Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

CHAPTER 21

It was all about which way you turned when you got on the plane. If you went left, you were on some kind of fast track, and if you went right, you were probably paying your own way.

Mike Burke had turned right, and now he was riding in steerage. Row 38, Seat A, ten rows up from the lavatories, but next to the window. Bound for Dublin.

He was returning from his sister Megan’s wedding, which had taken place in a picture-postcard, country church in Nellysford, Virginia – Burke’s hometown.

It was the first time he’d been back to the States since Kate died, and he’d done his best to be cheerful and agreeable. He’d assuaged the worries of his parents, and turned aside their questions. He was doing well, he was fine, the worst was over, it was behind him now…

Or so he said. In reality, he didn’t fool anybody. To be around Megan and Nate, and give no hint of the way he felt, was… well, impossible. They were luminous with happiness, and he was… what? A walking reminder that “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

Maybe it’s time to move on, Burke thought. With the old man back on his feet, and business beginning to pick up, maybe it was time for Burke himself to get on with his life. If not right away, then soon.

After all the years he’d spent, going round and round like a ball bearing on a roulette wheel, he’d come to rest in Dublin with Kate. And it wasn’t so long ago that he’d imagined spending the rest of his life there. But with Kate gone, Ireland no longer felt like home, much less like “the future.”

Yet he was still in the same flat, her flat, with the eclectic furniture and the big sleigh bed they’d picked out together. Her clothes still hung in the closets. Her books stood in the bookcases. Her pots and pans dangled from a pegboard in the kitchen.

And then there was the old man, who never stopped talking about her.

It wasn’t that Burke missed America, but somewhere in the back of his mind he’d begun to think of his trip to the States as a trial return. Maybe on his native soil, absent the daily reminders of Kate, he could imagine a fresh start.

But the experiment was over. He’d been in the States only a couple of hours when he realized there was nothing for him there. He was thirty years old, and he might as well have been the Flying Dutchman. The soft mountains of the Blue Ridge, black against the evening sky, meant nothing to him.

People kept telling him that it would get better, that his grief would ease. But that was just another way of saying that Kate herself would begin to disappear. They might be right, but it wasn’t what he wanted, not at all. In some ways, his grief was all that was left of her.

Washington wasn’t any better. He’d arranged to see a few of the people he knew but, once again, they hadn’t known Kate. And so they seemed like strangers. For Burke, everything went through Kate, or it didn’t go at all.

He couldn’t get over thinking about the way they’d found each other. He’d actually fallen out of the sky – crashed and burned and damn near died, only to be delivered to her doorstep by a man who called himself Colonel Homicide. If that wasn’t fate, what was it?

He shifted within the cramped architecture of his seat, his eyes on the video monitor overhead, displaying a cartoon Airbus inching its way across the Atlantic toward a map of Europe. He was exhausted by the efforts of the past few days, the strain of pretending he was fine.

Even so, he took some joy from Tommy’s rebound. He’d had a part in that, a part in keeping the old man from dying of a broken heart. It was good to see him now, going out to the pub with his pals. They were busy again at the office, so much so that they’d hired a new secretary. These were boom times for Ireland, and now that Tommy was back, the firm would prosper once again.

Burke had kept the business afloat until the old man was on his feet again. But what really turned the corner for Tommy was a visit from Kate herself.

“She came to me,” he said, “in the night. Stood at the foot of my bed – Katie herself, mind you. ‘Da,’ she says to me, ‘I canna stand the sadness! Do you understand me? Between you and Michael, I have no peace. You’ve got to stop.’ And then she kissed me on the forehead and made me promise I’d be brave enough to get on with things. She promised that she would always be there, even if she was gone. Isn’t that just like her?” Tommy asked. “Still looking after us?”

Burke would have given anything for a glimpse of Kate. Even if it was an illusion, a hallucination or a dream, it would have sent a rainbow straight through his heart. After the vision, the old man looked so relieved, so suddenly at peace with himself and the world, that Burke felt a surge of envy. “She hasn’t come to me,” he said, as if Kate’s ghost had betrayed him.

