Storm Front

again, or I’ll kick your ass and then I’ll arrest you.”
    One of the reporters shouted, “Who are you?” and another one answered, “Virgil Flowers, he’s with the BCA.”
    Virgil looked at the fighters, then the reporters and cameramen, and said to Sewickey and the other man, “You two, get in the truck.” He pointed at the man with the bloody lip and said, “Passenger seat,” and to Sewickey, “Backseat. Now!”
    The man with the bloody lip grinned at the reporters and said, “I guess we’ll talk later.” He picked out a female reporter, wiggled his eyebrows at her, and said, “Sheila.”
    He was, Virgil realized, disturbingly good-looking, with curly dark hair, somewhat oversized brown eyes, square shoulders, and a three-day beard. He was wearing an olive drab jungle shirt with pockets on the sleeves. The sleeves were rolled up over the elbow, with a buttoned flap holding the rolls up high, showing just a hint of muscle. A loop of Tibetan beads, turquoise alternating with lapis lazuli, decorated one wrist, but in a purely masculine way. The shirt was tucked into khaki cargo shorts, over waffle stomper boots with the socks rolled down.
    He was maybe thirty, Virgil thought.
    He was going to say something more to Sheila, the reporter, until Virgil repeated, “Now!” Sewickey headed toward the truck, and the good-looking guy nodded apologetically toward Sheila and went to the truck.
    —
    I N THE TRUCK , Virgil turned in the driver’s seat and said, “All right, what was that about?”
    Sewickey said, “This cocksucker—”
    “Whoa! Shut up,” Virgil said. To the other man: “Who are you?”
    “He’s a charlatan,” Sewickey said.
    “SHUT UP!”
    Sewickey shut up and the other man dug a business card out of one of his shirtsleeve pockets and said, “I’m Tag Bauer. You may have heard of me.”
    Virgil looked at the card, but only one faint bell rang. “You mean . . . like the watch?”
    In the backseat, Sewickey laughed. “Yeah, like the watch. Another useless fashion statement.”
    “SHUT UP!”
    “That’s Tag Heuer,” Bauer said. “My last name is Bauer.”
    The card said, “Field Archaeologist—Host of
The Bauer Crusade
on PBS.”
    “You’ve got a TV show?” Virgil asked.
    “That’s why he’s wearing makeup,” Sewickey said. “Unless he’s gone transvestite on us.”
    Virgil: “If you don’t shut up, I’ll cuff you to the truck bumper. I’m serious, man. Shut the fuck up.”
    Sewickey shrugged and looked out the window at the TV corps. Bauer said, “You may have seen my name in the
New York Times
, and just not remembered. I’m the person who found the Siddhartha’s begging bowl in an obscure Tibetan monastery, smuggled it past the Chinese guards and across the Himalaya, and returned it to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.”
    “I may have seen a book,” Virgil said, tentatively. He hadn’t, but there was bound to be one.
    “Yes,
Bowl of Clay, Ark of the World
,” Bauer said.
    “Available on Amazon?”
    “Yes, both in paper and in Kindle form. Also, through Barnes and Noble, for the Nook.”
    “This Sidhay dude . . .”
    “Siddhartha,” Bauer said. “The Buddha.”
    Virgil’s eyebrows went up. “Like, the
Buddha
buddha?”
    “That’s right. . . . Look, maybe I should explain.”
    “Uh-oh,” Sewickey said from the backseat. “Watch his lips. If they move . . .”
    Virgil looked at him, and Sewickey held up his hands and nodded again. To Bauer, Virgil said, “Yes. Explain.”
    “I roam the world in search of ancient mysteries and artifacts of power,” Bauer said. Sewickey made a farting noise in the backseat, but Bauer continued. “Through my work, my writing, and my connection with PBS—”
    “And your inheritance from Daddy,” Sewickey interjected.
    “. . . I am fortunate enough to be able to rescue various artifacts that have been lost or hidden, and return them to their rightful and historic owners.”
    “When you say, ‘fortunate enough,’ you mean . . . buy them?” Virgil asked.
    “Sometimes these artifacts have been in the hands of the ‘new owners,’ if I may call them that, for centuries,” Bauer said. He moved his hands as he spoke, in the practiced arcs of the TV presenter. “They naturally feel they have a proprietary interest in them, and if they are valuable, want recompense for their delivery. For example, when I located the gopher wood planks from Noah’s Ark, in Tsaghkaber, Armenia, I was