Storm Front (21 page)

He picked up the phone and called Awad. “Can you talk?”

“I don’t think I will be able to attend tonight—I have a sickness.”

“He’s listening to you?”

“Something I ate . . . Yes, it’s a bad situation. I will try to do better.”

“Can you sneak out and call me?”

“I think so. It’s only a short-time problem. I will get better.”

“Call as soon as you can,” Virgil said.

—

V
IRGIL GOT OFF
the bed and headed downtown, to the Holiday Inn, and knocked on Sewickey’s door. Sewickey didn’t answer, which worried Virgil, given Sewickey’s track record. He went down to the front desk, and the woman there said she’d seen Sewickey on foot, headed across the street toward the Duck Inn.

Virgil found Sewickey sitting on a bar stool, with a beer, talking with the bartender. Virgil got on the next stool down and ordered Heineken, since they didn’t have Leinie’s.

“You got any idea what kind of car Bauer is driving?” Virgil asked.

“Give you one guess,” Sewickey said.

“Don’t make me guess, just tell me,” Virgil said.

“He’s got
The Drifter
yacht, he’s got
The Wanderer
airplane, so he’s got to have a . . .”

The bartender, who’d been listening in, slid the Heineken down to Virgil and asked, “He’s got a yacht, he’s got a plane—can I play?”

“Go ahead,” Sewickey said.

“Gotta be a Range Rover.”

Sewickey pointed a finger at him and said, “Bingo.”

Virgil said, “I was gonna say that.”

“It’s a white Range Rover, the new model, which, if I do say so myself, is still a pig,” Sewickey said.

“Like you wouldn’t want one,” Virgil said.

“I really wouldn’t,” Sewickey said with a semblance of sincerity. “I’d take the Lexus GX if somebody offered me one, but the Caddy is fine. If I could find the right set, I’d like to weld a couple of nice longhorns to the hood, but that’s about the only change I’d like.”

“No itch for a horse trailer?”

“Horses don’t like me,” Sewickey said. “But that’s okay, because I don’t like them back. Though I did have a fairly good horseburger once, in Ljubljana.”

“Fuckin’ French,” the bartender said.

“Ljubljana is in Slovenia,” Sewickey said. “Had some really terrific horseradish mustard with it, too. It was one of those build-your-own horseburgers.”

“Fuckin’ Slovenians.”

Virgil finished his beer and said, “I gotta run.”

“I’ll have another six or eight,” Sewickey said, and the bartender said, “Attaboy.” Sewickey asked, “Any idea of when we’ll know about the stone?”

“Rumor is, the sale takes place tomorrow night, unless somebody is lying to me.”

—

V
IRGIL WENT
back out into the heat, hitched up his pants, looked both ways, walked back to his truck, and drove to the Downtown Inn, where he saw Bauer’s Range Rover in the parking lot. Sticking the tracker to it was a matter of one minute, and then he was back in the truck.

Where was Awad?

Then Awad called and said, “I am going to the store to get potato chips. But: we must talk, face-to-face. I have found out something most important, for everybody.”

“Tell me.”

“Not on these phones. Who knows who listens?”

“Then let’s meet. Now. I’m not doing anything.”

“This afternoon, I fly. Let us meet at the airport, at four o’clock. You go there first, so if they follow me, they don’t see you arrive. Now, I have to hurry back so I am not suspected. I tell them, ten minutes for these chips and soda water.”

“Four o’clock,” Virgil said. And after Awad was gone, thought,
Them?

—

V
IRGIL SAT
in the truck for a couple of minutes—nothing to do, really—and thought about Ma. Since he
didn’t
have anything better to do, and since Ma was the wild card, playing a game he didn’t understand, maybe he could put some pressure on her.

He was about to head out to her farm, when he took a call from Yael Aronov: “I am at this Sam’s Club. You should come here quickly.”

“Jones is there?”

“No, not Jones. Is a woman I know from Israel. She is shopping. I do not know her, exactly, but I recognize her. She is the daughter of Moshe Gefen, who was the most famous paleographer in Israel. This cannot be a coincidence.”

Virgil turned the truck around and headed for Sam’s Club, while Yael explained that a paleographer studied ancient writing.

“So she would have an interest in the stone,” Virgil said.

