Beware the Jabberwock (Post Cold War Thrillers)

by Chester D. Campbell

  The CI chief rose from the table and stared down with an indulgent look. "I don't mind telling you, Hill, I think this thing stems from one obvious source. I’m sure our colleague, Mr. Quinn, disagrees. At any rate, there are too many unanswered, and seemingly unanswerable, questions. If you can help get to the bottom of it, I'm sure Kingsley Marshall would be grateful."

  With that, he turned and left.

  Chapter 11

  As if on cue, a smiling blonde waitress approached the table. "Would you gentlemen like to order now?"

  "I could certainly use something to cap off that sterling performance," Quinn said with mock seriousness. "How about you, Burke?"

  They ordered sandwiches and the waitress retreated to the kitchen.

  Burke frowned. "The sonofabitch doesn't trust me."

  Quinn dismissed, the thought with the wave of a beefy hand. "Hawk Elliott doesn't trust anybody. I'm only a little better. It's endemic to the territory."

  "Yeah, I remember working with counterintelligence types at the Bureau. They were all like Hoover, expecting to find commies under every rock. I thought maybe Elliott's problem was my FBI file."

  Quinn cleared his throat and glanced at the ceiling. "To tell you the truth, I didn't see any need to resurrect that matter with Hawk. It would only serve to delay things, and we don't have enough time as it is. I took the liberty of removing a few pages from the file before passing it on to him."

  "Do you think that was wise?"

  "There's no way he'll ever find out about it. Why don't you give me the short and sweet version. "

  Burke got a faraway look in his eyes. "It started back in the late sixties when I was summoned to Washington for a meeting in the Director's office. I found Hoover there with Assistant Director Bill Sullivan. After we sat down, Hoover got right to the point. He was unhappy that the FBI had never successfully infiltrated La Cosa Nostra, as he called it. The Mafia. Sullivan had proposed a scheme that might work. I would publicly resign from the FBI. Then I was to give the appearance of turning sour, pull off some crimes. I had to be careful not to get caught but obvious enough that my reputation would get around. Then I would work to get myself accepted by the mob."

  Quinn leaned forward, obviously intrigued by this turn of events. "How were you to maintain contact?"

  "By phone. Only to Sullivan, using a private number. He and Hoover would be the only ones to know the truth. There was to be absolute secrecy."

  Quinn frowned. "Fine for them. Bad for you. That left you strictly out in the cold."

  "That's how it worked out. In the first place, I had real problems going the crime route. My momma didn't raise her boy to be a crook. But since I had the utmost faith in Hoover's judgment, I went at it with a vengeance, robbing banks in Kansas City. It was so easy I hit one twice. Then I worked my way to Vegas and began nibbling away at the fringes of the mob. I met a few wiseguys and tried to get a toehold, but the lack of an Italian background was a major drawback. Despite trying every ploy I could come up with, I never managed to get on the inside. I finally gave up and came back in early 1972.”

  "I trust Hoover didn't take kindly to that," Quinn said.

  "When I got back to Washington, he refused to see me, wouldn't take my calls. I finally posted myself at the entrance to Harvey's, one of Hoover's favorite luncheon spots. When he came in, I stepped up and pleaded with him for a meeting to talk things over. He pursed his lips in his best bulldog scowl, frowned up at me and snapped, 'The FBI has no place for failures.'"

  Quinn just shook his head. "Let's leave the past buried. It's a new day, a new chapter."

  Burke sat back in his chair. "If that's the case, let's get on with it. Are you going to clue me in on this deal now? Or do I have to prick my finger and sign a blood oath on the tablecloth first?"

  Quinn gave a rattling laugh that shook his body and drew stares from the table across the way. He lowered his voice. "You crack me up. Part of me hoped you would give that bastard Elliott a real zinger. But the other, practical, part prayed that you'd keep your cool and be satisfied with a polite brush-off. Which, thank God, you were. This thing is my last chance to redeem myself with the seventh floor."

  "The executive suite, I presume?"