The old man gave him a warm smile, and touched his arm. “Perhaps in time, Michael…”

As the aircraft began its descent, Burke awakened from his reverie to a sense of disappointment. It was one of those brilliant mornings that happen too rarely in Ireland, the bright green fields sweeping toward the Irish Sea, the sea alive with whitecaps under a Windex sky.

He would have preferred gloom. Darkness and rain. Instead, he found himself descending into a Hallmark card. As the plane banked into its final approach, he saw the flash of a dozen sails beneath the wing, and the long, furling wake of a fishing boat. It did not lift his spirits.

It was barely nine a.m. when he cleared Immigration, so he collected his car and headed for the M1 that would take him into the heart of the city. To his surprise, he caught himself smiling. There was something about Ireland. Maybe it was the scale of the place, the lilting voices in the terminal, the mischief in the brogue.

Without realizing it, he was beginning to feel at home in the maze of streets and parks that were Dublin. He’d missed the old man, and the routine of work, the rose-brick building on Cope Street and jogging along the quays beside the Liffey. It was, he grudgingly admitted, good to be back.

He parked in his spot at the rear of the building and took the steps to the second floor. It was barely ten in the morning when he arrived at the doors to Suite 210, only to find them locked – and a note.

It was thumbtacked directly to one of the wooden panels, which was a bit like nailing a Vermeer directly to the wall. The panels in the door were solid oak, and gleamed – the brass fittings were rubbed daily with a soft cloth. The old man would have a conniption.

Burke pried the thumbtack from the door, and read the note. It was an official notice, in Gaelic and English, dated the day after Burke had gone to the States for Megan’s wedding.

CLOSED BY ORDER OF AN GARDA SIOCHANA

(INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION UNIT)

“Why didn’t you call me?”

He’d gone directly to Dalkey, where he found the old man in the yard, pruning a rosebush. A tangle of thorny branches lay in a heap at his feet.

“Is it yourself, Michael?”

“It is.” A quick hug.

The old man shrugged. “I knew you’d come back the second you heard – and would that be fair to your sister?”

Burke shrugged. His sister could take care of herself. “What happened?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what happened,” the old man repeated. “This shower of cunts came stormin’ in, like it was Ned Kelly they were after! Moira takes one look, goes into a swoon, if you can believe it, and this great eejit steps forward, flashin’ one of them little wallets.”

Burke looked confused. “What ‘little wallets’?”

“Like you see on the box. With the badges inside. And it turns out, this one’s not even Irish. He’s one of your lot!”

“Who is?”

“The eejit I’m talkin’ about. He’s American! This shiny-faced palooka’s come all the way from London – and the Garda, they’re fallin’ all over him, salutin’ his every fart.”

“What did he want?” Burke asked.

“He’s got a bug up his arse about some incorporation you did. I told him to feck off!”

Burke winced. “What did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t take that a’tall well. Touchy sort. Reminded me for the third time that he’s some bloody great FBI agent. Called himself a Lee-gut.”

“Gat.”

“Puh-tay-to, puh-tah-to… I told him I didn’t care if he was Lord of the Rings. If he wants to look at one of our files, he’d better have his paperwork in order.”

“Well, yeah,” Burke said, “but – which account was he after?”

The old man scowled. “The Twentieth-Century Motor Company. Something like that.” He paused. “Ring a bell?”

Burke shook his head. “No.” He’d set up lots of companies at Thomas Aherne & Associates. Most of the time he didn’t spend more than half an hour with a client.

“Manx registration?” the old man reminded him. “Jersey bank?”

Burke made a gesture, as if to say, What else is there? Then he said, “Hold Mail list?”

The old man nodded. “What else would it be? Totally normal setup. But this Yank, he takes one look at the folder-”

“You gave him the file?” Burke asked.

“I ‘gave’ it to the Garda.”

Burke was incredulous.

“It was a special unit,” Tommy explained. “They had a court order.”

Burke’s eyes rested on the harbor as he mulled over the old man’s words. The confidentiality of the firm’s files had always been absolute. For Tommy Aherne to give up a client was… unprecedented.

