Storm Front

by John Sandford

  “Ellen, you’ve been some kind of criminal. I’ve been overlooking that. Now, go inside, eat something healthy, get some sleep.”

  “Tell you what else,” she said. “I’ve got my ex-husband’s .22. I’m going to keep it right by my bed.”

  —

  SINCE HE WAS in the Cities anyway, Virgil called Davenport: “Just wanted to see if you know anything I don’t.”

  “All kinds of things, but one is relevant,” Davenport said. “That is, I managed to pry loose another one of those trackers. You want it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I gotta go out, but it’ll be on my desk.”

  Virgil picked up the new GPS unit, bought some candy at the candy machine, talked to the fingerprint specialist about Zahavi’s fingerprints from the gun—they’d gotten no return from anyone—and drove back to Mankato, to his house. He got a bowl of fruit and sprawled on his bed, the better to think about it, since that had worked so well the last time he’d tried it.

  Three bidders: the Hezbollah, Tag Bauer, and the Turks. Plus three non-bidders, who were nevertheless pursuers: Tal Zahavi, Sewickey, and Yael Aronov. One outside interest, with unknown involvement: Ma Nobles, who Virgil thought had taken Jones out of the hospital.

  The Turks were out of it, so if the deal was going down that night, it had to be with the Hezbollah, or with Bauer. Everybody else was probably out of it—or, at least, nobody else would be invited to attend.

  Except, perhaps, Ma Nobles. Where was she in all of this?

  Virgil thought about it for a moment, but didn’t have anything to work with: she was an absolute wild card.

  So: Bauer and the Hezbollah.

  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.

  —

  VIRGIL 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.”

  —

  VIRGIL 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?

  —

  VIRGIL 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.”

&nb
sp; “So let’s look some more,” Virgil said.

  They did, but Gefen was apparently gone.

  —

  VIRGIL CALLED ELLEN CASE, 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.

  —

  “YOU 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.”

  18

  Virgil 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.

  —

  VIRGIL 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.”

  —

  HE 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.”