"What else went wrong?"
"The worst was yet to come. When you travel as a tour guide, you get to know the people in your groups pretty well. Some of them like to talk a lot, some hardly say a word. And you usually find one or two who can be counted on to cause problems. I had taken aside the ones I thought needed to be told. I explained that we had a French gentleman who wanted to join us for the remainder of the tour, which was going back through Vienna. I told them he was a retiring sort who didn't like to be fussed over. I said we shouldn't bother him with any comments or questions about his being new on the tour."
"They didn't take your warning to heart?"
"On the contrary, I had no problem with them. I gave him his badge and brought him over to where our group had gathered before going out to board the bus. I was checking my list to be sure everyone was there when a little old lady who hadn't said two words the whole tour walked up to him and stared at his badge. 'Who are you?' she said right in front of our local tourism contact. 'You haven't been with us before.'"
"Was the contact a security type?"
"Undoubtedly. He went over to a telephone to make a call. I grabbed one of my good guys and asked him to create a diversion. He didn't know what was going on, but I knew he was sharp enough to get the picture. He started a loud argument that drew attention away from me and my scientist. I whisked him out a rear door."
From stories she had done in her newspaper days, Lori was familiar with the river boats that traveled up and down the Danube. They carried on commerce between the countries of Central Europe, operating between East and West. She had heard from other CIA people that some of the captains could be hired to transport illicit cargo. At the riverfront, she located a French-speaking German boat captain who agreed to take on two passengers for a sizable fee. Using a French passport she carried, Lori posed as the captain's mistress, while the Russian traveled as an extra crewman. After several close calls with river patrols, the captain managed to get them up the Danube, which marked the Czech-Hungarian border, and into Austria.
"I can see why that would have been your last Agency assignment," Burke said. "Sounds like you did a helluva job getting him out, though."
"The operation was a success, but I blew my cover. And I blew my job with the travel agency. They didn't take too kindly to having a tour group abandoned in Budapest."
"I'd think not. But the story explains why you insisted I keep that extra passport handy."
"Right. I'd have been in deep trouble if I hadn't had mine. After that I decided to go back home and give the travel business a try. I found the Agency had been looking into the need for an outside travel service, and they agreed to help me get started."
Clipper Cruise & Travel became an almost instant success. She worked hard to put it on a firm footing, then began a slow but steady expansion. After her marriage a couple of years later, that growing success turned out to be the Achilles' heel of the relationship with her husband. It revealed an ego problem that ultimately wrecked her marriage. Her husband had turned abusive when he couldn't accept a wife who was more successful in business.
The most startling thing she revealed to Burke, though, was the real meaning of her earlier comment that she had been born into the clandestine world. She had learned only recently, following her mother's death, that she was not the natural child of Cameron and Julia Quinn.
"You remember Dad saying that I was born in Hungary? He had been in contact with some of the leaders of the uprising. One was a young economist, early thirties, about the same age as Dad. His wife was pregnant and went into labor in the midst of all the turmoil. When the Russians began their crackdown, he asked Dad to look after the baby should anything happen. The AVO — Hungarian secret police — captured him and came to the hospital for his wife. Mother was in the same hospital, on the same ward. She had just undergone a hysterectomy. With the help of a friend in the British MI6, and a cooperative doctor, they got the records switched to show that Mrs. Julia Quinn had given birth to a baby girl. Me. My real parents were never heard from again."
"So you're really Hungarian," Burke said, intrigued.
She grinned. "Actually, but not really. I'm as American as apple pie. I have an American birth certificate, and no records exist anywhere to argue otherwise."
"Okay. Granted, you're one hundred percent Yankee. But you have what I now see as a Hungarian characteristic, something that intrigued me from the moment I saw you at your office last week. Sort of a sultry, gypsy-like quality. Mystery woman."
"Now you're embarrassing me," she said, lowering her eyes, giving her head a shake.
"I didn't mean to. It's really very charming. Now I understand something else, too. I wondered how a good Catholic like Cam could have only one child."
"Yes, I'd love to have had some brothers and sisters, but it wasn't possible." She glanced at her watch. "I think that's enough true confessions for awhile. We'd better try to get a little shut-eye before we reach the South China Sea."
The next time the stewardess came down the aisle, she could see nothing but two soundly sleeping passengers, one with dark hair tumbled onto the other's shoulder. Crossing the International Date Line, they lost a day as they slept.
The pregnant-looking Boeing jet swept down over the teeming harbor in the early afternoon, skimming above its conglomeration of ferries, ancient junks, ocean-going container ships, and lighters that carried cargo to and from the occasional freighter. Smoothly it slipped onto the long ribbon of concrete at Kai Tak Airport. Lori and Burke quickly checked through customs and immigration and headed out to the line of taxis. They went directly to Ruttonjee Hospital in the Wan Chai area west of Shau Kei Wan.
At the hospital, they were shunted about with bureaucratic dispassion, winding up in a small waiting area. When the clerical collar came through the door, Burke knew the news was not good.
"Mrs. Quinn?" said the chaplain tentatively. He obviously took Burke for her husband. "Mr. Logan Charles' daughter?"
Lori gave a brief nod, her eyes beginning to glisten.
"I regret to have to tell you that your father passed away about thirty minutes ago. If there is anything I can do to be of assistance… "
Lori looked around at Burke, then closed her eyes tightly and bit at her lower lip. She could have screamed, pounded her fists against the bearer of such hideous news, filled her handkerchief with a flood of tears. He would not have blamed her. After the conversation with Hawk Elliott, Burke had been prepared for the worst. He wasn't sure Lori had been. But as he put his arm around her, he felt her body stiffen, and then she opened her eyes.
"I want to see him," she said in a steady voice.
The chaplain took a deep breath. "He's rather badly battered. It would be better to remember him as you last saw him, rather than in his present condition."
"Don't you need someone to identify the body?" she asked with calm practicality.
The chaplain was obviously unprepared for her reaction. "Uh… that won't be necessary, Mrs. Quinn. There's a gentleman from the U. S. Consulate General there now."
There was a determination in her eyes that defied any opposition. "I want to see my father," she repeated.
He shot a pleading glance at Burke, who offered no help, then nodded his acquiescence. "Come with me."
They followed him through a maze of corridors and onto an elevator to the next floor. He finally stopped outside a room where a serious looking man with tousled brown hair, late-forties, stood talking with a white-clad Chinese doctor. The man turned and gave Lori a knowing look.