Storm Front (22 page)

“I’m happy to hear that,” Virgil said. “They weren’t only dumb, they amplified their stupidity with their arrogance.”

Lincoln said, “Hmm,” and then, “The DEA likes you. They’ve talked about recruiting you for a fairly hot job.”

“Yeah, I’ve chatted with a couple of their guys. The only problem with their job is, I’d get killed.”

“But you’d be paid well until then,” Moehl said.

“True, but I’ve got a boat, and all the fishing and hunting equipment that I need. What would I use the rest of the money for?”

They all examined him for a moment, then Lincoln nodded and said, in a flat voice, “Tell us why we’re here.”

“Okay,” Virgil said. “You have quite a bit of information about me in your computers, there, so you know I’m reasonably reliable. Let me ask this: Are there more than three people assigned to this?”

Lincoln showed a tiny sliver of a smile. “You were in the army. I’m the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel. I run the equivalent of a battalion. The battalion’s being mobilized.”

“You didn’t say exactly who you’re with,” Virgil said.

“That’s right,” she said. “I didn’t. Now: tell me what you’ve got.”

—

S
O
V
IRGIL
told the whole story, starting with the stone: about Jones, Zahavi, Aronov, the Turks, Sewickey, Tag Bauer, the Hezbollah contingent, and about Ma. All three of them took notes in the thickest laptops he’d ever seen, and every once in a while, made comments to each other that indicated that they were hooked into some kind of real-time research network.

When he told them about the Turks, and about the nut-cutter, Lincoln tapped a few keys and then said, “That could be true. The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan seems to have a price on his head. They’re offering a hundred thousand American dollars to anyone who brings it to them—the head. The rest of the body is not required.”

“The party . . .” Virgil began.

“PKK—the Kurdistan Workers’ Party,” Lincoln said, without looking at her laptop screen. “But the Turks are gone, correct? We show them flying out of Kennedy International two days ago. Now, about this Ma Nobles. How does she fit in?”

“She sells this fake barn lumber,” Virgil began, and by the time he was finished, he realized he sounded crazy. He said so. “But what can I tell you? I think she’s got some kind of relationship with Jones.”

“She’s no dummy,” Lincoln said. “According to her junior high records, she has a tested IQ of 151.”

“Ma?” Virgil was dumbfounded.

“Uh-huh. So watch yourself. Now. Tell us more about al-Lubnani and Faraj Awad.”

—

H
E OUTLINED
his relationship with the two men, and concluded by saying, “I think they’ve got an eye on all that money. Both of them seem to be pretty decent guys, other than that. Awad would just like to fly airplanes and get laid—he even made a weak pass at Zahavi, the Israeli agent. I don’t think he plans to fly a plane into a building, or anything like that. He has a healthy fear of pain and death. He’s afraid that you’re going to take him down in the CIA basement and attach electric wires to his testicles.”

Lincoln shook her head: “We’d never do that on-site.”

Virgil suspected she was joking, but couldn’t tell for sure.

He said, “So this is what
I
want. And with all due respect, you should listen to me, because, to tell the truth, the governor and I are asshole buddies, and if you don’t want to get dragged kicking and screaming in front of the TV cameras by some large highway patrolmen . . .”

Lincoln shook her head. “Never happen. I’d never scream, no matter where I was being dragged.”

And Moehl said, “We don’t need threats. Just tell us what you want.”

Virgil said, “You guys are a lot smarter than those Homeland Security people.”

Hartley said, “We know. What do you want?”

Virgil laid it out: he needed to get the stele, so he could return it to Israel. He had no interest in arresting, or getting credit for the arrest of, the Hatchet. He wanted his relationship with Awad and al-Lubnani respected, although he understood that they’d have to be questioned by the feds—by
some
feds, anyway.

And he wanted the Hatchet taken down after the exchange for the stone, and at a long enough interval both in time and distance that Awad and al-Lubnani wouldn’t be suspected of treachery.

