Storm Front (26 page)

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” Zahavi screamed.

“That was a machine gun,” Bauer shouted back. “Fuck this,” and he popped the door and was out with his hands over his head, the rain pounding down on his head.

Two seconds later, the pursuing truck stopped down the road, and a man jumped out and in the oncoming lights of the truck with the flashers, Bauer could see the man’s silhouette with the long gun. He shouted, “We give up.”

—

V
IRGIL STOPPED
beside Shrake’s truck, and then Ma pulled up, and then Jenkins. Virgil and Jenkins pulled on rain jackets, and Ma pulled a plastic garbage bag over her head. Jenkins took the rifle from Shrake, and the three of them walked up to Bauer and Zahavi, who both had their hands over their heads. Shrake was a few steps behind, pulling on a jacket. Bauer and Zahavi looked like drowned rats.

“Crazy motherfuckers,” Virgil said. “You’re both under arrest for everything. Shrake, read them their rights.”

“I am a diplomat and I invoke immunity,” Zahavi said.

“Immune this,” Ma, said, and she hit Zahavi in the eye with a balled fist, and the Israeli went down. One second later she was back up, ready to go, but Jenkins got her around the waist and said, “Let’s not.”

Virgil had hold of Ma, who twisted around and said, “She put a gun in my face.”

Bauer said, “Yeah, she had a gun. She made me do it.”

“I am a diplomat—”

Virgil: “Fuck a bunch of immunity.” To Jenkins and Shrake: “Cuff them and transport them up to Ramsey. Aggravated assault, et cetera. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Where are you going?”

Virgil looked at his watch. Five minutes to nine. “I oughta know in the next couple of minutes.” Then he remembered, looked at Bauer, and asked, “Where’s the stone?”

“Floor of the truck.”

Virgil and Ma walked up to the truck, and Virgil saw the bowling bag. He picked it up, and turned to Ma.

“So there’s no auction?”

She took the bag from him, unzipped it, walked to the front of Bauer’s truck, and smashed the stone against the bull bars on the front. The stone cracked in half, showing a white interior.

“It’s an imitation, made out of plaster of paris,” she said. “I told you Reverend Jones would do something tricky. The auction is over. The money and the stone are gone.”

They all looked at the shattered fake, and then Bauer said, “Aw, shit.”

Virgil asked Ma, “Where’s Jones?”

“He’s turning himself in—to you. He should be down at the Perkins at any minute. He’ll need to go to a hospital, not to a jail. He’s in terrible shape. I don’t know how he holds together. Only willpower now, the medicine doesn’t work anymore.”

“Okay,” Virgil said. To Jenkins and Shrake: “Change in plan. Jenkins takes these two up to Ramsey. Shrake comes with me and we’ll bust Jones, and Shrake will transport him to Regions. He walked out of Mankato once, I’m not going to give him another chance.”

Ma asked, “What about me?”

Virgil shrugged: “The way I see it, you just carried out the plan we talked about last night. As long as we get lots and lots of cooperation.”

“Sure,” she said.

“Let’s do this,” Virgil said. “We’ll lock the Range Rover and leave it. I’ll get it towed tonight. Ma, you can follow us down to the Perkins. Let’s get out of the rain.”

—

S
O
B
AUER AND
Z
AHAVI
were cuffed, Zahavi silent for once, and they all walked to whatever vehicles they were going to, and Ma said to Virgil, “You are strangely cheerful, and that worries me.”

“Yeah, well, you know,” Virgil said, but he couldn’t help grinning at her. “You win some, and you lose some.” He looked up at the dark sky, the leading edge of the storm now well to the east, took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of the rain on the gravel and the corn, and said, “What a great night, huh?”

—

O
N THE WAY BACK TO TOWN
,
Virgil got on the secret phone. When Lincoln answered, he said, “I’ve busted Bauer and Zahavi, the Israeli Mossad agent. She’s claiming diplomatic immunity, but you might be able to trade something for her . . . reasonable treatment.”

“Somebody will think about that.”

“You got your guy?”

“That’s classified,” she said, and hung up.

In other words, Virgil thought,
Yes
.

—

V
IRGIL AND
S
HRAKE
pulled into the Perkins, but Ma did not. Virgil saw her taillights disappearing down the highway and called to Shrake, “Where the hell is she going?”