  "You presume correctly. Hawk would like to fry my balls. But my instincts tell me this could be a very major operation. If we manage to deal with it successfully, I'll have the Director and General Palmer toasting me like a fraternity brother."

  Burke raised an eyebrow. "Anything in it for me?"

  "Hell, we might even make Elliott eat his words and offer you a job as a special case officer."

  "Thanks, but no thanks." He folded his arms, shifting into business mode. "Okay. What are we after?"

  Quinn leaned forward and lowered his voice even further, forcing Burke to do likewise. "About three weeks ago, the NSA intercepted a phone call from Singapore to a company in Kansas City. The caller mentioned an apparent operational code word called Jabberwock. Three days later, another intercept operator picked up the same code word in a call from Hong Kong to Berlin."

  Burke scratched his beard in wonder. "Those electronic snoops must really be combing the haystacks."

  "They won't reveal operational details, of course. But I gather these calls were netted in sweeps while they were searching for something else. An analyst noted the repeat of the same code word and passed it along to his supervisor. It was a week after the first call before the DCI received the information from NSA."

  "Long enough for the trail to go cold," Burke said, nodding. "Say, Jabberwock sounds awfully familiar, but I can't—"

  "Ever read Through the Looking Glass?"

  "Of course. Lewis Carroll. Yeah, I remember. Part of it was printed backwards in the book. You had to read it with a mirror. 'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!'"

  "Right. It's advice well taken."

  Their conversation was interrupted by the waitress bringing their sandwiches. Then Quinn continued.

  "The company in Kansas City was Rush Communications. I checked on the director of security there, found he was a former FBI agent named Toby Callahan."

  "Toby?" Burke broke into a half-smile of disbelief. "We worked together in the New York Field Office years ago. He was on the Goon Squad, too. One of your compatriots, as I recall. Wouldn't lift a finger on St. Patrick's Day, except to hoist a huge glass of Irish whiskey."

  "That's him. A true Hibernian. I told him I was with State Department Security. We were checking out an employee of the Singapore embassy who had made a call to this Kansas City number. He said he'd look into it and get back to me."

  "Toby was meticulous. I'll bet he checked you out."

  "He did. I gave him the State Department number and an extension that rings at our office. Anyway, he said the number was a private line on the desk of their vice president in charge of research and development. Only on that day, May seventh, Mr. Robert Jeffries was at a business meeting in Hawaii. His secretary said no one to her knowledge had used his office that day."

  "Someone sure as hell did if NSA picked up the conversation. What about the caller?" Burke asked.

  "He used a phone booth in a hotel on Orchard Road in Singapore."

  "Dead end," said Burke.

  Quinn munched on a bite of his sandwich, then looked up. "Right. The other call came from an office in Hong Kong. Our people there tell me it's one of those setups like we have over here, a reception area and one room offices. There's a receptionist-secretary, takes everybody's calls, types letters and such. Her records showed the call was made by a man who claimed to be a salesman. Was only there a few days. He gave a false name and a nonexistent London address."

  "She remember much about him?"

  "That's what I intend to find out. The heavy-handed bastard who interrogated her really blew it. She got angry and refused to tell him anything further. Threatened to call the local police. As soon as I get you squared away, I'm heading for Hong Kong."

  Burke frowned at the bite he
had just taken. Raising the top slice of bread, he took a toothpick and lifted off an intruding slice of dill pickle as though it were an old shoe caught on a fishing line.

  He glanced back at Quinn. "Anything from the Berlin end?"

  "The number led us to the offices of I. F. Dreisbach. They're a shady dealer in military hardware. We know they've handled some transshipments for the Israelis. We suspect they've been dealing with guys like Qaddafi as well, though there's no solid proof. A discreet inquiry there turned up a flat denial. Nobody knew of any calls from Hong Kong the second week of May."

  "And you couldn't push it too hard without tipping your hand."

  "Exactly. It goes into the file as another question mark. Hawk wasn't kidding when he said there were too many unanswered questions."

  Burke found the details of the intercepts interesting, but without reference to the content, they held little meaning. "What were the conversations about?"

