Storm Front

by John Sandford

  “I’m sure they are quite valuable,” she said.

  “This is correct,” Awad said. “Mmm. So: he is employed by Sahin, who is a big collector of important artifacts from former Turkish lands. Like Israel. The rumor is that he will pay five million for this stone the minister has.”

  “Five million?” Virgil was incredulous. He knew a guy who’d killed a friend’s wife for ten thousand dollars and the papers to a three-year-old Buick. He looked at Yael. “It’s worth five million? You didn’t tell me that.”

  “We weren’t concerned with how much it would sell for—we’re only concerned that it’s stolen property,” she said. “We’re not going to pay to get it back.”

  “Then I think,” Awad said, performing a full-dress Middle Eastern shrug, which involved the entire body, “that you will not see it again.”

  —

  ACCORDING TO AWAD, his uncle had called him from Beirut and said that a man he knew was interested in buying the stone, and would pay a large amount of money for it. Awad was not being asked to make the payment himself, but to simply verify Jones’s possession of the stone. If he did that, then Awad would arrange for the buyer to meet Jones for the exchange.

  “Who is this that your uncle knows?” Virgil asked.

  “I do not know the answer to that question,” Awad said. “I asked, and my uncle said it was best that I did not ask.”

  “The Party of God,” Yael said.

  “This is possible, but I would not venture, under any conditions, to say so myself,” Awad said.

  “The Party of God—is that bad?” Virgil asked.

  “You may know them as the terrorist group Hezbollah,” Yael said.

  “Okay, that’s not desirable,” Virgil said.

  “So, with three killers seeking this stone already, I think it’s time for Raj Awad to preserve his testicles and take a vacation,” Awad said. “Perhaps to New England. New England is supposed to be nice in the summer.”

  Virgil: “Three killers? This Kaya guy, the Hezbollah buyer—who’s the other one?”

  Awad looked at Virgil, as if not believing his ears, then at Yael. When Virgil still didn’t catch on, he poked a finger at her.

  “She’s with the Israel Antiquities Authority,” Virgil said. “She does antiques.”

  Awad snorted. “They sent an antique dealer to compete with the Turk and the Hezbollah? I tell you, Virgil, I use an American idiom here. Your head is placed where the sun don’t shine.”

  Virgil looked at Yael, who said nothing, then back to Awad: “The sun don’t shine?”

  “She is Mossad, Virgil. Or Shabak. She cut your throat like a young goat.” Awad drew his index finger across his throat.

  “A young goat?” Virgil looked at Yael.

  Yael said, “He’s been on the kief. I’m with the IAA.”

  Awad snorted again, and Virgil said to Yael, “You were talking about favorite pistols? You prefer a Sig or even a well-turned Beretta? And you’re an antiquities expert?”

  “Israel is different,” Yael said, looking away.

  “This is true,” Awad said. To Yael: “I am told that young, attractive Mossad women are sometimes used to seduce their Arab targets.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Yael said. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  “I would gladly volunteer for this interrogation,” Awad said.

  “Ah, Jesus,” Virgil said, and he went back to the hall.

  —

  HE CALLED DAVENPORT. “I haven’t found the stone yet, but I’m making some progress. I wanted to update you in case I’m found dead.”

  “Virgil . . .”

  “Lucas, I found the guy who was in the house. He’s acting as a kind of representative for Hezbollah, the terrorist group, in Lebanon. He says there’s another character in the hunt, a former Turkish Army intelligence officer, known for cutting the testicles off Kurds. He also tells me that Yael is not from the Israel Antiquities Authority, but from the Mossad. Or . . . uh . . . I think he said Shabak, which is apparently some other Israeli intelligence agency that kills people. She denies it, but she’s lying.”

  Davenport was silent for a moment, typing on a keyboard, then said, “Shabak . . . I’m looking at Google. It’s Israeli internal security. I guess here in the States we call it the Shin Bet. They do seem to kill some people. Interesting.”