“Well—I don’t know her, I have only seen her at picnics, but I believe she is involved in high tech. Computer programming. As far as I know, she has no interest in paleography herself.”

“Maybe she’s here for her father—but you said he
was
the most famous.”

“He died six or seven months ago. Sometime like that. This was a big event in the archaeology circles. He was a winner of the Israel Prize, he was world famous in Jerusalem. But I tell you, if he were still alive, he would be the one chosen to lead the study of the stele.”

“But if she’s not a whatchamacallit, why is she here?” Virgil asked.

“Not for the shopping, I think,” Yael said. “But the answer . . . we have to ask her.”

Another bidder?
Virgil wondered.

The woman’s name was Yuli Gefen, and when Virgil got to Sam’s Club, and managed to badge himself past the bulldog guard at the door, she was not to be found. In fact, he had to call Yael just to find
her
in the cavernous store.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when they finally got together next to a pallet of generic toilet paper, “I didn’t want her to see me, so I kept hiding, and then, once, I couldn’t find her again.”

“Maybe she saw you,” Virgil said.

“This is possible,” Yael said. She stopped to gaze, apparently awestruck, at the mountain of toilet tissue. Then: “But it’s also possible that she is still here. We could look for a week.”

“So let’s look some more,” Virgil said.

They did, but Gefen was apparently gone.

—

V
IRGIL CALLED
E
LLEN
C
ASE
,
who answered but said, “I’m not sure I’m talking to you.”

“Things haven’t changed—they’re just as bad as they were,” Virgil said. “I have a question for you. Have you heard the name Moshe Gefen?”

“Moshe? Sure—he’s my father’s oldest friend in Israel. Actually, oldest friend, period. His wife was my mother’s best friend, period. They were. They’re both dead now. They died early.”

“How did they know each other? Your parents and the Gefens?”

“They knew each other forever,” Ellen said. “Dad was in Israel at the time of the 1967 war, they were both students. Dad was studying Hebrew, and Moshe was studying German, which Dad spoke pretty well, so they were teaching each other. Dad had this old Ford that he’d fixed up, and they’d drive all over the country. When the mobilization started for the war, they were way up by Lebanon, and Moshe had to get to his unit, which was all the way down at the other end of the country, near Beersheba. Dad drove him down, but when they got there, his whole unit had already moved south, so Dad drove south toward the Egyptian border. . . . He had a whole car full of soldiers. Moshe got to his unit—he was wounded a couple of days later—and Dad wound up driving Israeli soldiers all over the place. It was chaos for a while, the way they told it. Then when Moshe got wounded, Dad picked him up at a field hospital and drove him back to Beersheba, to another hospital. They’ve been friends all their lives, Dad and Moshe, Mom and Hannah. Hannah died, let me see, four or five years ago, of a lung disease. Probably from going to too many digs, you know, they breathe in all that dust.”

Virgil said, “Okay.”

“Why?”

Virgil hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Do you know Gefen’s daughter? Yuli?”

“Yuli? Of course. She’s a good friend,” Ellen said. “She dug with us a couple times, when we were there for the summer. How do you know about Yuli?”

“Because she was here this afternoon. Shopping at Sam’s Club.”

Long silence. Then, “Yuli? Really? She never told me.”

“Why would she be here, Ellen?”

“Well . . .”

“Who was going to get the money from your dad, if he manages to collect it?”

“I don’t know. I thought he’d probably arranged something.”

“That’s what I think,” Virgil said. “I think he arranged it with this Yuli. If you see her, or talk to her, tell her that I’m looking for her. If she tries to leave the country with that money, she better be doing a backstroke across the Rio Grande, because she ain’t getting it out legally. If I catch her—”

“I know, I know, you’ll put her in jail,” Ellen said. “You’re sort of a broken record about that, Virgil. Let me ask this: Why don’t you let it go? Let Dad sell the stone. You’ve got photographs, and you say they’re really good—who cares who gets the stone? Are you going to kill somebody to get it?”

“No, but I’m going to get it,” Virgil said. “I had it, and it was stolen from me by your old man, who damn near burned down my boat. I’m pissed. That stone ain’t going nowhere but in my back pocket.”

“Good-bye, Virgil,” she said, and hung up.

—

“Y
OU HAVE
solved the mystery?” Yael asked.

