Storm Front

by John Sandford

  Virgil said, “You all know now that somebody firebombed my garage last night and stole the stone. I am beyond being pissed off. So I’m telling you: this is now personal, and you do not want to get in the way. Go home. I’m telling you: Go home. Everybody who understands that, raise your hand.”

  They all raised their hands, and Sewickey yawned.

  Virgil: “You’re yawning, Sewickey. You think I’m joking?”

  “No, I don’t,” Sewickey said. “I’ll talk to you about it in private. About the yawn.”

  Virgil looked at him for a moment, then said, “Right.” And to everybody else, “Go home. All of you. Go home.”

  Then he turned and headed for the door, tipping his head, and said, “Sewickey.”

  —

  SEWICKEY FOLLOWED HIM OUT into the main dining room and Virgil said, “The yawn?”

  Sewickey pointed at an empty booth, and they sat facing each other, and Sewickey interlaced his fingers on the tabletop and said, “Virgil, you’re a likable guy, and I don’t want to see you or anybody else get hurt, but you don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  “What don’t I understand? There’s this precious artifact—”

  “You don’t understand that the stone isn’t especially important. It’s the idea of the stone, and what everybody can squeeze out of it. Blood, already,” Sewickey said. “But the authenticity, the preciousness, the power? Nobody here really cares about that. Well, maybe this Israel archaeologist does, but the rest of us don’t.”

  “I’ve read these, uh, books about the power these kinds of things can accumulate,” Virgil ventured.

  “Virgil, Virgil. It’s all crap. It’s a fuckin’ rock. Some lunatic killer three thousand years ago wrote a note on it, and then he died and nobody gave a shit what he said. The stone was probably part of a fence or a foundation or something. Maybe a chopping block, and used when they cut the heads off pigeons.”

  “Then, what—”

  “It’s all about us. About me and Bauer and the Hezbollah and the Israelis. We aren’t going home. We can’t. We need this thing.”

  “So you don’t even care about—”

  “Virgil, listen. It’s all crazier than a bucket of drunk rattlesnakes, but we’ve all got our needs and they need to be tended to,” Sewickey said. “Bauer calls himself an investigative archaeologist, but you know what he majored in, in college?”

  Virgil thought for a few seconds, then guessed, “Television?”

  “Drama. He wants to be a movie star. But he needs this stone. All that bullshit about the planks from Noah’s Ark almost killed him off. Nobody believed him. That thing about getting the gopher wood at a Glendale gas station? That’s the truth of the matter.”

  “The Hezbollah guy—”

  “Al-Lubnani? You don’t really want to go back to the Hezbollah leadership and say, ‘Sorry, boys, that one kinda slipped off my plate,’” Sewickey said. “I mean, Virgil Flowers might put him in jail. The Hezbollah, on the other hand, will cut off his head with a chain saw. How hard will he think about that choice?”

  Virgil regarded him for a moment, then said, “The Search for Hitler’s Heart? The True Cross?”

  Sewickey winced, then said, “Look. I’ve got a small department. It’s me, an assistant professor, and two graduate students, funded by three rich oil and gas guys from Midland. You know what rich oil and gas guys want?”

  “More oil and gas?”

  “Well, yeah. But what they want from me is results. I pull down a hundred and fifty K from UT, get expense-paid trips to Istanbul and South America and Russia and a lot of other places, eat in some very good restaurants, get quoted on TV, especially in Midland, and occasionally get laid by undiscriminating museum ladies. If those rich guys go away, it’s back to Mr. Sewickey’s eighth-grade English in Bumfuck, Oklahoma. So: I won’t risk my neck for the stone—you can send it into space, for all I care—but I need those photos I lost, because I need to be the American authority on the stone. If I could get those pictures back, I’d sit in the hotel looking at the porn channel and eating fried pork rinds and wait out the . . . the . . . climax of all this, and then go on TV at the end of it and become the authority. Make those guys in Midland happy.”

  “So . . .”

  “So nobody’s going home.”