“Anyway,” the old man said, “this Yank takes one look at the client’s name and, I swear to Jay-sus, he goes ballistic. Says we must have known it was bogus. That’s the word he used. Bogus!”

“So what was the name?”

“A ‘Mr. Francis D. Anconia.’ Or something like that. I only saw the file for a second, and he was yankin’ it out of my hands.”

The old man didn’t have the name quite right. Burke remembered now. The client had asked him about his ear. Sounded American, but… “Chilean passport?”

“The very one!”

Burke thought about it. Finally, he said, “I still don’t get it.”

“All I can tell you is, this Yank is steamed, he’s squawkin’ about money-laundering, terrorism-”

“Terrorism?”

“Swear to Christ, he’s goin’ from pink to purple, and back again. And just when I think he’s going to keel over, he takes this Kerryman aside – thick as two planks, this one is-”

“Who?”

“The Kerryman! ‘Inspector Doherty,’ he’s callin’ himself – and the Leegut has a word with him, private like. Then this Doherty steps forward and announces that he’s shuttin’ us down, ‘pending inquiries.’”

“What in-kwy-ries?” Burke asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, the short answer is you. This Kerryman says they’re opening a money-laundering investigation, and they’d like to have a word with our Mr. Michael Burke, particularly since it’s your name that’s on the file.”

Burke groaned. “Then what?”

“Then? Well, then they threw me out of my office – my own office, if you can believe it, the one in which I’ve been diligently servicing a respectable clientele for-”

“What’s the Legat’s name?”

“Kovalenko.” The old man took off his gloves and laid his clippers down at the base of the rosebush. “Come on, I’ve got their cards inside.”

There were three of them, resting on the marble top of a small table in the vestibule. The first card identified Sean Doherty as an inspector in the Garda’s International Coordination Unit (ICU). The second card belonged to Ira Monaghan of the Garda’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

The third card bore the FBI’s logo, a gold-embossed American eagle, and the name Raymond Kovalenko. The card identified Kovalenko as a Legal Attaché and gave the address of the U.S. Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London.

“So what do we do?” Burke wondered.

“They expressed the hope that you’d get on the blower and arrange for a heart-to-heart.”

Burke didn’t hesitate. He called Doherty’s number, straightaway. The inspector put him on hold for what seemed like a very long time, and then, when he came back on the line, suggested that Burke should come down to his office the following afternoon.

“If it’s all the same to you, I could come over right away,” Burke told him. The sooner he cleared things up, the sooner the firm would reopen – and the better it would be.

The receiver crackled with an emphatic Tsk! “I’m afraid that won’t work for us,” Doherty told him. “Tomorrow afternoon would be the earliest. Would three o’clock be convenient? Pearse Street?”

“I was hoping-”

“Yes, well, I’m sure you were but, entirely on the q.t., of course, your man Kovalenko’s awfully keen on this d’Anconia fellow. I’ve just this minute had a chat with him, while you were holding, and I can assure you he’s determined to meet you in person. So that’s something we can all look forward to!”

The next day, Burke went to the precinct house with his passport, which he’d been asked to bring. An identification tag was glued to his lapel, and he was escorted into Inspector Doherty’s small and messy office.

Two men waited inside. The smaller of the two was a sandy-haired fellow with the frail physique of a heavy smoker. This was Inspector Doherty “in the flesh” (or what there was of it). The second man was Ray Kovalenko. Six-two and solidly built, his even features were embedded in a pink complexion above a tiny, purselike mouth.

Kovalenko gestured to an empty chair, and everyone sat down. Burke assumed a helpful look, turning his face from one man to the other, but neither of his interlocutors seemed in any hurry to begin.

The FBI agent removed a small plastic bottle of Purell from his pocket, and squirted a dab of the disinfectant into the palm of his hand. Then he rubbed his palms together, and studied his nails. Finally, he said, “This client of yours – d’Anconia. What can you tell me about him?”

“Well,” Burke began, “he had a Chilean passport-”

“We know that,” Kovalenko snapped.

