FLOWER GIRL.
A Burton Family Mystery.
"What happens when a government scientist with top secret clearance teams up with a rogue CIA agent, who happens to be her father?"
By David Marshall Hunt.
Acknowledgements.
The editing and rewrites of this novel have greatly benefitted from the professional editing of Elizabeth Duvert, PhD for which I am deeply grateful.
Heidi Pitre"s cover design and artwork for this novel is exceptional.
Jeremy Thompson"s help with everything digital has been unequivocal.
I am also deeply appreciative of the support and sharing of a terrific group of authors, my colleagues from Launch lab 2014* and our wonderful pilots, Lynne Griffin and Katrin Schumann at Grubb Street, Boston.
The encouragement I receive daily from Barbara-Ann, my wife of over 40 years is immeasurable. My thanks to family, friends, and readers for their continuing support.
Our Akitas, Dylan and Clair, continue to provide security and companionship.
*Launch Lab 2014:.
Dr. Alice Locicero; Stephanie Rowe; Lori Reisenbichler.
Stephanie Kegan; Robin McLean; Ellen Herrick.
Mark Day; Ann Sussman; Lenore Myka; Nadine Kenney.
PART I: A FAMILY MATERIALIZES.
"To start a family business you first need a family."
[Professor Marshall Hunt, circa 1999].
Chapter 1: A Haunting Dream & A Visit from the CIA.
A Haunting Dream: Cheju-do Island.
At the age of four a doctor and one of the nurses, both clad in white, walked into the dormitory at the orphanage where I was housed along with three other girls ages 4 to 11. The place is called Park"s Clinic and Home for Girls and it is located on Cheju-do Island a scenic, volcano dotted island and popular wedding and honeymoon location off the southern coast of South Korea. Dr. Evel Park Senior owns these facilities and another clinic in Seoul and his oldest son Dr. Evel Park, Junior a.s.sists in running them. The nurse, a matronly lady, checked each of us while Dr. Park supervised. She said, "Carrie Lee has a slight fever, I"ll check back on her later today." Dr. Park nodded and the nurse made some notes to the clip boards at the end of our beds. I was feeling curious about what a slight temperature meant. The nurse said, "No need to worry child, it"s not malaria."
Now, that got me even more curious and I could tell by Dr. Park"s scolding finger wag and the nurse"s holding her hand over her mouth, that she had said something she should not have. She apologized more to Dr. Park than to me, saying, "I"m so sorry doctor, it just slipped out."
Dr. Park replied, "Your mother was critically ill with malaria and pregnant with you when your father drove her to our clinic in Seoul. Your father tragically died in a traffic accident that day and we were not able to save your mother; however, we were able to save you."
I had heard other girls talk in secrecy of their parents, making me curious; however, this was the first thing I was told of my parents fate.
It was later that very year that I began to be haunted by a dream.
A man in black treads slowly up a steep trail on the side of a volcano on Cheju-do Island. The trail tracks like a knife wound through the lush green gra.s.ses that grow so high they nearly block his view until he reaches the cliff side and looks out over the shimmering blue-green waters of the Korean Straits, the Sea of j.a.pan bordering to the east, and the Yellow sea to the west.
A pair of gnarled trees bend in silent testimony to years of strong winds. Between the trees, the man stops and brushes away sand and twigs from around two granite stones standing side by side. The man kneels and places flowers next to the two stones. Tears flowing, he whispers something that is lost in the wind.
In my dreams, from that year until I was twelve, I saw the man in black repeat this ritual on every second of June. I recorded these in my diary which I kept in a mixture of Korean, my first language and Arabic which I began learning at age four.
