John Case - Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

“It never lasts long,” he told her.

“Shhhhh.” She stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers, the pressure so light, it might have been a breeze.

Every few minutes, she removed the washcloth. He could hear her turn on the tap, and wring out the fabric. Then she came back to his side and replaced the cloth, now cool, over his eyes.

It had been a long time since anyone had shown Wilson any kindness – in part, perhaps, because he hadn’t allowed it. And no one had ever tended him during one of his migraines. He’d always hidden them, moving away from other people whenever they came on.

He congratulated himself on his intuition about Irina. She had heart. The other women might be mercenaries, even prostitutes, but Irina was the real thing.

The migraine was beginning to pass, though he was still a little dizzy, a little “off.”

Her tenderness took on the aspect of a revelation. That he should find a woman as beautiful as this, and as gentle as this, augured well. And, in fact, everything was falling into place. With Hakim out of the picture, he had three times as much money as he thought he would – and no entanglements. The hard part, turning the hash into cash and getting out of Africa alive, was over. All that was left was the payoff.

He’d bought a ranch and started work on the apparatus. And it would soon be ready. The marriage “transaction” that he’d entered into as a gesture to the future was looking more and more like a windfall, a blessing, a stroke of luck. Providence, or something like it, was smiling on him, readying the world for its cleansing and rebirth.

“It’s almost gone.” He began to sit up.

“Shhhhh…” With the tips of her fingers, she pushed him back down, and removed the washcloth. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Don’t open your eyes.”

When she came back again, she stretched out alongside him, fitting herself to his body like spoons in a kitchen drawer. She leaned over him, stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers, then kissed his neck.

“I remove my clothes,” she whispered. “Is all right?”

“Perfect,” he said.

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.

Burke was hoping for Door #2.

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.”

“Who?”

He spelled it for her, and gave her his number at the Esplanade.

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-”

“He’s out of pocket?”

“Ye-esss.”

“Just how far out of pocket is he?” Burke asked.

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

Burke groaned. “This is kind of important,” he told her.

“I’m sure it is.”

“‘Urgent’ is more like it.”

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

“By all means,” Burke told her. “Put him on.”

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?”

Do any of these people actually work? Burke wondered.

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?

Gomez called the next afternoon. The first words out of his mouth were:

“You’re in a lot of trouble, my friend.”

“What? Who is this?”

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

Burke took a deep breath. “What kind of trouble?”

A chuckle from Gomez. “So the tape – it’s okay, right?”

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.

Burke waited. Finally, he said, “Yeah – and ?”

“I talked with Agent Kovalenko.”

“Great!” Burke declared.

“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.”

“Hey!”

“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.

“What?”

Gomez bit his lip. “He’s unavailable for a few days.”

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.