Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

CHAPTER 27

Lake Bled was only sixty miles or so from Ljubljana, but once Burke passed the city of Kranj, about halfway, sleet began to tick at the windshield of his rental car. Traffic slowed and the road grew slick as it twisted into the foothills of the mountains. Fog bleached and thickened the air. Two hours later, he skated into Bled, white-knuckled behind the taillights of a black Mercedes.

The setting was spectacular. A small town at the edge of an emerald-green lake, Bled rested in the shadow of an eleventh-century castle perched at the edge of a steep cliff. The Julian Alps loomed in the background.

The town was crowded with skiers so it was more than an hour before Burke found a room at the Grand Hotel Toplice, a faded white elephant that looked as if Agatha Christie had spent her summers there.

The room was more expensive than he would have liked, which reminded him that he was going to have to do something about money. He was running through his savings fast. Though he’d been the beneficiary of Kate’s life insurance policy, he’d given it all to Doctors Without Borders.

In his room, he pulled aside the drapes that covered the French doors, and gazed through the falling snow at a gauzy sprawl of lights across the lake. He knew from an in-flight magazine that a seventeenth-century church was out there in the snow, standing on Slovenia’s only island. In the campanile was a legendary bell. Ring it, and your wishes came true.

Burke took two miniature bottles of Dewar’s from the minibar and emptied them into a tumbler. Going out to the balcony, he brushed the snow from a wicker chair, sat down and gazed across the lake.

Wishes were funny things, he thought, pulling his coat closer. To begin with, they were always in limited supply. No one ever had a thousand wishes. From the fairy tales that he’d read, you only got one – unless you were lucky, and then you got three. Either way, you didn’t want to waste them. You didn’t want to wish for something you could get on your own – like Lakers’ tickets – or something you could do on your own.

Like bitch-slap Kovalenko.

Neither were wishes prayers. Prayers were for possibilities, however unlikely (Dear God, let her get well).

Wishes were for lost causes, or outright miracles.

He sipped the Dewar’s and squinted into the wind, which was blowing toward him off the lake. In the distance, he could just make out the rough shape of the church, with its campanile. Kate would have loved it here, he thought. Then, looking toward the church, Wish you were here.

The morning was sky-blue, cold, and clear, sunlight knifing off the snow. To Burke’s surprise, the road to Luka Ceplak’s house was plowed, so it took only a few minutes to get there. Lugging two bottles of vodka in a Duty Free bag, he bounded up the neatly shoveled steps and rapped on the door. The air was fresh and redolent of woodsmoke. Beside the house, in an open-air shed, was a wall of wood so neatly stacked that it formed a flower at its center.

The man who answered the door looked like Geppetto. He was short, with a wiry physique and a pixie’s face that went nova when he saw the Duty Free bag.

“Ahhhh,” he said. “Mr. Burke? I see you come bearing gifts.” He rubbed his hands together. “Always welcome. Please to come in.”

A woodfire crackled in a limestone fireplace as the old man removed the bottles from the bag. Discarding the tissue paper that enclosed them, he revealed, first, a blue bottle of Skyy (“Ahhhh”), and a bottle of Grey Goose, which he kissed. Grinning, he lifted one bottle, then the other, several times, as if doing biceps curls, then finally held the Grey Goose forward. “Just a taste,” he said, “to warm up our conversation – yes?”

Burke didn’t drink in the morning. He was about to say no, when he thought better of it. “Great.”

While Ceplak disappeared through a doorway, and puttered in the kitchen, Burke studied a phalanx of framed photographs, sitting on top of the mantel. The pictures were black-and-white, and obviously quite old. In one of them, an elegant man in a three-piece suit stood in the foreground of what appeared to be a potato field. In the background was a structure that looked as if Eiffel had collaborated with Frankenstein to build a skyscraper. Rising above a low-slung brick building was a wooden tower that might have been about a hundred feet tall, capped by a gigantic metal hemisphere that would have gladdened the heart of Buck Rogers.

“So! Already, you’ve met the maestro,” Ceplak brayed as he reentered the room bearing the bottle of Grey Goose, two glasses, and a plate of crackers and cheese on a painted metal tray.

“The maestro?”

“Tesla! At the Wardenclyffe Tower, of course.” Ceplak handed him a glass, and raised his own. “Na zdravje!”

“Cheers!”

The old man tossed back the vodka in a single gulp. Burke followed suit. Ceplak took a deep breath, sucking the fumes into his chest. “Good, eh?”

Burke nodded. His throat was on fire.

“So!” Ceplak gestured to a Barcelona chair in front of the fireplace. “Sit.”

It was a beautiful room, Burke thought, an eclectic mix of gleaming wooden antique and modern pieces. One entire wall was an expanse of glass with a view of the lake. Burke could see the island now, just off to the right. Tiny figures, blatant against the snow, moved between the shore and the island.

“Pilgrims,” Ceplak told him. “Last year, in April, they row out. But this winter, I don’t think it ever ends.” He gazed at the scene for a while longer, then turned back to Burke. “And you! You’re a pilgrim, too!”