“Probably gonna pull some more bullshit,” Shrake said.

“Jones better be here, or I’ll bust her ass, too,” Virgil said.

There was a lot of water in the restaurant parking lot, but the rain had slowed. They went inside. No Jones. “Sonofabitch,” Virgil said.

Then a moonfaced man with a buzz cut waved a hand at them and called, “Virgil?”

Virgil recognized the voice, walked over and said, “You’ve changed.”

Jones was sitting in front of a half-f cup of coffee and an empty pie plate, looking up at Virgil. He said, “I wanted to say good-bye to my wife. I couldn’t go as usual—this is my disguise.”

Virgil said, “Well, sir, you’re under arrest. We’re going to take you up to Regions Hospital in St. Paul. You’ll be held in a security ward.”

“I think you’re too late,” Jones said.

“Never too late to go to jail,” said Shrake.

“Well, big man, I have to tell you. I think you’re wrong about that.” Jones sighed, his eyes turned up, and he slipped out of the booth. Shrake tried to catch him, but he landed squarely on his moon face.

Virgil tried to pick him up, but it was like trying to get hold of a two-hundred-pound lump of Jell-O. Virgil called 911, identified himself, and asked for an ambulance: “You better hurry.”

—

W
HEN
J
ONES
was on his way to the hospital, with Shrake following behind the ambulance, Virgil called Ma, but got no answer, so he headed over to Awad’s apartment.

Awad came to the door, and was effusive: “This was wonderful. Wonderful.” He embraced Virgil, who pulled his head back, afraid he was about to be kissed on both cheeks. “What can I tell you, as Americans say? I have already chosen the airplane. This is a 1999 Cessna 206H, slightly used, I am offered a deal of the lifetime.”

“Better not tell me about it,” Virgil said. “I’m a cop.”

“Ah, of course,” Awad said. “But . . .”

Al-Lubnani was packing clothes into a suitcase.

“You’re out of here?” Virgil asked.

“Indeed. Tonight. I will drive the Kia to Chicago. I hope the Hatchet will not interfere?”

“I have good reason to believe that he will not,” Virgil said.

“Good,” al-Lubnani said. “I need two days of freedom in France. After that, they will not find me.”

“I don’t suppose you kept the money here,” Virgil said.

“With the possibility that you would come? Of course not,” al-Lubnani said. “I trust you like my brother . . . but I’m afraid my brother is a rascal.”

“Well, like I said, I don’t really care. Where’s the stone?”

Al-Lubnani and Awad exchanged glances, and Virgil thought al-Lubnani might have gone a shade paler. “You don’t have it? Your assistant was here—”

“I don’t have an assistant,” Virgil snapped. “What the hell is going on? We had a deal.”

“But she said it was over—that you arrested the Mossad agent and this Bauer, that you were arresting Jones. That you sent her to get the stone.”

“Aw, for Christ sakes,” Virgil said. He cupped his hands. “Was she . . . ?”

They both nodded.

—

O
NE LAST TRIP
that night, out to Ma’s place. The truck was parked in the yard, and there were lights on all over the house. It was still raining, but now, more of a drip than a drumbeat. Ma met him at the door: “My goodness, look what the cat dragged in. Come on inside, we just finished making caramel corn.”

Inside, Virgil found her three youngest, eating caramel corn out of plastic bowls and watching
Iron Man 2
. Sam said, “We’re coming to a good part. You wanna watch?”

Virgil said, “I’ve got to talk to your mom.”

“We better go outside,” Ma said.

Virgil followed her out. She was moving right along, out across the yard to the barn. Virgil trotted to catch up, and inside the barn, she flicked on a light, a single bulb that showed up a tractor, a Bobcat, and a bunch of related machinery. She said, “Back here,” and threaded past the machinery to a ladder that went up into the loft.

Virgil said, “Ma, we gotta—”

“Up here,” she said. Virgil climbed up into the loft, into the slightly acid smell of the hay that was stored there. There was no light in the loft, except what came through the loft door from a pole light out by the driveway; the rain made a pleasant tickling sound on the roof.

Ma was sitting on what appeared to be a mattress. She said, “Rolf and Tall Bear sometimes bring their girlfriends up here.”

Virgil said, “Ma . . .”

Ma patted the mattress and said, “Virgie, there’s only one way you’re gonna get that stone.”