Carrie Lee My name is Carrie Lee; more correctly, it used to be Carrie Lee, now I am Shannon Lee Burton. Make that Dr. Burton. My closest friend and research colleague, Angie loves to bat her eyelashes and say our looks are our ticket out of here. We are both twenty-six years old and stay fit running in the Berkeley Hills which shows in her healthy bronze tan and my slightly sunburned look. We could pa.s.s for sisters in our Property of Golden Bear Athletic Department t-shirts and grey running shorts; however, that"s where the physical similarity ends. I have short cropped flaming reddish-brown hair, hers is long and usually blonde, in a pony tail when we are running, and I have grey eyes and hers are emerald green.
She says we are both way too good looking to be research scientists buried in the subterranean labs of a top-secret contractor for the federal government. I feign modesty whenever she says this, but who am I to challenge the 2012 Conrad Beecham Scientist of the Year award winner, Dr. Angie Pearce.
Angie and I have been best friends since the man in black rescued me, then dropped me off at the Bush School for Girls, a boarding school in Seattle, when I was twelve. Then he all but disappeared from my life for five years until I graduated and he helped me move to River View, Illinois, to attend university. Later I migrated to UC-Berkeley.
The only person other than Angie that I have ever discussed what happened to me as a child with is Professor Dr. Matte Morgan. When I was a clinical psychology graduate student at River View University Dr. Matte was my favorite teacher and I trusted her enough to open up to her about my misgivings as regards the man in black. Dr. Matte is a clinical psychologist in huge demand for cases of s.e.xual abuse and an award winning professor, my faculty advisor years ago, not to mention a long-legged blonde with cool blue-green eyes. I think she"s sweet on Professor Craft.
Professor Josiah Craft holds the prestigious R. V. Curfew Chair in International Business History at River View University and is an avid distance runner. His steel grey eyes, short-cropped grey hair, and full beard disguise his age. And, he has a cabin at Skeleton Lake in the Muskoka Lakes region of Ontario Province, Canada where he spends most of his summers.
Since I moved to Berkeley it isn"t possible to meet face-to-face, so Dr. Matte and I sometimes use Skype for our virtual counseling sessions.
A distorted face with a large nose glanced at me, peering out over her reading gla.s.ses like she was trying to find me in the little box on the laptop screen, as her soothing deep voice said, "Let"s pick up where we left off last session. Why don"t you tell me about what happened that day when you were rescued from the orphanage in Korea?"
"Okay," I said. "When I was four. I was told by the doctors at the orphanage on Cheju-do Island that I was born at their Seoul Clinic; nevertheless, I was told nothing about my parents other than that my mother died of malaria and my father died in a traffic accident. My only family was the staff and the other girls at the orphanage, and they rotated out when they turned 12.
"Three days after my twelfth birthday as Carrie Lee, I awoke as I always did to the sound of gongs ringing from a nearby temple. The dormitory I lived in was located in a compound at the western base of a volcanic mountain. The compound also had a hospital and clinic run by Dr. Evel Park and his oldest son. From age three to twelve, I lived and trained at the Parks" Home for Girls on Cheju-do Island. I learned Korean, Mandarin, and Arabic. I became adept at some martial arts, including stick fighting which was taught at a nearby school where Dr. Park"s youngest son, Sincere, who was three years older than me, also practiced. They also taught me etiquette and Muslim culture. The island was well known as a place for weddings and honeymoons, and on several occasions I served as a flower girl.
"That morning, nine other girls between the ages of three and twelve awoke and stirred around me in the dormitory. We were scheduled to serve as flower girls at a local wedding. Hot water went to the early birds, so we raced to the showers at the end of the hallway. I adjusted the warm water and lathered my body.
"Suddenly, all I could see was plywood splintering around me, plasterboard and cinder blocks smashing and giving way to a cloud of plaster powder. A large truck crashed through the west wall of the dormitory, nearly crushing one of the girls next to me in the showers. Its headlights illuminated the room in a yellow dust.