“Yes. Goddamnit, this whole thing is rolling downhill, now. Yuli Gefen is the bagwoman on the deal—Jones gets the money, she takes it out of the country, and Jones dies. Nice, neat, and tidy. And it’s going to happen soon. Or as soon as Gefen gets out of Sam’s Club.”

“What about the stele?”

“Oh, you’ll get the stele,” Virgil said. “I promise you that.”

V
irgil took a taxi to the Mankato airport, just in case: everybody in the mix now had probably seen his truck, and if Awad was nervous, Virgil thought he ought to honor that. He did take his pistol, and when he walked into the pilots’ lounge, he found the same man who’d been worried when Virgil had taken his guns on Awad’s training flight.

“What the hell are you guys up to?” the man asked.

Virgil asked, “You read the papers?”

“I watch TV.”

“You know about this minister, Elijah Jones, that everybody is chasing around?”

“I saw it on Channel Three. Tag Bauer’s looking for him.”

“Well, that’s what it’s about,” Virgil said. “I would appreciate it if you’d keep this to yourself. When I say appreciate it, I mean I won’t sic Homeland Security on you.”

“Hey—I’m outa here,” the guy said. “I really don’t want to know.”

“Just for future reference, Raj Awad has got some pretty high-up friends in Washington,” Virgil said to his back.

“Got it.” And the man was gone.

—

V
IRGIL FOUND
about four dozen various airplane magazines to read while he waited, but wasn’t much interested in anything that didn’t have either floats or skis. He did find an article about the rehabbing of Beavers and Otters, and that kept him occupied until Awad showed up.

Awad came in fast, hot, and stressed. “Virgil,” he said. “I have news, but I do not know if it is good or bad. Or who it is good or bad for.”

“Take it easy. Just lay it out,” Virgil said.

“There is a man from Lebanon, but really, he is from Iran. Al-Lubnani tells me about him, because al-Lubnani is very, very worried. This man will deliver the money for the stone. The money comes through the Lebanese mission to the United Nations, sent here in the diplomatic bag. You understand this?”

“Sure. Nobody gets to look in the bag, except the mission staff. No customs, no nothing.”

“This money is in hundred-dollar bills—three million dollars, which is Jones’s asking price,” Awad said. “But this is not important.”

“It’s not? Three million in cash isn’t important?”

Awad wagged a finger at him. “Not important. What is important is the man who brings it. His real name is Soroush Kazemi. He is an Iranian, but he pretends to be a Lebanese. He is known as ‘the Hatchet’ in this world.”

“That’s another bad sign,” Virgil said.

“He came to my apartment to speak to al-Lubnani and myself. This is why I could not speak to you—the Hatchet was on my couch.” A wrinkle appeared in Awad’s forehead. “He was not exactly what I expected. He was very nervous. He sweated very much.”

“If he’s from Iran, he’s got reason to sweat,” Virgil said.

“But here is the next important thing,” Awad said. “Al-Lubnani, who is very, very . . . very . . .”

“Worried.”

“Yes. He says he does not know why Kazemi would come to America. He must be here illegally, and he must be here to do no good. The Hatchet only does no good. The Americans know all about him, but they do not know he is here. If they find out he is here, they will put one hundred agents on him, and carry him down to the basement at the CIA, to where they keep the electrical apparatus.”

“We don’t really do that,” Virgil said.

Awad sighed and looked up at the ceiling, as if praying for patience. “Virgil, my friend, we will talk about this some other time. But believe me, the American security agents would do anything to get their hands on the Hatchet. The problem is, if he is taken before he delivers the money, the controllers in Beirut will suspect al-Lubnani or I. Even if they do not believe we betray him, they will kill us, you know, just . . . mmmm.”

“Just in case,” Virgil said.

“Exactly. So we make a deal with you. We provide you details on where the Hatchet is, and you let the money through, and then follow him and arrest him far from here. We think he is coming from Washington, D.C., so maybe he has a ring there. This could be, very, very . . . very . . .”

“Important.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Virgil asked. “You could have let this guy come and go.”

Awad was shaking his head. “The big fear is, he will be caught, and he will be traced, every step of his time in the U.S. And then they trace him to an innocent Lebanese air pilot, who is taken down to the basement at the CIA—”

“Where they connect wires to your much valued testicles.”

