"Let me remind you, Hill, if you want Lori Quinn back alive, you'll do as we instruct."
Burke ignored him, acting as though he hadn't spoken. "Think over my offer. I'll call you back."
He hung up the phone. He fervently hoped he was not jeopardizing Lori. But he felt reasonably confident they wouldn't harm her as long as there appeared to be a chance of capturing him.
He looked down at the sheet from the scratch pad. He recalled the rules for the code: starts after "the" and ends with a single "a"; use the first two letters of each word in the coded sequence; if the word following the "a" starts with a vowel, disregard the "a"; if it starts with a vowel and has only one syllable, use only the first letter of the last coded word. He underlined the designated letters on the sheet:
“The nights again are a problem.”
Niagara… the only Niagara he knew of was Niagara Falls, New York. She had to be telling him where they held her!
As he hurried out the office door, Lars met him with a fat envelope. "Better be careful carrying this much cash around, Burke."
"You can count on it, Lars. Thanks for use of the phone."
An hour later he entered the Knoxville Public Library, located the reference collection and picked out a volume of biographies of prominent American businessmen. He thumbed through the "N" section until he found Donald W. Newman, chairman and CEO, Pan West Industries, Inc. The long article detailed the background to Newman's wealth, his takeover of the defense contractor and how he had built it into PWI, one of the nation's premier conglomerates. Like Wizcom's Franklin Wizner, he served on many Washington insider committees, institutes and boards, particularly in the fields of foreign relations and intelligence. The closing paragraphs of the article provided the details that mattered. Newman and his wife, the former Mary Evelyn Keynes, resided in a Southampton, Long Island mansion but spent much of their time at homes in Key Biscayne, Florida and Niagara Falls, New York.
Chapter 45
The voice on the phone had the same harsh tone as the one he had heard that morning, like the man's vocal chords were made of coarse sandpaper. He hadn't thought about it earlier, but now he was almost certain. It was one of the voices he had heard at the house outside Nashville. The man in charge, the one called Richard.
"This is Burke Hill," he said. "Have you decided to accept my offer?"
From the sound of it, the man was barely managing to control his rage. The decibel level went up several notches. "This is your last damn chance, Hill. Unless you want Lorelei Quinn in a pine box, be in Washington, D.C. at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, in front of a row house on Twenty-Second Street."
When he gave the number, Burke thought he recognized it as being in the George Washington University area, his old stomping grounds as a student in the fifties.
"It's the last house in the row," the man continued. "There's a driveway between it and the next building. Miss Quinn will be in a car parked in the driveway. After you've seen her, don't try any stupid heroics. It would be useless. Just go into the house and answer the questions put to you by the gentleman who meets you. If you're candid with your answers, both you and Miss Quinn will be free to leave."
Yeah, Burke thought, about as free as the occupant of a butterfly net. I would probably leave unconscious in an ambulance and Lori wouldn't have been there in the first place. There was no chance they would trust taking her out in the open like that. Too many opportunities for something to go wrong.
"Okay," Burke said, feigning a note of resignation. "I'll be there."
Of course, he had no intention of being anywhere near Washington, D.C. But it would buy him the time he desperately needed. He left the telephone booth, located outside a restaurant in Charleston where he had stopped for supper, and returned to the Jeep. Before starting out again, he removed the Tennessee license plate and replaced it with the Louisiana tag he had taken from the old Buick.
Gary Overmyer and Hans Richter stepped out of the taxi on Dundas Street and walked south on Victoria. Looking like a couple of curious tourists, they strolled among the scattering of students from a nearby technical school, eyes fixed on the curb, until they saw the two small red marks made with spray paint. The marks were separated by the exact length of the satellite truck. When he drove here on Saturday morning, Overmyer would park with the left wheels flush against the curb, front and back ends even with the red marks. This would orient the weapon precisely according to the predetermined powder loading and fusing of the mortar shells.
Satisfied with their findings, the two men nodded at each other and strolled back to Dundas, where they turned west toward Yonge Street and the glass-roofed Eaton Centre, Toronto's giant, three-story downtown mall. There they would lose themselves in the early evening crowd for a bit of shopping. Tomorrow would be a throwaway. They needed books or something to occupy themselves while holing up in the motel to await the dawning of "D-Day."
Burke pulled into a twenty-four-hour convenience store on the road into Niagara Falls around eleven o'clock. He bought a street map of the city, then drove over to the Falls area where he turned in at a decent looking motel. There were no rooms available. He hadn't noticed the "No Vacancy" sign, nor had he taken into account the popularity of the area during the tourist season. A friendly clerk made a few calls, however, and he soon had a place to stay for the night.
After he had unloaded his travel bag and a case containing a few needed supplies, he searched around for the telephone directory. Running down the "N" column, he zeroed in on "Newman Donald W" and copied the address on the pad beside the phone. He had been afraid the number might not be listed. However, that would only have delayed him long enough to locate a city directory and check the list of names and addresses. He unfolded his map on the bed and spotted the street on the outskirts of the city along the Niagara River.
Satisfied that finding it would be no problem, he set his watch alarm and collapsed onto the bed. It had been another twenty-seven-hour day.
Chapter 46
The large, two-story brick Georgian house sat like a gracious overseer in the forefront of a plot of several acres that bordered the river, looking as genteel as a cultured country gentleman. The front featured a white wooden portico, supported by four round columns, and a large wooden entrance door with a transom above it. A paved driveway ran back from the massive wrought-iron gate to a parking area in front of the house, then circled around to the rear. A chest-high stone fence extended back from the road along the property line.
Burke drove slowly past the Newman home around seven a.m. He noted another house, half-hidden by trees, on the lot to the left, while an extensive wooded area extended to the right. A farm peopled with horses and bounded by long stretches of gleaming white fence lay on the opposite side of the road. The next house beyond the Newman's was a good quarter of a mile away. However, about two hundred yards down the road, a worn spot in the tall grass showed where vehicles had recently been driven back into the woods.
Burke swung the Jeep toward the grassy area and bounced along the rutted trail into the forest for about fifty yards. He then turned back toward the Newman place and parked among a clump of tall oaks. The trees and a tangle of bushes hid the Jeep from view, both from the road and from the crude trail. He had dressed in hiking boots and combat fatigues, which blended nicely with the vegetation. Swinging a pair of binoculars around his neck, he started off toward the Newman home, determined this time not to become a soldier of misfortune.