Lincoln had been rolling a pen around in her fingers as Virgil spoke, and when he was done, she said, “What you’ve just outlined is what we’ve already decided to do, although we may put a wee bit more pressure on the Hezbollah guys than you’re talking about. But, we’re neither lawyers nor publicity seekers, and if they are what they say they are, we’ll cut them loose without damage. If you can put us on Soroush Kazemi, we won’t take him down until we’ve uncovered every single contact he has here in the States—could be weeks before we do that, unless he tries to run for it.”

“Sounds good to me,” Virgil said. “Oh, there is one thing more, since you guys have files on everybody. I’d like to see your file on Tag Bauer. I don’t need anything top secret, I’d just like to see whatever you can give me.”

Lincoln looked at him for a moment, then looked down at her computer, typed for a while, then said, “You’ve got it, check your e-mail. I stripped out the government sources for the information, but the information itself is good.”

Virgil nodded. “Thanks.”

Hartley said, “Now. To reiterate. You say that when you first heard about this stele . . .”

And Virgil had to tell the whole story all over again, with the three of them picking at the details. When they were done, Virgil asked, “What do you want me to do now?”

“Nothing,” Lincoln said. “Keep looking for the stele, but don’t do anything about Kazemi. His people will be talking to Awad and al-Lubnani, so he’ll know all about you. If you act like you know he’s out there, he’ll figure it out. So: do nothing.”

“All right, but if I bump into him . . .”

“Keep your powder dry,” said Hartley. “He is a genuine, hard-core killer.”

Lincoln stood up, dug in her briefcase, took out what looked like a very large, old-fashioned cell phone and a wall charger. “Turn it on, keep it with you, and keep it charged. It’ll hold a charge for four days with normal use. It’ll work anywhere. If you need us, push one. If we need you, it’ll ring like a phone. Do not hesitate to call.”

“I can do that,” Virgil said, and they all started packing their briefcases.

—

“I
T
’
S HOT HERE
,”
Moehl said conversationally, as they walked out of the FBO’s building. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Gonna be a real scorcher tomorrow,” Virgil said, looking up at the sky. “Ninety-five degrees, ninety percent humidity, fifty percent chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Could get a tornado.”

Hartley asked, “You play the guitar?”

“Not so much,” Virgil said. “Why?”

“’Cause Weezer was always, you know, so heavy into guitars. I thought maybe you were a picker.”

“No, no, but I’m glad to know our spies are familiar with Weezer,” Virgil said. “Makes you seem more human, and less reptile-like.”

“Saw them a couple of times in L.A., back in the nineties, before I joined the Corps,” Hartley said. He took out a pair of oversized Beverly Hills sunglasses as they walked out to the parking lot and put them on. “I liked them, okay, but they were always a little too . . . mainstream, I guess you’d say. Though I suppose if you’re a cop, you’d wear a mainstream band T-shirt.”

Virgil, though insulted to the core of his being, covered up and said, “I know what you’re saying.”

Lincoln asked, “So, you know Tag Bauer personally?”

M
a Nobles drove along the back road, not quite sure that she had it right, until she saw the “Sawyer Pottery” sign on the left side of the road, with a gravel driveway climbing up a low hill into an old, poorly maintained pine plantation.

At the top of the hill, she found a red-cedar-and-glass house, wrapped with a walkway at the second level. Visible out back were a gray wooden shed, built of boards that she could sell in thirty seconds, if she could get them to western Massachusetts; a garage; and farther away, a low, wide structure that looked a little like a yurt. She wouldn’t have known what it was, except for a sign in a pathway that said, “To Wood Kiln.”

She got out of the truck, and as she did, she heard a glass door sliding back, and then Jones came out on the balcony and said, “The door is open.”

She went inside, and found Jones standing at the top of a short stairway. “Please come up,” he said. “I’m too weak to go up and down too much.”