  “That all sounds pretty cynical,” Virgil observed.

  “Virgil, have you even bothered to look at the economy? Another seven years and I’ll have nailed down a substantial pension,” Sewickey said. “If I’m kicked out of UT before then, it’s thirty years of microwave dinners, thinning hair, and fattening waistline. I’ll have spent fifteen years wearing a fuckin’ string tie and these goddamned cowboy boots, for nothing.”

  Virgil thought about that, then said, “Tell you what. You hole up in your room. I took a bunch of high-res photos of the stone last night, and I’m a pretty goddamned good photographer. You hole up, stay out of this, and I’ll get you a set.”

  Sewickey brightened: “Deal. You got yourself a deal, Virgil.”

  As he said that, Bauer emerged from the back room, trailed by Ma. Bauer asked, “What kind of a deal are we talking about?”

  “Mr. Sewickey has agreed to withdraw from pursuit of the stone,” Virgil said.

  Bauer: “Really? Hard to believe. Once he gets his teeth into a project, he’s a regular Chihuahua.”

  Sewickey half stood: “You want me to rattle a few of your fake pearly whites, wristwatch boy?”

  Virgil: “Stop that.”

  They stopped it, and Ma said to Virgil, “You’re getting pretty authoritarian, you know that?” and Virgil said, “Shut up, Ma,” and she said, “Oh, no, I kinda like it. Gives me little shivers,” and one way or another, thirty seconds later they all rolled together out the front door of the restaurant, and somebody yelled, “There they are!”

  Somebody else screamed, “Virgil Flowers: Is it true somebody firebombed your house and stole the stone?”

  Fifteen television people stampeded toward them, five of them with cameras on their shoulders.

  Sewickey and Bauer surged past him, but the reporters ignored them and closed on Virgil. Virgil gave them one minute of noncommittal answers, and then said, “That’s all I got.”

  As he stepped back, the cameras still on him, his phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the screen.

  Davenport.

  Virgil said, “Ah, shit,” and to the TV people, “You can quote me on that.”

  15

  Davenport: “Why am I hearing about this on television? Somebody firebombed your house?”

  Virgil was walking away down the street, leaving the TV crowd behind. “Ah, man, Lucas, I’ve been running around like a rat ever since it happened. I know who took the stone, or had to be involved.”

  He told Davenport how only three people knew that he had the stone, how Yael had no motive to steal it, so, “It had to be Ellen Case. She told her old man, and he firebombed me to get me out of the house. And it wasn’t the house—it was my garage.”

  “Jesus, the garage? What happened to the boat?”

  “The boat’s fine. Not touched.”

  “That’s a break. You got to give it to this preacher—he’s got some balls.”

  “More like he’s got nothing to lose,” Virgil said.

  They talked about the situation and finally Davenport said, “I’ll send Jenkins and Shrake over to pick up Case. Show her that you’re serious.”

  “I hate to, because she seems like a nice woman. I doubt she had anything to do with the fire.”

  “But she’s involved, Virgil. There’s nothing funny about a Molotov cocktail.”

  —

  VIRGIL WALKED BACK to his truck and found Ma Nobles leaning against the front fender. “That Tag Bauer is a handsome young hunk. He has asked me out to dinner
tonight, and I have accepted. However, my heart still belongs to you, if you act quickly,” she said.

  “What’d he do, tell you he’s in love?”

  “I figured that out for myself,” Ma said. “Unfortunately, it’s not with me. That boy’s desperately in love with his own self, and it would take some serious spade work to break that down. But if you don’t do something soon . . . I mean, I got a spade.”

  “You can tell by his hairline that he’s gonna wind up bald,” Virgil said. “He’ll probably get one of those hair-replacement little sewing machine–looking things on his scalp.” He sounded truculent in his own ears.

  “I’m not talking about a long-term relationship,” she said. “Anyway, you gotta admit, if him and me were to have a child, it’d be a good-looking one.”

