Storm Front

to nothing, is that this man might be sent to interrogate me, if they become uncertain of how the money was spent. Or if I do not instantly return to Lebanon.”
    “If you do decide to utter this name, I may have a way to work with it,” Awad said. “As you know, I have an excellent contact with the American authorities.”
    “Interesting,” al-Lubnani said. “This is Virgil?”
    “Yes. I have been reading about him, on the Internet. He has contacts in the American government. If they would be interested in this
mujahid
.”
    “I tell you, very seriously, the world would be a better place without this man.” Al-Lubnani took another sip. “Not that I am anything but a warrior against the face of these Israeli crusaders.”
    “Of course not,” Awad said. “Still . . .”
    “Another Bloody Mary?” al-Lubnani asked.

16
    V irgil watched the evening news, and it was effective: Zahavi was now the most well-known young Israeli in America. Of course, if he was wrong about the kidnappers, she might wind up being the richest young Israeli in America, after the lawsuits.
    He went to dinner at Applebee’s, where he got a large slab of ribs, french fries, and coleslaw, and had managed to smear a substantial amount of deep orange barbeque sauce around his mouth when Ma walked in with Bauer.
    They saw him instantly. Ma walked over and asked, “That sauce around your lips. You storin’ that for later?”
    Virgil wiped his face with a napkin and said to Bauer, “You asked her out, and took her to Applebee’s? On a first date?”
    Ma didn’t let the man answer. Instead, she jumped in with a question. “Jones got away again?”
    “Yeah. He’s like a ghost.”
    “Well, something else for you to think about,” Ma said. “Try not to burn your brain out. You need everything you got.”
    “Go eat your dinner,” Virgil said. “Looking at you two, it annoys me.”
    —
    V IRGIL THOUGHT about Ma’s comment anyway, as he worked through the remaining ribs. So, he just thought about it all. About Jones, about his daughter, about Ma, about who was hiding Jones and where he might be hiding the rock . . . about who had Ellen, and whether Ellen and Jones could be faking the kidnapping to throw him off . . . and that was a disquieting idea.
    Then he thought, why would any normal, sane person hide Jones, knowing that he or she would be complicit in several felonies, including aggravated assault and now kidnapping? And that while Jones would never pay, because he’d be dead soon, his little helper could go to prison for quite some time.
    Virgil came to a conclusion: nobody would do that. Not if they were sane.
    But somebody obviously was.
    It took him a while, and a hot fudge sundae, eventually he got around to another thought: unless the person helping him didn’t know he (or she) was actually doing that.
    Hmm. He finished the ribs, then used all four of the chemical hand-cleaning cloths provided by Applebee’s, took out his phone, went to a world time clock, and found out that it was 4:47 a.m. in Israel. Annabelle Johnson had said that they got on the bus every morning at five o’clock, to go out to the dig—so she’d be up. And if not, well, this was more important than sleep.
    He found his previous call to her in the cell phone registry and punched it up again. After involving several ground stations and a couple of satellites, the call rang the phone in Johnson’s backpack as she ate breakfast in a dormitory in northern Israel.
    Johnson answered, sounding bright and cheerful. “Ken?”
    “No, this is Virgil. Flowers. From the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”
    “Officer Flowers. Have you found Elijah?”
    “No, no. Could you tell me what kind of car you drive?”
    “Why?”
    “Just curious.”
    “Well, it’s a Volvo,” she said.
    “Like a red Volvo station wagon?”
    “Yes, exactly. Has something happened?”
    They talked for another minute, and Johnson said that Elijah Jones certainly was not authorized to drive her car, or to sleep in her bed; but the keys to her car would have been easy to find, for anyone inside her house. They were in the top drawer of her bedroom dresser.
    “Do you have your house key with you?” Virgil asked.
    “Well, in my purse, somewhere.”
    “Could you check and see if it’s still there?”
    “Yes, of course.” He heard her rummaging around, and a moment later, she was back on the phone. “It’s not there. I can’t believe this.”
    Virgil