John Case - Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

Doherty listened to it all, nodded throughout, and finally shrugged. “It’s outa my hands,” he said.

The thing was, the old man needed to work. After more than two weeks of idleness, he’d pruned all the roses, caught up on his correspondence, and played “108 holes of golf.” He was beginning to slip back into his old habits, getting bombed at the pub every night and talking, misty-eyed, about Kate.

In the States, the FBI was taking the time to contact Burke’s friends, family, and former employers, to inquire about his political views, acquaintances, and travels abroad. Burke learned of this when his father called to congratulate him on his application for a government job.

“What job?” Burke asked.

His father made a sound like a siren going off – a realization siren. “Ohhhhhhh!” he exclaimed. And then, in a whisper: “Cloak and dagger, huh?”

Since Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged loomed so large in Kovalenko’s world, Burke checked it out online. Google gave him more than a million hits. The top-listed site was a web page supported by the Ayn Rand Society, which featured photos of the author, long excerpts from her works, accounts of her philosophy, links to Amazon, and more. In essence, Rand believed that self-interest was not only natural, but the secular equivalent of the state of grace.

It was kind of interesting – especially if you were out of a job and your passport had been revoked. Burke read biographical sketches of the author, including her sallies before the House Committee on Un-American Activities; reviews of her books; and explications of their plots. This was no ordinary author’s website, but a mansion of chat rooms, with a library of blogs and long biographies of Rand’s major characters. There was even an online dating service.

In 1957, eighteen years before Mike Burke was born, Atlas Shrugged topped the bestseller lists. A survey attributed to the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club deemed Atlas Shrugged as the “second most influential book” for Americans – after the Bible.

At its heart, the book was the story of good and evil, capitalism and communism, light versus dark. Its plot was at once florid, complex, and more or less interminable. It involved an improbably named heroine – the lovely Dagny – and her efforts to rescue a railroad from unfair competition, shortages, and corrupt government manipulation. Meanwhile, Dagny searched for John Galt, the legendary inventor of a paradigm-shifting motor that was said to run on static electricity gathered from the atmosphere.

While Dagny struggled to keep the railroad going she noticed that many of the most talented CEOs of the time seemed to be leaving their jobs to “spend more time with their families” (and possessions, Burke thought). Like the corporate Atlases they were, the best and the brightest were shrugging off the burdens society had placed upon them. In effect, the movers and shakers were on strike. They were sick of the government’s interference, regulations, taxes, corruption, and incompetence.

Francisco d’Anconia was a robber baron on a secret picket line. A Chilean copper king, he decided to keep the metal in the ground rather than submit to regulations that squeezed his profits. His long-winded defense of this decision, “Francisco’s Money Speech,” was quoted in its entirety on various sites. The essence of the speech was simple: Money is the root of all good.”

And lots more, along the same line.

At the end of the book, Dagny crash-lands in a wilderness canyon, a sort of Libertarian Shangri-la, where she comes upon the shrugging Atlases who have withdrawn from the world around them. Among them are Francisco d’Anconia and the mysterious John Galt, inventor of the world-transforming motor. Civilization founders in their absence.

It reminded Burke quite a bit of his father’s blunt opinions about welfare, political correctness, and affirmative action. (No, no, and no.) In his dad’s view, the government shouldn’t be in the business of taking care of people. “Folks are lazy,” he’d insist. “They say there’s no jobs – so how come all these immigrants are working two jobs, and looking for a third?”

But in reality, Larry Burke would have given you the shirt off his back. John Galt would have sold you sunblock.

It was two in the morning when Burke finished reading, and shut down his computer. He didn’t get it. Whoever “d’Anconia” really was, he had to be nuts. For whatever reason, he’d chosen to travel the world as a figment of someone else’s imagination.

Obviously, he identified with Ayn Rand’s hero. But why? And what did al-Qaeda have to do with it?

For nearly two days, Burke stayed in his room. He watched soccer matches, tennis games, the endless droning on the Beeb about Tony Blair’s poll numbers. He ordered takeout from the Italian place around the corner, and slept a lot, dozing in front of “the box” (as the old man called it), only to wake up more tired than ever. He ignored the telephone when it rang, sinking deeper and deeper into his own lassitude. Occasionally, he wondered, What now? There was nowhere to go, and nothing for him to do. Or nothing he could do.

What roused him from this torpor was a visit from the old man. Together, they went to the Sun, where they sat at a dark and ancient table as far from the video poker machine as they could get and still be in the pub. Before long, each of them was deep into his third pint.

He felt like a bad influence, drinking with a man who was drinking too much. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. A little convivial oblivion.

“I don’t know what to do,” Burke remarked, not for the first time.

“Bastards,” the old man said. “I don’t know what to tell ya.” He took a long pull on his beer. “I went to see Harrigan the other day.”

Burke sat up straight. Harrigan was the firm’s soliciter. “Oh?”

Tommy nodded. “He says ‘Hello.’”

“Did you happen to mention the business with Kovalenko and the Garda?”

“I did, indeed.”

“And what did he say?” Burke asked.

Tommy pursed his lips, then smacked them. “He said… it’s certain to cost a penny, but they don’t have a case. Not a’tall. We’ll win in the end.”

Burke nodded thoughtfully, and sipped his drink. “Meanwhile…”

“We might have a bit of a rough patch… in the short term.”

Burke took a deep breath, and slammed his glass down on the table. “You know what? I’m going to Belgrade!” He said it so loud, there was a dip in the room’s noise level as people turned to look.

“And what do you want to go there for?”

“It’s where d’Anconia went. I’ll find the bastard and I’ll bring him back.”

The old man’s face screwed up into a caricature of skepticism. “There’s no point! That goony bird of your’s… he already done that.”

“What goony bird? You mean, Kovalenko?”

“The very man! He’s already checked it out. You’ll just be wasting your time.”

Burke shrugged. “Maybe not…” After 9/11, Burke did not hold the FBI or the CIA in awe. As everyone knew by now, two of the hijackers had roomed with an FBI informant. Others had been trained in knife fighting by a retired Delta commando in Florida. The FBI had declined to examine one of the hijackers’ computers, even after he’d been reported seeking to limit his flying lessons to steering jumbo jets in midflight (no takeoff or landing lessons required). Still other hijackers had been given visas to enter the United States even after the CIA had tracked them to a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, where plans had been discussed to put bombs aboard a dozen commercial airliners. This much Burke had read in the newspapers. Who knew what else was out there? “I’m guessing they missed something,” he said.