  “Ma—”

  “See ya,” she said, and she pushed off the fender and walked on down the street, not looking back. Virgil watched her go, until she got in her truck, and then turned back the other way, where Bauer and Sewickey were doing an “old comrades” act for the TV cameras.

  And he thought, I hope Jenkins and Shrake aren’t too rough with Ellen.

  —

  VIRGIL WENT HOME and looked at his garage for a while, picking at the peeling paint. When he left the house that morning, he’d thought that the damage had been purely superficial—a matter of scraping off the burned paint and putting on a new coat. Now, he began to see that the damage was somewhat more substantial; nothing that threatened the building, but it needed new wood, a carpenter, and a painter.

  He spent a few minutes talking to his insurance agent, who said that somebody would be around to take pictures and do an estimate on the damage. Virgil had worried that the policy wouldn’t cover arson, but, as it turned out, it did, as long as he made an official report. He called the fire department to do it, and was told that he should also file with the cops. He did that by phone.

  He was working on a computer report for Davenport when his phone rang. The screen said, “Unknown,” and he clicked it and said, “Yes?”

  “Virgil Flowers?” A man’s voice, gruff. He’d heard it before.

  “This is Flowers.”

  “This is Elijah Jones.”

  “Reverend Jones. I’ve been hoping you’d call, you miserable motherfucker.”

  “Well, I am, now . . . I need—”

  “Wait a minute. Before we get to your needs . . . Did you take that stone from my house last night?”

  “Yes. I also set your garage on fire. I hope the boat wasn’t hurt.”

  “You’re a goddamned sinner, you know that? You firebombed—”

  “Shut up!” Jones shouted. “I got my back to the wall, Flowers. I’ve got the stone, but somebody’s got Ellen.”

  “What?”

  “She’s been kidnapped. Whoever’s got her, wants the stone. I never saw this, I never had any idea that anybody could go this low—”

  “I told you, I told . . . Goddamnit, tell me what happened,” Virgil said.

  “I got a call, about forty minutes ago,” Jones said. “A male voice, on the phone I’ve been using for the auction. They said they had Ellen, and would give her up, in return for the stone. They said they didn’t want to hurt her, but they would if they had to. They said they’d start by cutting off her fingers and they’d leave them where I could find them, so I’d know that they were serious.”

  “Did you talk to Ellen?”

  “Yes. They put her on the phone, but they wouldn’t let her say much. She said she pulled into her garage, up in the Cities, and they were waiting for her, they threw a bag over her head and put her in a van and took her someplace, she doesn’t know where.”

  “Did you drop off the stone yet?”

  “Not yet. They said they’d hurt Ellen if I told anybody about this. They told me to start driving down Highway 83 south, and they’d call me and tell me when to turn and where to go, and if they saw anybody following me, they’d hurt her. I think it’s the Turks, Virgil. Kaya likes knives, so I’ve been told. Anyway, I’m headed south now, back toward town. I don’t know what you can do, but if I drop the stone, I’m afraid they won’t want a witness. They won’t have any reason to let Ellen go.”

  “The Turks went home,” Virgil said. “At least, they got on an airplane to Chicago. Listen, did you get a phone number from the incoming phone?”

  “No. It was blocked.”

  “Are you using the phone that Ellen calls you on?”

  “Yes. They told me not to use the phone, but they only know about the auction phone, that’s a different one.”

  “Give me the number—the number they called you on.”

  “Can you do something with that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m hoping the phone company can watch your phone, and if they call you on that again, see where the call is coming from. Or maybe tell where the first call came from.”

  Jones gave him the number. “Does the phone you’re on now, does it have a speaker function?”

  “Yes.”

  “So when you call me, put the phone in your lap and talk down into it. Don’t put it to your ear, in case they’re spotting you.”

  “Okay. Don’t do anything that’ll cause them to kill her.”

  “Just hold tight: I’ll start bringing in help,” Virgil said. “Are you in Mankato?”

  “No, I’m coming down from the north.”

  “Don’t drive too fast. Make me some time, before you get on 83.”

