Burke's look was a curious mixture of pleasure and disappointment. Happy to have picked up Jeffries' trail, but frustrated that he was a bit too late. "Do you know where was he headed?"
"Panama City, Florida." He looked up at the clock. "Let's see, he ought to be landing there most any time now."
Finding no scheduled flights that would get him there any sooner, Burke rented a Chevrolet Caprice and headed east on Interstate 10. He kept a heavy foot on the accelerator as he pushed on toward Pensacola, then sped as fast as the traffic would allow along Highway 98 on into Panama City. It was four-thirty when he pulled into the rather limited confines of the Bay County Airport. He parked at a hangar just past the long, box-like terminal, and went inside.
"Robert Jeffries?" said the man at the counter, a blank look on his face at first. It had been a long day. "Oh, yeah. Cherokee Lance. He was in here this morning. Picked up a passenger."
"Do you know where he was going?" Burke asked.
"Sure. Back out to the island."
"Island?" Could the Jabberwock training site be on an island? As he thought about it, what better place could you find? Perfect isolation.
"Yeah, Oyster Island."
"Sorry. I'm afraid I don't know much about this area."
"It's a little island about thirty miles south of Cape San Blas. That's between Port St. Joe and Apalachicola. Come here, I'll show you."
He went over to a large mosaic of aeronautical charts on the wall, indicating a blip of an island that lay beyond the point that protruded southward about halfway along the coast of the Panhandle. Burke saw a warning box had been drawn around it with red grease pencil. "Restricted Area" was printed beside it.
"Is it a military base?" he asked.
"No, it's owned by a company that has some kind of weapons testing facility there. They don't use it all the time, but there's a NOTAM out on it now. It's on the hook over there if you want to take a look. Jeffries flies back in here every few days. I asked him about the place once and he said I shouldn't get too nosy. Seems they've got some kind of fancy system to detect anybody trying to get on the island. Don't want drug runners out there, he said."
It had to be the Jabberwock team base. The talk about a "device" and "birds" definitely took on a military flavor now. But how could there be a military operation underway on a Gulf Coast island that the NSA and the CIA had no knowledge of? What was the connection of two Bulgarian Communist agents? And the apparent effort to make it sound like a Mossad operation? Burke knew he had just uncovered the tip of a mostly-buried chunk of ice.
He handed over one of his Douglas Bell business cards. "I'm a private investigator. Company I'm working for is interested in Jeffries. I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention anything about this if he comes back. Here's a little something for your trouble." He handed over a fifty-dollar bill.
The man's eyes bulged. He pushed the business card back into Burke's hand and grinned. "I never heard of you."
Burke went over to check the file of NOTAMs — Notice to Airmen. He found the item indicating the Oyster Island restriction would be active from mid-May to mid-June. The restriction was up to twenty-five thousand feet, five miles on either side of the island. The Weapons Division of Pan West Industries would be carrying out tests of explosive devices. He was familiar with the PWI name, knew it was a conglomerate of defense-related companies.
Burke drove down the coast to Port St. Joe, a small town distinguished only by a few industrial plants and a port area off St. Joseph Bay. The stretch of highway beyond was a bleak, deserted area of sand and pine trees, not unlike the uninhabited wilderness he had encountered through much of Alaska. At Apalachicola, he found a sleepy little town with more facilities for boats and ships and a protected anchorage on Apalachicola Bay. By then it was time to find something to eat and a place to unload his travel bag. It would also soon be time to call Lori at one of her designated "safe" numbers.
Off the main highway, on the outskirts of town, he found a rustic looking motel that apparently catered to fishermen, judging from the name Angler's Inn. It was located on an inlet where fishing boats were docked and pickup trucks were as abundant as taxicabs outside a Manhattan hotel. The inn was a steel gray, rectangular two-story building with a balcony around the second floor. Locating the office in a separate structure in front of the inn, he stopped to inquire about a room.
"We pretty well stay full up this time of year," the leather-faced, graying proprietor said. A cardboard sign on the counter gave his name as B. A. Casteel. "But you're in luck. Just had a cancellation. Fella's truck had transmission problems."
"Sorry for him, but glad for me," Burke said.
Casteel nodded. "Way it usually happens, ain't it? Somebody's bad luck is somebody's good luck. How many nights you staying?" He wore blue jeans and a faded blue shirt with half a dozen pens and pencils jutting up out of the pocket.
"One for sure. I may need to stay a few more. That any problem?"
"Just let me know tomorrow. Long as you pay your bill, you can stay till doomsday for all I care."
Burke laughed. He filled out the registration form and signed it Douglas Bell. He handed over the first night's room charge in cash. Offhandedly, he asked, "Know anything about Oyster Island?"
Casteel pursed his lips. "No more'n anybody else. I've fished out that way. Grouper hit pretty good sometimes."
"Is that the island owned by Pan West Industries?"
"Yep. That's it."
"I heard they had some kind of system that tells if somebody tries to get on the island. Wonder what they've got out there that's so important?"
Casteel snorted. "Few buildings. One's a machine shop, they say. There's a runway for airplanes. That talk about a burglar alarm, or whatever, come from some teenagers. They tried to have a party out there one night a year or so ago. Soon as they started up the concrete ramp across the beach, these damned sirens went off and lights flashed on all over the place." He pronounced it "sy-reens." "You ain't wanting to go out there, are you?"
"No. Just curious," Burke said with a shrug. And Casteel promptly obliged by satisfying his curiosity.
"I was talking to old Scooter Peyton at Port St. Joe the other day. Said he rented his old LCM, that's a landing craft, to a man wanted to haul some stuff out to Oyster Island. Said the man looked like a city slicker. Scooter's a slippery old lizard. Said he socked the poor bastard with a big fee for that old scow." Casteel chuckled.
Burke found he was just inside the Eastern Time Zone line, so local time was the same as Washington time when he called Lori at Walter and Chloe Brackins' home. She told him about the men with guns who had jumped her in the car, then fled as soon as they saw it wasn't him.
"That's one possibility I hadn't considered," he said. "But your diversionary tactic really did the job for me. I had no trouble getting back to my car."
Then he told her what he had learned about Jeffries and Oyster Island.
"This thing is getting pretty far out," she said. "How do you figure on pursuing it now?"
"I'll drop by Peyton's Boat Yard in the morning and see who rented the landing craft. May have been Jeffries. Maybe somebody else."
"Sure would be nice to get a look at what's happening on that island, wouldn't it? Too bad we can't ask the Agency to take a look with a spy satellite. Or get an old U-2 or SR71 to shoot from high altitude."
"Matter of fact, now that you mention it, there's a lot can be done with low altitude aerial photography," Burke said. "There are some new films available I've heard fantastic reports on."
"What about cameras?"
"We've had the optics for a long time. Just didn't have the emulsions to go along with the lenses."