Storm Front

Chapter 20

Awad called: “Al-Lubnani just got a call from the Hatchet. He has just gone to a meeting now. He says he might be getting the money.”

“Keep your head down,” Virgil said. “This Hatchet sounds like a nutbag.”

“I have thought to take myself out and get lost,” Awad said.

“Do you have a favorite bar?”

“The Pigwhistle.”

“Go there. Although, for a guy like you, it’s a poor choice. No coeds at the Dog.”

“As a man who knows these things, where should a man like myself go to meet women who will fornicate with me?”

“Ah, well, hmm, I’d try the Rooster Coop,” Virgil said. “It’s a cowboy bar. Don’t tell them you’re Lebanese — tell them you’re part Apache. If a part-Apache can’t get laid in the Rooster Coop, he can’t get laid.”

“I have cowboy boots,” Awad offered.

“Then you’re good,” Virgil said. “But go to a drugstore first and pick up some protection. You don’t want a bunch of little Apaches running around.”

“I have many of those protections here in my apartment, which I buy, like you Americans say, just in case,” Awad said. “I am going now.”

Virgil got the double-secret phone from under the car seat, brushed some pizza crust crumbs off it, and pushed “1.” Lincoln answered two seconds later: “Yes?”

“Al-Lubnani has gone to pick up the money from the Hatchet.”

“We know. We’re all over him. And Awad — we just heard you tell Awad to go to the Rooster Coop to get laid. That’s fine. Now, you should just stay out of this.”

“I’m starting to feel oppressed,” Virgil said.

“That’s your role in life,” Lincoln said. “Go home.” She hung up.

Is not, Virgil thought.

But he went home anyway, got online, read the news, thought about calling Ma, just for a social chat, but resisted the idea, and finally went out to the garage, turned on all the lights, climbed in his boat and began detailing the interior.

Virgil was a modestly tidy person, as much as most bachelors are, anyway, but he was serious about his boat. The last time he’d been musky fishing on Eagle Lake, up in Northwest Ontario, he’d hooked into a fish in the fifty-inch range. But the guide, who was not reasonably tidy, had left a net sitting on the front casting deck, and Virgil had stepped in it while fighting the fish. The guide, excited at seeing the fish, had pulled at the net handle and said, “Move your feet,” and Virgil, feeling that he was losing his balance, looked down at the net and then tried to pick up both feet at once, doing a little dance, lost his focus on the fish, felt the line go slack, and then watched the fish dive away.

Both Virgil and the guide could see Virgil’s bucktail hanging loose in the water, and the guide, standing there slack-jawed with the net in his hand, asked, “Why’d you do that? That was a nice fish.”

Wouldn’t have happened in Virgil’s boat.

Tag Bauer opened the motel room door and found himself looking at a slender dark woman who he suspected was not a fan. “Can I help you?”

Tal Zahavi put her index finger against his chest and pushed him back into the room, looked around, then kicked the door closed with her foot. “I’m from Israel,” she said. “I am looking for the Solomon stone.”

Tag shook a finger at her: “Ah. Yes. The Mossad agent. I’ve heard about you.”

“I would like to make you an offer.”

Bauer interrupted: “How’d you find me?”

“I called a source… and got the make and license number of your car. There are not many hotels here — I drove around until I found it.”

“How’d you find my room?”

“I paid a cleaning lady for the number,” she said.

“Okay. So what’s the offer?”

“I watched you on television and then I watched some of your TV shows on YouTube,” Zahavi said. “From some of the shows it seems that you shoot your own video at times. You have your own camera?”

“Of a sort,” Bauer said. “It’s a small Panasonic, but it takes excellent video. Of course, the results are not as good as real movies, it’s all handheld and so on.”

“This Flowers will not help you obtain the stone,” Zahavi said. “He is a liar and a sneak, and if he gets the stone, it will disappear into a police station and never come back out.”

“He says all he wants to do is send it back to Israel.”

“Yes, yes, with this Yael Aronov.” Zahavi nodded. “She is a pest. I can tell you, hers are the wrong hands. This stone is a very powerful propaganda weapon, and it cannot fall into the wrong hands, even if they are Israeli.”

“This is all very interesting, but I don’t see how it impacts me, or my camera,” Bauer said. He backed up and sat on the bed. “I’m actually thinking it might be time for me to get out of town… unless you can tell me why I shouldn’t.”

“I make you an offer. If you help me get the stone — if you provide information that will help me — I will help you make a movie about it. Here, in the U.S. And I will be able to provide further benefits, at a later date, in Israel. There are many things in Israel that would shine on your show. The copper scroll—”

“The treasure of the copper scroll…” Bauer said, his eyes narrowing at the thought.

“May be a myth,” Zahavi said. “But, we could provide you many sources knowledgeable about the copper scroll — the greatest experts in the field — and access to the scroll itself.”