“That is the one problem. The two problem is, the Hatchet erases the pilot to eliminate any trace of his, the Hatchet’s, arrival here.”

Virgil stood up and put the Beaver/Otter magazine under his arm, intending to steal it. It was an old issue anyway. “You stay in close touch with me. As far as I know, this guy is the next Osama bin Laden—or he might be Father Christmas, and you’re running some kind of hustle on me.”

“I don’t know this word, hustle,” Awad said.

“You’re trying to fool me,” Virgil said.

“No, no, no, not ever,” Awad said, making a wide-arm gesture like an umpire calling a runner safe at the plate. “I would never fool Virgil.”

“Stay very, very much in touch, then,” Virgil said. “Very. I will try to work something out. I’ll call somebody, and see what they say.”

—

H
E TOOK A CAB
back to his truck, in town, called Davenport, who said, “‘The Hatchet’? You gotta be shittin’ me.”

“Look, all I want to do is get to the bottom of Ma Nobles’s lumber scheme,” Virgil said. “I don’t know about the Hatchet and I never did find out anything about the nut-cutting Turk. All I want is a phone number.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

“Soon?”

“Five minutes,” Davenport said.

More like fifteen minutes, but Davenport said, “I’ve got a number for you. This is going to sound weird, but the man on the other end will say, ‘This is the colonel,’ and that’s all he’ll say. You tell him about this Hatchet, and answer any questions he has, and then you eat the paper with the phone number on it, flush three times the next time you use the toilet, and then shoot yourself.”

“Okay,” Virgil said. “Who is this joker?”

“More asshole games from Washington,” Davenport said. “You know how they are. Anyway, play along. We need the federal grants.”

Virgil called the number, and a man picked up on the first ring and said, “This is the colonel.”

Virgil said, “This is Virgil Flowers, I’m an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. A tall, good-looking blond guy, sort of a chick magnet, often compared to a younger Robert Redford. I was told to call you.”

“You think you’re auditioning for a comedy show?” the colonel asked.

“Maybe I got the wrong guy,” Virgil said. “If you know the right guy, I need to talk to him about an Iranian citizen we’ve got coming in here. A Soroush Kazemi, aka the Hatchet, supposedly a big operator for the al-Quds Revolutionary Guard, now operating out of Beirut. He’s got a bag with three million bucks in it, that came into the country in a diplomatic pouch through the Lebanese mission to the UN. He should be coming into Mankato, Minnesota, tonight. I’ve got contacts who’ll give him up. If you’re interested, or know somebody who is, give me a ring.”

The silence was so long that Virgil thought that the colonel had either hung up or gone to sleep. “Colonel?”

“You were a major in the marines, served in Iraq.”

“I was a captain in the army, and served in Bosnia.”

“Somebody will call,” the colonel said. “Sit right there in your 4Runner. Do not even walk across the street to the McDonald’s. Sit right there.”

Then he was gone, and Virgil looked uncomfortably across the street at the McDonald’s and said, “Well, that was weird,” and then, “They can’t tell a man not to have a cheeseburger. Not in a free country.”

So he went over to the McDonald’s, got a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, fries, and a strawberry shake, and carried them back to his truck. He’d finished the sandwich, the fries, and was sucking the last bit of the shake out of the bottom of the cup, when his phone rang.

“Flowers?” A different voice, with a Texas twang to it.

“Yes.”

“Do you have a reliability score on your information?”

“Huh. I didn’t really try to score it, but I’d say it’s way better than fifty-fifty. My source has actually talked to the guy. I think the two guys who are getting the money are working some kind of hustle—probably planning to take off with it, and they don’t want the Hatchet guy to come after them.”

“Please don’t use any specific names in this conversation. So you think it’s better than fifty-fifty. I assume it has to do with this missing Solomon stone.”

“Yes. The money is to buy the stone.”

“And your contacts specifically identified the courier as the name you gave the colonel.”

“Yes. And since one of my contacts is a member of a party of the highest kind—that’s a hint—I think he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Hmm. All right, I understand that. The team leaders will see you in three hours at the Rochester airport. Be there.”

Virgil said, “Before you go, give me a score on this incoming guy. You know, one to ten, ten being the highest.”