"I was so shocked that I had no time to react. A man dressed in black with a stocking over his face came through the dust and grabbed my left arm and slung me over his shoulder, carrying me out into the cold morning dawn like a sack of grain and tossing me in the pa.s.senger"s seat of the truck. He then backed the vehicle out of the hole in the wall and onto the road. The truck"s wheels, spinning on the ice and rainwater that covered the road, finally gained traction. Soon we were moving rapidly away from the clinic compound towards the waters of the Korean Straits and the Sea of j.a.pan.
"The man-in-black wrapped a warm blanket about me, and it was only then that I noticed that I was naked, shivering and still wet and soapy. I had won the race to the showers. In a few minutes, we reached a sandy beach, where the man-in-black drove the truck into the back of a strange boat-like craft. I was never to hear the morning gongs nor see what had been the only home and family I had ever known on Cheju-do again.
"The next morning, the man-in-black spoke to me in Arabic. He told me he was Reddy Burton, my father, and he gave me a gift, a green gla.s.s fishing-buoy with several ounces of seawater captured inside it for ballast. These buoys could be seen all along the inner coast of the island where fishermen spread their nets.
"The seawater and gla.s.s buoy are a gift to remind you of this beautiful place," he said to me in Arabic. To this day, that green gla.s.s buoy is one of my fondest visual memories of the tranquil beauty that was Cheju-do Island, my home. The buoy is hanging on my back porch.
"I was not to see much of the man-in-black, if indeed he was my father, for the next five years. Looking back on that moment now, I do believe his speaking to me in Arabic contributed greatly to my not being afraid at the time."
Dr. Matte took all this in without interrupting me, then she asked, "Where did you go for the next five years?"
"As the leaves began to take on their fall hues, in the late summer of 1998, Reddy dumped me at a foster home in Idaho. They were nice folks, but I ran away after a night of sleeping on the top bunk of one of six bunk beds with eleven other children in a 15x15 foot room. h.e.l.l, I had better accommodations on the island where I at least had my own closet, even if I had to compete for morning showers. Reddy tracked me down at Lake Pond Oreille the next day, and we drove to Seattle in silence. Then he enrolled me in the Bush School for Girls and disappeared.
"At first, I thought that no one else at the school spoke anything except English. Since I spoke only broken English, I preferred to be silent and mysterious.
"I stubbornly told everyone that I was called Carrie Lee and I did not readily accept the claim that the man-in-black was my father, surname Burton. It was a name change that did not come about easily. My second day I thought about running away again.
"However, then I met Angie who also spoke Arabic and Mandarin. She taught me English and together we made up a special secret coded language of our own that we used to combat the incessant teasing of the other girls at the school. I told you about that and that I take to languages with ease."
"Refresh my memory."
"Angie and I were the only orphans at the Bush"s girls" school. Okay, so technically I wasn"t an orphan. Until the man-in-black busted me out, I had been told I was an orphan, so I still felt like one. No one visited us on holidays or picked us up for a family weekend. I remember many a weekend when the two of us were the only girls in the dormitory. Also, before and after cla.s.ses as we walked up and down the hallways and between buildings to go to gym cla.s.s or to the dining hall where we all sat on benches, ten to a table, the other girls taunted us incessantly. "You don"t have a father! You don"t have a father!" To combat their incessant teasing, we developed a secret language drawing on the Arabic and Mandarin we knew."
"I already know about your years at River View; however, tell me about your Berkeley experience and when and if Reddy was around," Dr. Matte said.
"A dozen years later, Reddy made an appearance at my graduation from UC-Berkeley with a PhD in nano-technology and linguistics. As my graduation gift, he offered to make the down payment on a home in the Berkeley Hills overlooking the campus of the University of California. However, there was a catch to his offer. He wanted to build a workshop in my bas.e.m.e.nt. Angie and I now share that house in the Berkeley Hills behind the UC- Berkeley campus with Reddy below. It probably has the best security and communication setup in the world which Reddy set up after the CIA visit.
"Whoa, slow down Carrie Lee, tell me about this CIA visit," Dr. Matte said, adding, "And thanks for finally getting around to why you really called me."