Sometimes, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

V
irgil had found a pair of water wings in the barn, the cheap plastic kind that you blow up and roll up your arms, and he lay back in the creek water. With the barest flutter of his feet, and the support of the water wings, he could keep himself moving. The air temperature had to be in the high nineties, he thought, and when the sun beat down, his body had to be near the boiling point. And when he kicked through the shade of an overhanging burr oak, he felt as though he’d been doused with cool water. At this point in time, there couldn’t be a better place to be, not in the whole universe.

“We better stay in the shade as much as we can, or we’ll burn into a couple of cinders,” Ma said. “That sun is scorching hot.”

She had no trouble floating, Virgil thought, probably because she had built-in water wings. In any case, she was an attractive sight, as they flutter-kicked around the swimming hole. The whole environment was reminiscent of a moment from a Disney movie, Virgil thought, with the lush dark green woods all around, the gurgling of the stream over the broken-down dam, the occasional tiger swallowtail fluttering by; like when Bambi was meeting his first butterfly.

“So what’d that bitch do when you got her to St. Paul?” Ma asked, un-Bambi-like. She was referring to Tal Zahavi.

“Threatened everybody in sight,” Virgil said. “Diplomatic immunity, and all that. They’re gonna lay down for it. Or maybe they don’t have a choice. Whatever happens, it won’t do her spy career a lot of good. They took her to court for an appearance, and there are now twelve thousand news photos of her.”

“Good. She pointed a gun right at my nose. That really . . . I mean, I thought I might die right there.”

“You could of.”

“Have you ever thought you might die?” she asked. “When you were in a shoot-out?”

He had to think about it. “I’m not sure. I never
really
thought I was about to die, but I might have thought,
Holy shit, you’re about to die
, but not believed it, if you know what I mean. You’ve got this voice telling you that, but the voice sounds sarcastic.”

“Mmm.”

“Zahavi would have scared me, too,” Virgil said. “She was a little nuts. Maybe out in the cold too long. She
wanted
to shoot somebody—wanted to try it out, see how it felt.”

“You’re not gonna put Tag in prison, are you?” Ma asked.

“I don’t know what’ll happen to him,” Virgil said.

“He’s too cute to put in prison,” Ma said. “A double-crossing piece of scum, but I can excuse that, if a man is cute enough.”

“Glad to hear it,” Virgil said. “Davenport says Tag’ll make bail this afternoon, and he’s already scheduled a press conference. He claims he didn’t have any idea that Zahavi had a gun. He was just along for the ride, so that he could be shown handing the stone over to the Israelis. I don’t believe him, but a jury might. If you say you won’t testify against him . . .”

“Virgil, I just want it to be over,” Ma said. “I’ve got my life to live. I’d just send him home.”

“I kinda think that’s what will happen. Movie stars . . . prosecutors like movie stars,” Virgil said. “They think if they’re nice to them, maybe they’ll get to be in a movie.”

“Good luck to them,” Ma said. “Whatever happens, Tag brought it on himself. It’s not like you didn’t warn him.”

—

T
HEY PADDLED
around a bit more, and then Virgil said, “Not like I didn’t warn
you.
”

“Aw, let’s not go there, Virgie,” Ma said. “Not after last night. I never was going to keep the stone. But you surely scratched my itch, and I can’t tell you how nice that was.”

“Not to brag, but I have to say, I think I probably took care of your itch for several months, possibly even a couple of years,” Virgil said.

“Mmm. No. In fact, I feel it coming back on.”

“We’ll think of something,” Virgil said. “Say, you want another beer?”

“You’re not peeing in the water, are you?”

“Ma . . .”

—

T
HE NIGHT BEFORE
,
after Virgil recovered the stone, he’d spent a half hour talking to everyone involved, making sure that those who needed to be in jail were in jail, and that those who didn’t, weren’t. When all that was done, he told the kids that he was going to take Ma out to get a hot fudge sundae, took her to his house, as he told her, “to get you even further in my debt.”

The next morning, early, he drove up to the Cities without the stone, to work through the paper. The feds were asking about what happened to al-Lubnani, who might be considered an enemy alien, and Virgil explained that he’d disappeared. When they asked about Awad, Virgil said that Awad had worked as his informant during the whole episode—but if word of that got out, he might be murdered. They went away to think about it, and Virgil was confident that Awad was safe.

