"You go on, Burke. Get to a phone and call someone. Come back for me later."
"No," he said. "I'm not leaving you here. I'll carry you out on my back."
"How are you—"
Her voice broke off as they heard the sound of someone pushing his way into the underbrush.
"Shine the light over this way," a voice called in the distance.
"Go on, Burke." Lori’s low voice sounded urgent. "It may be your only chance."
"We still have the guns," he said. "If necessary, we'll fight our way out."
He had brought along the flashlight he used on Oyster Island, but it had fallen victim to his ambush by the Bulgarian. Same as the web belt, the M76, and the radio receiver.
"When we get back to the Jeep," he said in a low voice, "we should have a full confession on tape. I had a transmitter on the window of the library during their meeting. There's a receiver in the Jeep connected to a recorder."
During their hours of waiting in the bedroom, he had told her as much as the Bulgarians would allow about the people who had gathered in Wizner's house for the final Jabberwock briefing.
"If we get back to the Jeep," she whispered as the voices slowly came closer.
"Just stay put," Burke said, looking around, "I’ll do a little exploring."
He moved about until he found a tall tree with several vines hanging down like heavy, fibrous ropes. He remembered climbing vines like this as a boy, swinging out over the river, sometimes dropping into the water with a huge splash. He wrapped his hands around a cluster of vines and tugged. They held. Slowly, he began to climb hand over hand. It was rough on his palms, and the muscles around his stomach objected with twinges of pain. But after a few minutes he had managed to reach the first large branch. Swinging a leg over it, he pulled himself up. Then he began to climb from one branch to another. In his mind, he was back in Missouri, out by himself on a summer night, conjuring up visions of Tarzan swinging from tree to tree. He half expected to hear his mother's shout in the distance. "Burrrke! Burrrke Hill! Time to come in!"
It was a tall tree. Soon he reached a point where he could see through most of the surrounding forest. He spotted the beam of a strong flashlight some forty or fifty yards off to one side. Lights from the house glowed from another direction. Orienting himself by the lights, he determined a ninety-degree course that would lead to the wall. But a glance at the sky raised the hair on his neck. In the direction that should be up-river, a searing streak of lightning brightened the night like the flash of a warning beacon. A low rumble of thunder followed.
He began an urgent descent, branch by branch.
Back at the log where Lori waited, he showed her the direction they needed to take. Bending over, he motioned to her. "Climb aboard. We need to get moving."
"They'll hear us," she said.
"At the moment, they've skirted past us on the other side. Anyway, they'll soon be hearing something a lot louder."
As if on command, another rumble of thunder echoed from upriver.
"A storm?"
"Right,” he said. “It’s on the way. Let's go."
She put her arms around his neck. He cradled her legs packsaddle style and began the slow trek toward the wall. He took care while dodging trees and thick bushes to maintain a constant heading as best he could. Even so, when they reached the rock barrier, he found they had moved at an angle toward the river, pushing them farther back into the woods. Had their pursuers circled around this way? He hadn’t spotted the flashlight beam again.
By the time he boosted Lori over the wall, the first drops of rain filtered through the overhanging leaves. Within minutes, brilliant flashes of lightning followed by deafening crashes of thunder marked the storm’s path directly above them. A chilling wind swept the trees, and rain gave them a merciless pelting. The woods, which had begun to brighten with the coming of dawn, were plunged deeper into darkness. Burke finally gave up. They huddled together beside the wall as the storm plodded by overhead like some slowly lumbering behemoth.
After an agonizing wait, the sky began to brighten. They started out again, slowed by the treacherous footing of a slippery bed of leaves and grass, interspersed with puddles and strips of mud. It was after seven when they reached the Jeep, chilled and soggy, Burke's boots coated almost black by the mud.
He started the Jeep and let it warm up, switching on the heater to give Lori some relief from the shivering. Meanwhile, he disconnected the tape recorder, removed the tape and inserted it into the player on the dash. He switched on the radio and set the tape to rewind. It soon clicked back to forward and Blythe Ingram's voice came through the speakers:
"… test firings were right on the money. We adapted a standard eighty-one millimeter mortar so it could be bolted to the floor of the truck. A circular hatch in the roof is removed for firing. The elevation and azimuth for aiming the weapon have been preset for the marked location on Victoria Street… "
Lori seemed to forget her discomfort as she listened in fascination as the Jabberwock plot unfolded through the voices of the conspirators.
"We've got to find a telephone and call Judge Marshall," she said when the tape had finished.
"But the CIA is up to their assholes in this thing," Burke said.
"Not the CIA. Hawk Elliott and some of his henchmen. That Richard you heard on there is Alvin Kirsh. I recognized the voice. He's one of Hawk's yes-men. Kingsley Marshall doesn't know a thing about this."
"Why are you so sure?"
"You heard it on there. Colonel Golanov said the only people privy to the operational details were in the room, except for a KGB captain and Minister Zamyatin."
Burke hadn't thought about it, but that definitely left out the Director of Central Intelligence. Still he persisted. "Weren't you going to meet Judge Marshall when they kidnapped you?"
"That's what Hawk told me. I was so damned smug about what seemed to be happening that I made the mistake of believing him. When I called the night before, the duty officer told me Judge Marshall was out of town and probably wouldn't be back for another day. That's why I consented to talk to Hawk. Dumb me."
Burke shook his head. "Join the club. I got taken in by that smooth-talking Donald Newman. By the way, who is Colonel Golanov? I only know him as Emerson Dinwiddie."
"He's a very smooth KGB operator who used to be the darling of the diplomatic party set. Apparently he's with the Second Chief Directorate now. General Kostikov is head of it."
"Damn." Burke checked his watch. Seven-thirty. He started the Jeep and backed around to reach the trail that led out of the woods. He had no idea what time the parade was scheduled in Toronto this morning.
Chapter 48
It took much longer than it should have to locate the pay phone, but Burke didn’t want to risk driving past the Newman house. He worried that the search team would be out looking again after the storm had passed. As a result, he cut back away from the river and wound up on a rural road that only took them farther into the boondocks. It was after eight when Lori finally got to a telephone and called Judge Marshall's home. It rang interminably with no answer.
"What's the problem?" Burke asked.
"He's not at home. It's Saturday, he could have gone to his place in the Poconos. Eastern Pennsylvania."
"You think he'd have left town with this summit coming up?"
"You have a point," she said. "I'll try Langley."
Again she got a watch officer. This one she didn't recognize. He professed not to know where the DCI had gone. He offered to put her through to the Chief of Counterintelligence.