Storm Front

CHAPTER 16

AMES, Iowa

If he had been in Florence, Derrick Storm would have known at least three restaurants that would have been just perfect — two with a view of the Ponte Vecchio and one tucked high in the hills near the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. At his favorite spot in Jakarta, he wouldn’t have needed to look at the menu, just ordered a prawn nasi goreng that would have blown his date’s mind. In San Francisco, he had a hideout where the maître d’ would have escorted him to his preferred table and opened a bottle of Joseph Phelps Insignia without Storm even having to ask.

In Ames, Iowa, he was stuck driving around aimlessly until he found a Buffalo Wild Wings.

A franchised eatery wedged between a Target and a Pizza Hut was not, perhaps, the first place anyone would think to look for two international operatives in the middle of investigating a plot to cripple the global economy. But after a series of meals that had consisted of whatever the airline put in the box, they were ravenous. And the beer was cold. And there was nothing like a heaping pile of spicy wings to clear the mind, to say nothing of the sinuses.

It had been a productive afternoon and early evening with Dr. Rodney Click. Storm and Xi Bang had rounded out their education on the foreign exchange markets. They had received an introduction into the workings of the MonEx 4000, for what little good that did. They had tried a variety of scenarios on the Iowa State Sudden Monetary Depreciation Model.

Then Storm had put Click to work: Now that they knew the Click Theory was being put into practice, could he use his model to predict which bankers might be targeted? Which bankers would be most likely to have the influence needed to pull off Armageddon?

Click said he’d work on it through the night and get back to them in a day. Or maybe two. If he was lucky. Then he shooed Storm and Xi Bang out. The Buffalo Wild Wings had been their first stop.

“I have to admit,” Storm said, after they had both knocked the edge off their hunger, “I always feel a little guilty eating Buffalo wings.”

“Why?” Xi Bang asked, wiping sauce from her chin.

“It’s just thinking of all those poor buffalos, wandering around the Great Plains without their wings, grounded forever.”

“Oh, stop.”

“Well, seriously, have you ever seen a buffalo with wings?” Storm asked.

She rolled her eyes, swallowed the last quarter of her beer in one gulp, and motioned for the waitress to bring her another.

“Time to catch up, Nurse,” she said, nodding at Storm’s glass, still half-full.

“How do I know you haven’t spiked this with something while my back was turned? Maybe it’s rotten with Rohypnol and you’re going to take me back to a hotel room and take advantage of me.”

“Maybe I am,” she said.

Storm’s response was to tilt back his beer and drink until it, too, was empty. Xi Bang just laughed. She had left her silk dresses and traffic accident–causing skirts back in Europe and donned attire that was less conspicuous: black slacks, a fitted charcoal turtleneck, heels that were a mere four inches. She was still stunning — there was nothing she could wear, short of a king-sized sheet, to hide that — but at least she wasn’t calling as much attention to herself.

Storm was also dressed comfortably: fashionably cut jeans, open-collar shirt, cashmere blazer. He had gotten his share of flirty smiles from the hostess and the waitress — that whole ruggedly handsome thing — but he had ignored them. There had been some waitresses and hostesses in his past, and there would likely be more in the future. But women like Ling Xi Bang — intelligent, worldly, mysterious — were far more interesting to him.

“Okay, so, seriously, when were you on to me?” she asked.

“Well, I was curious from the start,” Storm said. “I’ve been around a lot of media events, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a press secretary as gorgeous as you.”

She looked down, blushing.

“But what really did it was when I asked you whether you preferred Roma’s or Geno’s.”

“The pizza places. You made them both up,” she said. “I should have known. They threw this backstory at me last-minute, and I just didn’t have time to research it like I usually would. I don’t usually do a lot of undercover work. I’m mostly an analyst. They only put me in the field this time because one of my areas of expertise is finance.”

“So all that poor-little-Ling-from-Qinghai stuff, that was all made up, right?”

“Every word of it,” she said.

“You sold it well. I was ready to believe that part.”

“Thanks.”

“So where did you get your English from? You must have spent some time in America. You have too many American idioms not to have.”

“My parents sent me to a boarding school in Virginia,” she said. “Not in the D.C. area where you grew up. Way down south, in the tidewater part of the state. Most of what I learned about espionage started with sneaking off after lights out and meeting up with boys behind the field house. That and hiding cigarettes.”

