Ghost Dancer by John Case

Author:John Case
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780345486011
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

DUBLIN | APRIL 4, 2005

Burke couldn’t believe it.

The company shut down, his passport void, the old man indicted…and all because this dick, Kovalenko, was an Ayn Rand nut with a hatred for offshore companies. The suggestion that he and Tommy were somehow in cahoots with d’Anconia, whoever d’Anconia was, was ludicrous. He could barely remember the guy. The real problem was that Kovalenko had taken an instant dislike to him. It was as simple as that.

And as complicated.

Burke had a way of rankling people in authority, people like Kovalenko who wore their self-importance like a badge of honor. There was something in Burke’s stance, something in his attitude, or in his eyes, that just…wound them up. It would have been funny, it would have been a gift—but it tended not to end well.

Kovalenko was putting the screws to them because he could. The case would never come to court because, when you got right down to it, Burke had done everything by the book—no matter who the client was.

But in the meantime, Aherne & Associates was closed and the old man was in trouble.

Obviously, Kovalenko enjoying rattling people’s cages—no matter who they were or what they’d done (or hadn’t done). It was just an exercise in power. Like the business with Burke’s passport. That was hardball. But it was hardball the way weenies played it.

Day after day, Burke did everything he could to persuade the Garda that it had made a mistake. He phoned, he wrote, he bombarded Doherty and Kovalenko with e-mails. He even showed up in person to plead Aherne & Associates’ case. But none of it was of any use. He appealed to Inspector Doherty’s sense of decency, but that only seemed to confuse him. So he tried a different tack: patriotism. Surely, Irish authorities could do something to protect Irish businesses. Surely, the Irish wouldn’t let a foreign power push them around.

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.

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