Ghost Dancer

by John Case

  “And what would I do with a letter?” Aherne asked.

  “As Legat, I’ll acknowledge that a mistake was made. And that it was our fault.”

  “You mean, your fault,” Aherne told him.

  “Exactly. It was my fault. You can do what you want with the letter. I’m sure your solicitors will think of something.”

  Aherne grunted his grudging assent, and went for pen and paper.

  When the letter was written, and the ink blown dry, Aherne said, “Michael’s in the States, isn’t he?”

  “Where?”

  “Nevada,” the old man told him.

  “Where in Nevada? It’s a big state!”

  Aherne shrugged. “Dunno,” he said. “If he calls, I’ll tell ’im you want a word.”

  At first, Kovalenko thought the old man had tricked him, and that he was lying. But, eventually, he accepted the depressing truth. The old fart didn’t know where his son-in-law was. And no, Burke hadn’t said anything to him about d’Anconia’s real identity.

  “But didn’t he tell you all about it?” Aherne asked. “He said he went to London. Were you not in, man?”

  It took only a day to confirm that Michael Burke had entered the United States from Ireland two days earlier, passing through immigration control at JFK. Credit card information revealed that Burke flew to Reno from New York, and rented a car from Alamo. A green Hyundai with California plates.

  But that was it. Kovalenko contacted the FBI office in Las Vegas, and asked them to put out a BOL for Burke’s rental car.

  Then, seventy-six hours and seven phone calls after Andrea Cabot’s initial call, Kovalenko persuaded his contacts in the Garda to visit Burke’s apartment. “We’re getting information from a confidential, but very reliable source that Mr. Burke is a victim of foul play. If you could visit the apartment discreetly, just to see if he’s dead on the floor, we’d be very grateful. Oh! and while you’re there, hopefully this morning, maybe you could make a copy of the hard drive on his computer and shoot it over to me…”

  Eighteen hours later, he had the name of “the American” Andrea was screaming about.

  Wilson. Jack Wilson.

  CHAPTER 47

  LAS VEGAS | JUNE 16, 2005

  Wilson was impatient—and worried that Irina had run into some kind of trouble at Immigration. Where was she? Her flight had landed half an hour ago. He stood with his double bouquet of red roses, looking for her in the parade of humanity streaming through Security.

  He felt sorry for them. They were thrilled to be in Vegas—you could see it on their faces—but if they were here on June 22, they were going to be in for a rough time. The city was as artificial as that place in the Middle East, where they had the “underwater restaurant.” A metropolis in the middle of nowhere, Vegas boasted nineteen out of twenty of the largest hotels in the world. And it was almost entirely dependent on the kindness of technology. The hotels would be uninhabitable in the absence of air-conditioning. (This June, temperatures were around a hundred degrees most days.) And what would they drink? The water supply depended on pumps that run on electricity, and even the dams allocating water around the state relied on state-of-the-art electrical systems using digital technologies. The water would be gone in a tick of the clock.

  Forty miles away, Lake Mead would become a mecca once everyone realized that the grid wouldn’t be coming back “up.” Not soon. Not ever. Maybe a few of them would think of Culpeper, and realize what was happening. But what they wouldn’t know, and couldn’t guess, was that this time they couldn’t just walk to the next town. This time there was nowhere to go. This time the whole country was going down and, with it, the world.

  Just getting to Lake Mead would be difficult for most of them. It was forty miles through high desert, so it wasn’t as if they’d be able to carry much in the way of food and water. Eventually, the ones who survived would defend their access to water, build defensive perimeters, and retribalize. How long would that take? A month? Two, at the most.

  Vulnerable people passed him. A woman in a wheelchair, a mother with an infant in a sling, a very obese man. They wouldn’t have a chance. And neither, of course, would Mandy. He’d been tempted to bring her to the B-Lazy-B. But he’d resisted, hardening his heart to his purpose. Mandy was the past, and the past was something he could not risk revisiting.

