Jeff Abbott - Panic

‘I swear to you I never knew she was betraying us,’ Mitchell said in a hoarse voice.

‘I know. I know, Mitchell. Otherwise you would have run with her. I know.’

‘Then please let me help you.’

‘I want to let you go. But you’re hardly in fighting shape. You might take off and endanger the only chance I have’ – Jargo paused – ‘of getting Evan back safely for you.’

‘The only chance. Tell me.’

Jargo watched his cigarette burn. Waited. Let Mitchell squirm.

‘Oh, Christ. Evan.’ Mitchell put his face in his hands.

‘I haven’t seen you cry since we were boys.’

‘They killed Donna. Imagine your son in their hands.’

‘Dezz would never be taken alive. You know how he is.’ Jargo didn’t look at Mitchell. ‘I’m so sorry.’ His voice cracked. Jargo closed his hand on Mitchell’s arm.

‘So let me help you. Please.’

‘He said he had the client files, Mitchell.’

‘I bet he lied… Donna wouldn’t have shared information with him. His finding out about us, it was her worst nightmare.’

‘Reality check. They were on his computer. Donna had clothes packed for him to run. He took off without waiting for his girlfriend. I think he knew. And he might know what the files are worth.’

‘Evan… wouldn’t know how to sell the information. He wouldn’t know anyone to contact. And he wouldn’t hurt me.’

‘You never told him about your background? Not once?’

‘Never. I swear, he knows nothing.’

You don’t know what he knows, and I’m not taking the risk, Jargo thought, but instead he said, ‘I’m weighing whether to attempt to get Evan back at all. If he plans on fighting for you, he won’t simply hand the files over to the CIA. He’ll try and strike a deal. Which may give us a window of time. But that’s the risk I’m assessing.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Jargo leaned forward, whispered an inch from Mitchell’s face, ‘You know I have operatives working for me within the Agency.’

‘I suspected.’

‘And clients within the Agency. Those people are at huge risk if Evan turns over the files. They’re dead in the water.’ Jargo tasted the smoke again, stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray. ‘My people inside the Agency have every reason to get Evan back for me. For us.’ He put a hand on Mitchell’s shoulder.

‘They won’t hurt him?’

‘Not if I tell them to bring him to me alive.’ The lie felt fine in his mouth. ‘But either way, we must get Evan and whatever information he has away from the Agency. Alive, so you can be together with him again.’

‘Please, Steve. Let me help. Let me help you find my son.’

Jargo stood. Made his decision. Dug in his pocket and unlocked the chain, slipped it free of Mitchell. The links made a pool of silver on the hardwood floor.

Mitchell stood. ‘Thank you, Steve.’

‘Go get showered. I’ll cook you dinner.’ He gave Mitchell Casher a rough hug. ‘How’s an omelet sound?’

Mitchell seized him by the throat, shoved him hard against the wall, relieved him of his gun, angled it under his chin. ‘An omelet sounds great. But just so you and I are clear. Your agents. They don’t hurt or kill my son. Make them understand we need him alive.’

‘I’m glad that’s out of your system. You can let me go now.’

‘If they kill my son, I will kill yours.’

‘Let go.’

Mitchell released his hold on Jargo; Jargo gently pushed his hand away. ‘This is what our enemies want. Us at each other’s throats.’

Mitchell handed him his gun. ‘Evan. Safe. That’s nonnegotiable. I can control my son once we’ve got him back.’

‘I will do everything I can to bring him home. You realize he’ll be the best-kept secret in the Agency. Resources, people, will be diverted from their normal work to help hide him and to rally against us. My eyes inside the Agency will be looking for those signs. A well-meaning idiot in the Agency will mass for a secret war against us, and we’ll stop them with our own Pearl Harbor.’

‘Getting him back will be almost impossible.’

‘In a way,’ Jargo said, ‘I think it might be easy. What we need to do is convince him to come back to us.’

He went downstairs to make the omelet. The curving cypress staircase was full of shadow; he did not like lights burning brightly in the lodge, even with every window carefully sealed and covered. Too much light would glow like a beacon in the vast dark and might attract unwanted attention.

The kitchen in the empty lodge was large, dimly lit. Dezz sat on a stool eating a candy bar, sullen, morose. CNN was on the TV.

‘Any details of note?’ Jargo asked.

‘No. A few people suffered minor injuries in the rush to get out of the zoo. No arrests. No suspects. But no mention of videotape of us.’ Dezz chewed his candy. ‘When we catch them, I get the bitch. She’s all mine. Ask her your questions, then give her to me. Christmas comes early this year.’

‘If Evan has the client list and hands it over to the CIA, then they’ll up the surveillance on those targets. Not just on our clients inside the CIA, but elsewhere. But slowly. They can’t commit too many resources suddenly to us without incredibly uncomfortable questions being asked.’

‘Your point?’

He could share with Dezz what he didn’t dare share with Mitchell. ‘Very few in the CIA know about us. There is a man, code-named Bricklayer, but I have not been able to determine who he is. Bricklayer is supposed to root out any internal problems in the CIA: problems such as using freelance assassins, selling secrets, committing unapproved kills, stealing from American corporations. Basically, Bricklayer wants to put us out of business.’

‘Bricklayer.’

‘Carrie’s a resource Bricklayer will have to use. That may be a blessing to us.’

‘How?’

‘How the CIA uses Carrie will tell us how much they really know about us.’ He gathered the makings of an omelet from the fridge. Cooking would calm him. He chopped vegetables and he thought of a lifetime ago, a child, watching the girl who became Donna Casher standing across a sun-drenched kitchen table from him, cutting vegetables with a calm precision. She had always wanted everything exact, just so. The sun had always caught her hair in a way that transfixed Jargo, and a tinge of sadness and regret touched his heart. He wished, just once, he had told her how much he liked her photographs.

‘You know, Mitchell and Donna and I, the first job we had together when we went freelance, it was in London. A hit. Really simple, it didn’t require all three of us, but there was a sense of power in the three of us doing the kill together. A sense of liberation.’

‘Who killed whom?’ Dezz asked.

‘Victim doesn’t matter. Mitchell and I both did the kill, although my shot hit first. Donna handled logistics.’ Jargo cracked eggs in a bowl, stirred in milk, dumped in the broccoli and peppers. ‘Because it was our first job, we were cutting the bonds of our old life. We were so conscious in making our decisions. Before we were never encouraged to be so deliberative. We were more point and shoot, don’t ask questions. I fingered the bullets I was using for the longest time, like they were worry beads. Or the last shackles of a chain that we were all breaking.’

Dezz ate a piece of candy.

‘I just traded one set of chains for another, Dezz.’

Dezz had no mind for reflection. He said, ‘So how are you getting Evan and Carrie back? Or at least shutting them up?’

‘Carrie will tell the CIA what she knows, which isn’t much. She can’t betray enough to hurt us. She can give them descriptions, the apartment in Austin, but not much in terms of usable evidence.’