"I wouldn't call it an invasion. Just a surreptitious visit to try and figure out who's doing what to whom. Like who the hell makes up the Jabberwock team, and why are guys with the stature of Blythe Ingram and Robert Jeffries involved? Who was the bogus Hong Kong salesman Emerson Dinwiddie, and who sent in the Bulgarian hit men?"
"You think a search of Oyster Island will answer all that?"
"Well, it ought to provide a damned good start." He sensed that he was about to be called to task for leaving her out again, and she quickly proved him correct.
"I suppose you know you can't do it alone," Lori said. "One of those intercepts indicated they would have, what, eight people?"
"Right." He tried a whimsical note. "I can sure give it the old college try."
"And get your tail shot off. Remember the detection system the man in Panama City told you about. I'm coming down there. You probably couldn't even get out to the island without drowning yourself."
"The hell I can't," he said. Now his competence was being challenged. "I can rent a boat with a driver to take me out there."
"Ha!" Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "That's how much you know about boats. You don't call the man who sails a boat like that a driver."
"Whatever. Anyway, you don't need to be down here. I may have something else for you to look into up there."
"Burke Hill," she all but shouted. "I wish to hell you would stop treating me like a China doll you keep on a shelf. I have managed to take care of myself under circumstances much more dangerous than this. I'm not going to sit around here and let you get yourself killed because of some nineteenth century notion about a woman's place."
His ear felt hot, almost as if the fire in her voice had singed the wire to his phone. "Okay, okay," he said, not wishing to prolong the argument. "I probably couldn't do anything before Friday night anyway. I may not get to see the photos until Thursday. We'll talk after that and decide what to do."
"That 'we' sounds a little better. Remember Saturday night we were talking as equals, like partners. If this relationship is going to go anywhere, it has to be on a partnership basis."
He knew she was right, but only grudgingly admitted it. "Yes, ma'am," he said in his best boyish manner. "Talk to you later, partner."
The next morning, Burke cashed the two remaining Hong Kong checks, at separate banks. He figured he would have to pay McKenzie in advance for his services, and there would be other expenses if he laid on a night mission to Oyster Island. Despite Lori's vehement opposition, he had a hunch such a move would prove essential before it was over. Afterward, he drove back along the coast, arriving in Apalachicola early in the afternoon. He spent the rest of the day checking around the marinas to determine what was available in charter craft that might be used for a trip out into the Gulf.
It was late afternoon when he called Aerial Photomap.
"Weather's still looking good," McKenzie confirmed. "There's a cold front that's stirring up things in the Pacific off Mexico, but it shouldn't get here before the weekend. I believe we're in business. I presume you want to go along?"
He wasn't thrilled at the idea of flying out over the Gulf in a small, single-engine plane, but he definitely wanted a look at Oyster Island. "If there's room."
"With the camera installed, it's just a two-seater. But you can fly co-pilot. It'll be around a two-hour flight over there. Let's plan on a noon takeoff. That'd put us back here about four-thirty. The boys in the lab are going to be tied up pretty late tomorrow, so the earliest we could process it would be Thursday morning."
Burke felt a little disappointed at the delay, even though he had anticipated it. That would mean another night in New Orleans and wouldn't put him back in Apalachicola before sometime Thursday afternoon. He had entertained an outside hope of mounting his Oyster Island expedition Thursday night, but the time it would take to line everything up and make all the arrangements effectively ruled that out.
When he checked in with Lori that evening, he found she had been visited by Hawk Elliott. The CI chief was in his usual crotchety mood. He denied any knowledge of the stakeout at her house but accused her of holding out on the Agency.
"He said he knew I had been in contact with you, but I hadn't called Judge Marshall to report it."
"Did he say how he knew?" Burke asked.
"No. I suppose he figured my trip out to the car the other morning was a decoy. He knows I've been going somewhere different every night, and I've made very few calls from home. I took your bug detection device into the office today but didn't turn up anything. We have several phone lines, of course, and he could tap them all if he chose to."
"I should have bought the other gadget," he said, a bit irked at the oversight. "The one used to check for line taps. Did Hawk make any threats?"
"Just by implication. He's pretty cagey. He knows I'd go straight to the Judge if he did anything overtly. He wanted to know how much I knew about Jabberwock."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him I didn't know about anything except your trip to Tel Aviv and Dad's to Hong Kong, that you both were apparently chasing down leads. I don't think he believed me. But he said they were looking more closely at the Israeli angle."
"Bullshit," Burke said. "There ain't no Israeli angle. But there's a damned solid American angle. And a still nebulous Red flag."
"Have you thought about this possibility?" she asked, the sudden change in her manner echoing a deeply felt concern. "Could it be some supersecret U.S. operation? Maybe the Agency investigation is just a smokescreen. With people like Ingram and Jeffries involved, and the use of the PWI facility, it sure takes on the look of a government-sanctioned enterprise."
He had to admit there was a certain logic to her suggestion. But it still left a major gap. "In that case, how do you explain Cam's death?"
Her voice turned a bit flat. "I can't. But we don't know definitely that it was related to Jabberwock."
"Oh? What happened to Amy Lee?"
"Do we know if she was really killed? What if she's back on the job?"
Her questions were beginning to nurture a vague, disquieting doubt. He had been so blindly certain of his own analysis that he had failed to ask himself the really tough questions. Could he have been wrong all along? What if he were to go charging out to Oyster Island and discover that he was compromising some vital, highly-classified paramilitary operation?
“How much do you trust Sydney Pinkleton?” he asked.
“I’d trust him with my life, why?”
“You’d better, because that’s what we’re about to do.”
“What do you mean?”
"Do you know how to contact him?"
"Not offhand. I'm sure I could track him down."
"See if he would find out what happened to Amy Lee. And ask him to check on that lab guy at the hospital."
The business day was just getting started in Hong Kong. She agreed to contact Pinkleton immediately after Burke detailed McKenzie's plans for the aerial reconnaissance mission the next afternoon.
Chapter 34
When he met McKenzie at the Aerial Photomap office the next morning, Burke brought up the subject he knew he should have explored on his first visit.
"I'm sure you'll want payment in advance," he said. "How bad's the tab going to be?"
McKenzie shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I'll let you pay for the gas. I'll take care of the rest. This is an experiment, remember. I've got high hopes for the results, but I can't guarantee anything."
He ushered Burke into the nearby Lakefront Airport hangar, where he introduced a small, short-haired dynamo named Buddy Bottelli. Buddy wiped his stubby fingers with a tattered green rag before grasping Burke's outstretched hand.