“Nice place,” Ma said, as she climbed the stairs and followed Jones to a sitting area. He dropped on a couch, and she took an easy chair.

“Yes. It’s charming. Maybe a little too charming. But then, they’re charming people,” Jones said. “They would be somewhat unhappy if they knew I was here.”

“Where are they?”

“England. Supposedly studying pottery,” Jones said. “Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t, but I’ll tell you what—they’ll write it off.”

“I brought the food,” she said.

“Do you know where Flowers is?”

“He said he had to go to Rochester—I don’t know what for.”

“You believe him?”

“I asked him if he’d like to come over and go skinny-dipping, and he said he had to work. I know he likes to skinny-dip, so . . . I believe him. Hasn’t called me today.”

“Hmm. If I were younger, and not a minister, and not married, and not dying . . . anyway . . .”

“He would never find this place,” Ma said. “I could hardly find it myself, and I knew where it was.”

“I know that—that’s not why I wondered,” Jones said. “The thing is, Florence, I need another favor from you, and having Flowers on his way to Rochester is perfect.”

“What do you need?”

“My wife is in a home in St. Peter. I need somebody to drive me up there.”

Ma looked at him, then shook her head. “Sir, everybody in the state is looking for you, and your picture is everywhere.”

“Yes, they know exactly what I look like. That’s why I need another favor.”

“Another one?”

“I need you to cut my hair. I can shave myself, but I can’t cut the hair.”

—

A
FTER THE CONVERSATION
with the spies, Virgil drove to the Rochester convention center, called Davenport on a hardwired phone, and filled him in. “I’m not sure I was supposed to tell you any of this, because I was sworn to absolute secrecy, but I want somebody at my back who knows what’s going on.”

“I got your back, but to tell you the truth, I’m confused as hell,” Davenport said. “Assuming they take out this Hatchet guy, you’ve got the rest of it covered? The stele, the Israelis, the Hezbollah, this Bauer guy, and the Texan?”

“I’m not sure,” Virgil said. “I’m trying to narrow things down—at this point, it seems to be coming down to the Hezbollah and Bauer. They seem to be the only ones with any money. If I get killed, pick up Ma Nobles and run her through the wringer. It’s possible that she knows more than anybody about what’s going on.”

“You know I’d never second-guess you—”

“Yeah, right.”

“But if it had been me,” Davenport said, “I’d have sicced the Iranian Hatchet man on the Turkish nut-cutter and called it a day.”

—

V
IRGIL HEADED HOME
.
When he was thirty miles out, he took a minute to check on Bauer’s location: and his location was moving, out toward Ma’s place. Nothing he could do about that—he was forty-five minutes away. Was it possible that Ma had Jones, and the exchange was about to happen?

He called Awad, who answered and said, “I can talk.”

“What are the chances that an exchange could take place today, and that you’re being cut out of the deal?”

“Do you know something?”

“I know nothing at all—that’s my major problem,” Virgil said.

“I don’t think we’re being cut out. Al-Lubnani talked to Jones—Jones called him—and al-Lubnani told him that the money was coming in cash, and Jones says, ‘Good.’”

“All right. Stay in touch.”

“What about that other thing we talked about?” Awad asked.

Meaning, the Hatchet.

“Don’t even think about it,” Virgil said. “This is no longer your responsibility. If you don’t think about him, and al-Lubnani doesn’t think about him, you’ll be fine. If you think about him, this man will see it.”

“I will not think, and will advise Mr. al-Lubnani to do the same.”

“Is Mr. al-Lubnani there now?

“Yes.”

“I need to talk with the two of you, together. It’ll only take a minute,” Virgil said.

“Come now. We will arrive at the laundry room on the first floor.”

—

O
N THE WAY INTO TOWN
,
Virgil had a stray thought: What if the stele was a bait, an artificial lure, so to speak, and Jones, who’d shown no reluctance to use a weapon, simply planned to hijack the money from both Bauer and al-Lubnani?