  The P.A. system was delivering its message about “unattended luggage” when he finally saw Irina, a hesitant figure in blue, wheeling a black suitcase. She was scanning ahead, looking for him, a sweet furrow of concern in her forehead. He raised his hand and his voice: “Irina!” And when she turned to see him, her face uncoiled into a child’s unfettered delight. Her joy at seeing him bowled him over. He felt a rush of euphoria.

  And then she was in his arms—sweet-smelling, real, a dream come true.

  Showing Irina around Las Vegas was like taking a child to Disneyland. Wilson was more than indifferent to the pleasures the city offered, but her happiness gave him so much pleasure that, like an indulgent parent, he couldn’t stop smiling.

  She gaped at the casinos on the way from the airport, practically bouncing with excitement. She oohed and aahed at the lobby in the Mirage, and once they were in their suite, ran around like a little kid. “Oh you are joking me! This is our room?!” She left no corner unexplored—delighted with the minibar, the toiletries, the television, the lavish bathroom, the gigantic bed. She threw herself on it, giggling and bouncing.

  He joined her there and when they kissed, Wilson felt it in every molecule. Soon they were beginning to make love. She unbuttoned his shirt. She widened her eyes when she saw the tattoos. “You have…pictures,” she said.

  “Ummm-hmmmm.”

  She traced the dragonfly with a finger, then ran her lips along the outline of the crescent moon. Raising her head, she saw the unfamiliar words emblazoned on his chest. “And this? What is this meaning?”

  Wilson smiled. “It means, ‘Don’t be afraid.’”

  As her lips moved to the words, he reached for the buttons of her blouse, and she squirmed away.

  “What?” he said, as he got up to turn out the lights, then climbed back into bed.

  “I like the dark,” she whispered, and who was he to argue with her? Beyond the window, through the privacy sheer, the city glittered like a strange galaxy.

  Afterward, she wrapped herself in a sheet and, blushing, closed herself into the bathroom to dress. When she came back, he opened a split of champagne. They drank a toast “to us,” and went down to the casino. Wilson showed her how the games were played, and her glee at hitting a ten-quarter payoff at the slots was so endearing that even the most hardened gamblers smiled. Her wide-eyed apprehension as she sent the dice flying across the table, and her look of expectation and alarm as the roulette ball raced around the wheel, was pure gold.

  It was the first time in a long time that Wilson had been happy. He’d been living on adrenaline the last few months, going from Allenwood to Washington, then Dublin, Belgrade, Bled, and Beirut. Odessa and Bunia, and places in between. Moving the money, buying the ranch, building the weapons. Then Culpeper and San Francisco, with Maddox as the filling.

  It left him with a feeling of unreality, as if he’d been playing at being himself. It was a role of his own devising, that was true—he’d written the script. But the constant need to stay within himself and his emotions, to be on guard and always in the moment…it had taken a toll.

  But now Irina was here and everything was different. There was something about her that made him feel solid and of a piece. Just being with her restored him to himself.

  Later that evening, at the White Chapel, Irina’s fantasy unfolded with the sweetness and precision of a sequel to Shrek. Las Vegas was a cluster of homages to the real thing: New York, Paris, Venice, and Cairo—the list went on and on. In the same way, a wedding in the White Chapel was a tricked-out version of the traditional ceremony. A chapel, yes, but not a church. Attendants and witnesses, of course, bu
t strangers. “Close strangers.” Flowers and scattered rose petals and wedding cake and photos—unplanned by the bride, but definitely a part of the package.

  Getting married in Vegas was like hiring an interior decorator. It was a massive invasion of privacy, but that was okay, because they knew best. They really did.

  Irina’s elation at every detail transformed the ceremony. She emerged from the dressing room in an ankle-length satin sheath, hand-beaded with pearls by her mother, her cheeks rosy with excitement. “My God, she’s blushing,” one of the paid attendants whispered. “We’ve actually got a blushing bride!” When they repeated their vows, Irina’s voice shook with emotion. As Wilson slipped the ring on her finger, she beamed at him. Before the minister could grant permission, she threw herself into his arms. “I am loving you, Jack Wilson!” she caroled. “I am so lucky woman.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have a lot of experience making people happy.

  “Now we go home?” she asked.

  Wilson nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “now we go home. Let’s go home.”