“The scroll’s in Jordan.”

“We have resources in Amman,” Zahavi said.

Bauer pushed himself back on the bed until his head was on a pillow, and thought about it. Zahavi leaned her butt against a bureau, crossed her arms, and let him think. Eventually she added, “Of course, you are free to decline, and we Israelis are free to decline access to our valuable archaeological country.”

Bauer said, “First the carrot, then the stick.” More thought, then, “I do have some information that could prove useful.”

Zahavi smiled: “That makes me very happy.”

“I’m not sure that I would want to be involved in the actual acquisition of the stone.”

“You wouldn’t have to be, if there’s a way I could get it on my own.”

“On the other hand,” Bauer said, “I’m not sure I’d trust you to help me make the movie, once you got your hands on the stone, if I wasn’t there to insist.”

“When I make a deal, I honor it,” Zahavi said.

“What else could you say?” Bauer asked.

“My organization has a reputation to uphold,” she said. “When we promise to pay, we pay — otherwise, people would stop talking to us.”

He mulled it over for a while, and eventually said, “Jones has had help in concealing both himself and the stone. A woman. Flowers is working with this woman. Tonight, she agreed to help him recover it. I don’t think she was telling the complete truth, but in any case, at some point tomorrow night, she will be alone with the stone. She doesn’t have it yet, she’ll have to pick it up somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if Flowers has her under surveillance — or will have her under surveillance tomorrow.”

“Why would this woman have the stone?”

“As I understand it, and I don’t have the final details, the bidders will bring their money to the auction, which will be held in a public place. When Jones has seen the money and has accepted the bid, the woman will appear with the stone, and display it. Then Jones will be given the money, and Ma… and the woman will deliver the stone. Everybody will probably have guns.”

“Do you have the money to win the bid?”

Bauer hesitated, but then thought, Flowers knows anyway, and if Flowers knows, then the Mossad could know. “No. I don’t. I planned to show up in my truck, and put the headlights on Jones and the bidders. My camera will be mounted in the truck window, and I’ll make movies of the exchange — I’ll plead with Jones to give me the stone, so it can be saved for posterity. He won’t, of course, but that’s about all I got. I’d rather have the stone. Even temporarily.”

“If you tell me about this woman, you could have the stone long enough to make a video.”

Bauer chewed his lower lip, then said, “The exchange is tomorrow at nine o’clock at night. The woman will have to get the stone before then, maybe several hours before. I guess it’s possible that she already has it. She has—”

He stopped suddenly, and Zahavi cocked her head: “What? Tell me.”

“I’ve already made arrangements with her to see the stone, and maybe take a few pictures. Not film, just a quick photo.”

“And who knows this?”

“Just me… and the woman, of course.”

Zahavi smiled: “So we have it… unless Flowers is with her.”

“No. She won’t let him ride with her — because if she did, he’d just take the stone and the auction would be finished.”

“But he could have her under surveillance.”

“He could. But I can tell you something else that would be valuable to you. I found all of this out at the woman’s house. I was talking to her when Flowers showed up, and he forced us to take a deal on giving up the stone. She was going to refuse, unless she got her way. And her way is, let the exchange take place, and then take the stone away from the high bidders. Flowers wasn’t happy about it, but he agreed.”

“Yes, yes, yes, but what is this valuable other thing?”

“He wants to make sure that when it all takes place, that he gets the right stone, and nobody tries to give him a fake. So he will have Yael Aronov with him tomorrow evening, to verify the stone. And since Aronov is Israeli, you may have some influence over her. If she could tell us where Flowers is, and whether he’s directing a surveillance of this woman…”

“You’ll have to give me the other woman’s name eventually,” Zahavi said.

“Sure, but not yet,” Bauer said, crossing his arms over his chest. A signal that he’d taken a position, and wouldn’t give it up.

“So,” Zahavi said. “Do you know where Yael Aronov stays?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Bauer said.

Virgil was still working on the boat, checking screws on the oarlocks, when Awad called, shouting over the sounds of a cowboy band. “I have an emergency. Al-Lubnani is at my apartment. He wishes to speak to me, but I do not wish to speak to him because I am very very very busy. I tell him to speak to you and he says he will.”

“All right. I’ll go there now,” Virgil said.

“Thank you. Thank you, my friend. I go now.”

“Good luck,” Virgil said.

Al-Lubnani let Virgil into Awad’s apartment and asked, “Do you wish a screwdriver?”

“Got a beer?”

“Alas, I do not,” al-Lubnani said.

Virgil looked in the refrigerator, found a Pepsi, and he and al-Lubnani, carrying a screwdriver, moved to the couch and easy chair. Virgil put his feet on the coffee table and asked, “What happened?”

