"Mr. Hill," he said, "how can I be of service?"
Burke wanted to be sure he was dealing with the right man. "You're Mr. Luk?"
"Yes. Were you referred by someone?"
"I was told to give you this," Burke said, handing over the torn piece of currency.
Mr. Luk glanced at the bill, then looked gravely back at Burke. "What I have for you is in a safe. Please wait here and I shall return shortly."
He hurried out the door, leaving Burke to face a rather barren room and ponder what Cam Quinn had bequeathed him. Obviously it concerned Jabberwock, and he had been told in no uncertain terms to forget that mysterious business. But he had begun to harbor some serious misgivings about Cam's death, whether it might indeed have a connection to Jabberwock.
Mr. Luk returned a few minutes later with a large sealed envelope. Written across the front in Cameron Quinn's distinctive scrawl was the instruction: "Open and read immediately."
"My office is next door," said Mr. Luk. "I will be there if you need me."
With that, he left the room and closed the door. Burke tore open the envelope and removed the lengthy letter, which covered several sheets of the Pearl Hotel's pale blue stationery. It was dated "Monday morning." He began to read:
Burke:
If you get this, it will mean, of course, that something has happened to me. After my experience with the Bulgarians yesterday, that is a distinct possibility. I hope to elude them when I leave here today, but the fact remains that they obviously know why I am here. They know that I called on Miss Amy Lee at the Causeway Bay Business Centre. I was not able to spend as much time with her as I had hoped, since she had previous commitments. But I plan to talk with her again this afternoon. I warned her not to mention what we talked about, in case anyone asked.
She told me the man who placed the call to Berlin identified himself as Emerson Dinwiddie, a sales representative with Abercrombie & Cox in London. The firm and address were fictitious. She described him as tall, with dark hair, well dressed, spoke with a cultured English accent. He appeared to be thirty-five to forty years old, athletic. Her words were, "He looked like a boxer, light on his feet."
As I told you on the phone, he mentioned coming here from Singapore, and he said he needed to call a man in Lahaina, though he didn't place the call from the Centre. I tried getting in touch with Toby Callahan in Kansas City, but he had the day off. You should call him and find out if our friend, Robert Jeffries, was in Lahaina on May tenth. That would pretty well tie them together, regardless of what happened to the call from Singapore to Kansas City.
Burke stopped reading as Quinn's words triggered a sudden thought. Call forwarding. Couldn't Jeffries have set his phone in Kansas City to automatically forward calls to his hotel in Hawaii? Since NSA was intercepting the signal from Singapore, they probably would not have known the call did not stop in Kansas City as expected. If only he knew someone at NSA, he could check it out. But the more he thought about it, the more certain be became. That would also account for the caller from Singapore saying "I told you I would call in the morning." Although it was after noon in Kansas City, it was still morning in Hawaii. He read on:
I'd almost be willing to stake my life on Shallit's reply to you today. No Jabberwock in the Mossad's files. This does not have the ring of an Israeli operation. Actually, it smells of the KGB, but I can't reconcile that with Robert Jeffries. The man in Berlin spoke like an American, too. Jeffries has to be the key.
If I'm out of the way, Hawk Elliott will probably tell you to go fly a kite. You can try to convince him that you're making headway on the case and should be allowed to continue. It will likely be a losing battle. But please don't drop it! This thing scares the hell out of me, and Hawk is too involved with the Toronto-Washington summit to get overly concerned about it. The fact that it was my case could also cloud his judgment.
I don't expect you to sacrifice everything for this investigation, Burke. There isn't much time anyway. Calculating from those intercepts, it sounds like their "D-Day" would be toward the end of the second week in June. There's a lot to be done and you'll need resources to do it. That's one reason I instructed you to read this letter now.
A few years ago, when the Agency was at one of its low points in the wake of Watergate and the debacle in Iran, I was involved in a particularly sensitive operation with real promise of compromising a major KGB effort. The White House was reluctant to approve the necessary covert activities, and the DCI at the time didn't want to authorize spending the necessary funds to get the job done another way without some ironclad guarantees of success. We couldn't give that, of course. As we thrashed about trying to resolve the dilemma, I was contacted by a wealthy gentleman with a surprising knowledge of what was going on. He offered to put up the money. In short, we went ahead with the operation and it was a rousing success.
We have remained in contact over the years, and he has made available a sizeable bank account to finance my activities when there's been a problem with Agency funds. He has also provided other assistance on occasion. I have scrupulously used the money only for Agency business. I did not want to be personally beholden to him, although he has never sought to take any personal advantage of our relationship.
Last week, $100,000 was transferred to a special account at this bank. I talked with him just before I left and explained your role in this investigation. He agreed that you should have access to the account. Also, when you need his help, you can contact him at the phone number I have written at the bottom of this letter. I can't give you his name, but he will know you. I can tell you that the phone number is unlisted, a blind number from which your call will be transferred.
You can draw as much money from the account now as you think you'll need. The remainder can be transferred back to the States as necessary. Mr. Luk will handle it for you.
One last request. You know how much Lori means to me. She would be proud of the way I have counted my calories over here and avoided that first drop of Scotch. She is quite capable of looking out for herself, but I would feel much better knowing you were around to look in on her occasionally. She was quite impressed with you the other night. I know you won't disappoint me.
P.S. I'm sure I don't need to say this, but you should destroy this letter after you have read it and made note of the phone number.
It was signed "Cam."
Burke sat for a long moment staring at the letter, letting its impact sink in. It was almost as if Cam had had a premonition of what was to come. The secret bank account was a startling development. His first inclination was to say to hell with it, he didn't want to get involved with any power brokering insider. He would take care of his own expenses. But when he thought of the amount of money he had spent the past few days in air fares and hotel bills alone, he began to re-evaluate his position. He had invested a sizeable amount of cash recently on photographic equipment, including a high tech color lab he had set up in his house, leaving him with only a small reserve. There was no way to guess what he might need to pursue this investigation, but it could easily make a large dent in that $100,000.
He realized that he was no longer giving any consideration to dropping the case. And as he looked back at Quinn's letter, he knew why. Everything now pointed to Jabberwock as the reason for Cam's death. The investigation was no longer simply an academic exercise, a matter of finding dots for the "i" s and crosses for the "t" s. Though the enemy still lacked a face, it had taken on a definite personality, that of a killer. Someone had given the order, and someone had carried it out. Or so it seemed. He had to admit it was primarily conjecture at this point, the evidence circumstantial. But there was one obvious avenue to explore that might provide the conclusive missing link.