His rudeness took Burke by surprise. For a moment, he didn’t know what to say. So he began again. “Well, anyway, as I said, he had a Chilean passport, but from his accent, I’d say he was from the States.”

“So you knew it was a bogus name.”

Burke shook his head. “No.”

Kovalenko fixed him with a glare. “You didn’t think it was strange when a guy named ‘Francisco d’Anconia’ comes walking into your office, and wants to incorporate the Twentieth-Century Motor Company?”

“Well, the name was a little anachronistic,” Burke said, “but-”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Kovalenko warned.

Burke turned the palms of his hands toward the ceiling, and glanced at Doherty, hoping for an explanation. Doherty looked away.

Kovalenko’s little mouth curled into a sneer. He leaned toward Burke. “What about a Mr. Tim? Hypothetically, if a Mr. Tiny Tim came walking into your office-”

“Or Father Christmas,” Doherty suggested.

“Exactly! If Father Christmas came walking into your office, would you have a problem with that?” Kovalenko asked. “Take your time,” he added, before Burke could reply. “Because I really want to know.”

Burke looked from the FBI agent to the Garda, and back again. This isn’t going well, he thought.

Kovalenko sighed. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “You a reader?”

Burke shrugged. “Yeah. I read a little.”

The FBI agent looked pleased. “How much do you know about Ayn Rand?”

The question took Burke by surprise. “Wasn’t she… she was some kinda nut, wasn’t she?”

Kovalenko froze, as if he’d been smacked.

Uh-oh, Burke thought. Wrong answer. “I mean, she was conservative,” he said. “I seem to remember, she was pretty conservative.”

Kovalenko’s jaws worked up and down, as if he was chewing on something. Spittle sparkled on his lips, but no words came. Finally, he leaned forward, eyes bright with venom. “She was the most important writer of the twentieth century.”

“Really?!” Burke tried to sound interested and encouraging, but even to his own ears, the exclamation sounded skeptical and smart-ass.

“Yes, really! She wrote a little book called Atlas Shrugged,” Kovalenko snarled. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

Burke said nothing.

“Francisco d’Anconia was the hero.” Kovalenko’s brow creased in a frown, and he corrected himself. “One of the heroes. There were several.”

Burke tried to look fascinated. But Kovalenko wasn’t buying it. “Well, I guess I’ll have to read it,” Burke said. He waited. A clock ticked on the wall behind him. From the street came the distant beep of a municipal truck, backing up. Burke cleared his throat. “So, uhhh… how can I help?”

The FBI agent glanced at the Garda, his mouth open, jaws working silently. Finally, he said, “Well, Mr. Burke, you can begin by telling me everything you know about your pal, d’Anconia.”

“Well, he’s not a pal, actually. I mean, I saw only him for half an hour,” Burke said. “Tops. You’ve seen the file. It’s all there.”

“I want to hear it from you.”

With a shrug, Burke recited the details as he remembered them. “The guy called. Came in. He didn’t seem to know exactly what he wanted, but then, people don’t.”

“They don’t,” Kovalenko repeated.

“No. A lot of times, they don’t. This guy wanted a corporation, a discreet bank account. I walked him through it.”

“Discreet,” Kovalenko sneered. “That’s one way to put it. The way I see it, you set up a shell corporation for this guy – who you knew was not Chilean…”

Burke interrupted. “The passport looked genuine. The picture matched. And he looked kind of Hispanic.”

“And what made him come to Aherne and Associates?”

“He said he saw an ad,” Burke replied. “The Aer Lingus magazine.”

“So. Not a planner. Kind of a last-minute decision.”

Burke made a gesture. It happens.

“And you never heard of the guy before?” Kovalenko said.

“No. I mean… I think he called from the airport.”

“We’ll find out if there are any prior contacts. We’re already looking into you, I can promise you that, Mr. Michael Anderson Burke.”

Burke shrugged. They knew his middle name. Wow.