  “Interesting? I’m dealing with a Turk who cuts your balls off, a Middle Eastern terrorist group, and an Israeli gun moll, and you say it’s interesting?”

  “It is interesting. You need some help?”

  “Yes. The first thing is, I want you to get onto whoever it is you get onto, your fed friend in Washington, that Mallard guy. Find out if they have anything on a Turk named Timur Kaya.” Virgil spelled it.

  “I’ll get on that,” Davenport said. “And I could spring Jenkins and Shrake if you need more manpower.”

  “Not yet, but I might. I’m going to poke this beehive a couple more times, but you tell those guys to get ready, in case I call.”

  —

  VIRGIL HAD just stepped back through the door when Awad took a phone call. He listened for a moment, and said, “I will call you back. I cannot talk at this moment.”

  He hung up and said to Virgil, “Football friend.” He tapped the soccer ball with a toe.

  Virgil said, “Raj, I swear to God, if you run, I’ll have you arrested and shipped to Israel. Not Lebanon, but Israel, for complicity in this theft. You know what they do to Hezbollah agents in Israel? They string them up by their testicles.”

  “Do not,” Yael said.

  “So I’m going to give you my phone number, and you’ll give me yours,” Virgil continued. “If I call, you drop everything and come running. You understand?”

  “Of course, but I did nothing,” Awad said. “I am not Hezbollah—I’m a Lebanese from birth, not a Palestinian.”

  “Okay, I’ll accept that, at least at this point,” Virgil said. “Did you know that we found blood on the floor of Jones’s house?”

  Awad’s eyebrows went up, and he said, “No,” and then, “The Turk,” and then, “Much blood?”

  “Not much, but it wasn’t done shaving.”

  Awad shook his head. “This is not good.”

  —

  VIRGIL AND YAEL LEFT, after one more warning to Awad. Back in the truck, Virgil muttered, “Mossad.”

  Yael said, “You cannot believe this Arab.”

  “Shut up.”

  He pulled out of the parking lot, drove onto a neighboring street, then around the block, and then around another block, and finally parked on a hillside two blocks from Awad’s apartment parking lot, with a view of Awad’s car.

  Yael said, “We do this because he lied about the football call?”

  Virgil said, “Yes.” He unsnapped his safety belt, got out, popped the back door on the truck, got a pair of image-stabilized Canon binoculars out of his equipment box, got back in the truck, and handed the glasses to Yael. “You watch. I’m going to close my eyes and think about this.”

  He thought for thirty seconds, then sat up and called Davenport again. “I’ve got a cell phone number. I need to know where the calls are going, and where they’re coming from.”

  “We can do that,” Lucas said. “Hope it’s a smartphone.”

  “It’s an iPhone,” Virgil said. He gave Davenport Awad’s cell phone number.

  “Piece of cake.”

  —

  VIRGIL CLOSED HIS EYES AGAIN, then asked, “Will you guys have a file on this Turk?”

  “Somebody might,” she said.

  “Get it.”

  “I will ask,” Yael said.

  No mention of the handicap of working for the antiquities authority, Virgil noted.

  A minute later, Yael said, “Here he is.”


  Virgil sat up: “That didn’t take long.”

  “Just long enough to call back to his football friend,” Yael said.

  —

  AWAD WAS NOT ELUSIVE. He drove a half-mile into the downtown area, with Virgil a few cars back all the way. Once downtown, Awad dumped the car in a parking space, got out, looked at his watch, and hurried down the street. Virgil pulled into a space at a fire hydrant, and they watched as Awad crossed the next street, looked at his watch again, and disappeared into the Pigwhistle bar and grill.

  Virgil drove a half-block down the street, found a parking space, and put the truck in it. “C’mon,” he said to Yael.

  “Surveillance?” she asked, as they got out of the truck.

  “If the guy he’s meeting came out of the bar first, would we know which one he was?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “if it’s another Palestinian.”

  “And maybe not,” Virgil said. “You want to do surveillance, do it on your own.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m gonna go see if it’s the Turk in there,” Virgil said.

  “How?”