  “I’ll try.”

  —

  VIRGIL CALLED DAVENPORT: “Things got worse. . . .”

  He recounted Jones’s story, and Davenport said, “I got a call from Jenkins. He says Case is not at her house, but her car is in the garage. Her next-door neighbors didn’t see her either last night or this morning. They’re still checking the neighborhood.”

  “Okay. We need to alert the sheriff’s departments south of Mankato, and any highway patrolmen down there. There’s something a little odd about the call to Jones—if they took her last night, why did they wait until ten o’clock in the morning to call him? I can think of a couple of possibilities.”

  “Like?”

  “Like they came from somewhere else, and have taken her somewhere else. Like if the Turks came back, but knew they couldn’t be seen, so they hid out. Up there in the Cities, down in Albert Lea or over in Rochester. Maybe even down in Iowa, to get across a state line. They’ve got Jones driving south with the stone, so I suspect that they’re not in the Cities.”

  “I’ll check again on the Turks,” Davenport said.

  “Do that. There’s also a possibility—maybe a better possibility than the Turks—that she was snatched by the first Yael. She disappeared so completely that I think she had to have help, and that help is likely male. The Mossad, if she’s really Mossad, has done some of that kidnapping stuff.”

  “All right. What are you going to do?”

  “Right now? I’m gonna talk to an Arab,” Virgil said.

  —

  HE GOT on the line to Awad. “Where are you?”

  “I am preparing for a training flight,” Awad said.

  “Good. I need an airplane ride. It’s important. I’ll pay. Can you do that?”

  “I have no commercial license, but I accept pay, how do you say it, under the chair.”

  “Table,” Virgil said. “Under the table. That’s good enough. I need to go now.”

  “I will have the plane in two minutes. If you called me ten minutes from now, I would be in the air already,” Awad said. “Is this a law enforcement matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me in one seconds.”

  “A woman’s been kidnapped.”

  “So I am helping to fight this crime?” Awad asked.

  “I guess,” Virgil said.


  “This is A-1 quality,” Awad said. And he did a perfect imitation of the Cops theme song, trilling, “Bad boys, bad boys . . .”

  “Ten minutes,” Virgil said. “If you have a pair of binoculars, that would be good.”

  —

  JONES CALLED five minutes later, with Virgil halfway to the airport. “I’m coming into town, heading south. I’m driving a red Volvo station wagon. What should I do?”

  “Call me when you get to the intersection of 22 and 83,” Virgil said.

  “Where will you be?” Jones asked.

  “Close by—but out of sight,” Virgil said. “You take care. You getting killed won’t help Ellen one way or the other.”

  —

  VIRGIL PARKED out front of the flight service, got his pistol, a cased M16, and a pair of image-stabilized Canon binoculars from the truck, walked into the flight service. The man behind the desk flinched when he saw Virgil coming, but Virgil had his ID ready and called, “Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”

  “What’s going on? Is there trouble?”

  “Where’s Awad?”

  “Raj? I always suspected—”

  “I’m riding with him,” Virgil said.

  The man looked relieved for a half-second, then said, “In our plane? Wait a minute—”

  “Don’t have a minute,” Virgil said. “We got a woman kidnapped.”

  “But—”

  “And no time to argue about it. Where is he?”

  He found Awad in the pilots’ lounge with al-Lubnani. Al-Lubnani had a pair of binoculars around his neck. Virgil looked from al-Lubnani to Awad to al-Lubnani, and the old man shrugged and said, “Two binoculars are better than one.”

  “You’re right,” Virgil said. “Let’s move.”

  Awad was dressed like a bush pilot, square-shouldered in a long-sleeved olive drab shirt with epaulets, jeans, and aviator sunglasses, like Virgil’s. He was flying a Cessna 182, a four-seater. Virgil got in the front with Awad, who passed him a pair of headphones, and handed another pair to al-Lubnani in the back. Al-Lubnani sat behind Awad, so he and Virgil could look out opposite sides of the plane.