“Boarding school, huh? Your parents must have been well off.”

She nodded. “My grandfather, my mother’s father, was high up in the party,” she said. “He used his influence to arrange my mother’s marriage to a wealthy businessman from Shanghai. That’s where I really grew up. The part about Peking University is true, though. I really did graduate in the top of my class. My father wanted me to go into his business. But I knew that was really code for: Go into my business for a few years until I marry you off to whichever vice president I want to take over the company when I retire. I didn’t want any part of that.”

“So how did you end up with the Ministry of State Security?”

“Who says I’m with the Ministry of State Security?” she said, letting only the slightest smile slip.

Storm affected a German accent: “Ve haff vays of making you talk, Agent Xi Bang.”

“My grandfather still had party connections,” she continued. “He got me an internship in the Ministry of State Security. That seemed a lot more interesting a path than becoming someone’s wife.”

“Do you ever think about marriage?” he asked.

“Why, Agent Storm, are you proposing?”

“I thought I already did. We’re going to dance to ‘The Vienna Waltz’ at our wedding, remember?”

Fresh beers arrived on the table. A Widmer Brothers Drifter Pale Ale for her. An Arrogant Bastard Ale for him.

“Okay, so what about you?” he said. “When were you on to me?”

“Cheers again,” she said, touching her glass to his.

“Cheers again,” Storm said.

“And stop stalling. I showed you mine. You show me yours: When did you figure me out?”

“I was suspicious the moment I laid eyes on you,” Xi Bang said. “The way the other correspondents looked at you, I could tell you weren’t part of the usual herd. Plus, that jacket? Atrocious. The media actually dresses a lot nicer than that these days.”

“Well, the correspondents from Soy Trader Weekly are noted for their down-to-earth apparel,” Storm said.

“Ah, yes, Soy Trader Weekly. Nice website, by the way. But that’s how we actually made you.”

“How? That website was perfect.”

“Yeah, too perfect,” Xi Bang said. “When our techs tried to hack it, they couldn’t. It had CIA encryption on it. You want to tell me Soy Trader Weekly has access to that?”

“Amateur mistake,” Storm said, making a mental note to tell Jedediah Jones about that flaw.

They dove back into the pile of wings, doing an efficient, if messy, job of shrinking it. Storm, as usual, ate like he had an empty leg. But Xi Bang held her own. And when the waitress came and asked if they wanted seconds, they shared a half second of silent communication before deciding, yeah, that would be fine.

“So you know your reputation precedes you in the Chinese intelligence community,” Xi Bang said as they waited for the next round of wings to arrive. “From the stories that circulate, I figured ‘Derrick Storm’ was actually an amalgam of several different American operatives.”

“Nope. Just me. What made you think that?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed that all of what I heard couldn’t be true. Or that if it was true, it had to be multiple agents’ legends rolled into one.”

“I guess it depends on what you heard.”

“Were you in Morocco a few years ago?” she asked.

Storm just shrugged.

“What about ‘The Fear?’ Did you really take him out?”

He said nothing. But Xi Bang caught his tell: The corner of his mouth pulled up a fraction of an inch.

“There’s also a rumor you once killed an enemy agent with a melon baller.”

“People exaggerate,” Storm said at last, shaking his head. “It was an ice cream scoop.”

She checked to see if he was kidding. He wasn’t. She knew better than to ask for details.

“So,” he said, switching subjects with the tone of his voice, “it looks like our interests in this current case are aligned.”

“Kind of strange for two countries that act like enemies half the time, isn’t it?” she said. “But, yes, my people want Volkov stopped as bad as your people.”

“If I may ask, what are your orders?”

“Probably the same as yours: If I see Volkov, I shoot to kill,” she said. “My country still talks a big game about Communism, but the fact is there are very powerful business interests that have substantial influence on the party. Those interests have made it clear that a strong U.S. dollar is their priority. And therefore my bosses have made it clear this thing with Volkov is my priority. My role is supposed to be more investigative, but if I get a shot…”

“I understand,” Storm said. “We should work together.”

“Work together?”

“We can go back to being enemies later,” Storm promised. “I’ll even let you tie me up.”

“That sounds great, but… can we do that?”

