Burke drummed his fingers, creating the sound of a racing horse's hooves. His voice had a troubled ring. "I agree it looks like murder, Brittany. But the police would want to know why it couldn't have been the Major who forged the prescription?"
"Good question. How do we resolve it?"
"Well, one way would be to take photos of Bolivar and Stern to the pharmacy. See if anybody might recognize one of them. I could try it, but Nate's sending me to Seoul in the morning."
"What on earth—"
"He said Jerry was having problems with some key accounts. Nate wants me to conduct an audit and help straighten things out."
"That doesn't sound like the Jerry I worked for. He always kept a firm hand on everything."
After he had hung up, Burke recalled what Roddy Rodman had told him about Bryan Janney's death in Guadalajara. He wondered what was on the label of that Dalmane bottle? If only he had the time to check it out, too. But he had a feeling that time was rapidly becoming a commodity in short supply.
Burke found Lori at the travel agency and told her about Nate's instructions. She was incredulous. And appalled at the short notice. Then, before leaving the office, he put through a call to Jerry Chan's home in Seoul. He caught the branch manager in the midst of breakfast.
"What's going on, Jerry? Nate says I'm leaving for Korea in the morning, that you're having financial problems and I'm to conduct an audit. That isn't what you told me yesterday."
Jerry was hesitant. "Well, it's sort of complicated. I'll try to explain when you get here."
"We're good friends, Jerry. Lay it on the line. What did Nate say to you?"
When involved in an operation, Jerry could make up cover stories with the best of them. But Burke knew when it came to personal matters, he was a lousy liar.
"Aw, Burke, he said not to tell you."
"I don't doubt that. But what did he say?"
"You know you're going to get me in trouble."
"Had you rather be in trouble with him or me?"
"Come on, Burke, I'm fond of both of you. I don't know what the problem is between you two, but I wish you'd get it settled and leave me out."
"What did he say?" Burke was adamant.
"Nate said he was worried about you. You had been acting strange toward him lately. He thought it might be good to get you away from Washington for a week or two. He's faxing me some financial information to put in the files, stuff for you to work on. He said to 'be creative' and come up with some things to keep you occupied."
Burke arrived home to the usual wet kisses and boisterous leg-pulling of Cam and Liz. He was hardly inside the door when his son Cliff called from Philadelphia.
"Hi, Dad. You'll never believe what happened today."
After what had happened so far, Burke was ready to believe almost anything. "Try me."
"Before I get to the good part, I'll give you a follow-up on Adam Stern. I got to thinking about it this morning and decided, just for kicks, to call the State Department. Talked to the man, himself, the Senior Undersecretary. At first he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. Then he wanted to know what my interest was in Adam Stern."
"What did you tell him?"
"I said it involved a confidential investigation. I couldn't reveal any of the details. But I let him know I knew Stern was no longer employed by the government."
"What did he say to that?"
Cliff laughed. "He got very serious. He said the nature of the assignments of certain former government employees was such that their backgrounds required continued confidentiality. He said I sounded like a nice young man. I’m sure you're proud to hear that. But if I required further information on Adam Stern, I should talk to Director Pickens. Actually, I had a chance to ask the Director about it later, but decided I had best not."
"Wise choice. Apparently that was the interesting part of your day. What was the good part?"
"Remember my telling you about getting the citation from the Attorney General for my handling of that Medicare fraud case?"
"Yeah."
"Well, who should call this afternoon but Bradford Pickens himself. He said that case had earned me a special award, five days and four nights at a resort in the mountains of Idaho."
"Hey, congratulations! When do you go?"
"That's the funny part. He apologized for the mix-up in not informing me sooner, but said the date had been set and couldn't be changed."
"When?"
"I leave in the morning. Fly to Boise, where a small plane picks me up and flies me back into the mountains. It's one of those places you can hardly get to from here. The Director said he had already cleared it with my SAC."
Special Agent in Charge, head of the Philadelphia Field Office. Cliff obviously had made no connection between the two incidents he had related, but Burke began to wonder. Had the call to the Senior Assistant Secretary of State that morning triggered the sudden revelation of the "special award" this afternoon? It seemed an odd circumstance that he was being dispatched to Seoul at the same time his son was being shipped off to the boonies in Idaho. Everybody with any interest in Adam Stern was suddenly being taken out of circulation.
When Burke told Lori about his suspicions, she gave him a questioning frown. "Aren't you beginning to get a little paranoid about this?"
"Maybe," he said. "But not without cause."
Then he related what he had learned from Jerry Chan regarding Nate's decision to send him to Seoul.
"He told Jerry to make up something to keep you busy over there?"
"That's about the size of it."
"What have you decided to do?"
He told her what he planned.
Dinner was sometimes a test of wills between parent and twin. Cam's high chair sat beside Burke, Liz's beside Lori. The trick was to keep the food on the tray and heading for the mouth. Tonight Burke was managing fairly well. It was Liz's turn to act up.
When the phone rang, Burke answered it.
"This is Roddy. We're at a motel in Little Rock. The Major and his crew appear to be bedded down for the night. Did you work out anything on the rental car?"
"Everything's arranged. I'll give you the guy's name and phone number. Make sure you do the swap where the Major won't see you."
"Shouldn't be any problem. I suspect he sticks close by to keep an eye on his charges."
"Don't blame him."
"Maybe by the time we call you tomorrow, we'll have some idea about where they're going."
"There's been a change of plan, Roddy. You'll be calling my wife, Lori, tomorrow."
He told Rodman about the decision to send him to Seoul, then related how he planned to deal with it.
61
Adam Stern lived in a crusty looking old apartment building that faced Central Park to the east. It sat on the opposite side of the park from the Foreign Affairs Roundtable. Although the structure wasn't much to look at on the outside, it was maintained with meticulous care on the inside. The owner, who occupied the entire top floor, ran an import-export business and was a longtime Roundtable member. His decorator, a middle-aged French-Canadian who had no difficulty sizing up the no-nonsense tenant after the first meeting, had furnished Stern's two-bedroom, ground floor apartment with heavy, masculine furniture, and carpets and draperies in cool, dark earth tones. It was perfectly suited to his style of moving stealthily in the background.
Stern sat before a large screen TV tuned to the baseball game between the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians. The score was two to two in the top of the third inning. But Stern's mind was elsewhere. He felt like a forest ranger putting out brush fires. He had received a call from the State Department that morning, advising that Special Agent Clifford Walters had followed up on his request for the file on Adam Stern. When he talked to FBI Director Pickens about it, he asked, strictly on a hunch, if there was any connection between Walters and Burke Hill. Damned if Walters wasn't the man's son. Pickens promised to see that the young agent was dispatched far away and out of touch.