Dance Of Death

MIKE BURKE SETTLED the telephone back into place. Wilson’s address was a prison?

He jammed his hands into his pockets as he walked back to the Esplanade. The good news was that he had a name now, a real name – which was more than Kovalenko had. So he’d get points for that. He even had an address. Sort of.

But that was bad news, too. This particular address did not inspire confidence. On the contrary, it tended to reinforce Kovalenko’s doubts that Burke had acted in good faith when forming a corporation for “d’Anconia.”

On the other hand (there were a lot of “on the other hands,” it seemed, as Burke tried to get Wilson into focus) his quarry was a Stanford man. So he couldn’t be all bad, could he? Of course not.

The ridiculousness of this thought was not lost on Burke as he trudged through the cold-snap that was Belgrade. If Wilson graduated from Stanford, he’d undoubtedly done well on his SATs. But that didn’t make him a saint. To go from the playing fields of Palo Alto to the Yard at White Deer suggested that our boy was either a very bad man, or a total fuckup.

At the hotel, it took Burke fifteen minutes to get through to London. When he did, Kovalenko wasn’t there. His assistant, a Brit named Jean, offered to take a message. Burke said, “Just tell him I can identify d’Anconia.”

She repeated the details, then mouthed a little tsk. “I must tell you,” she said, her voice clipped. “Mr. Kovalenko is out of pocket at the moment. I’ll do my best to get your message to him, but –”

She sucked a little air through her teeth in a display of regret. “It could be several days.”

The secretary sighed. “Maybe you should have a word with Agent Gomez. He’s filling in.”

There was a few seconds of silence, and then she came back on the line. “I’m afraid he’s away from his desk. Shall I have him call you?”

Replacing the handset in its cradle, Burke swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. As he did, he felt something crumpling in his pocket. It was the three-by-five card that the desk clerk had given him the day before. He sat for a moment wondering what to do. On the one hand, he was curious about who Wilson might have been calling in the Ukraine. But he was also smart enough to know that this was precisely the kind of thing that got cats killed. He should probably leave it to Kovalenko.

Right, he thought, and dialed the number. There were a couple of short rings, and then a recorded voice came on the line. To his surprise, it was a woman’s voice, heavily accented and sexy:

You have reached Ukraine Brides. Please listen carefully to choose your correct prompt.

If you are interested to receive our brochure, please press “one,” leave name and complete address.

If you are interested to speak to representative, please press “two,” and leave telephone number to reach you.

Or … you may prefer to visit our complete website at ukrainebrides – all one word – dot org. Thank you.

Burke hung up. As he fell back on the bed, he thought: He wants to get married?! Like this guy doesn’t have enough problems?

“Agent Gomez.” Suddenly, his voice changed. Became almost chipper. “You mind if I tape this?”

Burke gritted his teeth. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s fine. What kind of trouble?”

Click. “Well,” Gomez told him, “I had a little chat this morning.” He paused for effect.

“I gave him the message you left. Said you’d called from Belgrade. He was very curious as to how you managed to get around without your passport.”

Burke didn’t know what to say. He started to mumble something about dual citizenship, then heard the weakness in his own voice and got angry – as much at himself as at Gomez. “Y’know,” he said, “I haven’t done a fucking thing wrong.”

“The only thing I’ve done is, I’ve been helpful.” He paused. “So how come Kovalenko doesn’t call me himself?”

A thousand miles away, Special Agent Eduardo Gomez stood beside the window in his office, looking through the blinds at the plane trees in Grosvenor Square. “He’s in the shop,” Gomez said.

In fact, and as Gomez well knew, Kovalenko was in the Mayo Clinic, having flown to the United States in a desperate bid to save himself – though from what was unclear. Kovalenko’s own internist said he was fine, that the anomalies on his CAT scan were fairly typical, and nothing to worry about. But the Legat was not a man to take chances. Certainly, not with his own health. He wanted a second opinion – preferably from an American who had gone to Harvard. So he’d flown the coop – and the Atlantic.

The truth was: Ray Kovalenko was a hypochondriac. Everybody knew it. Nobody talked about it. In his absence, Gomez had taken the opportunity to avail himself of Kovalenko’s office, where he’d checked out some of the websites the Legat had visited. And what he found was terrifying. Kovalenko surfed for diseases the way some guys surfed for porn.

The Centers for Disease Control, the World Organization for Animal Health, the User’s Guide to Rare Diseases websites – each was just a click away at the top of the Legat’s list of Favorites. The man needed help. But like a lot of people who need help, he did not want to hear about it. He was a medical paranoid who ran his life along need-to-know principles. And not just his private life. His professional life was equally opaque, perhaps because he understood that secrets were the hundred-dollar-bills of the Information Age.

So he didn’t delegate well. Which meant that when Kovalenko was unavailable, certain cases did not move forward. And woe unto anyone foolish enough to step in where he wasn’t wanted. In the end, Gomez thought, covering for Kovalenko was simple. You took messages and kept your head down. Anyone could do it.

Meanwhile, the guy on the other end of the line, the guy in Belgrade – Burke – was shouting: “What does that mean? He’s ‘unavailable for a few days.’ Do you even know what this is all about?” Burke asked.

A skeptical silence ensued. Finally, Burke asked, “Did you tell him I can identify d’Anconia?”

“He knows that,” Gomez replied. “His secretary gave him the message. That’s why I’m calling.”

“If you’ll just give me the information,” Gomez insisted, “I’ll pass it along.” He sounded almost bored.

Burke made a sound, somewhere between a gargle and a growl. If he told this guy that d’Anconia was an ex-con named Jack Wilson who’d done time in a federal prison called Allenwood, that would be the end of it. The FBI would get on with the case, and Burke would be left with nothing, twisting in the wind.

Maybe Kovalenko would do the right thing. Maybe he’d reinstate Burke’s passport, and remove the sanctions against Aherne & Associates. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. When you came right down to it, the Legat did not seem like a stand-up guy.

“Y’know,” Burke said, “I’m just gonna wait until I see him. It’s kinda complicated, and … Tell Mr. Kovalenko I’ll be in touch.” And with that, he hung up.

Falling back on the bed, he watched the lights fluttering across the ceiling. He thought about going back to Dublin. That would be the easiest thing. He could give the information to Doherty. But what was the point of that? This was Kovalenko’s show.

The best thing he could do, Burke decided, was find a way to improve his hand. Pick up as much as he could so that when it came time to sit down with Kovalenko, he’d have more to trade than a name.

He could fly back to Dublin that same night. But there was nothing for him to do there. If he returned to Ireland, he’d just sit around, missing Kate, and drinking with the old man.

But if he went to Lake Bled, he might actually learn something. D’Anconia – Wilson – was no doubt long gone. But this notebook guy, Ceplak, might know where he is. If Burke could find that out, Kovalenko would have to be more accommodating.

He reached for the three-by-five card that Milic had given him, and dialed the 386 country code for Slovenia. The phone rang and rang, and then a man’s well-lubricated voice answered: “Zdravo?”