Storm Front

pouch through the Lebanese mission to the UN. He should be coming into Mankato, Minnesota, tonight. I’ve got contacts who’ll give him up. If you’re interested, or know somebody who is, give me a ring.”
    The silence was so long that Virgil thought that the colonel had either hung up or gone to sleep. “Colonel?”
    “You were a major in the marines, served in Iraq.”
    “I was a captain in the army, and served in Bosnia.”
    “Somebody will call,” the colonel said. “Sit right there in your 4Runner. Do not even walk across the street to the McDonald’s. Sit right there.”
    Then he was gone, and Virgil looked uncomfortably across the street at the McDonald’s and said, “Well, that was weird,” and then, “They can’t tell a man not to have a cheeseburger. Not in a free country.”
    So he went over to the McDonald’s, got a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, fries, and a strawberry shake, and carried them back to his truck. He’d finished the sandwich, the fries, and was sucking the last bit of the shake out of the bottom of the cup, when his phone rang.
    “Flowers?” A different voice, with a Texas twang to it.
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have a reliability score on your information?”
    “Huh. I didn’t really try to score it, but I’d say it’s way better than fifty-fifty. My source has actually talked to the guy. I think the two guys who are getting the money are working some kind of hustle—probably planning to take off with it, and they don’t want the Hatchet guy to come after them.”
    “Please don’t use any specific names in this conversation. So you think it’s better than fifty-fifty. I assume it has to do with this missing Solomon stone.”
    “Yes. The money is to buy the stone.”
    “And your contacts specifically identified the courier as the name you gave the colonel.”
    “Yes. And since one of my contacts is a member of a party of the highest kind—that’s a hint—I think he knows what he’s talking about.”
    “Hmm. All right, I understand that. The team leaders will see you in three hours at the Rochester airport. Be there.”
    Virgil said, “Before you go, give me a score on this incoming guy. You know, one to ten, ten being the highest.”
    “Eleven,” the voice said. “Maybe thirteen. Three hours. Be there.”
    —
    V IRGIL WENT HOME , cleaned up, put on a vintage burnt-orange Weezer T-shirt and a blue-black linen sport coat over his usual jeans and cowboy boots. With his straw hat and aviators, he thought, he should be able to hold his own with any stiff from D.C.
    Before he left, he checked his tracker monitor to see where Tag Bauer was. The tracker put him either at the South Central College or the KEYC studio in North Mankato. Either was okay with Virgil.
    Ma Nobles called as he was walking out to the truck: “Hot day,” she said.
    “Do you know where Jones is?”
    “Why do you have to ruin a social call by asking something like that?” she asked.
    “Because it’s the only thing I can think about right now, no matter how hot it is,” Virgil said.
    “I just called to tell you I was heading out to the swimming hole, and thought you might like to come along.”
    Virgil said, “I can’t. Believe it or not, some of us have to work.”
    “Working out my way?”
    “No, I’m headed over to Rochester.” Then he wanted to bite his tongue: no reason to tell her that she was free to run wild, with him out of the picture.
    But she didn’t seem to notice. “Be that way—but I’ll be out there, in case you get a break from all that hard labor.”
    “Take a gun in case you run into any crazy rednecks out in the woods,” Virgil said. “Oh wait—you
are
a crazy redneck.”
    “You are not advancing your cause, here, Virgil,” she said. “I just may call Tag and see if he needs a swim.”
    “He can’t go either. He’s sitting in a TV studio and his makeup isn’t waterproof,” Virgil said. “But I’ll be seeing more of you, real soon, Ma.”
    “I’ll be holding my breath,” she said, and hung up.
    So much for intimidation.
    Virgil had driven the highway to Rochester so many times that he tended to fall asleep at the wheel. On this day, though, he had too much to think about. Awad and al-Lubnani didn’t have to know about the Washington team. If Awad and al-Lubnani were actually planning to rip off the Hezbollah’s money, and he thought that likely, then he should be able to figure a way to blackmail them into telling him the exchange point,