  CHAPTER 48

  FALLON, NEVADA | JUNE 21, 2005

  A week can be a very long time. Long enough so that the woman who refilled the coffee urns and cereal dispensers in the breakfast room began to greet Burke with a friendly smile. “How’re you today?” she’d ask, realigning doughnuts and bagels between incursions of eaters.

  He was ready to go back to Dublin. But he figured he might as well play the string out and wait for Madame Puletskaya’s call. Then he could honestly say he’d done everything he could do. And there was a chance, a Super Lotto kind of chance, that Wilson himself would show up—at Mandy’s, in Fallon. Maybe Burke would get lucky.

  Meanwhile, he explored.

  He went to Pyramid Lake, and then out to Grimes Point, where a millennium earlier Jack Wilson’s ancestors had carved petroglyphs into the boulders. You could be standing there in the front of the glyphs, gazing into the past, while right behind you matte-black fighter jets—Tomcats and Hornets—took off and landed at the Naval Air Station.

  Tuesday. June 21.

  Would Madame Puletskaya even call? He sat in a chair beside the bed in his room, with a newspaper at his feet, silently rehearsing his friend-of-the-groom voice. She says/I say… It was almost ten when the phone rang. He lifted the receiver to his ear. “Hullo?”

  “This is Madame Puletskaya. Good morning!”

  He introduced himself.

  Olga must have briefed her because she got right to the point. “You are friend of Jack’s, you say? But how do I know this?”

  “I’m a good friend of Jack’s,” he told her. “He gave me your number. Told me to call. To tell you the truth, he’s so delighted with Irina, he thought I might have the same luck.”

  He could almost hear Madame Puletskaya’s crusty exterior cracking like packed ice. “Beautiful girl,” she said. “I am so happy for them. Very sweet, maybe shy—you like shy girl also?”

  He didn’t know what to say. “Yeah! Shy girls are…something!”

  “If you are signing up for our service,” she told him, her voice manifestly shrewd, “for the Sweet Sixteen, you get sixteen pictures and e-mail contact is all. For the Great Eight, you get photos and complete biographies of eight girls, e-mail contact, one letter translated, and one delivery of flowers. This is better deal. Is more selective. And for friend of Jack, I’m especially picking only most beautiful girls. One hundred twenty-five euros. Maybe one hundred fifty dollars. You have computer? Is extra to send, but if you like, we can do FedEx.”

  “About Jack—”

  “We settle business first, okay? You prefer Great Eight, yes? Is better deal. And you have computer?”

  He got the picture. She might be willing to talk about Jack, but she wanted to make a sale first. “Yes,” he said, “I have a computer.”

  “We take Visa and Master. Also PayPal, if you prefer.”

  He pulled out his wallet, and read off the numbers from his Visa card. When she had finished giving him directions on how to access his “Great Eight,” he asked her again. “The thing is, about Jack and Irina—”

  “You go to wedding?

  He paused, realizing he didn’t know if the wedding had occurred or not. “I…no,” he said, “but I’d really like to send a present.”

  “Very nice, yes, for bride couple.”

  “The thing is, Jack gave me his new address, but I don’t have it with me.”

  She hesitated, but she came through. “Oh? Is beautiful place, my goodness! Irina shows me pictures. She is lucky lucky girl.” He heard typing on a keyboard, and then, as he held his breath, he listened as she read out the address.

  “Post Office Box one-two-four, Juniper, Nevada.” She gave him the zip code.

  “Thanks so much,” he said, thinking—shit, a post office box. “Do you have a telephone number?” He was thinking that he might be able to pull up a street address using a reverse-lookup directory.

  The Russian was quiet for a moment, then said. “This, I don’t release. Privacy rules, yes?”

  “It’s just that sometimes FedEx wants a phone number, that’s all.”

  “There is possibility of UPS,” she told him. Then changed the subject. “Such a couple!” she declared. “This one, I can tell it works out. Sometimes, you can tell…no! It’s…what do you say? A train wreck! But this one? This one is marriage made in heaven. And for Irina? I am so happy for this girl. If nothing else, God forbid, at least she gets good medical care.”

  Burke thought he’d misheard. “Medical care?”