Kovalenko sat back in his chair, and frowned, as if he’d been puzzled by a sudden thought. “Why are you here?” he asked. Before Burke could answer, he clarified the question. “I mean, what are you doing in Ireland?” The way he said it, the Emerald Isle could have been located in the Straits of Hormuz.

“My wife was Irish,” he explained.

Kovalenko’s forehead descended into chevrons. “Was?”

Burke nodded. “She died. About eight months ago.”

Kovalenko looked alarmed. “Of what?”

Burke blinked in amazement. Finally, he said, “Sepsis.”

Kovalenko drew in a sharp breath and let out a little tsk – though he didn’t bother with any pro forma words of condolence. “Eight months ago. And yet you’re still here. For those of us with suspicious minds – and I’m paid for that – it’s just a little convenient, isn’t it? You say d’Anconia had an American accent. Just like you. And here you both are, in Ireland. He just shows up out of the blue and you set up a phony corporation for him-”

“Look,” Burke said, trying not to lose patience. “It wasn’t a phony corporation. This is our business. We set up companies. It’s what we do.”

“Did!”

Burke took a deep breath, but kept his temper in check. “If laws are broken, if papers are not filed in a timely way, if there’s a criminal enterprise or fraud, various authorities – Irishauthorities – pursue those matters.” He turned toward Doherty. “Tell me something. Why is the FBI hassling an Irish firm that’s been in business for thirty years? What’s going on?”

The Garda spoke up. “International cooperation.”

“All we do at Aherne and Associates,” Burke said, “is put together corporate entities and notify those connected to them about annual forms that have to be filed and fees that have to be paid.”

“That’s not all you do,” Kovalenko insisted. “You also set up bank accounts.”

“That’s part of our service, yes.”

“Bank accounts in funny places. St. Helier. The Caymans-”

Burke shook his head. “There’s nothing ‘funny’ about St. Helier or the Caymans.”

Kovalenko made a gesture like an umpire, signaling safe. His eyebrows furled into a frown, and his face went from pink to red. He spoke in a muted snarl. “I’ll tell you what’s funny. You know what’s funny? Your tit’s in a wringer – that’s what’s funny.”

Burke didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Excuse me?”

“This is a national security investigation,” the FBI man said, “and your ass is dead center. What if I told you the bank account you set up received a wire transfer from an al-Qaeda operative? Hmm? Not a lot of money, at first, but… I’m guessing they were start-up funds. Because two months later, that same account has three-point-six mil moving through it. In and out, all in forty-eight hours.” He clapped his hands. “Untraceable. Who has that money now? And what’s he going to do with it?” He paused. “Any ideas?”

Burke sat where he was. What was he supposed to say? “Look, Mr. Kovalenko, we’ve given you everything we have. What more can we do? Try to understand that from our standpoint, this was a routine transaction. We probably do a dozen of these every month.”

Kovalenko drummed his fingers on the desk. “There’s nothing routine about terrorism,” he hissed. He paused to let this sink in, then sat back in his chair. “Why don’t we go through it again? You get a call from the airport…”

And so it went, for a second time and then a third. Doherty looked like he was dying for a smoke.

“Aren’t you leaving something out?” Kovalenko asked.

Burke thought about it. “I don’t think so.”

The FBI agent slid a slip of paper across the desk.

It was a note from the file, written in Burke’s own handwriting.

Esplanade

Belgrade

“Oh yeah,” Burke said, remembering. “He was going to Belgrade for a couple of weeks. The Esplanade – that’s a hotel. I sent the paperwork there.”

“It didn’t seem odd that this was the only address Mr. d’Anconia provided?”

Burke shook his head. “He said he’d be traveling. And he didn’t want any other mail sent to him, just the banking papers. I put him on the Hold Mail list. A lot of our clients-”

“I’ll bet!”

Burke was beginning to lose it. Turning in his seat, he asked Doherty, “Tell me something: When did Ireland become the fifty-first state?”

The Kerryman chuckled. “We’ve had our own troubles with terrorists, Mr. Burke. I’m sure you’ve read the papers. And after that unpleasantness of yours – I mean the World Trade Center, of course – cooperation seemed to be in order.”

