Jeff Abbott - Panic

‘You’ll kill me regardless if I talk or not.’

‘My son didn’t leave me much of you to work with. But it’s your choice whether the end is fast or slow. I’m a humanitarian.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Not me. Your daughter. Or your granddaughters. She’s, let’s see, thirty-five, very rich husband, living in Dallas. I’ll send my son up to her showcase home. Dezz’ll fuck her, make rich hubby watch, tell them the reason their wonderful lives are being cruelly abbreviated is her dumbass father, then gut them both.’ He paused and smiled. ‘Then I’ll sell your granddaughters. I know a reclusive gentleman in Dubai. He’ll pay me twenty thou for them. More if I don’t break up the set.’

Gabriel’s eyes moistened in terror. ‘No. No.’

Jargo smiled. Everyone, but him, had a weakness, and that made him feel so much better and secure in his place in the world.

‘Then let’s chat like the professionals we are so your family gets to enjoy their storybook life. Who are you working for?’

Gabriel took two deep breaths before answering. ‘Donna Casher.’

‘What exactly were you supposed to do for her?’

‘Get fake IDs for them, get her and her kid to her husband. Then get all three of them out of the country. Protect them.’

‘And your payment was what?’ Jargo moved closer with the larger knife, brushed its edge along Gabriel’s jaw.

‘Hundred thousand dollars.’

Jargo lowered the knife. ‘Ah. A cash basis. Would you like a drink to kill the pain? Kentucky bourbon? Mexican tequila?’

‘Sure.’ Gabriel closed his eyes.

‘And I heard you were off the sauce. Shame to backpedal. Well, you can’t have a drink. Not yet. I don’t believe that hundred thou was the whole payment, Mr. Gabriel.’

‘Jesus, please, don’t hurt my girls. They don’t know anything.’

Jargo leaned close to Gabriel, studied Gabriel’s face as though admiring the deftness of a painting, and flicked out his hand. A shred of cheek parted from Gabriel’s face. Gabriel gritted his teeth but didn’t scream. Blood dripped from the cut, in a slow ooze.

‘I’m impressed.’ Jargo got up, went to the bar, opened a bottle of whiskey. Sniffed at it. ‘Glenfiddich. Mother’s milk, during your glory days at the Company. At least what I heard in the rare moments I gave you any thought.’ He tippled a stream onto Gabriel’s cut. ‘The drink you wanted. Enjoy.’

Gabriel moaned.

‘Now. An old spook like you, a hundred thousand won’t keep you in Fritos and Ripple.’ He produced a piece of paper from his jacket, held it up. ‘We traced this e-mail from you to Donna Casher. Decode it for me.’

The old training died hard. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

Jargo flicked the blade along the ear’s surface, scored blood from the lobe. Gabriel jerked. ‘With two bullets in you, your mouth ruined, this doesn’t hurt much. You want me to dig the bullets out for you?’ Jargo grinned.

Gabriel shuddered.

‘See, Donna Casher turning to an ex-CIA drunk is truly the million-dollar question. Why you? I believe you were willing to take a bigger chance. For more than money. Tell me. For your family’s sake.’ Jargo leaned down, whispered into the man’s devastated ear. ‘Buy their safety.’

Gabriel’s chest heaved. He cried. Jargo restrained himself from cutting the man’s throat. He hated tears. They lessened a person so.

Gabriel found his breath. ‘The message meant she was ready to run.’

‘Thank you,’ Jargo said. ‘Running with what?’

‘Donna had a list.’

Confirmation. ‘A list.’

‘Of a group of people. Inside the CIA… running illegal, unauthorized operations. Hiring out assassination and espionage work to a freelance group of spies she called the Deeps. She had your CIA clients’ names, she had account information on how they had paid for your services. Like I always suspected.’

‘And never proved,’ Jargo said. ‘Describe the data, please.’

‘This freelance group, the Deeps, she said they had clients inside the CIA. Inside the Pentagon. Inside the FBI. Inside MI5 and MI6 in England. Inside every intelligence agency in the world. Inside the Fortune 500. Inside governments, all high-ranking people. Any time someone needs a dirty job, forever off the books… they come to you.’

‘They do,’ Jargo said. ‘You can see why my clients wouldn’t appreciate you taking their names in vain.’ He brought the knife closer to Gabriel’s throat. ‘Did Mitchell Casher know about your arrangement to be his wife’s bodyguard?’

‘She said he didn’t know about her having this client list, or her wanting to run. He was on an assignment for the Deeps – for you – and she said we would meet him in Florida in three days. That was his reentry point after his assignment overseas. She wanted me with her when she talked to him. To convince Mitchell they had no choice but to run. I was to pose as a CIA liaison, tell him they were getting immunity and new identities in exchange for the data. Then they’d run, the whole family, together.’

‘Donna made this a fait accompli.’

‘She didn’t want to give her husband a choice. She was burning their every bridge.’

‘Where was she running to?’

‘I just had to get the Cashers safely to Florida. They would run from there. Anywhere. I don’t know. Didn’t Donna tell you this before you killed her?’

‘Dezz killed her. In a rage. Because she would not speak. She was stronger than you. And she had better training.’ He wiped blood off the knife. ‘And so she summoned Evan to Austin.’

‘Donna planned to explain to him they had to run – tell him the entire truth. That she worked for your network, she wanted you brought down, that she would give me the data to bring down every one of your clients. Then we were driving to Florida. She wanted to avoid airports.’

‘Lucky for him you arrived.’ Jargo brought his face close to Gabriel’s. ‘This client list and some related files were on Evan’s computer. We saw it. We erased it. You’re telling me he didn’t know he had the files?’

‘I don’t know if he knew or not. I’m telling you what his mother knew. He… he doesn’t seem to know much.’

‘Does he know or not?’

‘I don’t… think so. He’s dumb as a stump.’

‘No, he’s not dumb.’ Jargo ran the tip of the blade along Gabriel’s chin. ‘I don’t believe you. Donna cleaned the files off her computer. She sent a backup to Evan’s computer. But she would need the files to convince Evan of the need for them to vanish. You don’t simply just go and run away from your life. So Evan must have seen the files. And taken the precaution of making a copy and hiding it.’

‘He doesn’t know.’

Jargo jabbed the knife into the bullet wound in Gabriel’s shoulder, and Gabriel’s eyes bugged, the veins popped on his neck. Jargo clamped a hand over Gabriel’s mouth, twisted the knife, let the scream run its course under his fingers, removed the knife, flicked away the blood.

‘Are you sure?’

‘He knows,’ Gabriel gasped. ‘He knows. I told him. Please. He knows your name. He knows his mother worked for you.’

‘He fought you.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Beat you.’

‘He’s thirty years younger than me.’

‘Given your reversal of fortune,’ Jargo said, ‘I think you’d like for Evan to bring me down.’

Gabriel met Jargo’s stare. ‘You won’t live forever.’

‘True. Where were you supposed to meet Mitchell in Florida?’

‘Donna knew the location, I didn’t. He wasn’t expecting her. She was intercepting him on his way home.’

‘Where will Evan run? To the CIA?’

‘I warned him off the CIA. I didn’t want…’