“I meet this Hatchet,” al-Lubnani said, sipping at his drink. “He shows me the money. He has a pack for your back, and he opens it, and inside, it is filled with packets of dollars. One-hundred-dollar bills. Three hundred packets with one hundred bills in each packet. This is a very interesting sight.”

“I bet it was,” Virgil said. “Do you have it?”

“I do not. This is what he told me: when we have a rendezvous tomorrow, he will be my backup. He will go with me, but will not come exactly to the meeting. He will wait nearby. I am wondering, does he have a gun? Does he rob the meeting, to keep both the money and the stone? Will he shoot everybody, including me?”

“Good questions,” Virgil said. “I will take these under advisement. Do you know where you are meeting?”

“Not yet. Jones will call me at nine o’clock tomorrow and tell me where to meet. I said, ‘It is dark at nine o’clock,’ and he said, ‘That is why we wait until nine o’clock.’”

“Hmm.”

“You say you take this under advisement. I ask you, are your arrangements… Is everything under control?”

“Yes. I believe we are watched even now.”

Al-Lubnani looked at the ceiling. “CIA?”

“They won’t tell me,” Virgil said. “As far as I know, it could be Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

“I wish I was in Paris,” al-Lubnani said. “Instead, I am in a ridiculous Hollywood movie.”

“Know how you feel, pal.”

When Virgil left, he heard the door close behind him, but when he was thirty feet down the hall, heard it open again and turned and saw al-Lubnani coming after him.

“I forget to tell you,” he said. “When I go to meet the Hatchet, I find him in a limo. You know these black limos, like they have in New York City? Towns, I think?”

“Town cars,” Virgil said. “I know them.”

“This town car has a driver and the Hatchet sits in the rear seat. But, as we are looking at the money, I see that the driver is listening to us. A window is between us, but I can see him listening. So I think the driver is not entirely a driver. I think he is with the Hatchet. Or, excuse me if this sounds crazy, it is possible that the Hatchet is very, very careful, and the man in the backseat is an actor, yes? He is an actor, and the driver is the Hatchet.”

“Why do you think that?”

Al-Lubnani scratched his beard, thoroughly, then said, “I can’t tell you this, except to say, I have lived in Beirut a long time, and there, you learn to know when something is wrong. There is a… wrongness. Is this a word?”

“I don’t know, but I know what you mean,” Virgil said. He scratched his own chin, thinking about it, then said, “I will also take this under advisement.”

Out in the truck, he got the double-secret phone from under the seat and pushed “1.”

Again, Lincoln answered in two seconds: “Yes?”

“Did you hear me talking to al-Lubnani?”

“No. We have his phones, but we don’t yet have his apartment. We will remedy that as soon as we have the warrant, which should be at any minute.”

“All right. Well, al-Lubnani didn’t get the money, though he saw it. He says three hundred packets of ten thousand dollars each. The Hatchet kept it, and will turn it over to al-Lubnani tomorrow night, just before the exchange, which is set for nine o’clock.”

“Yes.” Lincoln’s voice was neutral: Virgil couldn’t tell whether that was new information or not.

“So, have you got the Hatchet covered?”

“We have the man who met al-Lubnani covered. We hope to confirm his identity tonight.”

“Have you run a check on the limo driver?”

“Yes.”

“Could you give me like five words on him? Local? Islamic or not? Where did they get the limo?”

“Local, Islamic. Name — you won’t believe it, but I’ll tell you anyway — is Max Kaar. Eleven years with the company.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Keep your pretty little head out of this, Flowers. We’ve got it. Just get the stone, without interfering with the target, and everybody will be happy.”

Pretty little head? It pissed him off.

While Virgil was talking to al-Lubnani, Yael Aronov was sitting on her motel bed, pondering the possibilities. She had one moderately large suitcase that she’d bought herself, plus the two enormous suitcases she’d gotten from Tal Zahavi’s room.

When she first saw them, she’d considered them an opportunity. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Though she’d towed some pretty large suitcases through the green “nothing to declare” zone at Ben Gurion, these seemed excessive: maybe Zahavi, if she were truly with the Mossad, could have gotten away with it — perhaps she could have avoided customs altogether.

Yael might not be able to do that, with the elephant-sized bag.

Yael had just bought twenty iPad Minis at Sam’s Club, and if she could get them back in Israel, she could make a hundred dollars each on them — and two thousand was a lot to risk, simply to pile more stuff in an enormous suitcase.

But the temptation was strong. She’d never been stopped at customs….

Her contemplation of the bags was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door, a quick chink-chink-chink of a maid using a key. She was not a cop or a spy, so she didn’t even think about her response: she went to the door and opened it.

A thin, dark-haired woman said in Hebrew, “I am Mossad,” and pushed Yael back into her room.

Yael said, “Tal Zahavi — I have seen you on TV.”

“Yes. That putz Flowers, I can’t believe this,” Zahavi said.

