Storm Front

“Oh, no. Don’t worry. There is not the slightest chance it could be traced back to you. We can even split it up five ways so it looks like it’s coming from five different places. You can trust ol’ Donny now. You wire that money over and we’ll take care of it.”

Donny was so excited — and so worried he’d forget the details — that he turned to the next fresh page on his legal pad. He wrote “ALABAMA FUTURE FUND” and “$5 MILLION” and “SPLIT INTO FIVE LLC’S.” Then he wrote “THANK YOU” and the donor’s name, and underlined it three times so he’d remembered to write a nice thank-you card. Manners were manners, after all.

“Well, I have to tell you, I really do appreciate this. And you better believe I’ll remember next time you need anything. You just call ol’ Donny, you hear?”

Right. Maybe it wasn’t extortion after all. It was just another favor being done in a town full of favors.

He ended the call, his hands still shaking. It was all being put in play. With the five million in place, Donny’s people would be able to make a media buy that would start hitting next week.

Then see what goddamned Jack Porter’s charts would look like.

CHAPTER 16

AMES, Iowa

If he had been in Florence, Derrick Storm would have known at least three restaurants that would have been just perfect — two with a view of the Ponte Vecchio and one tucked high in the hills near the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. At his favorite spot in Jakarta, he wouldn’t have needed to look at the menu, just ordered a prawn nasi goreng that would have blown his date’s mind. In San Francisco, he had a hideout where the maître d’ would have escorted him to his preferred table and opened a bottle of Joseph Phelps Insignia without Storm even having to ask.

In Ames, Iowa, he was stuck driving around aimlessly until he found a Buffalo Wild Wings.

A franchised eatery wedged between a Target and a Pizza Hut was not, perhaps, the first place anyone would think to look for two international operatives in the middle of investigating a plot to cripple the global economy. But after a series of meals that had consisted of whatever the airline put in the box, they were ravenous. And the beer was cold. And there was nothing like a heaping pile of spicy wings to clear the mind, to say nothing of the sinuses.

It had been a productive afternoon and early evening with Dr. Rodney Click. Storm and Xi Bang had rounded out their education on the foreign exchange markets. They had received an introduction into the workings of the MonEx 4000, for what little good that did. They had tried a variety of scenarios on the Iowa State Sudden Monetary Depreciation Model.

Then Storm had put Click to work: Now that they knew the Click Theory was being put into practice, could he use his model to predict which bankers might be targeted? Which bankers would be most likely to have the influence needed to pull off Armageddon?

Click said he’d work on it through the night and get back to them in a day. Or maybe two. If he was lucky. Then he shooed Storm and Xi Bang out. The Buffalo Wild Wings had been their first stop.

“I have to admit,” Storm said, after they had both knocked the edge off their hunger, “I always feel a little guilty eating Buffalo wings.”

“Why?” Xi Bang asked, wiping sauce from her chin.

“It’s just thinking of all those poor buffalos, wandering around the Great Plains without their wings, grounded forever.”

“Oh, stop.”

“Well, seriously, have you ever seen a buffalo with wings?” Storm asked.

She rolled her eyes, swallowed the last quarter of her beer in one gulp, and motioned for the waitress to bring her another.

“Time to catch up, Nurse,” she said, nodding at Storm’s glass, still half-full.

“How do I know you haven’t spiked this with something while my back was turned? Maybe it’s rotten with Rohypnol and you’re going to take me back to a hotel room and take advantage of me.”

“Maybe I am,” she said.

Storm’s response was to tilt back his beer and drink until it, too, was empty. Xi Bang just laughed. She had left her silk dresses and traffic accident–causing skirts back in Europe and donned attire that was less conspicuous: black slacks, a fitted charcoal turtleneck, heels that were a mere four inches. She was still stunning — there was nothing she could wear, short of a king-sized sheet, to hide that — but at least she wasn’t calling as much attention to herself.

Storm was also dressed comfortably: fashionably cut jeans, open-collar shirt, cashmere blazer. He had gotten his share of flirty smiles from the hostess and the waitress — that whole ruggedly handsome thing — but he had ignored them. There had been some waitresses and hostesses in his past, and there would likely be more in the future. But women like Ling Xi Bang — intelligent, worldly, mysterious — were far more interesting to him.

“Okay, so, seriously, when were you on to me?” she asked.