CHAPTER 45
Still weary with jet lag, Burke decided to spend the night in Fallon. He took a room at the Holiday Inn Express and ate dinner at a Mexican joint called La Cocina. Returning to the motel, he went to bed at ten, thinking he had traveled thousands of miles to see Mandy Renfro. For nothing.
He didn’t have a clue as to what he was going to do in the morning. Go to the casino. Put whatever he had in his wallet on red, and watch the ball go around and around. Or maybe he’d just play blackjack until the world came to an end. That would be a plan.
As it turned out, he slept nearly twelve hours, waking up a little before ten. When he stumbled downstairs to see if he could still catch the free continental breakfast, he knew right away that there had been another event. Despite the lateness of the hour, a dozen people were still in the breakfast room, clustered around a television.
On the screen, figures in HazMat suits were carrying stretchers to a fleet of ambulances standing haphazardly at the curb, while police kept a crowd at bay in front of what looked like a government building. Paramedics were treating people on the sidewalk.
“Where is that?” Burke asked. Never taking his eyes from the screen, the man next to him replied, “Frisco.”
“What happened?”
The man just shook his head. “A lot of people are dead.”
The screen shot changed to a press conference, where the city’s mayor, standing next to the chief of police, was insisting earnestly that there was “no evidence of biological agents.”
A reporter asked: “Was this a terrorist attack?”
The chief of police rambled through a series of evasions.
An elderly woman close to the TV spoke up. “Someone said the temperature went through the roof. They said it happened all at once. What’s that all about?”
Burke poured himself a cup of coffee. He’d just taken a sip when a plume of sensation shot through his chest. The federal courthouse in San Francisco was where Jack Wilson had been tried.
Later that day, Burke sat at a booth in the Cowboy Diner, drinking coffee from a thick mug and looking at his notebook. A television droned above the bar.
The authorities in San Francisco were leaning toward an explanation that involved a malfunction in the building’s heating system. So far, no one had connected the event with Culpeper.
Burke flipped through the pages of his notebook, searching for leads that he might have overlooked. In the end, he found only one. A scribbled note that read
Ukrainebrides
There was a telephone number next to it, and it took him a moment to remember how he’d come up with it. The hotel clerk in Belgrade. For another twenty euros, Burke thought, I could probably have gotten a DNA sample.
He went back to his room around eight, stopping to buy a phone card at a convenience store. God only knows how much it would cost to call Ukraine from a Holiday Inn.
Sitting on the bed with the phone, he punched in about twenty numbers and listened to the recorded message. Finally, he went for Option 5: talk to a representative.
Five minutes of Europop ensued, while Burke stared at the screen on the muted television. Stretchers and gurneys in the hallways of a hospital. Harried doctors coming out of a burn ward. Body bags and hapless officials.
He was tempted to hang up. Five minutes of Europop was a lot, especially when he didn’t think anything was going to come of it. He was just basically crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s. He wasn’t expecting the call to go anywhere.
Finally, a voice interrupted the music. “Yes, hello? This is Olga Primakov.”
“Hi-”
“I am sorry to make you wait, but it is very late here.”
Burke hadn’t even thought about that. “I’m really sorry-”
“Is better the website, yes?” Olga said. “You can see pictures of brides. But maybe… you don’t have computer?”
“That’s right,” Burke told her. “I don’t. Not where I am.”
“Perhaps the library-”
“Actually, I got your number from a friend. Jack Wilson?”
“Oh yes, I’m meeting him at Romantic Weekend. Of course.”
Burke sat up straight, and snapped off the television with the remote. “He told me about that!”
“So Jack Wilson gives you this number. Wonderful! You are also looking for a pretty bride?”
Bride? Had Wilson married one of these women? Where did he find the time?
“The ring he’s giving Irina – oooooh, is super-fantastic,” Olga gushed.
“Yeah,” Burke agreed, “it’s a great ring.” He pounced on the name. “Irina’s thrilled with it!”
“So big!”
“Well, that’s Jack. He never does anything halfway. But that’s why I’m calling. I wanted to give them a present, you know, and I was wondering where I should send it.”
Olga hesitated. “But you can take it to the wedding,” she told him. “Is soon, I think. Tomorrow or next day.”
“Ri-iighht,” Burke replied, “but… where is it, anyway?”
There was a long silence, and then: “You don’t be… invited?”
“Oh, yeah, of course I was, but… I’m on the road, and I left the invitation at home, so-”
“I’m sorry,” Olga told him, “I am not permitted to provide this… information. Only Madame Puletskaya can give this. And like you, she’s traveling. But I know she calls Wednesday.” She paused. “You’re in U.S.?”
“Yes.”
“What is your time zone?” she asked crisply.
“Rocky Mountain.”
“Oh yes? Then I arrange she calls you – Rocky Mountain, eight to noon. Yes?”
“Yeah, sure, but-”
“Please? Your number? I am giving it to her on Wednesday.”
Burke recited the telephone number of the motel, and said, “The problem is… that’s a week! And-”
“Sorry. Is best I can do!” Then she thanked him. And hung up.
CHAPTER 46
Seated at his desk, Ray Kovalenko shook his head and swore quietly to himself, then threw his hands in the air and half growled, half shouted, “Shit!”
He’d turned his office upside down, and checked the clothes he’d been wearing. To no avail. The index card was nowhere to be found.
As for Burke, he was MIA. It wasn’t just that he didn’t answer his phone. The Garda was looking for him, and no one had seen the man for days.
The father-in-law, Aherne, was about as much help as a dose of the clap. Feck off!
Kovalenko had gone to the trouble of locating and contacting Burke’s family in Virginia, but they seemed genuinely surprised to learn that their son wasn’t in Dublin. (And that the FBI was looking for him.)
So he had racked his brain, trying to remember what Burke had said about d’Anconia – and who he was. He’d been to Belgrade. He’d been in Allenwood. He’d gone to UCLA. Or USC. One of those places. None of it was any help without a name, a real name, and Kovalenko didn’t have a clue. Sounds like… It was on the tip of his tongue, and then it was gone. Williams…
Meanwhile, Andrea Cabot called twice a day, once in the morning and again in the afternoon. He was dodging her.
In the end, it took a trip to Dublin and a large serving of crow before Tommy Aherne would even agree to see him. And then it was only to negotiate. He wanted the indictment dropped, the sanctions lifted, and a new passport for Burke.
“Done!” Kovalenko agreed.
“And there’s the issue of compensation-”
“Compensation? Compensation for what?”
“Business lost,” Aherne told him.
“I can’t-”
“Then I’ll suppose you’ll be on your way,” Aherne told him, taking the FBI agent by the elbow, and turning him toward the door.