“Eleven,” the voice said. “Maybe thirteen. Three hours. Be there.”

—

V
IRGIL WENT HOME
,
cleaned up, put on a vintage burnt-orange Weezer T-shirt and a blue-black linen sport coat over his usual jeans and cowboy boots. With his straw hat and aviators, he thought, he should be able to hold his own with any stiff from D.C.

Before he left, he checked his tracker monitor to see where Tag Bauer was. The tracker put him either at the South Central College or the KEYC studio in North Mankato. Either was okay with Virgil.

Ma Nobles called as he was walking out to the truck: “Hot day,” she said.

“Do you know where Jones is?”

“Why do you have to ruin a social call by asking something like that?” she asked.

“Because it’s the only thing I can think about right now, no matter how hot it is,” Virgil said.

“I just called to tell you I was heading out to the swimming hole, and thought you might like to come along.”

Virgil said, “I can’t. Believe it or not, some of us have to work.”

“Working out my way?”

“No, I’m headed over to Rochester.” Then he wanted to bite his tongue: no reason to tell her that she was free to run wild, with him out of the picture.

But she didn’t seem to notice. “Be that way—but I’ll be out there, in case you get a break from all that hard labor.”

“Take a gun in case you run into any crazy rednecks out in the woods,” Virgil said. “Oh wait—you
are
a crazy redneck.”

“You are not advancing your cause, here, Virgil,” she said. “I just may call Tag and see if he needs a swim.”

“He can’t go either. He’s sitting in a TV studio and his makeup isn’t waterproof,” Virgil said. “But I’ll be seeing more of you, real soon, Ma.”

“I’ll be holding my breath,” she said, and hung up.

So much for intimidation.

Virgil had driven the highway to Rochester so many times that he tended to fall asleep at the wheel. On this day, though, he had too much to think about. Awad and al-Lubnani didn’t have to know about the Washington team. If Awad and al-Lubnani were actually planning to rip off the Hezbollah’s money, and he thought that likely, then he should be able to figure a way to blackmail them into telling him the exchange point, using the Hatchet as a sword hanging over their heads.

“I’ll go on TV,” he’d tell them, “and say you guys stole the money. Who’s Hezbollah going to believe—the guys who disappeared with three million in cash, or a cop? But give me the stone, and I’ll tell everybody that Jones got the money, and I’ll tell Washington about the Hatchet, and no matter what happens then, he’ll no longer be a factor.”

Somewhere in that whole mix of threat and promise, he should be able to land the stele.

—

T
HE
G
ULFSTREAM JET
came into the fixed-based operator at Rochester, and after parking, dropped a ramp to the tarmac and a woman and two men got off. All three of them had tight skin of the kind you get by hanging around in deserts, all three of them appeared to be in their middle-to-late thirties, but generally looked like associate professors who happened to be in great physical condition. All three carried briefcases, and all three were packing guns, although they were discreetly out of sight beneath their jackets.

They spotted Virgil as the odd-man waiting, and the woman led the group over and asked, “Flowers?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She took in his T-shirt with neither a blink nor a question, offered her hand and introduced herself as Rose Lincoln. The two men were introduced as Tom Hartley and Wesley Moehl, and Virgil said, “My truck is out front.”

“We should have two vehicles waiting for us,” Lincoln said. “But we need to debrief you before we head over to Mankato. This FBO has a conference room.”

“Let me get my briefcase,” Virgil said, not wanting to be outgunned.

—

I
N THE CONFERENCE ROOM
,
when Virgil arrived, the two men were sitting on one side of the table, and the woman on the other, all three with their chairs turned toward the head of the table and an empty chair. Virgil took it.

The woman had a thin stack of paper in front of her, and was flipping through it. When Virgil sat down, Lincoln said, “You’re not exactly a virgin in this sort of stuff—you’re the guy who shot up those Vietnamese agents a couple years ago.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And arrested a couple of high-level Homeland Security officials for conspiracy to commit murder, which got your governor on every TV station in the country,” said Hartley.

“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” Virgil said. “But the charges didn’t stick. They were guilty, but the Department of Justice kicked it under the rug.”

“I can tell you, for your own information, that those guys now have offices near the cafeteria at Homeland Security, where they spend their days making sure that nobody gets issued more wastebaskets than the regulations allow,” Moehl said.