Storm Front

was, closed with Velcro. He pulled the seam apart, and found another passport.
    A diplomatic passport for a Tal Zahavi, with a current photo of Yael-1. The same birth date as in the other passport. The interior must have had fifty entry stamps for European and South American countries, plus the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. The woman traveled a lot.
    Virgil put the passport on the worktable, flattened it along the edge with a magazine, and took a photo, checked to make sure the photo was good, and took a backup just in case.
    When he was done, he returned the passport to the suitcase, zipped it back up, put it back where it had been, and took another look around, and left. One minute later, he was in his truck.
    Tal Zahavi.
    With a diplomatic passport . . .
    —
    D AVENPORT CALLED again when Virgil was halfway to St. Paul. “The incoming Yael is the real one, unless there are three of them. I sent you a picture of her, you’ll have it in your e-mail. Anyway, Yael-1 doesn’t look anything like the photo we got from the embassy.”
    “I wonder who the hell she is?”
    “Maybe Yael-2 will know,” Davenport said.
    “She’s gotta be working with somebody,” Virgil said. “Listen, the gun’s gonna have her prints on it, and I’ve got it locked up in my truck. I’ll drop it off with the guys upstairs and see if they can pull anything off it.”
    “I’ll make sure somebody waits for you. I’m going home,” Davenport said.
    Virgil rang off. It would be convenient if the feds were able to identify Tal Zahavi by name. If they could, there’d never be awkward questions about how Virgil had identified her, if it became necessary for him to reveal her identity.
    —
    W HEN V IRGIL got to the BCA building on St. Paul’s north side, he found a latent print specialist waiting; she was reading a
Kick-Ass
comic, which she set aside as he brought in the gun.
    “It has your prints all over it, of course,” she said.
    “Mostly on the slide. I didn’t touch the stock, but I’d think the magazine would be the best possibility,” Virgil said.
    “Give me a half hour and I’ll tell you if there’s anything there,” she said.
    “Call me,” Virgil said. “I’m on my way to the airport.”
    He stopped at Davenport’s office, where he found a single GPS and a tracker tablet, along with a note from Davenport. “Apparently, right after the class, everybody wanted one of these things, so there was only one left in the house. I could get a couple more tomorrow or the next day if you still need them. Let me know.”
    Probably guys tracking their girlfriends, Virgil thought. He went back to his truck and headed to the airport.
    He got a call from the latent prints tech as he was walking through the skyway into the main terminal: “We’ve got prints. Partials on the brass, a couple of good ones, thumb and forefinger on the magazine. I’ll get them off to the feds.”
    “She’s a foreigner, so there might not be anything,” Virgil said.
    But: if she were really with the Israeli government, a Mossad agent, would she have left fingerprints on the magazine?
    Virgil had taken his laptop and the phone/WiFi link with him. At baggage claim, he found a seat, turned all the electronics on, and first checked his e-mail, where he found the photos of Yael-2. Then he went to the Israel Antiquities Authority website at www.antiquities.org.il, clicked on “About Us,” and then on the “Organizational Structure” and “Curriculum Vitae” tabs, and harvested as many names, with positions, as he could find. He transferred the data to a Microsoft Word document.
    He was still doing that when Yael-2 called from the plane, which had just touched down.
    —
    Y AEL -2 WAS a middle-sized dishwater blonde, who looked more German than Virgil’s idea of an Israeli—pretty and a little plump, and exactly like the photos Davenport had forwarded to him. She had a more pronounced accent than Yael-1. She shook hands as she introduced herself, apologized for arriving later than expected. “I went through Amsterdam, there was some stupid problem with my passport. I had to stay there two extra days before they would allow me on the plane.”
    “You were arrested?” Virgil asked.
    “No, no, they even arranged for a hotel, though I had to pay for it. Then it turned out, there was no problem, and they arranged for me to get on the same flight I would have been on two days before. Annoying. I thought the computer systems were better than