.” Eunice responded, “But we want foliage, orchids. There’s a lot of that between the arrow’s head and White River, which is Rio Branco translated into English.”

  Jackie was looking at the maps, “Miss North, Just why are we flying into Sao Paulo? It’s like 1,800 miles to Rio Bronco.”

  Eunice sensed something was awry, intuitively, she called the g
irls together, “I’m walking around here thinking you girls know what’s going on, then, suddenly, nobody knows it’s Thursday? Come on ladies, let’s talk -- out loud, please.”

  The three psychics looked at each other. Eunice suspected they were communicating amongst themselves via ESP, by the way that their eyes darted one to another and their facial expressions were undergoing rapid changes. They were silently arguing, no doubt about it.

  Lisa looked at Eunice, “Miss North, as a group, we are not sure what is expected of us on this orchid hunt. We’re just confused. All three of us are getting images of spies and terrorists all around us in Sao Paulo. We’ve all seen, in our sixth sense, Margolova firing bullets at Jackie. And we’ve sensed her, Margolova, following us -- to Rio Branco. Yet, the CIA and their Brazilian contingent were supposed to eliminate her in Sao Paulo. The latest thing we are seeing is that Jim Morgan and his girlfriend Catherine is Margolova’s target, not so much the orchids. The real problem here is that we, the three of us, are being considered as expendable merchandise.”

  Eunice was listening intently. She had her elbows firm on the table, her head resting in the palms of her hands, she was intoxicated with their perception, “Go on, I’m sure there’s more.”

  “Yes,” Lisa countered, “...there is.”

  “Go ahead.” Eunice wanted everything between them open and above board, “What else?”

  Lisa continued, while Jackie and Tonya focused on reading Eunice’s thoughts, “Last night, we did some if-then scenarios. It’s kind of a game we can mentally play, if the person’s mind we are focusing on has an alternative plan. We can expose that plan by changing our own intent. Are you following?”

  “Yes. I am. Please go on.”

  “We did this rethink, because we, all three of us, sensed a physical harm coming to Jackie. We don’t think she’ll die. But Margolova will shoot her, if she goes.”

  Eunice was flabbergasted; Jackie and Tonya clearly read her shock at the words Lisa was openly orating.

  “Please continue, Lisa.” Eunice looked at Jackie with a maternal concern.

  Lisa began, “The second scenario we worked was that we declined to go...on the orchid hunt. Jim Morgan and Catherine Harris go, just the two of them... They want the adventure, and they want to be together...” Lisa paused.

  Eunice wasn’t enjoying the Morgan remarks, “And?” Eunice questioned.

  “They both get murdered by Margolova. She finds the orchids and sells them to some Hezbollah Monks in Lebanon.”

  “And if no one goes?” Eunice looked to the girls as a group for an answer.

  Lisa blushed, and continued, “Margolova will come here and kill a lot of people, including you.”

  “Me!” Eunice was appalled, “Why me?”

  “There’s one more situation we considered, Miss North.”

  “And, that is?” Eunice was overwhelmed with what she was hearing, she was angry, and wanted to stop the conversation, but would hear them out, “let’s hear it, Lisa. Don’t hold back anything. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Tonya interrupted, asking if she could use the bathroom. Jackie then asked for coffee, as did Lisa. Eunice called Mureatha for fresh coffee and requested some Danish, or whatever was available. Eunice herself was ready for a shot of whiskey...

  Lisa sat quietly waiting for the coffee, as she did so, she read some deep hurt feelings in Eunice’s thoughts. They were centered on Morgan and Harris, and how she was now going to host them as her guests and independently contracted employees. And Lisa felt a deep sadness for the woman whom she had grown to admire as her mentor and confidant.

  Eunice’s thoughts raced on, she had forgotten, in momentary lapse, that her thoughts were open to these mysterious women. And she had a quick flashback to that night when Morgan, so nervously, and yet so tenderly eased her out of her virginity...

  “Oh, that’s so beautiful.” Lisa spewed out the gentle words in a moment of pure caring for Eunice’s thought. And a sob and a teary eye followed Lisa’s infraction of Eunice’s private recollection.

  Eunice was startled by Lisa’s soft-spoken sentiment and began to apologize, awkwardly, for – thinking in public.

  Jackie was tuned in on Eunice, too. But her own thoughts raced off in a morbid direction – to her own night of deflowering. When her drunken boyfriend demanded that she suck his dick and then took her with hard thrusts in an insensitive display of macho aggressiveness. And it turned her stomach... She stood and moved toward Eunice’s bathroom, passing the returning, all smiles, Tonya, while trying to conceal her own, forming tears.

  Tonya returned to a now teary-eyed and hugging duo, Eunice and Lisa. “Oh-oh...” Tonya stopped short of the table, “What did I miss?” She candidly questioned.