  “Sure! You have best medical care in America. I tell her this.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “In Ukraine, it’s not so good. Doctors, they are all becoming taxi drivers and waiters. I can’t blame them. It’s more money. So…U.S.? It’s better for my little Irina.”

  “Is she…ill?”

  “No-no-no-no-no-no-no. She’s perfectly healthy, of course! Her condition, it’s perfectly under control. Ukrainebrides guarantees this: healthy young women. Every girl can have children.”

  “But she has a condition,” Burke said. “If I’m going to hook up with someone—”

  “Yes, but I’m telling you it’s not serious.”

  “I understand, but…” He could sense her thinking on the other end of the line, worrying that she was about to lose a client.

  “Okay,” she said, “but maybe you don’t mention this, okay? Irina, she’s shy about this. You’re promising?”

  “Not a word. I just want to be sure—for myself.”

  “Well,” Madame Puletskaya said with a sigh, “it’s like this…”

  A post office box might not be the most useful address, but it was all Burke had. And when he looked up the location of Juniper, it seemed like it just might be enough. Juniper was a speck (Pop. 320) near the Idaho border, the kind of place where people would know about the new guy in town, especially if the new guy had a lot of money.

  It was close to noon when he checked out. And he was beginning to worry. For the first time, the question arose in his mind: What if I actually find the sonofabitch? Then what? As he recalled, Francisco d’Anconia was kinda big. And, seemingly, pretty fit. Which wasn’t surprising when you considered that he’d spent the last ten years doing push-ups, lifting weights, and jogging around his cage.

  Fortunately, this was Nevada, and gun stores were about as common as Dunkin’ Donuts shops in Massachusetts. On the way out of town, he passed a store with a rearing wooden Grizzly outside, and a sign that read “Gun & Sun.” Making a U-turn, he parked in the lot and went inside. It was a gun store that doubled as a tanning salon.

  The girl behind the counter couldn’t have been more helpful. She would probably have sold him an RPG, if he’d asked. But there was a problem. “The phones are down,” she said.

  “So what?” Burke asked, eyeing a sleek Beretta.

  “We have to do an instant check with the state p
olice before we can sell you a gun—to see if you have a criminal record. You don’t have a criminal record, do you?” she teased.

  “No,” Burke replied.

  “Sometimes they’re down for a minute—if there was a storm, or something? But sometimes it’s an hour or more. You want to wait? I could put you in one of the pods at the back, get you some color.”

  Burke shook his head. “Not today. I’m kind of busy. How about a gun show? They don’t have to do a check, do they?”

  “No. And you can get anything you want at one of them. Only I don’t think there is one until the weekend,” she told him. “And we’ll have our phones up before then. You sure you don’t want to get a tan?”

  “No, but…is that a cell phone?” He pointed to a glass case, which held an arsenal of handguns and miscellanea. A crossbow. Some kind of…wands. Cell phones.

  “It looks like a cell phone,” she said. “But it’s a stun gun. One hundred eighty thousand volts.”

  “What do you do with it?” Burke asked.

  “Basically, you just touch someone and…he kinda loses it.” She paused. “I could sell you that!” she said. “Cuz it’s nonlethal.”

  He took I-95 to I-80 and followed it all the way to Elko. Eight hours later, he veered north in the direction of Jackpot. Soon, the pavement gave way to dirt and gravel. He drove on in a cloud of dust, locking headlights with a single car.

  It was close to ten p.m. when the darkness brightened a few miles ahead. Juniper. The town consisted of two stick-built houses, facing each other across the road, and a cluster of trailers. “Downtown” was a post office, a general store, and a bar with a sign that read BUCKET OF BLOOD.

  The saloon reminded Burke of the nightmare bar in Quentin Tarantino’s vampire film, but it was the only place that was open—and he was thirsty.

  The Bucket of Blood had been decorated at the whim of its eccentric owner. Driven by a solar battery, a porcelain Hello Kitty sat on the bar, waving its paw unceasingly. A collection of dusty plastic horses marched along a ledge near a sign for the restroom. There was an entire wall covered with postcards, and a television set framed by a rack of elk antlers.