Awad himself was being hustled on the purchase of a fourteen-year-old utility plane, which Virgil thought he’d probably buy—with hundred-dollar bills, of course.

—

M
A FLOATED UP
and put her feet on the stony creek bottom. She was short enough that the water would have come up over her nose, so she had to bounce as she pushed up between Virgil’s ankles. “I do feel bad about Reverend Jones.”

“Nothing anybody can do about that,” Virgil said. Jones was in the security ward at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, after being transferred up from Mankato. He never recovered full consciousness. The docs at Regions had his Mayo medical file electronically transferred, looked at it, looked at Jones, and suggested that the old man be sent home.

“He’s right there at the end,” an oncologist told Virgil. “He’ll never be back, now. His coma is getting deeper. He’ll be dead in a week. He’ll need a lot of morphine, and it’ll save everybody a lot of money if he got it through a hospice service, instead of here.”

Virgil related that to Ma, who teared up for a moment, then splashed some creek water in her eyes and washed the tears away. “That man saved my life,” she said. She’d told Virgil all about it during their extended slumber party. “He hadn’t come along, I had the potential to turn into a real piece of trailer trash.”

“I doubt it—you’re a survivor.” Virgil looked at his watch and said, “Your kids still gone?”

“Another hour or two. Why?”

“We could get back to the house . . . and then I’ve got to head back to the Cities, now that I’ve recovered the stone.”

“Are you going to tell them the truth about the stone? Your cop buddies?”

“I have to, Ma. You called me this morning and said you’d found it at Jones’s old family place, while you were tearing it down. He must’ve ditched it there. Rolf was a witness—not that anyone will care, since they’ll have the stone.”

“I was amazed when that thing popped out of the wall,” she said. She got in the shallow water, stood up, arched her back, and stretched and yawned. “If we’re gonna do it, we better get ’er done, before the boys get back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Virgil said.

She was a sight.

—

O
N THE WAY
back to the house, Virgil said, “I got a question for you, Ma. I know you’re smart, because somebody told me. I don’t mean a little smart, or somewhat smart, but really, really smart. When we’re talking, sometimes you use perfect grammar and syntax, and sometime it’s this rednecky ‘slicker’n snot on a doorknob,’ ‘dumber’n a bag a hammers,’ and all that. Why do you do that? Switch back and forth?”

She glanced at him and said, “You’re not totally unperceptive. I’d noticed that.”

“So why?”

“I don’t know. Because people expect it, I guess,” she said. “I drive around in a pickup truck and tear down buildings and I got five boys without daddies . . . so that’s what they expect. ‘Dumber’n a bag of hammers, dumber’n a barrel of hair, slicker’n owl shit . . .’ If I act that way . . . well, they won’t see me coming, if I’m ever in a spot where I don’t want them to see me coming.”

Virgil cupped a hand over his ear and pumped a drop of water out, and said, “Okay. I can buy that.”

“I’m sure you can, since you do the same thing—laid-back surfer-boy bullshit, those band T-shirts and that long blond hair, until you have to be mean. Then you can be meaner than the average rattlesnake.”

“I resemble that remark,” Virgil said.

“Yes, you do,” she said. “So, let’s walk faster. I’ve got a couple new things I want to try. As it turns out, lucky for me, you’re not the bashful sort.”

—

A
N HOUR LATER
,
Virgil called Yael and asked, “You packed?”

“I am ready. Do you still have the stone?”

Virgil had called to tell her that he’d recovered the Solomon stone. “Of course. You thought I’d lost it again?”

“Not exactly, but I thought I should inquire, in case I shouldn’t check out.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Virgil said.

He kissed Ma good-bye on the front porch, and as he was walking out to his truck, saw Sam coming down the driveway on his bike, in his Cub Scout uniform. Virgil turned the truck around, stopped next to the kid, and asked, “You fish?”

“When I can.”

“I got a boat. If your mom says okay, we’ll go up to the St. Croix and knock down some muskys,” Virgil said.

“Can you eat muskys?” Sam asked.

Virgil crossed himself. “Never, never ask anything like that. No, you can’t eat muskys. Maybe we should go for walleyes.”

“Either one is good with me,” Sam said. He looked down at the house, then back at Virgil. “You didn’t knock her up, did you?”

