Storm Front

available to the intersection. When they got back, Virgil said, “I hope we’re not too late.”
    “I don’t think so,” said al-Lubnani. “We know they are watching us, but we cannot see them. So, they must be some time away. A minute or two. We have only been away for a minute or two.”
    “I hope,” Virgil said. “Unless they were lying in that cornfield, there, and picked up the stone and walked back into it.”
    They circled the intersection for five minutes, watching the roads and looking for parked cars on the edge of the cornfield, seeing nothing, until finally a highway patrol car rolled up to the corner and stopped. Virgil got back to the dispatcher, who got a cell phone number, and Virgil called. The patrolman came on, and Virgil got him to walk the ditch.
    “No stone here,” the patrolman said. “They’ve cut this ditch, and there’s no stone.”
    “So either they got it, or Jones never threw it in the ditch,” Virgil said. To Awad, “We need to get back to Mankato. Fast.”
    He called the Mankato dispatcher again and was told that nobody had seen the Volvo. There was a net out around the city, but so far, no luck.
    He tried Jones again, and this time, Jones answered.
    “They’re going to cut her finger off—”
    “Did they tell you to do a U-turn and head back west?”
    “Yes. . . . I don’t know how they are tracking me.”
    “They’re doing it with the phone. They know where you are. They will probably be coming for you. Where are you now?”
    “I won’t tell you that. Let them come. I just want Ellen back.”
    “Listen. If they call you again—and they will, if you keep moving, if only to tell you to slow down—if they call you, tell them that before they touch Ellen, to look at the television news tonight.”
    “What?”
    “Tell them to watch the news,” Virgil repeated.
    “What are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to send them a message.”
    Jones groaned then, and said, “I don’t have any time. I don’t have any more time.” And rang off.
    Virgil didn’t bother to call again. Instead, he began calling television stations.
    —
    W HEN THEY LANDED , Virgil thanked Awad and al-Lubnani, jogged to his truck, locked up the guns, and raced through downtown Mankato, to his house. He printed a dozen photos of Tal Zahavi that he’d taken as she left the Downtown Inn for the last time. He paced impatiently as they chugged out of the printer, and when the last one popped out, he gathered them up and headed back downtown, to the Holiday Inn. When he saw the white vans, he said to himself, “Ah, boy.” He’d gotten at least three responses.
    The press conference was short, but hot; a sensation, in fact. There were four cameras and one radio reporter, and three newspaper reporters. Sewickey and Bauer were hovering in the background, attracted by the cameras.
    Virgil announced that Jones had called him and told him that his daughter, Ellen Case, of Minneapolis, had been kidnapped and was being held, with the Solomon stone demanded in exchange. He passed around the photos of Zahavi and said, “We would very much like to speak to this woman, Tal Zahavi, who we believe is staying somewhere in southern Minnesota or northern Iowa. We believe that she is armed and dangerous. We are putting out an order that she is to be arrested on sight.”
    “Is she the kidnapper?” asked the Channel Three reporter.
    “I don’t know—but I would very much like to ask her that question,” Virgil said. Everybody got the hint.
    “Has the FBI been notified?”
    “We don’t know that the kidnappers have crossed state lines, but with Iowa so close by, it’s possible. We will be talking to the FBI about the possibility.”
    As they closed the press conference, Sewickey stood up and called, “Could I have your attention? Virgil didn’t say so, but this woman works with the Israeli Mossad. A few days ago, she robbed me in my hotel room, and bound me, and left me on the floor, where I’d still be if Virgil and a friend hadn’t found me.”
    That resulted in another sensation, and another press conference, and another headache for Virgil; when it was over, he took Sewickey aside and asked, “Why?”
    “Revenge,” Sewickey said. “I want that bitch to be famous. I want to see you roll her ass right into whatever kind of hellhole you have for women in this state. If not that, I want to see her working in an Israeli dime store.”
    “Ladies’ prison is not so much of a