He’d keep the possibility in mind, but as he chewed on it, he decided that Jones probably was not doing that: in his own terms, it would seem unethical. The gunplay had all been in self-defense, which he would think of as ethically excusable.

But then, he
was
a thief, so his ethics, by definition, had to be somewhat flexible.

—

T
HE
R
IVERSIDE
T
RANSITIONAL
C
ENTER
looked like a small elementary school of yellow brick, with a flag circle out front, and two dozen cars in a narrow parking lot that was less than a third full.

Inside, the place was painted in colors meant to be cheery, and the bulletin boards were pinned with cartoons and felt animals and pictures of collies in pastures with fuzzy sheep.

“Place is like the waiting room for hell,” Jones muttered as they went up the steps. He was using a cane he’d found in a closet at the pottery, and he needed it. It also worked as a disguise, because the athletic, bearded, long-haired Reverend Jones never used one.

Jones had always worn his hair preacher-long: not hippie long, but nothing like a military cut. Now you could see his pale scalp through Ma’s buzz cut. And Jones had always worn a beard, and now Ma knew why. With the beard, he looked fierce, almost Old Testament warrior-like. Without it, he was a moonfaced man with a severely receding chin. The transformation was so complete that Ma could hardly keep from staring at him.

Inside, they went to a front desk, and Jones introduced himself as Clarence Haverford, Magda Jones’s elder brother, “up from Iowa.”

The cheerful woman led them into a locked dayroom, chatting cheerfully and filling them in on Magda. “She’s very healthy, very cheerful, but she’s not very aware of personalities or what’s going on around her anymore. But always cheerful.”

“She always was,” Jones muttered. And then, “I bet you haven’t seen that damn husband of hers around here. I’ve been reading about him.”

“We don’t talk about that. But I can tell you, we’ve got our eye out.”

“Good,” he said. “I’d like a few words with him myself. Or maybe not words. What I’d like to do is take this cane and shove it—”

“Clarence!” Ma said severely, as Jones turned toward her, and she thought she saw a twinkle in his eye. They were a good team.

—

T
HE DAYROOM
was filled with people sitting in chairs, looking around, plus a couple of orderlies. That was it. People looking around, until an orderly walked up to a man and sniffed at him, and said, “Bob, we better go back to your room. You need to change.”

“Change?”

Ma looked away.

Magda was sitting on a glider, gliding. She looked up and smiled when Jones and Ma walked up, and said, “Hi!” but there was no recognition in her eyes.

Jones got close and said, “Magda, how are you feeling?”

“I feel fine. Are you James?”

“I’m Elijah,” Jones said.

“Where’s Elijah?” Suddenly she looked frightened, and peered around the room, her smile disappearing. “Why don’t they let me see him?”

Jones took her hand, and Ma suddenly realized she couldn’t deal with it, and said, “I’ll wait outside.”

Jones looked at her, then nodded. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”

He was more like ten minutes, and Ma, looking through the glass plate in the locked dayroom door, saw him holding Magda’s hand, talking gently with her, saw her shaking her head. But then the smile came back, and she began to talk. Jones listened to her for a minute or two, then said something to her, kissed her on the forehead, stood, kissed her again, and walked toward the door, looking reluctantly back. She was following him with her eyes, and he stopped and went back and kissed her on the lips, but she pulled away, as if shocked, and he kissed her on the forehead again, and then came through to the door.

Ma said, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Jones said, tears running down his moon face. “Tonight I’ll pray to the Good Lord, and thank him for taking me with cancer.”

Then Ma started to cry, and, leaning on each other, they went out the door.

