Storm Front

find the stone.”
    “Yes. Now, more than ever.”
    “So let me tell you about our other competitors here,” Virgil said.
    —
    H E TOLD HER about the Turks, the Hezbollah, and the Texan, and about Jones shooting the Turks, and about Jones’s daughter. “He’ll be dead soon. So why is he trying to auction the stone? He can’t use the money—and it’s a lot of money.”
    “For his children?” Yael-2 suggested.
    “Maybe, but I’m not sure they really need it,” Virgil said. “I’ve warned his daughter to stay away, but I can’t think of anything else that Jones could do with the money. He’s asking for it in cash, and he’ll have to pass it to somebody.”
    “So you track her,” Yael-2 said.
    “I’m going to do that. And I’m thinking maybe I should call a conference with all the competitors and explain to them that they’ll all be going to a pretty nasty prison if they don’t cooperate.”
    “I know the boss of the Turks,” Yael-2 said. “He lives in Istanbul, and does not leave very often. His collection from the Ottoman lands is huge—perhaps the biggest in existence. I don’t think you will convince his people to go away. The Hezbollah, if it is like you say, would literally kill to get this stone. This man you say that you like, this Raj Awad, he is playing a dangerous game. And this Mossad agent . . . perhaps we can warn her away, if we can find her.”
    “She’s at the Downtown Inn,” Virgil said.
    Yael-2 shook her head. “Not anymore. If the Mossad stopped me in Amsterdam, then they know that I am now here talking to you. She will be gone.”
    “To where?”
    Yael-2 shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe an Israeli sympathizer here, or maybe another hotel under a different name. You say she had a gun, there must be somebody. If they could get a gun, they could get a car and a room.”
    “Well, poop,” Virgil said. “But tell you what: let’s go look. Maybe you’ll know her.”
    “Good,” she said. She spit the last of the bing cherry pits into the bowl Virgil had given her, then said, “Let me tell you something.”
    “Yeah?”
    “There is something going on here that we don’t understand. Something fundamental.”
    —
    V IRGIL THOUGHT about that on the way downtown, and finally concluded that Yael-2 was wrong. There wasn’t
something
fundamental that they didn’t understand: there were a whole
bunch
of things they didn’t understand.
    —
    A T THE D OWNTOWN I NN , they pulled into the parking lot and almost the first thing Virgil saw was the Texan’s Cadillac. He pointed it out to Yael-2 and said, “That’s one thing we don’t understand—why those two are talking to each other.”
    Up at Yael’s room, Virgil knocked, but got no answer. He knocked louder. Nothing. He had the room key in his wallet, but wasn’t willing to use it around witnesses, just in case this should ever move to a courtroom. They went down to the front desk and talked to an assistant manager, whose name tag said Vivek Bhola. Bhola checked his guest list and said, “She checked out two hours ago.”
    Yael-2 said, “Of course.”
    “You haven’t cleaned the room?”
    “Not until tomorrow morning,” Bhola said.
    “Get the key,” Virgil said.
    Bhola programmed a key and they went up. The room was empty, except for two huge suitcases, apparently abandoned. Virgil checked the one where he’d found the passport: the passport was gone.
    “Now what?” Yael-2 asked.
    “Do me a favor,” Virgil said. “Don’t ever ask, ‘Now what?’”
    What they did was check Sewickey’s Cadillac, though not until Virgil had loaded the two giant suitcases into the back of his truck. “They are abandoned, and I may find a use for them,” Yael-2 said.
    “Take some refrigerators home?”
    She eyed the suitcases for a moment, then said, “I don’t think refrigerators.”
    When they checked the Cadillac, Virgil found the driver’s side unlocked—and the keys sitting on the driver’s seat.
    Yael-2 said, “Well, I can’t ask you . . . to rephrase it, what now?”
    “Let’s run down to the Holiday Inn,” Virgil said. “Maybe Sewickey’s there. This Caddy with the keys, that’s very curious.”
    —
    W HEN THEY got to Sewickey’s room, Virgil knocked, and got no response . . . but did hear a distant
thump
. “Did you hear that?”
    Yael-2 said, “Like something fell?”
    “Yeah.” He knocked again, and this time, there were four thumps. Like,
thump
, pause,
thump
, pause,
thump
,