A Visit From The CIA: Berkeley Today, a man and a woman, wearing dark blue suits and white shirts, stood leaning against our front door waiting for Angie and me to return home. My first thought was that they were missionaries, but the man snuffed out a cigarette on the sole of his shoe. Then he carefully crumbled the remaining tobacco, scattering it onto the gra.s.s while rolling the paper into a tiny ball with his thumb and forefinger and putting it into his jacket pocket. I"d seen Reddy doing the same thing. He called it "policing" the cigarette.
Angie doffed her baseball cap, untied her ponytail, and revealed her new do, shaking out a full head of long raven black hair that literally glistened. She liked to flirt and she had the tools.
"Hi, folks, can we help you?" she asked the man. I estimated him to be just over six feet tall. He had the ramrod straight posture of a military man, likely a Marine, short cropped brown hair, and a very compelling smile. Angie was on full alert.
"We"re here to interview a Dr. Shannon Lee Burton. From the description we have, that would be you," the shapely but stern looking woman said to me. She had just glanced at the photo on her smart-phone, then showed it to me, stared at me and I nodded.
"Yes, I"m Dr. Burton. Who are you?"
"I"m Special Agent Effie Newhouse of the CIA and this is Agent Clemson Rapier. May we go inside?" she asked, flashing her credentials and returning them to her hip pocket next to a partially visible holster.
"Sure, why not? We"ve just had our morning espressos, but I can brew some Kenya AA, French press if you"d like?"
I wasn"t too startled by the arrival of two government visitors. I"ve been tracked by the government ever since I entered university back in River View, Illinois, where I showed an exceptional skill for learning languages. I just told you about Angie"s and my secret language at Bush Girls School; however, I may have forgotten to tell you that until after Reddy rescued me, I did not know English. Now I speak Spanish and Russian, in addition to my not so native English and the Korean and Mandarin of my childhood and the Arabic I was taught to become a proper child bride. Right now, I"m working on j.a.panese and enhancing my encryption skills.
I also remember the details and fine print on the pages of every novel I have ever read, it"s a curse at times.
"You already work for the government so I expect you know that they covet these language and memory skills for their intelligence gathering projects," Dr. Matte added.
The FBI did a security check on me before the government hired me for my lab job. I knew the lab was top-secret stuff, but today I learned just how deep in I am. I think they wanted to hire and train me as a field agent and then have me return to my lab job and await further instructions. Well, that was at least part of the reason for their visit.
"Don"t stop there girl, what were they really after?" Dr. Matte asked.
I never wanted to work for the CIA; however, the two agents came prepared and they nearly had me hooked when Agent Newhouse said, "We are here to recruit you for a CIA intelligence job and we are hopeful that you can help us locate Agent Richard F. Burton who has disappeared from our radar for the past few months."
The person the agents were really inquiring about is the man-in-black, Richard Francis "Reddy" Burton. This Richard Burton is my father, and it has taken me the better part of fifteen years to discover the few bits and pieces I know about who he is and why he goes missing for extended periods.
Agent Newhouse says, "They say no one quits the company, but according to recent events we are approved to discuss with you in confidence, Agent Burton has done just that."
I did not flinch. I was thinking that Reddy may have met a worse end.
Agent Newsome continued, "Four months ago Burton failed to check in after his last a.s.signment and he"s been officially declared to be off the reservation. No one, and I mean no one, seems to know where he is or even if he"s still alive."
There, he said it, maybe Reddy is hurt or worse, dead.
"He"s gone rogue," Agent Rapier said. "He vanished from our radar after being a.s.signed to several covert a.s.signments. Normally we don"t reveal these details about our agents, but he recently listed you as his beneficiary on his personnel docs and retrieving Burton and making sure he is OK is a high priority. He is a valuable a.s.set."
It struck me as careless of Reddy to reveal to the government that he had a daughter. He is so secretive about his comings and goings.