Burke gritted his teeth.

Kovalenko snorted his contempt. “There’s only one reason to be on a Hold Mail list: to hide assets. Isn’t that right?”

“No,” Burke told him, “that isn’t right. Different people have different reasons for wanting to be anonymous.”

“Oh, I agree,” Kovalenko told him. “Some of them are terrorists, some of them are drug dealers. Most of them probably just want to cheat on their taxes!”

Burke shook his head. “There are lots of reasons to set up offshore, and there’s nothing wrong with avoiding taxes. That’s just common sense.”

“I’ll tell you what’s common sense,” Kovalenko promised. “A little due diligence. You ever investigate a client?”

Burke shook his head.

“Not your business,” Kovalenko suggested.

“In fact, it’s not.”

Kovalenko made a noise deep in his throat, and it occurred to Burke that the FBI agent was growling.

“You know,” Kovalenko told him, “we had the chief of police in Belgrade visit the Esplanade.”

“Good,” Burke said. “That’s exactly what I would have done.”

“For your information, our Mr. d’Anconia stayed there for two weeks, and when he left… that’s all she wrote. No one’s seen him since.”

Burke had an idea. “What about his passport? There’s a photocopy in the file, I’m sure. Isn’t there-”

“Some kind of emergency contact?”

Burke nodded.

“We thought of that,” Kovalenko assured him. “The address in the passport turns out to be a restaurant in Santiago. El Pollo Loco. Which means…” He turned to Doherty. “Can you tell us what it means, Inspector?”

“Certainly,” the Kerryman said. “It means the ‘Crazy Chicken.’ His emergency contact is the Crazy Chicken in Santiago, Chile.”

“I guess you didn’t bother to check that,” Kovalenko added.

“No,” Burke said. “I didn’t check that.”

“He just walked in and out of your office – is that about it?”

“Something like that,” Burke replied.

“And that’s everything you remember?”

“Let me think,” Burke said. But when he closed his eyes to concentrate, he was blind with fatigue. An enormous yawn convulsed him. He tried to stop it, but he couldn’t. A tidal wave of jet lag rose inside him.

Kovalenko went over the edge. “Let me see your passport!”

“What?”

“Your passport.”

Burke fumbled the passport out of his pocket and handed it over.

Kovalenko snapped open his attaché case. Removing an ink pad and a metal stamp, he rocked the stamp back and forth in the ink, then brought it down with a thump on the passport page with Burke’s picture on it.

Burke gasped. “What are you doing?”

“I’m endorsing your passport,” Kovalenko muttered, taking a pen from his pocket to sign and date the endorsement. Then he flipped the passport in Burke’s direction, making sure it didn’t quite reach him.

Burke retrieved the passport from the floor, and opened it. In burgundy letters, emblazoned across the page, were the words:

Valid only for travel to the United States

“Wait a second,” Burke sputtered. “You can’t do that!”

“I already did,” Kovalenko smirked.

“But… why?”

It was Doherty who answered. “Because we’d like you to stick around for the trial. We’ll need you to give testimony.”

“What trial?” Burke asked.

Kovalenko smiled. “Republic of Ireland versus Aherne.”

Burke blinked. “Aherne! Since when is Tommy on trial?”

“He got the papers about an hour ago,” Kovalenko announced.

“For what? What’s the charge?”

It was Doherty’s turn, and he seemed to be enjoying it. “Money-laundering. One count.”

“What are you, out of your mind?! Tommy didn’t have anything to do with it. I was the one who handled the paperwork. It’s my name on the file. Tommy never even met the client!”

Kovalenko shrugged. “Yeah, well, it’s his name on the door.”

Burke came out of his seat like he was on springs, lunging at the FBI agent. Kovalenko shot backwards in his chair, its wheeled casters squealing across the floor. Doherty threw himself on Burke’s back, locked him into a bear hug, and dragged him away.

Kovalenko sat in his chair with his back to the wall, breathing hard, rubbing at his arm. “That’s rich, you comin’ after me.”

Burke looked him up and down. “Yeah,” he said. “Thinka that.”