  A double, “Nothing” came from the emotional sisters-in-arms as they composed from their platonic hug and sensuously exposed, reflective, moment.

  As Lisa went back to her seat, Eunice came to a sound conclusion that she was mentally depressed over Jimbo Morgan. With all her training, her doctorial degree in psychotherapy, and her vast understanding of social and mental well being, she was helplessly adrift in the sea of, lost love -- insanity.

  Jackie returned with a noticeable smudge of mascara highlighting her left eye. Her personal crisis was over, but the emotional flash had left the telltale badge of a deeply hidden negative emotion. Tonya tried to focus in on what had transpired but only found three blank minds that she couldn’t penetrate, no matter how intensely she tried.

  Mureatha entered with a silver tray laden heavy with Cajun biscuits oozing with homemade blueberry sauce and three heat insulated carafes of fresh ground Columbian coffee. Intuitively, she sensed some tragedy afoot. And left with an immediacy as quietly as she had unobtrusively just entered. Her innate sense of service told her to become invisible, fast, and she correctly did – she had a guest room to prepare, for two.

  Lisa took a roll and poured herself a cup of steaming mocha. Then, while adding three teaspoons of sugar, she asked Eunice, with a noted reluctance, if she should continue.

  Eunice answered mentally, “Yes, please.” Then, also in her mind asked, Tonya and Jackie, “Are you girls ready?” And they both nodded out in the affirmative.

  Lisa began, “Margolova has already ordered a hit on Morgan and Harris, to be done in Chicago -- immediately. We learned this, found this out, just this morning, from Tonya. It’s to be carried out by an Arab faction there, in Chicago, controlled out of New York City. They, the Arabs, don’t know that ... They ... Morgan and Harris, are in route to the Institute.”

  Tonya raised her hand to interrupt, “Margolova knows they are coming here.”

  Eunice was bewildered, “How do you know this, Tonya?”

  Tonya hung her head, “I just know.” Then added, “A girl working with North American Airlines is a member of the Aeroflot customer services. Aeroflot is a Russian airline. Her name is Sonja. She works out of Mexico. She has a list of names she follows, if one of the names buys a ticket, she calls it in, to Moscow. She’s a member of the Recheeka, a Russian underground of old school Communists. Margolova is a member of this leftist faction and gets money from it, gold Rands from South Africa. That’s all I’m getting right now.”

  Eunice had the entire dialogue down on her legal pad in shorthand. She looked to Lisa, “Lisa, you said you did another outcome read? What did that entail?”

  “Yes. We go straight to the orchid fields; the five of us. It takes us three days to find the wild orchids. Once found, Margolova shows up. But she doesn’t leave. This all becomes very vague when we go there mentally.” All three girls nodded in the positive. “But... We, the five of us, all return to the Institute.”

  Eunice was drained mentally and physically, “Thanks girls. Will you all be at the dinner tonight?”

  They all answered with an individual, vocalized, “Yes.”

  Tonya raised her hand, “Miss North?”

  Eunice had stood to escort them out, “
Yes Tonya.”

  “You will have an unexpected guest at the dinner tonight. I don’t know his name. He’s a very shadowy character...”

  Eunice looked to Lisa and Jackie, who both shrugged their shoulders in an, I don’t know gesture. Their meeting was over, the girls left, and Eunice walked to the lanai railing and looked out across the Potomac River. Her thoughts were confused as to what action to take next. But she definitely had to act. A meeting with John Alberquist was forced to the top of her priorities.

  Working with ESP gurus was taking a toll on her normal right-on disposition. And now, a shadowy mystery guest was coming to dinner...

  Chapter Fifteen

  Morgan and Catherine held hands as the DC-10 bounced down into Ronald Reagan Airport near Washington D.C. The Institute’s limo, one of four, stood out like an old gray battleship moored in the Hudson River mothball fleet. An elderly redcap loaded their bags and their uniformed driver, Sam, whisked them off on, what should have been, a twenty-minute drive to the front door of Eunice’s massive English Tudor home. It was 04:00 P.M., E.S.T., and traffic was getting heavy.

  Sam advised, “We’re going to stop at the Brazilian Embassy, Mr. Morgan. Do you both have your passports with you?”

  “Yes, we do.” Morgan spoke for both of them.

  When they arrived at Whitehaven Street an Embassy Consular met them outside. They were issued Vitem II, Visas and no money was exchanged. They were there for all of three minutes. To say the least, Catherine was impressed because she had stood in line with her father to obtain Visas in the past and knew that even her magnanimous father couldn’t pull those kind of strings.

  Morgan was impressed, too. But didn’t say anything. He guessed, correctly, that Eunice was once again manipulating his every move. He smiled at Catherine, then announced, “Wait ‘til the next stop, that’s where we’ll get a few shots in our ass.”

  Catherine smiled as a blush flashed across her cheeks; she didn’t know if he was serious, and began to openly wonder, “You’re kidding. Right?”