“Sure, you just take some rope and…”

“No, I mean can we really work together? I mean, I know we’ve been doing that informally. But I’m not sure if I can formally…”

“Formal, informal — doesn’t matter,” Storm said, dismissing the thought with a backhanded wave. Sure, Jones and his superiors in the high reaches of the CIA would have a fit if they knew Storm was in bed — literally and figuratively — with a Chinese agent. But this wasn’t the first time Storm had made an alliance that the CIA wouldn’t approve of. Besides, wasn’t that why Jones hired him? To do things that Jones and the agency couldn’t do themselves? To give them plausible deniability when it all went wrong?

“All your people are going to care about is that the job is done,” Storm continued.

“Same with my people. We’ve got to figure out who hired Volkov and stop whoever is behind it. We’re going to be a lot more likely to accomplish that working together and sharing information.

“Besides,” he added, “I don’t want to have to chase you up any more skyscrapers.”

“What? Can’t a girl play hard to get?”

“I hope not, Agent Xi Bang,” he said, grinning. “I sincerely hope not.”

There were five flights a day out of the Ames Municipal Airport, none of which left after dusk. Yes, one phone call to Jedediah Jones would change that. Yes, there were other ways out of Iowa.

But Derrick Storm and Ling Xi Bang told themselves they were stuck, stranded and marooned until morning. And, in any event, they had nowhere to go — at least not until Click’s model gave them some answers or, sadly, until Banker No. 5 met his end.

So it was that they ended up at making a short stumble up the street to a Days Inn. They decamped in Room 214, then subjected anyone unfortunate enough to be inhabiting Room 212 or 216 to something that might have sounded like a TV at too high a volume, tuned to Animal Planet.

Then, after a short respite, they did it again.

Later, as they lay naked, the sheets a tumble at the bottom of the bed, Storm let his fingertips follow a meandering path across Xi Bang’s rib cage, stomach, and thighs. He was propped on one elbow. She was lying flat, her eyes fixed on some point in the darkness, enjoying his touch.

She broke the stillness by asking, “Was the cupcake story true?”

“Yeah, actually, it was,” Storm said. “Every bit of it.”

“Do you remember your mother?”

“Not really.”

“So it was just you and your dad?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like I ever felt I was missing anything,” he said. “You can’t miss what you never knew in the first place. I have a great dad. That’s enough.”

“I can’t believe he never remarried.”

“Forget remarried. He’s never even dated,” Storm said. “He acts like replacing her in any fashion would be an act of betrayal. I think his general attitude is that she was the love of his lifetime, the one and only, and that to behave otherwise would diminish that somehow.”

“I can’t decide whether that’s romantic or sad.”

“Maybe it’s a bit of both,” Storm said.

“What do you think? Is there one or are there many?”

“I believe that the human capacity to love is not a one-shot deal.”

“So that’s how it is for you, Storm? Love as a hundred-round magazine? Set the gun on automatic and spray it around?”

“I never said that,” Storm said. “Love is like a bullet, though. You know the instant you’ve been hit. And even if it’s just a glancing blow, you’re never quite the same. The bullet either buries itself deep inside you, or it takes some piece of you away with it.”

He was thinking about Clara Strike when he said it. How many chunks of him had she taken out over the years? And yet how many times did he keep returning to face the firing squad?

“I see you have a lot of scars, Derrick Storm,” Xi Bang said, tracing a network of forever-puckered skin on his abdomen. If only she knew how deep some of them went.

“What about you?” he asked. “Ever been in love?”

“I’ve dated,” she said.

“I didn’t ask about dated. I asked about love. Real love. The kind of person who’s always with you, even if your lives take you in very opposite directions.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

Her response was to close her eyes and hum “The Vienna Waltz.” “We should dance some more,” she said.

“You can…,” Storm began, then was interrupted by his satellite phone ringing.

“You have to take that,” she said.

“No. I can ignore it.”

“Either you answer it or I will. And then you’ll have a lot of questions to answer from whoever is on the other line.”

“You’re tough, Ling Xi Bang.”

“You have no idea.”

Storm rolled over, groped around until he found his pants on the floor, and fished the phone out of his pocket. The caller ID came in as restricted. Hello, Langley, Virginia.

“This had better be good,” Storm said.

“It is,” the pebble-riddled voice of Jedediah Jones informed him.

“Well, talk then,” Storm said, shifting so Xi Bang could hear it.

“Is someone else there?” Jones asked. Storm sometimes swore his phone had a camera hidden on it, but he had yet to find it.

“No. Just me.”

