Burke had kept the business afloat until the old man was on his feet again. But what really turned the corner for Tommy was a visit from Kate herself.
“She came to me,” he said, “in the night. Stood at the foot of my bed – Katie herself, mind you. ‘Da,’ she says to me, ‘I canna stand the sadness! Do you understand me? Between you and Michael, I have no peace. You’ve got to stop.’ And then she kissed me on the forehead and made me promise I’d be brave enough to get on with things. She promised that she would always be there, even if she was gone. Isn’t that just like her?” Tommy asked. “Still looking after us?”
Burke would have given anything for a glimpse of Kate. Even if it was an illusion, a hallucination or a dream, it would have sent a rainbow straight through his heart. After the vision, the old man looked so relieved, so suddenly at peace with himself and the world, that Burke felt a surge of envy. “She hasn’t come to me,” he said, as if Kate’s ghost had betrayed him.
The old man gave him a warm smile, and touched his arm. “Perhaps in time, Michael…”
As the aircraft began its descent, Burke awakened from his reverie to a sense of disappointment. It was one of those brilliant mornings that happen too rarely in Ireland, the bright green fields sweeping toward the Irish Sea, the sea alive with whitecaps under a Windex sky.
He would have preferred gloom. Darkness and rain. Instead, he found himself descending into a Hallmark card. As the plane banked into its final approach, he saw the flash of a dozen sails beneath the wing, and the long, furling wake of a fishing boat. It did not lift his spirits.
It was barely nine a.m. when he cleared Immigration, so he collected his car and headed for the M1 that would take him into the heart of the city. To his surprise, he caught himself smiling. There was something about Ireland. Maybe it was the scale of the place, the lilting voices in the terminal, the mischief in the brogue.
Without realizing it, he was beginning to feel at home in the maze of streets and parks that were Dublin. He’d missed the old man, and the routine of work, the rose-brick building on Cope Street and jogging along the quays beside the Liffey. It was, he grudgingly admitted, good to be back.
He parked in his spot at the rear of the building and took the steps to the second floor. It was barely ten in the morning when he arrived at the doors to Suite 210, only to find them locked – and a note.
It was thumbtacked directly to one of the wooden panels, which was a bit like nailing a Vermeer directly to the wall. The panels in the door were solid oak, and gleamed – the brass fittings were rubbed daily with a soft cloth. The old man would have a conniption.
Burke pried the thumbtack from the door, and read the note. It was an official notice, in Gaelic and English, dated the day after Burke had gone to the States for Megan’s wedding.
CLOSED BY ORDER OF AN GARDA SIOCHANA
(INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION UNIT)
“Why didn’t you call me?”
He’d gone directly to Dalkey, where he found the old man in the yard, pruning a rosebush. A tangle of thorny branches lay in a heap at his feet.
“Is it yourself, Michael?”
“It is.” A quick hug.
The old man shrugged. “I knew you’d come back the second you heard – and would that be fair to your sister?”
Burke shrugged. His sister could take care of herself. “What happened?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what happened,” the old man repeated. “This shower of cunts came stormin’ in, like it was Ned Kelly they were after! Moira takes one look, goes into a swoon, if you can believe it, and this great eejit steps forward, flashin’ one of them little wallets.”
Burke looked confused. “What ‘little wallets’?”
“Like you see on the box. With the badges inside. And it turns out, this one’s not even Irish. He’s one of your lot!”
“Who is?”
“The eejit I’m talkin’ about. He’s American! This shiny-faced palooka’s come all the way from London – and the Garda, they’re fallin’ all over him, salutin’ his every fart.”
“What did he want?” Burke asked.
“He’s got a bug up his arse about some incorporation you did. I told him to feck off!”
Burke winced. “What did he say?”
“Well, he didn’t take that a’tall well. Touchy sort. Reminded me for the third time that he’s some bloody great FBI agent. Called himself a Lee-gut.”
“Gat.”
“Puh-tay-to, puh-tah-to… I told him I didn’t care if he was Lord of the Rings. If he wants to look at one of our files, he’d better have his paperwork in order.”
“Well, yeah,” Burke said, “but – which account was he after?”
The old man scowled. “The Twentieth-Century Motor Company. Something like that.” He paused. “Ring a bell?”
Burke shook his head. “No.” He’d set up lots of companies at Thomas Aherne & Associates. Most of the time he didn’t spend more than half an hour with a client.
“Manx registration?” the old man reminded him. “Jersey bank?”
Burke made a gesture, as if to say, What else is there? Then he said, “Hold Mail list?”
The old man nodded. “What else would it be? Totally normal setup. But this Yank, he takes one look at the folder-”
“You gave him the file?” Burke asked.
“I ‘gave’ it to the Garda.”
Burke was incredulous.
“It was a special unit,” Tommy explained. “They had a court order.”
Burke’s eyes rested on the harbor as he mulled over the old man’s words. The confidentiality of the firm’s files had always been absolute. For Tommy Aherne to give up a client was… unprecedented.
“Anyway,” the old man said, “this Yank takes one look at the client’s name and, I swear to Jay-sus, he goes ballistic. Says we must have known it was bogus. That’s the word he used. Bogus!”
“So what was the name?”
“A ‘Mr. Francis D. Anconia.’ Or something like that. I only saw the file for a second, and he was yankin’ it out of my hands.”
The old man didn’t have the name quite right. Burke remembered now. The client had asked him about his ear. Sounded American, but… “Chilean passport?”
“The very one!”
Burke thought about it. Finally, he said, “I still don’t get it.”
“All I can tell you is, this Yank is steamed, he’s squawkin’ about money-laundering, terrorism-”
“Terrorism?”
“Swear to Christ, he’s goin’ from pink to purple, and back again. And just when I think he’s going to keel over, he takes this Kerryman aside – thick as two planks, this one is-”
“Who?”
“The Kerryman! ‘Inspector Doherty,’ he’s callin’ himself – and the Leegut has a word with him, private like. Then this Doherty steps forward and announces that he’s shuttin’ us down, ‘pending inquiries.’”
“What in-kwy-ries?” Burke asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, the short answer is you. This Kerryman says they’re opening a money-laundering investigation, and they’d like to have a word with our Mr. Michael Burke, particularly since it’s your name that’s on the file.”
Burke groaned. “Then what?”
“Then? Well, then they threw me out of my office – my own office, if you can believe it, the one in which I’ve been diligently servicing a respectable clientele for-”
“What’s the Legat’s name?”
“Kovalenko.” The old man took off his gloves and laid his clippers down at the base of the rosebush. “Come on, I’ve got their cards inside.”
There were three of them, resting on the marble top of a small table in the vestibule. The first card identified Sean Doherty as an inspector in the Garda’s International Coordination Unit (ICU). The second card belonged to Ira Monaghan of the Garda’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
The third card bore the FBI’s logo, a gold-embossed American eagle, and the name Raymond Kovalenko. The card identified Kovalenko as a Legal Attaché and gave the address of the U.S. Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London.