Burke cocked his head. “How’s that?”

“You come to see the notebooks.”

“Actually…”

“My father, Yuri – maybe you know – for thirty years, he’s Tesla’s assistant. Is funny, this pair! The maestro, he’s two meters – this is like basketball player! My father, he’s like me: one point six meters! Practically a dwarf.”

Burke laughed, and loosened the collar of his shirt. The vodka within, and the fire without, were making him warm.

“You’re probably wondering how they met, am I right?” Ceplak asked. “Well, I’ll tell you. My father comes to New York, it’s 1885. He’s fourteen years old, has maybe two dollars in his pocket. English, he has nothing. No words! Hello, good-bye, yes, no – this is tops! No friends, no relatives. But he knows about this famous Serb, right there in New York. So he goes to see him. Is Tesla, of course! And together, they’re speaking Serb. For thirty years, my father’s working for Tesla, they’re speaking Serb.”

“Wow,” Burke said. “Were you in New York then?”

Ceplak scoffed at the idea. “No. I wasn’t even born.” He paused, and posed, raising his chin in a noble profile. “How old you think I am?”

Burke shrugged. “Eighty?”

Ceplak’s face fell. “Yes, this is amazing guess! I am eighty.”

“So your father-”

“He stops working for Tesla in 1915. Bad time. No money. Tesla, by then he’s moving from hotel to hotel. Always he’s feeding pigeons in his room, always he’s being thrown out. My father has job now at Con Edison, okay? And he gives Tesla little salary – just to live on.” He paused. “Imagine, this great man! He invents everything – alternating current, radio, a hundred patents, plus! He’s on cover of Time magazine – and he cannot pay hotel bill!” Ceplak shook his head and chuckled to himself. “Ten years later, I am big surprise to my parents. We come back to Slovenia. End of story.” The old man topped off his vodka. “Now,” he said, “these notebooks – where do you want to begin?”

“Actually, I’m not here to see the notebooks,” Burke told him. “I’m not a scientist. I probably wouldn’t understand them.” He paused and corrected himself. “I mean, I definitely wouldn’t understand them.”

Ceplak rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger, peered narrowly at Burke. “Youuuuu… are a journalist… or a writer. Perhaps, you are writing a book about the maestro, am I right?”

“No,” Burke said, his voice regretful. “I came to ask you about someone else who was here, someone who did come to look at the notebooks. An American – maybe you remember him. A guy named Jack Wilson.”

A look crossed the old man’s face, and Burke tried to read it: distaste or apprehension. Maybe both. “Yes, he’s here,” Ceplak said. “Long time. He sits where you’re sitting. And he’s reading. For days, he’s reading reading reading. And he’s making calculations.”

The old man got to his feet, and walked to the window. Lifting a pair of binoculars to his eyes, he gazed at the lake, and then began to chortle. “Look at this!” he insisted, handing the binoculars to Burke. “On the steps, up to the church. For newlyweds, if the husband carries the wife to the top, it’s good luck for the marriage. But this poor fellow, he’s smaller than me! Better she should carry him.”

Burke got the couple in view. The man was hunched over, dragging his bride up the steps in a sort of fireman’s carry.

Ceplak refilled their glasses. “Now that,” he said, “is love!” He handed a glass to Burke, clinked it with his own, then downed his portion in a gulp.

Burke sipped his vodka as Ceplak went to the fire, and added a log. “You know where Wilson went?” Burke asked.

Ceplak shrugged. “He says he’s going home. So, I guess he goes back to the States.”

“Any idea where?”

The old man shook his head. “Tell me something,” he said. “Why you are so interested in this man?”

Burke had a story ready – he’d thought it up on the plane. But he decided it would be simpler to tell the truth. “We had a business arrangement. It didn’t work out.”

The old man nodded, knowingly. “He owes you money.”

Burke shook his head. “No,” he said, “it’s worse than that. There’s trouble with the police.”

“Police?” The old man’s face creased with worry. “He’s criminal?”

Burke made a gesture. “According to the FBI, he’s a terrorist.”

Ceplak closed his eyes, put his head in his hand, and massaged his temples. “You’re sure?”

Burke reached for the vodka. “I’m not sure of anything. All I know is, they shut down my business because of him.”

“And if you can’t find him, what happens then?”

“I’ll tell the FBI what I did find. Then it’s up to them.”

Ceplak nodded thoughtfully. After a moment, he said, “No good.”

Burke looked at him.

“Your FBI,” Ceplak muttered, “they know Tesla. When he dies, they take his papers.”

“I know,” Burke said. “I read about that.”

“They come here, it’s not good,” Ceplak said.

Burke tried to reassure him. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Ceplak looked worried. “I think, these FBI, maybe they don’t just read. Maybe they take the notebooks.” It could have been the light, but it seemed to Burke that the old man’s eyes were wet with tears. “Better they don’t come here,” Ceplak announced. “Better, you find him.”

Burke looked skeptical.

“Maybe I can help,” the old man said.