Storm Front

by John Sandford

  “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.”

  —

  VIRGIL 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.

  —

  THE GULFSTREAM 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.

  —

  IN 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 sai
d. “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.

  “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.”

  —

  SO VIRGIL 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.”

  —

  HE 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.

  —

  “IT’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?”

  19

  Ma 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.”