Storm Front

secrecy, but I want somebody at my back who knows what’s going on.”
    “I got your back, but to tell you the truth, I’m confused as hell,” Davenport said. “Assuming they take out this Hatchet guy, you’ve got the rest of it covered? The stele, the Israelis, the Hezbollah, this Bauer guy, and the Texan?”
    “I’m not sure,” Virgil said. “I’m trying to narrow things down—at this point, it seems to be coming down to the Hezbollah and Bauer. They seem to be the only ones with any money. If I get killed, pick up Ma Nobles and run her through the wringer. It’s possible that she knows more than anybody about what’s going on.”
    “You know I’d never second-guess you—”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “But if it had been me,” Davenport said, “I’d have sicced the Iranian Hatchet man on the Turkish nut-cutter and called it a day.”
    —
    V IRGIL HEADED HOME . When he was thirty miles out, he took a minute to check on Bauer’s location: and his location was moving, out toward Ma’s place. Nothing he could do about that—he was forty-five minutes away. Was it possible that Ma had Jones, and the exchange was about to happen?
    He called Awad, who answered and said, “I can talk.”
    “What are the chances that an exchange could take place today, and that you’re being cut out of the deal?”
    “Do you know something?”
    “I know nothing at all—that’s my major problem,” Virgil said.
    “I don’t think we’re being cut out. Al-Lubnani talked to Jones—Jones called him—and al-Lubnani told him that the money was coming in cash, and Jones says, ‘Good.’”
    “All right. Stay in touch.”
    “What about that other thing we talked about?” Awad asked.
    Meaning, the Hatchet.
    “Don’t even think about it,” Virgil said. “This is no longer your responsibility. If you don’t think about him, and al-Lubnani doesn’t think about him, you’ll be fine. If you think about him, this man will see it.”
    “I will not think, and will advise Mr. al-Lubnani to do the same.”
    “Is Mr. al-Lubnani there now?
    “Yes.”
    “I need to talk with the two of you, together. It’ll only take a minute,” Virgil said.
    “Come now. We will arrive at the laundry room on the first floor.”
    —
    O N THE WAY INTO TOWN , Virgil had a stray thought: What if the stele was a bait, an artificial lure, so to speak, and Jones, who’d shown no reluctance to use a weapon, simply planned to hijack the money from both Bauer and al-Lubnani?
    He’d keep the possibility in mind, but as he chewed on it, he decided that Jones probably was not doing that: in his own terms, it would seem unethical. The gunplay had all been in self-defense, which he would think of as ethically excusable.
    But then, he
was
a thief, so his ethics, by definition, had to be somewhat flexible.
    —
    T HE R IVERSIDE T RANSITIONAL C ENTER looked like a small elementary school of yellow brick, with a flag circle out front, and two dozen cars in a narrow parking lot that was less than a third full.
    Inside, the place was painted in colors meant to be cheery, and the bulletin boards were pinned with cartoons and felt animals and pictures of collies in pastures with fuzzy sheep.
    “Place is like the waiting room for hell,” Jones muttered as they went up the steps. He was using a cane he’d found in a closet at the pottery, and he needed it. It also worked as a disguise, because the athletic, bearded, long-haired Reverend Jones never used one.
    Jones had always worn his hair preacher-long: not hippie long, but nothing like a military cut. Now you could see his pale scalp through Ma’s buzz cut. And Jones had always worn a beard, and now Ma knew why. With the beard, he looked fierce, almost Old Testament warrior-like. Without it, he was a moonfaced man with a severely receding chin. The transformation was so complete that Ma could hardly keep from staring at him.
    Inside, they went to a front desk, and Jones introduced himself as Clarence Haverford, Magda Jones’s elder brother, “up from Iowa.”
    The cheerful woman led them into a locked dayroom, chatting cheerfully and filling them in on Magda. “She’s very healthy, very cheerful, but she’s not very aware of personalities or what’s going on around her anymore. But always cheerful.”
    “She always was,” Jones muttered. And then, “I bet you haven’t seen that damn husband of hers around here. I’ve been reading about him.”
    “We don’t talk about that. But I can