However, I let it drop, asking instead, "Tell me how he"s a valuable a.s.set. I don"t even know where he lives. He hasn"t been here for months. If I hear from him, I"ll tell him you dropped by and inquired about his whereabouts."
"Thanks," Agent Newsome replied. "Actually, we also have a second objective. We"re here to recruit you. Frankly, we"re having this discussion with you to let you know we are sincere in an offer we are about to make to you, recovering Agent Burton would be a bonus."
The words a.s.set and recovering seemed very cold to me. Agent Newhouse cut into my thoughts, saying, "Let me tell you why we value Agent Burton and then I will get to that offer I just mentioned."
Richard Francis Burton was raised on a mixture of Catholic values and benevolence a la his childhood idol, Dr. Tom Dooley - the doctor and humanitarian whose efforts in Viet-Nam and Laos in the 1950"s saved many lives. He enlisted in the Marines at 18 after a short stint as a minor league baseball player. He served as U.S Marine Gunnery Sergeant. Three deployments to Iraq. Numerous tours of duty including US Emba.s.sy guard postings in Nairobi and Kuala Lumpur. Two years based at Camp Pendleton as a sniper instructor. His service jacket shows a bronze star with two cl.u.s.ters and a silver star for valor and two purple hearts.
I began inadvertently to smile as my chest swelled up with a sense of pride as Agent Newhouse continued.
First wife"s name, Anne Burton 1965-1986 (Maiden name: unknown). She was 19 when they married and moved into quarters at Camp Casey in South Korea; she died the following year, on 2 June 1986. Cause of death, malaria, which also took the life of her stillborn fetus, verified by attending physician Dr. Evel Park, Sr..
I felt a lump in my throat and swallowed hard. Dr. Park had told me a third of the truth, my mother had died from malaria; however, the 2d of June matched the dates annually when my dreams of the man in black came back to haunt me at an early age, and my father is still alive and I"m supposed to be dead. I was in shock.
I missed whatever Agent Newhouse said for the next minute or so, then she added, "That all happened before we hired him."
I also wondered, perhaps for different reasons than the CIA, where he disappeared to, why, and why so frequently. However, while I took all this information in, I wasn"t emotionally ready for the onslaught, not quite yet.
When the agents turned to his military background and personal life, I came back to life. I learned that morning that he was a sniper and a hero. As to his personal life, 2 June was the date of my mother"s and my deaths; However, I am still alive. Also, he had a second wife and maybe a son or daughter, meaning maybe he was absent so much because he was with his other family. I felt strangely jealous.
I had to ask; however, I whispered, "Who was his second wife? Any children?"
Agent Newhouse replied, "We are pretty sure he was married to a Philippine girl a few years later and they may have had a daughter, but it hasn"t been verified."
Next, I suspected that the CIA wanted to keep tabs on me in order to track him, not just to recruit me into the company. Newsome and Rapier were dodging around their real mission.
I wanted to keep the dialogue going. So far their goals meshed with mine. What I really wanted to know was what had happened to my father and why was I listed as officially dead. I had found out how and when my mother died but otherwise I knew nothing of her. However, having no other family, I also wanted to know about my father"s second wife and whether I had a step-sister or brother. Maybe his frequent and lengthy absences were to be with them. Then, I also had to ask myself, did I really want and need him in my life? h.e.l.l, I had rarely seen him since my rescue, with the exception of graduations.
The interview seemed to be at an end when Agent Newhouse said, "We have one last question, it is "Cla.s.sified Top Secret: Need to know only"."
I nodded and she asked, "A hacker friend of his set up his computer with a nearly untraceable line that has the code name Michaela."
"Any idea what Michaela means?" Agent Rapier asked. "It may be code for something. We think it may have something to do with his second family."
Agent Rapier paused, then continued, "Burton has acquired contacts all over the world, and he is superior in one skill, he is a sniper par excellence."
"Is Michaela a person or what?" I asked.