He walked up the hallway to the front and found a short, heavyset man with dark skin browsing the paintings. A black beret was pulled down above his plump face. Burke turned to the girl in the flowery dress. "It was beautiful, but I'm afraid it's a bit out of my price range."
She shrugged. "I understand. Look around some more if you'd like. You'll find a number that are less expensive."
He looked around for a few minutes, then thanked the girl for her trouble and left. He decided to wander about the area a short time longer before taking a taxi back to the hotel. It would soon be time to call Cam in Hong Kong. After reaching the plaza, he looked around and spotted the short man in the black beret walking off in the opposite direction. Was this another bad sign, or was he falling victim to paranoia?
It was after five by the time he got through to Quinn's hotel. He had scoured his room for listening devices, finding none. He didn't want to alert his trackers that he was onto them, however, so he avoided taking the phone apart to check it. Nevertheless, he had to assume it was bugged. He used a public phone in the hotel lobby to place the call to Hong Kong. When the Pearl Hotel operator answered, Burke asked for Logan Charles, the name Quinn was using. The phone rang several times, and he had begun to worry that something might have happened when a tired voice came on the line.
"Yes?"
"Hey, wake up! It's just after five o'clock in Tel Aviv. You been sleeping on the job?"
"Oh, hello, Burke. I must have dozed off. I've been attempting to keep my eyes open until you called. How's it going there?"
"So far, so good. I'm supposed to get a call tomorrow afternoon with the answer, if it's available."
"You'll get it. You can count on that."
"He's got a computer problem to work out, but he said he would do what he could. What have you come up with?"
There was a slight pause. "I've got good news and bad news."
Burke frowned. "Oh, oh. Let's have the good first. Then maybe I can stomach the bad."
"Well, it seems our salesman came here from Singapore."
"Bingo."
"There's more. He talked about making another call, to someone in Lahaina."
"Lahaina… Maui… Hawaii?" Burke's heart quickened a beat. Robert Jeffries, the Rush Communications man, was in Hawaii on business at the time of the first call. Was he still there three days later?
"You've got it. I was going to call your old colleague and look into it, but the time difference made it too early there." He paused as if checking the clock. "It's eleven here. That would be ten in the morning. I'll give him a call after I hang up. But it sounds like we may have a real break."
"Great. Now, what about the bad news?"
Quinn's voice turned cold. "I'm being followed."
"What? Who would—"
"They're good. Two guys. I didn't pick them up at first. When I did, I decided to see if I could find out something about them."
"Did you?"
"Fortunately, an old friend from another organization called to warn me. They're Bulgarian."
"Bulgarian?" That was a shocker.
"Right. Used to work for the Bulgarian Intelligence Service."
"What would a couple of — you said 'used to'?"
"He thinks it unlikely they still do, with the way things have changed over there. Anyway, I haven't been involved in anything in their neck of the woods for a good while."
"Then why would they be tailing you?"
"Beats the hell out of me, but I don't like it at all. Just remember what I told you to do."
"Hey, you'll be okay." Cam could take care of those kinds of problems. He could disappear as quickly as a girl in a magician's box. At least he could have in the old days. “I hate to mention it,” Burke added, “but I may have picked up a tail, too.”
He told Cam about the bushy-browed, hook-nosed Arab he had spotted twice.
“There’s no way anyone should know you’re there except on a photographic assignment,” Cam said.
“Unless the people involved are who you don’t think they are.” He avoided using the term Mossad, in case the call was being intercepted. Cam would know what he meant.
“I still can’t believe that.”
"I should have an answer a little earlier tomorrow,” Burke said. “I'll call soon as I get the word."
He hung up the phone and stroked his heard, deep in thought. Why would a couple of former communist agents be tailing Cam Quinn in Hong Kong? Did it tie in somehow with the Mossad's interest in himself? If it were the Mossad, it must have something to do with Jabberwock. But what? What connection could there be between former East Block agents and the man from Rush Communications in Kansas City? None of it made sense. As he realized jet lag had begun to get a grip on him, the only thing that seemed to make sense now was to satisfy that gnawing in his stomach and crawl into bed. Maybe tomorrow things would be clearer.
Chapter 19
The noon-day sun blistered the island with its merciless glow. The Jabberwock team and its overseers had Sundays off, but Gary Overmyer could find little to get excited about on this bleak little patch of sand. He was almost sorry he had agreed to be confined to the training site for three weeks. But, considering the money…
He wore his usual jungle fatigues. Dark stains of sweat circled his armpits. Ever the soldier, a gun belt and holstered pistol hung from his waist as he wandered down to the end of the island away from the buildings. There he found what appeared to be the remnants of a firing range. A rotting wooden post with a crossbar stood in front of a ten-foot high mound of deteriorating sandbags near the beach. He figured it had held a silhouette target, but whatever had once been there was long since obliterated by years of weather, wind, and salt water spray.
As Overmyer stood at the edge of the beach, with the noise of the breakers rolling in behind him, the crude cross conjured up memories of his boyhood in South Carolina. He remembered being dressed up in his Sunday best and sent scampering off to the little white church down the road, where the cross for a steeple was always the first thing he saw. That had been back in the fifties, an innocent time and a much simpler life.
He had lost his innocence and been initiated into the brutality of the real world when he went to Vietnam with the Army's Green Berets in the late sixties. He had survived more missions behind enemy lines than he cared to count, harrowing night sorties that required the employment of every ruse in the book, plus many an abuse that no one dared put on paper. Silent treks beneath a jungle canopy, constantly straining to hear the least telltale sound that could mean an ambush. Sometimes even more threatening were the villages where a kid at play or a woman with her wash might suddenly become an armed enemy.
He had stayed in the Army for a while after the war, but the built-up stresses eventually imploded in his head, landing him in a psychiatric ward. After his release, he returned to civilian life, tried but failed to stick it out with a succession of jobs until he turned to writing. It seemed at last he had found his niche. He wrote Vietnam War stories for adventure magazines and took on occasional freelance nonfiction assignments. But he always hung onto his Special Forces roots. He was invited to lecture on a few occasions at the Special Forces School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. His biggest thrill, however, came when he took to the woods to practice his stealth on animals or any wayward humans with the misfortune to happen along. He stayed proficient with rifle and handgun, and though he never really harmed any of his quarry, he had scared the living bejesus out of many an unsuspecting camper or hiker. The sudden appearance of a combat soldier in full camouflage dress, his features darkened with face paint, automatic weapon at the ready, was enough to terrify the most blasé trekker. He likely would have ended up in jail except that no one had ever managed to catch him. He pulled his maverick maneuvers on a random basis, and never twice in the same location.