“But you kidnapped—”

“Borrowed her, for a few hours,” Zahavi said. She saw the suitcases on the bed and said, “Those are my suitcases.”

“Virgil said I should keep them, since… well, we’re both Israelis,” Yael said. “But I don’t want them. What would I do with them?”

“I was planning to buy Fruit of the Loom underwear, which my uncle can sell in his store,” Zahavi said.

Yael made a moue. “Not a bad idea,” she conceded. “My brother kills for Fruit of the Loom. If your uncle runs a clothing store—”

Zahavi poked a finger at Yael: “So now, I require your aid. This is official business. Tomorrow night, the Hezbollah will purchase this stele, for as much as three million dollars in cash. We will stop this — but we can’t outbid them, because we have no money. So, we will intercept the stone.”

“You maybe, but not me,” Yael said. “I do not work for the Mossad, and I will not. I am surprised that you still work for the Mossad, after this… borrowing of Ellen Case.”

“You are not required to work with me, you are only required to tell me where this Flowers is. I have information that you will be with him tomorrow night as he attempts, also, to intercept the stone. I need to know where he is.”

“And how do I do that?” Yael asked, her fists on her hips. “He will be there. I say, ‘Excuse me, I have to make a telephone call to betray you?’”

“You say nothing. When he begins to chase the stone, when he knows where it is and who has it, you press my phone number on your telephone. You do not have to say anything: just call, and I will know he is chasing the stone.”

“This is crazy,” Yael said. Then, “Are you still on assignment? I would think that your superiors would have put you on a plane back to Tel Aviv when they saw the TV reports.”

“This is not your business,” Zahavi snapped. “The operation continues.”

Yael said nothing, but the skeptical look on her face suggested that she didn’t believe what Zahavi said.

Zahavi: “I was given unreliable support, who abandoned me the minute the trouble started. But I can still do this—”

“I don’t want you to do it,” Yael said. “I want to take the stele back to the IAA myself, so it can be properly examined.”

“And so you can publish it and so the Arabs can make propaganda from it forever.”

“I think you have been in the sun too long,” Yael said. She added, “But, I am a good Israeli, and I will call you tomorrow night, if Virgil leaves me. But I will file a big complaint, a big stink, if you lose or destroy the stone, and I will not stop just because you are the Mossad and you say so. I will go to the newspapers, and we will have it out in public.”

“I will not lose or destroy it — when the stone is back in Israel, this will all be arranged by our bosses. You will have to be content with that.”

They talked for another couple of minutes, about the auction for the stone, and then exchanged phone numbers. As Zahavi was preparing to leave, checking the parking lot from the room’s only window, Yael asked, “Are you going to take the suitcases?”

“No. I will not be leaving here in an airliner, and I will have no time to pull two big bags. My uncle will have to make his own profits.”

A moment later, she was gone. Yael watched from the window as she hurriedly climbed into the passenger side of a large white SUV, and was gone.

Virgil rarely took a bath, preferring the speed and overall cleanliness of a shower, but this night he’d submerged in his oversized bathtub, a relic left behind by the previous renter, a disabled man who’d had it installed to help with muscle cramping. He died, but Virgil didn’t think it had to do with the tub. The man had also left behind an oversized hot-water heater, which meant that Virgil could submerge to his ears, and cook out his frustrations.

The water had just begun to cool, and his toes were showing wrinkles, when his cell phone rang. Because of the ongoing clusterfuck, he’d left it on a windowsill above the tub, where he could pick it up. He did, and saw that Yael was calling.

“Did you buy a membership at Sam’s Club?” he asked.

“Yes, I did, and this membership, which I use only one time, cuts directly into my profit,” she said. “But, I don’t call to talk about Sam. I just had a visitor. She swore me to secrecy as one good Israeli to another.”

Virgil said, “You gotta be kidding me. I thought she’d be on the other side of the ocean by now.”

“I think she is in very large trouble, and she tries to save herself. But, that is her problem. My problem, my only problem, is to get this stele. I think tomorrow night that she will try to take it, by force if necessary. I am supposed to alert her, when you leave me to attack the stone carrier.”

“Hmmm,” Virgil said. “All right. She had a male assistant when she kidnapped Ellen Case. Is he still with her?”

“Somebody is with her. When she left, she got in the passenger side of a very large white car. But, she said to me that her assistant had abandoned her. I believe that, because… she seemed to tell the truth. She was very angry about it. Now, her new assistant will tell her where the exchange takes place, this auction. She says it will be at nine o’clock, but that the minister will not have the stele.”

“This car… was it like a safari vehicle?”

“Exactly. You know it?”

“I do. Okay, I will work through this. I will call you tomorrow and tell you what we’re going to do.”

He punched off, put the phone back on the windowsill, said, aloud, “That fuckin’ Bauer,” and resubmerged to think about it some more.