  Quinn glanced around him. Two other tables were occupied now. "I'll show you later," he said.

  By the time he had described the shooting on Cyprus and the subsequent meeting in Kingsley Marshall's office, they had finished their lunch. Quinn pushed Burke's money away and paid the bill.

  "I told you you wouldn't get rich doing this," he said. "But all your expenses will be taken care of from here on."

  "Thanks."

  Burke was hardly a wealthy man, but he wasn't concerned about the money. His photography business had done rather well the past couple of years. As they walked toward the car, he picked up the conversation at the point Quinn had ended his story. "So I got drafted because your division was all tied up chasing down terrorists?"

  "That's about it. As you know, the Russian president is coming here for a summit next month. And the Canadians are having a little pre-summit gala in Toronto the Saturday before. We got orders from the White House to start monitoring every known terrorist group."

  Burke nodded. "Not the type the President's Chief of Staff would like on the invitation list."

  "Right. They're planning a big celebration in Toronto. It'll be on the plaza in front of the New City Hall. A parade with marching bands, the whole nine yards."

  Cam unlocked the door, and Burke swung onto the front seat. Accustomed to riding in an open Jeep, he wasn’t prepared for the heat of a closed vehicle sitting in the sun. "Whew!" He shook his head. "A little air, please." He leaned back and took a deep breath. "I remember reading about the Toronto deal. Honoring the leaders for their roles as peacemakers, as I recall. Those Canadians know how to get good press."

  Quinn switched the air conditioner on high and backed out of the parking space, turning abruptly onto the street. "Our people are strung out everywhere, beating the bushes. They don't want any problems in Canada, and we damned sure don't want some fringe group taking a shot at the Russians in Washington."

  Where the former Soviet leader was concerned, Burke thought, they weren’t worried about left-wing terrorist factions. The major worry was renegade Afghans or dissidents from one of the republics. The American President, however, would be fair game for any number of groups.

  It took only a short time to drive the few blocks to the unmarked brick office building in Arlington where the CIA maintained offices involved in recruiting and training. Quinn ushered Burke into the lobby and showed his ID card to a uniformed security guard. Burke picked up a visitor's pass and they headed for the elevator.

  They entered an office marked "Personnel Processing." Burke spent the better part of the next hour filling out forms, getting fingerprinted, photographed, voice printed. He felt like a stuffed bear being tossed about a kindergarten circle. Finally, he signed the security oath and listened to another caution about its significance.

  Once outside the building, Burke dusted his hands together. “What a hassle. Sure takes tons of crap to satisfy the bureaucrats."

  "You just experienced a little taste of it. They say everything has its purpose. I have a feeling the purpose of a lot of this shit is to provide jobs for constituents of those big spenders across the river. Anyway, you are now officially in. We'll go over to Lori's office and I'll finish briefing you on Jabberwock."

  "Lori? Your daughter?"

  "She runs a travel agency. Does a damned good job of it, if I may say so." His pride showed in the cherubic smile that crossed his face as he unlocked the car. "She put in a few years in Europe with the Agency. Worked under cover as a writer, and then as a travel agent. She enjoyed that so much she decided to do it in the real world."

  "She's got no CIA connection now?"

  "Only a business one. Normally we use our own planes or military aircraft. If we have to use airline travel, she books it. The bills are paid through dummy accounts that provide no trace back to Langley. She has connections in every corner of the globe. She can get tickets booked from different cities, by different agencies. Then we pick up what we need, wherever we need it."

  Chapter 12

  Clipper Cruise & Travel was located in a modern brick and glass office building in Rosslyn, just across the Key Bridge from Georgetown. Its distinctive logo, the rakish lines of a majestic nineteenth century clipper ship, appeared above an entrance that faced the sweeping Potomac. Paintings of some of the more famous craft—"Nightingale," "Witch of the Wave," "Cutty Sark," and the first large Baltimore clipper, "Ann McKim"—graced the walls.

