Storm Front

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