Storm Front (18 page)

“We’re too far away,” al-Lubnani said.

Virgil said, “Raj, can you edge in a little closer?”

Awad tipped the plane toward the Volvo, and ten seconds later, the Volvo made a U-turn and started back the way it had come, accelerating, blowing past a car that it came up behind, and Awad said, “He is going a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour.”

Virgil got on the phone, but Jones didn’t answer. Virgil tried again, and a third time, and finally Jones came on and said, his voice curdled in anguish: “They saw you. They say you’re tracking me in an airplane. They say they’re going to cut a finger off and mail it to me.”

“Why did you slow down there? Did you throw the stone out the window?”

“I’m going away. I’m not talking to you anymore.”

And he hung up.

Virgil redialed, but Jones wouldn’t answer. The Volvo continued speeding back west, and Virgil said, finally, “Raj, we’ve got to go back. I think he threw the stone out the window back at that intersection. We’ve got to go back and watch it until we can get a sheriff’s car there.”

“What about the red car?”

“We have to let it go. I’ll get somebody else to run it down.”

—

V
IRGIL CALLED
the dispatcher out of Mankato and had her vector a couple of city cars toward Jones, and to direct anyone available to the intersection. When they got back, Virgil said, “I hope we’re not too late.”

“I don’t think so,” said al-Lubnani. “We know they are watching us, but we cannot see them. So, they must be some time away. A minute or two. We have only been away for a minute or two.”

“I hope,” Virgil said. “Unless they were lying in that cornfield, there, and picked up the stone and walked back into it.”

They circled the intersection for five minutes, watching the roads and looking for parked cars on the edge of the cornfield, seeing nothing, until finally a highway patrol car rolled up to the corner and stopped. Virgil got back to the dispatcher, who got a cell phone number, and Virgil called. The patrolman came on, and Virgil got him to walk the ditch.

“No stone here,” the patrolman said. “They’ve cut this ditch, and there’s no stone.”

“So either they got it, or Jones never threw it in the ditch,” Virgil said. To Awad, “We need to get back to Mankato. Fast.”

He called the Mankato dispatcher again and was told that nobody had seen the Volvo. There was a net out around the city, but so far, no luck.

He tried Jones again, and this time, Jones answered.

“They’re going to cut her finger off—”

“Did they tell you to do a U-turn and head back west?”

“Yes. . . . I don’t know how they are tracking me.”

“They’re doing it with the phone. They know where you are. They will probably be coming for you. Where are you now?”

“I won’t tell you that. Let them come. I just want Ellen back.”

“Listen. If they call you again—and they will, if you keep moving, if only to tell you to slow down—if they call you, tell them that before they touch Ellen, to look at the television news tonight.”

“What?”

“Tell them to watch the news,” Virgil repeated.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to send them a message.”

Jones groaned then, and said, “I don’t have any time. I don’t have any more time.” And rang off.

Virgil didn’t bother to call again. Instead, he began calling television stations.

—

W
HEN THEY LANDED
,
Virgil thanked Awad and al-Lubnani, jogged to his truck, locked up the guns, and raced through downtown Mankato, to his house. He printed a dozen photos of Tal Zahavi that he’d taken as she left the Downtown Inn for the last time. He paced impatiently as they chugged out of the printer, and when the last one popped out, he gathered them up and headed back downtown, to the Holiday Inn. When he saw the white vans, he said to himself, “Ah, boy.” He’d gotten at least three responses.

The press conference was short, but hot; a sensation, in fact. There were four cameras and one radio reporter, and three newspaper reporters. Sewickey and Bauer were hovering in the background, attracted by the cameras.

Virgil announced that Jones had called him and told him that his daughter, Ellen Case, of Minneapolis, had been kidnapped and was being held, with the Solomon stone demanded in exchange. He passed around the photos of Zahavi and said, “We would very much like to speak to this woman, Tal Zahavi, who we believe is staying somewhere in southern Minnesota or northern Iowa. We believe that she is armed and dangerous. We are putting out an order that she is to be arrested on sight.”

“Is she the kidnapper?” asked the Channel Three reporter.

“I don’t know—but I would very much like to ask her that question,” Virgil said. Everybody got the hint.

“Has the FBI been notified?”