“That question you asked me about looking for someone at the Federal Reserve who is capable of playing with the Fed’s government bond sales?”

“Yeah?”

“Turns out you were on the right track. You just had the wrong institution.”

“Oh?”

“Are you familiar with Senator Donald Whitmer of Alabama?”

“Donny Whitmer? Yeah. Sure. What about him?”

“Three weeks ago, he snuck a rider into an appropriations bill that puts limits on the Federal Reserve’s ability to sell bonds.”

“In other words, he wiped out the last possible buttress to preventing the currency destabilization predicted in the Click Theory.”

“Exactly. We have no idea why he’s done this or who he might have done it for. But it feels like too big a coincidence to be dismissed. Whitmer usually uses his pull to lavish pork on his constituents, not pass obscure-sounding policy changes.”

“What’s your theory?” Storm asked.

“Well, here’s an interesting little fact: The word is that Senator Whitmer has a big primary battle on his hands and that it isn’t going well. Donors have been jumping off his ship like they know it’s sinking. And then suddenly, right when he needed it most, someone formed a Political Action Committee to support Senator Whitmer. It’s called the ‘Alabama Future Fund’ and it already has five million bucks in it.”

“Think it’s some form of bribery?” Storm asked. “Whitmer adds the rider in exchange for five million bucks?”

“Either that, or Whitmer called a chip in when he realized he was in trouble.”

“Either way, it’s something we need to look at. And hard. Whoever put all that money into that PAC is probably the person who hired Volkov,” Storm said.

“Or maybe it’s a group of people, but yes. The only problem is we don’t know who it is.”

“Doesn’t a PAC have to list its donors?”

“Eventually, yes. But a PAC can choose to report its donors on a quarterly basis, and the quarter isn’t over yet.”

“Well, okay, so can’t the nerds figure it out?”

“Yes, but it won’t get us far. If someone wants to obscure the source of PAC funding, it’s as easy as creating a limited liability corporation. I’ll bet you a case of Scotch that the PAC’s donor will turn out to be an LLC with a post office box in Delaware.”

“No bet,” Storm said, knowing Jones was right. “So what are you proposing?”

“I’m going to make myself an appointment with Senator Whitmer and find a subtle way to inquire who his sugar daddy is,” Jones said.

“But I have to set it up right, go through channels, talk to some lawyers. It might take some time.”

“We don’t have time,” Storm said.

“That’s the only way, Storm.”

“We’ve got four dead bankers already. Who knows when the fifth and sixth are going to fall? These are men with families. We can’t just sacrifice them because you have to be polite. If you don’t have the guts to do it, I will. I’ll go to Washington and ask him myself.”

“Storm, under no circumstance are you to engage the senator, do you understand? That’s a direct order.”

“Why are you stalling?” Storm barked.

And then Storm answered his own question. Donny Whitmer was the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, a powerful man who controlled the lid of the cookie jar that was government spending. Jones didn’t want to risk having his hand slapped away from the cookie jar. This was all about Jones’s budget, his preservation of the chunk of bureaucratic turf he had carved out for himself.

“Just stay the hell away from the senator,” Jones said. “I’ll handle this.”

“Fine,” Storm said, then ended the call.

“What’s going on?” Xi Bang asked.

He filled her in on the half of the conversation she had missed.

“So what’s our next move?” Xi Bang asked.

“Jones said I couldn’t engage the senator,” Storm said. “He didn’t say anything about you doing it. And it turns out Senator Whitmer has a certain reputation as being… fond of the ladies. Think you can go to Washington and, uhh, talk with Senator Whitmer? Maybe figure out who this donor is?”

Xi Bang rolled her eyes. “Washington and Beijing are supposed to be so different. Capitalists versus Communists. Two-party versus one-party. Americans versus Hans. But underneath it, they’re all just a bunch of dirty old men.”

“Dirty old men are a universal constant across cultures,” Storm confirmed. “So will you do it?”

A knowing grin spread across Ling Xi Bang’s face. Then she immediately snapped into character, and a perfect accent from somewhere deep within the American South poured out of her. “Why, shoot, sugar britches, I’d just looove to have a little chat with the senator,” she said.

“That’s the spirit.”

“The only question I have is how I get into his office,” she said.

“You can’t just stroll into those buildings.”

“You can when you know the people I do,” Storm said. “Just get yourself on the ground in D.C. I’ll take care of you from there.”