—

V
IRGIL MET
al-Lubnani and Awad in the laundry room, and as Virgil had said, the conversation didn’t take more than a couple of minutes. At the end of it, they all shook hands, and Virgil headed out to Ma’s place, where his tracker said that Bauer’s car was still parked. He was a few hundred yards out when a beat-up black Toyota pickup turned out of her driveway and headed toward him. As it passed, he recognized her oldest son, Rolf, at the wheel.

Virgil had been cooperating with the Blue Earth County sheriff’s office on the lumber scam. He hadn’t actually talked to Rolf, though he’d seen photos of him. On a hunch, he rolled past Ma’s driveway—Bauer’s Range Rover was parked in the side yard—and kept going until the black pickup was hidden in its own gravel dust. He made a quick three-point turn and went after it.

He was three hundred yards behind when the truck reached Highway 169, which paralleled the river as it turned north toward the Twin Cities. Virgil slowed as the pickup waited for a car to pass, hooked right onto the highway. Virgil drove to the intersection, thinking Rolf was probably going to Mankato—though he was taking a long way around—but then, a quarter mile down the highway, the pickup slowed, signaled a turn, and crossed over to a road on the other side, where it disappeared again.

Now Rolf was only a few hundred yards from the river. Virgil followed. The road down to the water dead-ended, but Rolf turned at the very end of it and disappeared again. An unmarked track? Virgil pulled to the side of the road, dug out his iPad, and looked at a satellite view of the area on Google Maps. As far as he could see, there was no track or other road extension. Rolf was right at the river.

Virgil drove on down, parked fifty yards out, got out, put his gun in the small of his back, and walked down to the end of the road.

The Toyota had been pulled off and parked in a notch in the riverside trees. Virgil found a path going back into the woods—more than a game trail, but less than a regular fisherman’s access.

The problem was, the woods were so dense that if Ma’s kid wanted to ambush him, he could. Virgil didn’t think that was likely, because Ma’s kids, those he’d met, seemed mellow enough. Still, he didn’t know this one, and he really needed to see what was going on.

As he hesitated, the silence was broken by the sound of a gasoline engine, rough at first, then smoothing out, well down toward the river. Virgil plunged into the brush, moving quickly, but not trying to be especially quiet: he could still hear the engine, probably a gas generator, and nobody who was near it would hear him coming. Two hundred yards in, he found that he was correct: the kid had mounted an electric winch on a tree, and was using the generator to run it. A steel cable ran down into the water, where Rolf was standing, in hip boots. He was a muscular young man, blond and round-faced like his mother, intent on the work.

As Virgil watched, a foot-thick stack of wire-bound boards surfaced, hooked up by the winch cable, and Rolf horsed them over toward the shore. There, he threw the winch into neutral and squatted to look at the boards. After he’d spent a couple of minutes scraping at them with a knife, he horsed them back out into the river.

Not antique enough, Virgil thought. Not yet, anyway.

He thought about the possibilities, then eased back into the trees. When he was a hundred yards back, he jogged the rest of the way to his truck, turned it around, and headed back toward Ma’s.

—

W
HEN
V
IRGIL
pulled into the yard, he got a quick flash of Ma’s face at a kitchen window, but she ducked away and Virgil thought,
Is Jones in there?

He walked up to the door and knocked once and then went through and stood on the landing of the stairs that went down to the basement and up to the kitchen, and called, “Anybody home?”

A moment later, Ma called, “Who’s there?”

“Virgil. I thought we were going skinny-dipping.”

Ma appeared at the top of the stairs, arms akimbo, and said, “I’m entertaining.”

“Well, hell, I’m happy to join in,” Virgil said. “I’m a pretty good singer, actually.”

Ma couldn’t help herself, and smiled, and said, “I’ve got Tag Bauer on my couch.”

“That’s fine, Tag and I are old buddies,” Virgil said, as he climbed the four steps up to her. She was wearing a cornflower blue linen blouse and white shorts, with flip-flops. “I was wondering, though, if you’ve got Elijah Jones under your bed?”

“I don’t even know Reverend Jones—”