The doctor came back, towing a younger Chinese, hardly more than a teenager, dressed in a white laboratory coat. The doctor faced them with a somber look. "I'm sorry. We have a problem." He glanced at the youth.
The boy hung his head, avoiding their eyes. "The test tube dropped. Broke," he said in a low, barely audible voice. "No more blood sample."
"Shit!" Burke could only shake his head. How the hell could he have been so careless? That left no way to disprove the test results.
The lab technician bit at his lower lip. He was breathing hard, trembling, obviously a nervous wreck. "It's the truth. I'm very sorry."
Burke saw Sydney Pinkleton making a mental note of the name on the boy's badge. "Let me go take a look at the police report, and I'll get back to you," Pinkleton said. "Will you be at the Pearl?"
Lori nodded. "If we can get rooms there."
It was late afternoon by the time they arrived back in Kowloon. A sympathetic manager at the Pearl Hotel provided them with connecting rooms. He had already turned over "Mr. Charles'" personal effects to representatives of the U. S. Consulate General. He wasn't aware, of course, that they were from the CIA.
Burke ordered a bottle of Blue Nun from room service and they sat at the table in Lori's room.
"Did you give a report to Sam Allen while I was in the room at the hospital?" Lori asked.
"You might as well know," he said, agitation in his voice. "I talked with Hawk Elliott as soon as I got back to Washington from Israel. He told me to butt out, said I was no longer needed. He didn't even want to listen to what I'd found out in Tel Aviv. Said Cam hadn't reported anything to him and they would have to start the whole investigation over from scratch."
"That's stupid," she said. "I'm sure you could tell them a lot more than what they know now."
"My sentiments exactly. But I'm afraid Mr. Elliott lets his animosity toward Cam get the better of his good judgment."
"They never got along."
Burke sipped at the wine. Should he go all the way and tell her about Jabberwock? Now that he thought about it, this accident was exactly what Cam had feared. In the morning he would have to carry out Cam's instructions and call on Mr. Luk at the East Asia Bank. Or would it be better for both him and Lori to just forget the whole thing, put Hong Kong behind them, and go back and try to pick up their lives where they had left off?
Lori Quinn had a perceptive and analytical mind and obviously saw right through his dilemma. "You're trying to decide what to tell me," she said. "If it has any possible bearing on my father's death, I want to know."
He considered for a moment giving her the whole story, but what to do about Jabberwock was his problem. There was no need to drag her into it. She had enough on her mind with worrying about her father's death, the details of getting him home, a funeral, and winding up his affairs.
He shook his head and took a long swallow of wine. "No," he lied, "I was just thinking about that bastard, Elliott. As far as he's concerned, if you aren't a CIA insider, you don't have enough sense to run a kindergarten operation."
"He knows his business," Lori said. "But I think he goes around half the time with blinders on."
The phone suddenly jangled on the bedside table.
Lori picked up the phone and heard her godfather’s voice.
"Lori, this is Sydney. I have just gone over the police report and spoken with the investigating officer."
"What did you find, Uncle Sydney?"
"Nothing helpful. The report states rather flatly that the cause of the accident was driving under the influence of alcohol. The car reeked with the odor. Of course, that of itself is hardly conclusive. An open, nearly empty bottle was found on the floor. The officer said it was dark and rainy, on a hill. There were no witnesses."
"I still can't, won't believe he was drunk," she said sadly.
"I know. I can't blame you. But it appears there isn't much chance of proving otherwise. The young lab chap was bothersome. Terribly nervous. But he had lost face. For a Chinese, that's disastrous."
"The question is, was it his second blunder?" she said.
"Yes. I know what you mean. If I turn up anything else, I'll get back to you."
"Thanks, Uncle Sydney. You're a dear. Let's keep in touch."
"By all means."
Burke looked across as she hung up the phone. "No luck?"
"No luck." She repeated what Pinkleton had told her. "What do you think really happened, Burke?"
"I don't know. It might help if that damned Sam Allen was concerned enough to do a little follow-up checking."
She made a sudden decision. "I'm going to call him."
A few minutes later, she had Allen on the phone. "Were you aware that my father was being followed in Hong Kong by two Bulgarians?"
"Negative," said Allen. "Who told you that, Burke Hill?"
"No, Sydney Pinkleton, an old and valued friend of my father and I."
"Don't get carried away with what the Brits tell you, Miss Quinn. From what I know of the case your father was involved in, there would be no reason whatever for any old East Bloc types to be interested in him. The SIS would like us to help them keep tabs on every petty little network they turn up around here. We've got more important things to do."
"I should think you would want to do some follow-up to make certain there was no foul play involved in Dad's death. We asked for a re-check of the blood-alcohol test and found that the lab technician at the hospital had lost the rest of the blood sample."
"He did, eh? I'm not surprised. There's a lot of incompetence around here. Look, Miss Quinn, I know it pains you to think about it, but Cameron Quinn was a hard-driving, hard-drinking case officer. A brilliant intelligence mind, to be sure. But he shouldn't have been running around the island at night, driving on treacherous, unfamiliar roads. He could have had a driver if it was official business. He pushed his luck one time too many. It happens to most of us sooner or later."
Lori slammed down the phone, steaming. "I might as well have been talking to that door over there."
Burke put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a reassuring hug. "It hasn't been a very good day all the way around, Lori. Let's go find some dinner and then try to get a good night's sleep. You have a lot of arrangements to make in the morning, and I've got a little business to attend to."
Wherever it might lead, he had an obligation to Cam to go by the East Asia Bank on Queen's Road Central and see what Mr. Luk had for him.
Chapter 24
A summer storm had swept out of Mexico early on Monday morning, swiftly crossed the Gulf and lashed the coast east of New Orleans. Normally it would have pushed on up the Atlantic Seaboard and out into the ocean, but this one encountered a stubborn high pressure cell in the southern part of Alabama and Georgia and stalled out. It had steadily battered the Florida panhandle with wind and rain before beginning to subside around noon on Wednesday. The Jabberwock team had been confined to their quarters as the trees on Oyster island swayed perilously and an anxious Robert Jeffries checked periodically to make sure his Cherokee Lance was still securely anchored. Except for that, the storm did not overly concern him, as it gave him an opportunity to get most of the mountings completed for the truck's electronics. But Ted and Goldman fretted constantly over the delay in setting up the test firing.
Blythe Ingram coolly observed the interplay between the group's personalities as the tedious hours stretched on. He equated it with an elastic band constantly strained toward the breaking point, liable to lash back at any moment. The team, he noted, was not really a team at all, despite the planners' hopes. It was three discrete individuals linked in a common enterprise. They appeared to work together adequately, but with no sense of camaraderie. He felt quite sure that under certain circumstances, they would be quite capable of turning on each other with the dispassion of a black widow spider devouring her mate. He wondered what went through their minds when they contemplated the destruction they planned. Then he had a sudden thought. Could it be much different than that faced by the launch crew in a Minuteman missile silo? They trained constantly to unleash a weapon that could incinerate thousands of people whose only crime was to have been born on the wrong side of the ideological tracks. If nothing else, this was certainly a unique experiment in group dynamics.