Burke gave her a curious grin. "This is quite a surprise. Would you like to meet an old acquaintance of Cam Quinn's?"
"Really?"
"Send the gentleman over," he told the waiter.
As they waited for Shallit, Burke enlightened her. "You remember when Cam sent me to Israel to find out if Jabberwock was a Mossad operation? Shallit was the guy I met. He gave me the negative answer."
The neat-looking, muscular Israeli sauntered over to their table. "Forgive my intrusion," he said. "I shan't stay long. But I did want to thank you for clearing up that business about Jabberwock."
"I was happy to," Burke said. "Cam never really believed you were involved, but he had to know for sure. Please have a seat. Ben Shallit, I'd like you to meet my wife Lori. She was Cam Quinn's daughter."
"Yes, so I heard," Shallit said, giving a slight bow toward Lori as he sat down. "I was quite fond of your father, as I had good reason to be. He was responsible for saving my neck on one critical occasion. It was most distressing when I heard of his death. It's a bit late, of course, but please accept my sympathies."
"Thank you, Mr. Shallit. But I'm rather curious. Where did you hear about me?"
"As your husband knows, and you may have noticed from my card, I'm in the computer business. I saw the two of you at the Hilton having lunch with one of our convention speakers."
"Will Arnold," she said with an understanding nod. "He's a next door neighbor from back home in Virginia."
Shallit smiled. "Yes, so I was informed. He's quite a voluble person. When I asked him if that were not Burke Hill I saw him with, he proceeded to tell me all about his interesting neighbors. Seasoned world travelers. I believe he said you, Mr. Hill, were with an international public relations agency? Your wife has her own travel firm? I gather you must have married shortly after the Jabberwock affair."
Burke nodded. Good old Will Arnold. Count on him to provide all the details. It would only take a simple question to get Will rolling. Of course, there was no secret that Burke was chief financial officer for Worldwide Communications Consultants.
"Will said there was a dinner tonight at the Hilton," Lori said. "You must have been tired of hotel banquet food."
"I believe you call it the 'green pea circuit' in the States," he said with a chuckle. "I had a rather more serious reason for coming to your table, however. Cameron once told me quite proudly that his daughter was following in his footsteps."
"The past tense is correct," Lori said. "As a matter of fact, my last assignment for the Agency, the one that did me in, took place right here in Budapest."
She thought back to that last fateful visit in the early eighties. She was conducting a group tour for a travel agency out of Paris, a job that provided a convenient cover to allow a young CIA officer easy access to the East Bloc. She had received instructions to bring out a defecting Soviet scientist who was attending a convention in Budapest. Through no fault of hers, things went badly wrong, blowing her Agency cover and ending her job with the travel firm. The upshot of that affair was a decision that one CIA career in the family was sufficient.
Shallit smiled. "Then this must be a return to the scene of the crime, so to speak?"
"You might say that. But it wasn't really what prompted our visit."
"I understand. Let me explain my reason for approaching you." Shallit was now all business. "I saw the televised White House ceremony that followed Jabberwock. I know you both should have access to the Director of Central Intelligence."
Burke's expression didn't change, but his senses went on full alert. He glanced around to be sure there were no nearby diners exhibiting any interest in them.
Shallit picked up on it immediately. "I cleared myself first, then checked to make certain you were not being followed."
"Why would anyone be following us?" Lori asked, frowning.
"No reason. Merely a basic precaution."
Burke chose his words with care. "We could probably wangle an interview with Kingsley Marshall, if we insisted on it. But in case you weren't aware, Mr. Shallit, my involvement in that operation was strictly at the behest of Cam Quinn. I was never a CIA employee. They'd never have laid on that public ceremony at the White House if I had been. Neither Lori nor I have any direct connection to the Agency any more."
"All I ask," said Shallit, "is that you deliver a message to Mr. Marshall. It won't be a pleasant one, I'm afraid."
"That sounds ominous," Lori said.
"As I mentioned at our first meeting, I am no longer active as an intelligence officer. But my company develops and maintains the software used by the Institute, so I still enjoy close contacts there."
Burke nodded. Mossad officers used "Institute" the way some CIA people referred to Langley as the "Agency." The Israeli service's official name was the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations.
Shallit explained there were a few things so highly classified they were never even put into the computers. But, of course, if they were recorded on paper, they had to be logged through the document registry system. An old Mossad colleague was in charge of the registry and handled one of these super-secret documents in the not too distant past. Quite by accident, he got a peek beyond the cover sheet. Curious, he read on. Shocked at what he read, he had worried over it for months and finally confided in Ben Shallit.
"A lot of Israelis are not too happy about the trend of events and the way our government has handled them," Shallit said.
"Are you referring to the new move toward negotiations with the Palestinians?" Burke asked.
"As you know, the question of peace with the Arabs has been a sore spot with your government. The hardliners in Jerusalem claim you're in bed with the enemy as a result of the Gulf War and its aftermath. There has been much fear that the United States will curtail its aid to Israel."
That brought Lori forward in her chair. "Israel has received more American aid than any other country since World War II," she said.
"True, but your Congress seems determined to cut spending, and foreign aid could be next. Post-communism and unrest in the Middle East have changed the playing field. I'm sure you're aware of what happened in Israel recently. Our government moved to create new markets and new sources of cash by concluding a pact with the new regime in South Korea. According to the announced terms, we provide them with the latest in civilian and military technology; they give us economic assistance and heavy machinery."
"Frankly, I was pretty surprised at it," Burke said, tilting his head to one side. "I thought the Koreans had chosen to be on the Arabs' side to keep the oil flowing."
Shallit gave him an indulgent smile. "That was the case, previously. But with all the realignments taking place around the globe, world politics has an interesting way of reversing the old order. The Russians badly need spendable cash. And since their former clients in Eastern Europe are short of cash themselves, they signed a hard currency deal to sell oil to South Korea. That freed the Koreans to negotiate the agreement with Israel."
Burke nodded. "From what I've heard, the new bunch in Seoul is highly nationalistic. No doubt that's why they wanted to forge new alliances outside the old American protective umbrella. They're apparently making lots of changes. I don't know how good a move it was, but Congress sure jumped for joy when they asked us to bring the rest of our troops home."
"From what my friend saw," Shallit said, his gaze growing more intense, his voice lowered almost to a whisper, "I judge they don't want Americans around looking over their shoulders. The document he read was a highly secret addendum to the agreement between Israel and South Korea. Under its terms, we're providing the Koreans an initial supply of weapons grade uranium, plus a reprocessing plant to separate fissionable materials from spent uranium."