“We don’t know that the kidnappers have crossed state lines, but with Iowa so close by, it’s possible. We will be talking to the FBI about the possibility.”

As they closed the press conference, Sewickey stood up and called, “Could I have your attention? Virgil didn’t say so, but this woman works with the Israeli Mossad. A few days ago, she robbed me in my hotel room, and bound me, and left me on the floor, where I’d still be if Virgil and a friend hadn’t found me.”

That resulted in another sensation, and another press conference, and another headache for Virgil; when it was over, he took Sewickey aside and asked, “Why?”

“Revenge,” Sewickey said. “I want that bitch to be famous. I want to see you roll her ass right into whatever kind of hellhole you have for women in this state. If not that, I want to see her working in an Israeli dime store.”

“Ladies’ prison is not so much of a hellhole,” Virgil said. “It’s more like a dormitory.”

“Send her down to Texas—we’ll fix her clock,” Sewickey said.

—

V
IRGIL DROVE
back to his house and called the Israeli embassy and asked to speak urgently to Colonel Ohad Shachar. When he came on the line, Virgil said, “I’ve put out an arrest order for Tal Zahavi, who I believe is a Mossad operator. I believe she has kidnapped a woman and taken her across a state line, which makes it a federal offense. You should be hearing from the FBI. In the meantime, I’ve sent very good photographs of her to every TV station in the area. I wanted you to know.”

“You are misguided,” Shachar said. “This woman has nothing to do with the Mossad—I doubt even that she is an Israeli. So, do what you must.”

“I am telling you that I already have,” Virgil said. “I’m not negotiating, I’m simply telling you. Let me give you a few of the television websites—you can watch the press conference yourself.”

A while later, Davenport called: “Well, that’s another weed in your cap. The legend of that fuckin’ Flowers continues to spread, like Minnesota kudzu. At least you’ve got Jones and the stone.”

“Not exactly,” Virgil said.

Jones had vanished. He explained that to Davenport, who, after a silence, said, “I’m sure you’ll find him right away. With the stone.”

“Probably,” Virgil said. “But I’m more worried about Ellen. Did you hear back about the Turks? Did they leave the country?”

“I haven’t heard. We’re still waiting.”

“Not my day,” Virgil said.

“Is there anything I can do?” Davenport asked.

“Yes. Get the DMV to do a computer run and figure out how many red Volvo station wagons there are in the state, and which ones are located around Mankato.”

“I’ll see what they can do,” Davenport said.

“Goddamnit: I hope Zahavi gets the message,” Virgil said. “If she gets the message, they’ll let Ellen go. She had a couple of loose gears, but I don’t think she’d hurt an innocent.”

“You’d know better than me,” Davenport said. “To tell you the truth, from this distance it looks like she’s got more than a few loose gears. She looks like she’s fuckin’ nuts. For a stone? All of this for some old stone?”

—

T
O GET A DEGREE
,
Raj Awad was required to take general courses along with his pilot training, and so it was that after he returned from the airport adventure, he had to hurry off to “Introduction to Gender”—he’d been told that it was a good place to pick up chicks. He later decided that perhaps his American mentor had been pulling on his shirt, but by that time, it was too late, and he was in for the semester.

He was returning from the class when he found al-Lubnani standing in the kitchen holding a bottle of Stolichnaya.

Two concepts flashed through Awad’s mind in a fraction of a second: (a) Hezbollah fanatic, (b) the Islamic ban on alcohol.

He stuttered, “Where did you find this? One of my silly friends—”

“Under the sink,” al-Lubnani said. “I believe I saw a bottle of V8 in the refrigerator?”

A moment of realization. “And some celery,” Awad said.

So that’s the way it was. They mixed up a pitcher of Bloody Marys, got a couple of glasses, and sat on Awad’s tiny balcony, in the heat, and made the best of it.

After a while, al-Lubnani observed, “I do not believe I see in you the best of the
mujahid
.”

“I confess, this is true,” Awad said. “I am a seeker of peace. I wish to be a pilot, and nothing more. The kind who lands his airplane at airports, and not in tall buildings.”

“And I find a number of
Playboy
magazines under the bed,” al-Lubnani said.