“Jesus, I hope not,” Virgil said. “You don’t need another redneck in this family.”

“That’s the goddamned truth,” Sam said, and pedaled on.

—

O
N THE WAY
to pick up Yael, Virgil called Davenport, who came on and said, “Now if we just had that stone, everything would be somewhat perfect.”

“I’ve got it. Jones apparently ditched it at his old farmstead, and a woman I know is tearing the place down,” Virgil said. “It popped right out of the wall.”

“An amazing coincidence,” Davenport said. “Astonishing, really.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Virgil said. “I suspect Jones wanted it found. The money’s probably where he wanted it to go, so . . . he doesn’t care about the stone anymore. Or maybe he does care, maybe he never wanted to betray his old friends in archaeology. So he left it where we’d find it.”

“Okay,” Davenport said. “Although, I’ve got a feeling that you haven’t looked under all the available rocks.”

“I’ll tell you, Lucas, we really don’t want to do that. At least, not until we hear what’s finally happened with the Hatchet.”

“Got it,” Davenport said. “Speaking of Jones, his daughter’s asking for you. She’s over at the hospital.”

“I’ll stop this afternoon,” Virgil said. “But first, I’m gonna bring the stone up and stick it in the evidence locker, and let you geniuses figure out what to do with it. I’m done with it.”

“See you when you get here.”

—

A
ND HE MADE
a call to Lincoln, the intelligence agent, or whatever she was. He pressed “1” on the double-secret telephone, and she answered two seconds later. “What?”

“I thought I’d give you a chance to say, ‘Thank you,’” Virgil said.

“Thank you.”

“You’ve still got him?”

“Got who?”

“All right. I hope it works out for you,” Virgil said. “Is there any possibility that I’ll ever know how it turns out?”

He could hear her thinking, and then she said, “I’ll tell you what, Virgil. There are some possibilities out there, where we just couldn’t talk to you. I’m not talking about us doing anything illegal, I’m just saying, there are some possibilities.”

“Give me a hypothetical.”

“Hypothetically, if you were in this sort of situation, say, and the target was picked up and eventually agreed to turn—”

“Okay. I got that,” Virgil said. “But listen: if it’s just a straight bust, or you take down a group, but it doesn’t make the papers . . . give me a ring. I don’t need details, I’d just like to know what happened. How the story came out.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she said. “I have to say, Virgil, you are a journey all of your own, and I hope you enjoy yourself in the rest of it.”

“What do you want me to do with the secret phone?”

“Nothing. In a day or two, it’ll turn itself off, and it’ll never come back. If you open it up, you’ll find that the electronics have been reduced to a brownish goop. I wouldn’t taste it. If, for some reason, we need to talk to you again, we’ll know where to find you.”

“But I won’t know where to find you.”

“That’s correct.”

And she was gone.

—

W
HEN HE GOT
to Mankato, he found Sewickey sitting in the parking lot, in his Caddy, with the engine running. Sewickey got out and said, “Thank God. I’ve been here for four hours. I saw all that about the Mossad woman and Bauer on TV, and I figured you’d show up to talk with the Israeli.”

“You’re looking for the photographs?” Virgil asked, remembering that he’d promised them to Sewickey, if Sewickey stayed out of Virgil’s hair.

Sewickey said, “Exactly. I need to get back to Austin. There’re rumors that a piece of parchment has come up on Santorini that mentions a town called ‘Atalant,’ obviously a reference to Atlantis. I’m going, and right quick, but I need to get to Austin first.”

“If you had a camera . . .”

“I do. A brand-new one. In the Caddy,” he said.

“I’ve got the stone, right here in the truck,” Virgil said. “Get your camera, you can take some shots, and I’ll take a couple of you examining the stone, and we’ll be all square.”

“Virgil, you are a prince among men,” Sewickey said.

“Not so much,” Virgil said. “I figure if you get these photographs, you’ll stick them straight up Bauer’s ass.”

Sewickey laughed. “I will indeed. And make the oil and gas guys happy, at the same time. Who knows, maybe I’ll get my own TV show.”

They went up to Yael’s room with the stone and made three dozen photographs, using a bedsheet as a seamless backdrop, and then a dozen more of Sewickey examining the stone with a magnifying glass, while wearing an Aussie outback hat. Yael did not approve, but conceded that Virgil may have owed something to Sewickey.