Jeff Abbott: Panic

‘Just find out what film projects he’s considering. Fuck him enough and he’ll tell you. He’s a man like any other. He likes to fuck and talk about work. Men are boring that way,’ Jargo said. She tried to imagine Jargo performing either activity, and the picture would not come into focus.

She went back into Evan’s bed and focused on him with the same energy he’d poured into her, feeling guilty and sick all at once.

‘Why won’t you tell me about your next project?’ she asked one afternoon after pulling him away from his video-editing and into bed.

‘I’ve got to get Bluff edited, it’s a mess. I can’t even think about the next film.’

She ran a hand down his chest, his flat stomach. Nipped at his flesh below his navel with her fingertips. ‘No worries. I’m just interested in your ideas.’ She tapped his forehead, used the line that had become their tease between each other. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll buy a ticket.’

And gave him the warmest smile she could conjure.

She could see in his face the decision to change a well-worn habit. He leaned back. ‘Well. A guy at PBS talked to me about doing a bio on Jacques Cousteau. I could get that on PBS or Discovery Channel in five seconds flat. Good for the pocketbook. But I’m not sure it’s the right career move for me.’

‘So no idea, then.’

She saw him decide to trust her, saw the smile creep across his face. ‘It’s weird, China’s Communist but they have millionaires in Hong Kong still. I think there might be a story worth doing.’

‘China. Too far away. I’d miss you.’

He kissed her. ‘I’d miss you, too. You could come with me. Be my unpaid assistant.’

‘My dream job,’ she said. ‘So who’s the lucky subject in China?’ She thought this might be the seed of Jargo’s interest. Evan had zeroed in on a high-ranker in Beijing who lined Jargo’s pocket. But how would Jargo have known?

‘There’s a Hong Kong financier named Jameson Wong who might be an interesting character, he lost all his money in bad deals, and instead of rebuilding his business he’s become a leading activist against the Communist government. Businessman turned campaigner for freedom.’

She snuggled her face against his chest. Tomorrow she would betray his confidences, report his every word. China. This Jameson Wong guy. That was the interest point. ‘I’d buy a ticket. You’re my brilliant boy.’

‘Unless I do the other project,’ he said. ‘But I think it’s a dead idea.’

She kept her face close to his chest. ‘What other one?’

‘About an interesting murder case in London, about twenty-five years ago.’

‘Whose murder?’

‘The guy was named Alexander Bast. He was kind of an uber-funky cool guy, very much into the art scene, very much into sleeping with young starlets, famous for his parties. Like Wong, he lost it all. In a scandal about drugs at one of his clubs. Then someone put two bullets in him.’

‘I thought you preferred your subjects living.’

‘I do. Dead people don’t talk well on camera,’ he said with a quiet laugh. ‘I thought about combining both stories. Compare and contrast two very different lives, find a common thread that gives an insight about success and failure.’ She heard his voice rise in excitement. ‘But it might not be commercial enough.’

She raised her face toward his. ‘Don’t worry about that, make the movie you want to make.’

‘I know what I want to make right now.’ He kissed her, they made love again. He dozed and she got up from the bed and washed her face.

She made no mention to Jargo, in the days ahead, of Jameson Wong or Alexander Bast or Jacques Cousteau.

‘He’s focused entirely on editing his current movie,’ she said the next week when she talked to Jargo. She had a cell phone that Evan didn’t know about; she kept it hidden in a pocket under the driver’s seat. She sat in the car, in the parking lot of a Krispy Kreme.

‘Stay on him. If he commits to another film, I want to know immediately.’

‘All right.’

‘I’ve deposited another ten thousand in your account,’ Jargo said.

‘Thank you.’

‘I wonder,’ Jargo said, ‘if you think Evan might ever consider working for me.’

‘No. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be good at it.’

‘It’s an unbeatable cover. A rising-star documentary film-maker. He can go anywhere, film about anything, and no one would doubt his credentials or his intentions.’

‘He’s interested in the truth. That’s his passion.’

‘And yet he’s fucking you.’

‘Recruitment’s not a good idea. Not now.’ She was afraid to argue further; afraid of what would happen if Jargo thought Evan was a danger to him.

‘I want you to be prepared,’ Jargo said. ‘Because you may have to kill him.’

She watched the line of cars slowly move through the doughnut store drive-through. The back of her eyes hurt. Jargo had never suggested such work to her before; mostly, before sliding into Evan’s bed, she’d worked as a courier for Jargo, in Berlin, in New York, in Mexico City. Never a killer. The silence began to get dangerously long, he would get suspicious. ‘If you say so,’ she said. There was nothing else to say. ‘Then I should get distance. I don’t want to be a suspect.’

‘No, you stay close. If it has to happen, you and he both vanish. You don’t stay around. You’re both dead and gone, and we build you a new legend. I can probably use you more in Europe anyway.’

‘Very well,’ she said. He told her to have a good day and then he hung up. She filed her empty reports with Jargo, manufacturing innocuous lies about what Evan’s next project might be, until Jargo had called her two days ago and said, ‘I want to know if Evan has any files on his computer that shouldn’t be there.’

‘Be specific.’

‘Lists of names.’

‘All right.’

An hour later she searched Evan’s computer while he was out running errands. She called Jargo. ‘I found no files like that.’ Evan had scant data on his computer other than scripts, video footage, and basic programs.

‘Check every twelve hours, if possible. If you find the files, delete them and destroy his hard drive. Then report back to me.’

‘What are these files?’

‘That you don’t need to know. Don’t memorize the information or copy the files. Just delete them and make sure that hard drive can’t be recovered.’

‘I understand.’ And she did. The files were what Jargo was truly worried about, probably files that connected back to Jameson Wong or the other potential film subjects.

But if Evan’s hard drive was to be destroyed, she had a sinking, awful feeling that Evan was to be destroyed as well.

Carrie washed her face again. Evan was gone, stolen by a man who might be very, very bad, and soon Jargo’s technical elves would find a trace of him and they would go get Evan from the man who had taken him. The files had been sitting on his system this morning, she had left without looking for them, and if Jargo doubted her word, he would kill her. She had to win back Jargo’s trust. Now.

Last night, Evan telling her that he loved her, seemed like a moment from a world that no longer existed, a pocket of time where there was no Jargo and no Dezz and no files and no fear or pretending. She wished he hadn’t said it. She wanted to hit him, to push him away, to tell him, Don’t, don’t, don’t, you don’t know anything, I can’t have a life with you, I can’t be normal ever again, it can’t ever be, so just don’t.

She had to harden her heart now. She had to catch Evan.

E van opened his eyes.

He was lying on a bed. The cream-white sheets had been folded back; a thin cotton towel was spread behind his head. One of his arms was raised, bound to the bed’s iron-railing headboard with a handcuff. The bedroom was high-end: hardwood floors, a rustic but expensive reddish finish on the walls, abstract art hung to precision above a stone fireplace. A sliver of soft sunlight pierced a crack in the silk drapes. The door was closed.