Awad sipped the Bloody Mary, said, “You know, this could use some pepper. I will get some.” He stood up and said, “The
Playboy
magazines. I am all alone here.”

“I understand this
Playboy
. I once bought them in Beirut, when I was a younger man.” Al-Lubnani frowned. “They’re not so good anymore. They don’t show so much, how do the Americans say it, this
qittah
.”

“Pussy,” Awad said. “That is not an exact translation.”

“Not so clearly anymore, the photography,” al-Lubnani said. “Back in the eighties, it was more clear.”

Awad came back with the pepper, he sprinkled some on his drink and passed the shaker to al-Lubnani, who said, “I also sometimes become . . . weary of the conflict.”

“Mmmm.” Dangerous territory, but not uninteresting.

“Have you been to Paris?” al-Lubnani asked.

“Of course. I lived there for two years, when my parents sent me away from the fighting,” Awad said. “I hope someday to fly for Air France.”

“This is the most wonderful city, for me,” al-Lubnani said. “The city of light. Strolling down the Champs-élysées, or standing on the Pont Neuf, watching the boats, dinner on the Left Bank. I am an artist, you know, in watercolor. And I am half French. My mother was a Frenchwoman and I still have a French passport. My father was a diplomat, he is gone now.”

“This is sad,” Awad said. “About your father.”

“Yes.” Very long pause. “I have been thinking. I wish to be frank with you, and I sense that I may be.”

“Mmmm.”

Al-Lubnani laughed. “A careful noise, this mmmm.”

“I am most interested in hearing you talk, but I am careful in such things.”

Al-Lubnani, who was now lightly oiled, poured himself a third Blood Mary. “You and I are much alike, despite our ages. We would like to live in peace. We are Lebanese, not Palestinian. We have grown up in one of the most sophisticated cities in the world, a place that was once the banker for the entire Mediterranean. I would have nothing to do with the Party, except, I was in the wrong place, and they asked me to speak for them, and I could not say ‘no.’”

“Of course not,” Awad said.

“So I spoke for them, and then . . . I was in the Party. I am Lebanese to my bones, I speak French and Arabic and English and a little Greek, and here I am, driving around with AK-47s in my car, bowing to illiterate gunmen and praying five times a day.”

“I understand,” Awad said.

Al-Lubnani sighed. “A man will come here and provide me with the funds to pay Jones for this stone, for this propaganda victory. This man, he is a killer—a real
mujahid
. The headquarters, they send me to make the transfer, because this man, this killer, he cannot risk exposure in the U.S. If the Americans find him here, they will put him in a box and never let him out.”

“What is he doing here at all?” Awad asked.

“I don’t know. You know, I am here unofficially, as a simple man from Lebanon, touring the country. I could not bring any money with me, because of American customs. This
mujahid
, his first mission was not here to deliver the money. He was here for something else, but the money comes to New York in the diplomatic pouch, is transferred to him, and he brings it here. I make the exchange, I take the stone to Lebanon, he goes back under the ground.”

“Mmmm.”

Al-Lubnani put his feet on the balcony railing. “But I ask myself, this only in theory: they wish to have this stone in Lebanon. I wish to live in peace in Paris, which is a very expensive city. This man, this killer, brings three million U.S. dollars in cash, in a satchel. For one million, plus my own funds, I could live, not brilliantly, but reasonably, in Paris.”

“Mmmm.”

“I ask myself, if Jones takes a bid of one and a half, who is to know that he has not taken all three?”

Awad said, “I ask myself, but only politely, why should I risk my life so that you could live in Paris in comfort?”

Al-Lubnani raised a finger: “You must do the mathematics. I believe Jones would take one and a half. I need one. That is two-point-five. For the additional five hundred thousand, one might buy a small airplane.”

“I would like a small airplane,” Awad admitted. “Although I would like to fly for an airline, becoming a bush pilot would also be acceptable.”

“A bush pilot, here in the Minnesota?”

“Not in Minnesota. Too cold. I would be interested, perhaps, in some African bush. Or even Syrian bush. Well, any bush, as long as it is not shooting at me.”

“Mmm. Syria. Syria might be difficult for the next thirty years,” al-Lubnani said. “But Turkey, Turkey could have a place for you. Or Kurdistan.”

“There is no Kurdistan,” Awad said.