  “I’m gonna ask him.”

  “This is a most unusual technique,” Yael said. “I shall enjoy watching it, but I have little hope for its success.”

  6

  The Pigwhistle bar and grill had a painting of a woodchuck—a groundhog—in the front window under a flickering neon Blatz Beer sign, because that’s what a pigwhistle is.

  In this case, the pigwhistle had been painted by a refugee from the Mankato State fine arts program, and looked, at first glance, like a dachshund, and was the reason that people familiar with the Pigwhistle called it “the Dog,” as in, “Meet you at the Dog.” You had to live in Mankato, and be of a certain boulevardier class, to know that. Virgil qualified.

  He stepped inside, with Yael just behind him, and waited a few seconds for their eyes to adjust. In addition to a wide range of exotic beer, and excellent pizza, the Pigwhistle had an extreme degree of bar darkness, along with high-backed booths, the better to attract adulterers. When he could see, Virgil walked down the line of booths, checking each one, until, at the back, by the bowling machine, he found Awad.

  And Derrick Crawford, the local private detective.

  Virgil looked down at Crawford and his battered pinch-front fedora, and asked, “Whazzup, Derrick?”

  Awad looked up, startled, and asked, “You followed me?”

  Virgil said, “Of course. What, you thought we were here by accident?” To Crawford, he said, “Move over, Derrick.”

  Crawford said, “Jesus Christ on a crutch,” and slid over, taking a half-glass of beer with him, and Virgil sat down. Yael sat across from him, next to Awad. She said to Awad, “You want to move your leg, please?”

  Awad moved a quarter inch, which seemed to satisfy her, and she said to Virgil, “Proceed with the interrogation.”

  Virgil nodded and said to Crawford, “Tell me everything you know about this whole thing with the stone.” He pointed to Awad. “And about this Awad guy.”

  Crawford pushed back his hat—he wore a fedora because he thought he looked a little like Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones, and, in fact, he did, except that he was several inches shorter and perhaps fifty pounds heavier, and, when his hat was off, bald—and asked, “Right from the beginning?”

  “That’s probably the best place,” Virgil said.

  “Well, this guy”—he pointed at Awad—“called me up and said that he wanted some surveillance done on this Reverend Elijah Jones, to see who he was talking to. We met up, I told him two hundred bucks a day and expenses, and he gave me a grand, in cash. Said there was more where that came from.”

  “Your uncle?” Virgil asked Awad.

  Awad nodded.

  Crawford took a sip of beer—he was one of the few people Virgil knew who could drink beer while keeping a wooden kitchen match firmly in the corner of his mouth—and said, “I asked around and found out that Jones was at the Mayo, so I went over there and talked to him about this stone. He denied knowing anything about it, and that was that. Then, he checked himself out of the place, and a nurse I know called me up and told me, so I put a watch on his house.”

  “How did you do that?” Yael asked.

  “Parked down the block,” Crawford said.

  “He showed up?” Virgil asked.

  “Yup. Last night, after midnight. Driving a rental car, which I thought was a little odd, because his own car is in the garage.”

  “Why do you tell him all of this?” Awad asked. “This was secret communication, like with a lawyer.”

  Virgil looked at him and said, “Quiet.” And to Crawford: “Go ahead, Derrick.”

  “So anyway, when he got to the house, I called up Raj, here, and he said thanks, he’d give Jones a ring. He told me to stay on the job until he called and let me go,” Crawford said. “So fifteen minutes after that, another car pulled up. A rental. I checked on the tag, ran it through a couple of databases, and it turns out it was rented to a guy named Timur Kaya, who’s traveling on a Turkish passport. I happen to know he’s staying at the downtown Holiday Inn.”

  “How do you know this?” Yael asked.

  “I followed him there,” Crawford said.

  “Good work,” Yael said. “Which room?”

  “One-twenty.”

  “When the Turk left, he didn’t leave with a body-sized bag, did he?” Virgil asked.

  “He didn’t leave with any bag,” Crawford said. “Not even a stone-sized bag.”