  Quinn led Burke past a row of glassed-in cubicles where attractive young women called travel counselors assisted clients with their trip plans. At the end of the row stood the "Captain's Cabin," with a porthole in the door instead of a window, the office of Clipper's distaff president, Lorelei Quinn. The call of the sea must have been irresistible, Burke thought.

  As he soon learned, the grandmotherly woman at the desk outside Lori's office was much more than a mere secretary. For one thing, she had a top secret security clearance. With the title of executive assistant, Brenda Beasley was the only other person in the office privy to the CIA connection. Should Lori not be available, she took calls on the secure line for emergency assistance. A kindly looking, white-haired woman, she reminded Burke of someone from a Norman Rockwell painting.

  Before Brenda could announce their arrival, Lori spotted her father through the open door and strode out to meet them.

  "Come in, Dad," she said. Holding out her hand to Burke, she spoke in a lilting, low-pitched voice that seemed to have an almost physical charm. "You've got to be Mr. Hill."

  He wasn't prepared for this. The cute, perky kid he remembered had indeed grown up. Now a striking young woman, she had long dark hair and impish eyes that lent a quality of mystery to her face. Not a pageant type beauty, but a woman with an attraction far beyond skin deep. It reminded him of the only other time he had encountered that name, while cruising down the Rhine west of Wiesbaden. The Lorelei Rock stood on a cliff near St. Goar. According to local legend, a young maiden had thrown herself into the river in despair over an unfaithful lover. She became a siren whose voice lured fishermen to their destruction. Lorelei Quinn's voice might be capable of that, he thought.

  "Mr. Hill was my dad," he said with a grin. "I'm Burke. Don't make me sound as old as Cam. This Santa Claus beard is just to throw young ladies off guard."

  Her smile turned contrite. "You'll have to forgive me if I confess that I couldn't really remember what you looked like. I recall your coming for dinner a time or two. But I'm afraid I was paying more attention to Barbie dolls then than to my Dad's friends."

  Burke grimaced with a shrug of resignation that let his shoulders sag as though a stack of years had been dumped on them. Maybe he wasn't as old as Cam, but it still left him a good twenty years older than Lori. "You're certainly not the little girl I remembered. Knowing your mother, I should have guessed you'd turn out to be a lovely lady."

  "Well, thank you, Burke." She said it with sincerity. "Now what have you two been up to?"

  "I got him initiated into the Hawk Elliott fan club," Quinn said with a chuckle.
"If your conference room isn't in use, honey, I'd like to borrow it a while to go over some things with Burke."

  Burke's eyes followed with unaccustomed interest as she walked over to a door that led off one side of her office. He found something strangely appealing about the way she moved, totally feminine, graceful, but showing the quiet confidence of a woman with a firm grip on her place in life.

  "Take as long as you like," she said.

  Quinn led the way into a paneled room walled on one side with windows that faced the imposing Washington skyline. It featured a long, oval-shaped hardwood table.

  "I see why you're so proud of your daughter," Burke said when the door was shut behind them. "If I was a few years younger—"

  "Who said he wasn't as old as Santa Claus?"

  "Hell, I've been living like a hermit for so long, I might as well be."

  "Haven't there been any females in your life since the divorce?"

  Burke's eyes dropped as a wistful look came over his face. "Yeah, there was one. A girl I met up in Alaska, shortly before I left there."

  Burke had saved virtually all the money he had made in the oil fields, accumulating a sizable nest egg, and was trying to decide what his next move should be. He had gone to Anchorage to check on some prospects when it happened, one of those chance encounters that seemed almost a part of destiny. Ginger Lawrence, a vacationing teacher from Idaho, stood dejectedly in the hotel lobby, looking like a waif abandoned by the world.

  When Burke asked if he could be of help, she reluctantly admitted to having overslept and been left behind by her tour group. On a whim, he volunteered to show her the town. It turned out to be a thoroughly delightful junket. She was ten years his junior, but their interests dovetailed on several counts. He was an expert photographer, she an avid amateur. He was a student of history, she a teacher. Both were partial to the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff (a taste for Russian composers he had cultivated listening to tapes during Alaska's endless winter nights).