  Virgil: “So you followed the Turk to the Holiday Inn? Then what? You talk to him?”

  “Hell, no. Raj told me about the Turk and this thing with testicles, and I said to myself, That’s not necessarily a guy I want to know. So I went back to Jones’s house, drinking lots of coffee, making two hundred bucks an hour. I’m standing behind a tree, taking a leak, when another car pulls up.”

  “It was like a traffic jam,” Virgil said.

  “Yeah,” Crawford said. “I oughta mention, it’s two o’clock in the morning by now, and the light’s still on at Jones’s house. It’s like he was expecting these people. Anyway, a guy gets out of the car and goes up to the house, and I see Jones let him in. I check the tag on the car, it’s a Cadillac SUV. I find out it’s private, owned by a guy named John Rogers Sewickey from Austin, Texas.”

  “How do you spell that?” Virgil asked. He was taking notes. Crawford took his own notebook out and spelled the name.

  “Never heard of him,” Awad said. “Who is he?”

  “He’s a professor who specializes in Ancient Mysteries,” Crawford said, orally capitalizing Ancient Mysteries. “I was about to tell you that when Virgil arrived. He teaches the Ancient Mysteries core course at the Center for Transubstantial Studies at University of Texas.”

  “Hook ’em, Horns,” Virgil said.

  “Exactly. He’s written a lot of books and papers and so on. I looked at his bank account, don’t ask me how, and he has fourteen thousand dollars in checking and in an investment account. He appears to be writing two alimony checks a month.”

  “Then he’s not here for the stone,” Yael said. “He couldn’t afford it.”

  “The Turks are agents for somebody else, so maybe he’s an agent for, like, the Iraqis,” Crawford said. “I know he’s been there—he led the search for the Garden of Eden. I guess he found it, at the junction of these two big rivers, the Euphrates and the Ganges.”

  “I believe the Ganges is in India,” Virgil said.

  “Okay, then it was something else,” Crawford said.

  “Where’s he staying?” Virgil asked.

  “Well, conveniently at the downtown Holiday Inn, in room two-seventy,” Crawford said.

  “Then what?” Yael asked.

  “After I watched him ch
eck in, I went back to Jones’s house, and the lights were out and the rental car was gone.”

  “Ah, crap, you missed him,” Virgil said.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Did you try going in the house?” Virgil asked.

  “No, no, I didn’t. . . . You know why.”

  “Okay. Do you know anything else? Anything at all? Or have any guesses?”

  “Well, before you got here, Raj told me that you’d found blood on the floor?”

  “Just a smear.”

  “Then I suspect the Turk probably created that,” Crawford said. “When Jones came to the door, to meet Sewickey, he looked like he was blowing his nose in a hankie. Now, if there was blood on the floor, I think he might’ve been trying to stop a nosebleed. I mean, how many people would meet somebody at the door while blowing their nose? And keep blowing it?”

  “That’s a legitimate question,” Virgil said.

  “Thank you,” Crawford said. “Also, when Raj first called me, and before I found out that Jones was at the Mayo, I walked across the street to the courthouse to look up his tax records, to see where he lived. Turns out he has two places—the one here in town, and he’s got what looks like an old family farm off Highway 68 West. I haven’t gone out there yet, just looked at the tax file.”

  “Where is it? Exactly?” Virgil asked.

  Crawford looked at his notebook again, and gave Virgil the location, which Virgil noted in his own notebook. Crawford spread his hands. “And that is all I’ve got. Well, except for one thing. It was the Euphrates and the Tigris.”

  Virgil said, “Ah. Good catch.”

  Virgil turned to Awad. “Why didn’t you go over to Jones’s house last night, after Derrick called you?”

  “Because he told me to come this morning. So I did.”

  “Exactly how close are you to the Hezbollah?” Virgil asked. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I am not close, I promise you,” Awad said, holding up his right hand, as though swearing an oath. “I am now calling my uncle and telling him what has transpired here, and telling him I want nothing more to do with it.”