Jeff Abbott - Panic

He waited. He didn’t like that Khan was out of his view. Maybe the man was bolting out the back door. Jargo’s name might be like acid on skin. Evan stepped behind the counter and went around the corner – cluttered with an antique desk with a computer; a watercooler; and stacks of books – and went searching for Thomas Khan.

Pettigrew watched Carrie pretend-chatting on her phone, keeping her gaze near the bookstore entrance. Evan went in. A minute passed; Pettigrew counted each second. Then he pulled a briefcase from the rear seat of his sedan, got out of the car, and strolled toward the entrance to the bookstore.

He saw Carrie watching him and he lifted his hand in a quick, furtive palm-up signal: wait. She stayed put as he headed for the bookstore.

The maze of offices in the back of the gallery led nowhere. ‘Mr. Khan?’ Evan called in a hushed tone as he went into the bookstore’s back. It was empty. Thomas Khan employed no assistants, no secretaries, no junior booksellers in his rabbit hole of a business. Evan heard a slight sound, two sharp thweets, maybe an alarm peep announcing a door had opened and closed. Evan found a back exit door. He pushed it. It opened onto a narrow brick way and he saw Thomas Khan running for the street, glancing back over his shoulder.

‘Stop!’ Evan ran after him.

Pettigrew performed best while taking specific orders. This was the truth of his life: taking orders in school, in family, in bed with his wife. He carried out today’s orders with certainty. He stepped inside the bookstore, closed the door behind him, locked the dead bolt above the key lock. He flipped the simple calligraphied sign over to CLOSED. No one else had left or entered the shop since Evan. He saw Evan stepping into the rear of the shop, quietly calling, ‘Mr. Khan?’

A couple rummaged for editions on a table. The woman murmured in French to the man, pointing out a volume’s price in dismay. Pettigrew brought out his service pistol and with a hand only slightly shaking, shot them both in the back of the head. Thweet, thweet, said the silencer. They collapsed, their blood and brains spraying across a pyramid of volumes. Ten seconds had passed.

Pettigrew set down the briefcase. Jargo said there would be a two-minute delay once he set the briefcase’s combo lock to the correct detonation sequence. Ample time for him to get out, go to the street corner, shoot Carrie in the head, escape in the confusion. He thumbed the last number of the lock into place.

Jargo lied.

T he explosion tore open the front of Khan Books, flowering into an orange hell, sending glass and flame shooting into Kensington Church Street. Carrie screamed as the force of heat and blast hit her. A car passing in front of the bookstore tumbled and slammed into a restaurant across the street. People fled, several bleeding, others running in blind panic. Two people lay in bloodied rags on the pavement.

Debris rained down on the street, shattered chunks of brick, raindrops of glass, a sooty mist and smoke. She careened backward, into the shelter of the corner of the building, in front of a dress shop, the mannequins indistinct behind the webbed glass.

Evan.

Carrie stumbled to her feet, ran toward the inferno, stopped halfway across the street. Heat slammed against her face. Burning pages settled toward the ground in a fiery snow. One landed on her hair; she slapped at her head, burned her hand.

‘Evan!’ she screamed. ‘Evan!’ Only a fierce roar answered her as thousands of books, and the structure of the building, abandoned themselves to flame.

Gone. He was gone. She heard the rising cry of police and emergency sirens. She ran down the block toward the CIA car. The door was unlocked, the keys still inside. She ducked into the car, started the engine.

Shaking, she made a mix of left and right turns, avoiding the instant traffic jams, and stopped near Holland Park. She willed her fingers to be still and dialed Bedford. When he answered the phone, at first she could not speak beyond identifying herself.

‘Carrie?’ he said.

‘At Khan’s store. There was an explosion. Oh, shit.’ He was gone. Evan could not be gone.

‘Calm down, Carrie.’ Bedford’s voice was like steel. ‘Calm down. Tell me precisely what happened.’

She hated the hysteria in her voice but her self-control broke like a rotting dam. Her parents dead, her year of nonstop deceit, worrying that Jargo would discover her at any moment, finding Evan and nearly losing him again… she bent over in the car.

‘Carrie! Report. Now.’

‘Evan… went inside Khan’s bookstore. Pettigrew followed him inside a minute later, but he signaled all was well. Then about thirty seconds later, a blast. The entire store is gone. Bombed.’ She steadied her voice. ‘I need a team here. We need to find Evan. Maybe he’s still inside, hurt, but it’s all on fire…’ She stopped. He’s gone. He’s gone.

‘Did you see Evan or Pettigrew leave?’

‘No.’

‘Any other exit or entrance?’

‘I don’t know… not on the street I could see.’

‘Okay,’ Bedford said. ‘Assume you’re under surveillance. Obviously the Deeps have targeted Khan.’

‘Get me a team. MI5 or CIA. Now. I need them here now.’

‘Carrie. I can’t. We can’t show our involvement. Not with a bombing in London.’

‘Evan…’

‘I can be in London in a few hours. I need you to lay low. That’s a direct order.’

‘Evan’s dead, Pettigrew’s dead, and that’s just too bad, isn’t it? You let him get involved, you wanted him involved because it made this hunt easier for you!’

‘Carrie. Get ahold of yourself. Right now I want you safe, I want you protected. Pull back. Find a place to hide, a library, a coffee shop, a hotel. You are not authorized to talk to anyone, not even Pettigrew’s superior, until I arrive and debrief you. That’s a direct order. I’ll call you back when I’m on the ground in the UK.’

‘Understood.’ The word tasted like blood in her mouth. ‘I’m sorry. I know you cared for Evan.’

She couldn’t answer him. She wasn’t supposed to lose anyone else she loved. He could not be gone.

‘Good-bye,’ she said.

She hung up. She steadied the tremble that threatened to take over her hands.

She wasn’t hiding in a hotel. Not yet.

She got out of the BMW. Cars and pedestrians fleeing the blast area choked the streets. She stopped at an office supplies store near Queen Elizabeth College and asked to borrow their phone book. She found the listing for Thomas Khan.

‘Where is this, please?’ she asked the clerk, pointing at the address.

‘Shepherd’s Bush. Not at all far, west of Holland Park.’ The clerk gave her a look of friendly concern; the news of the Kensington Church Street blast was all over the television and radio, immediately suspected as a terrorist attack, and Carrie was begrimed and shaken. ‘Do you need help, miss?’

‘No, thank you.’ She wrote down Khan’s address. She could break into his house, find if he had any connection to Jargo or to the CIA. It was action. Evan was gone. She could not sit still.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ the clerk called as Carrie ran out the door.

No, Carrie thought, I’ll never be all right again.

But wait. She stopped herself, stumbling along the side-walk, the sirens a constant buzz in the air. As soon as the police identified Khan Books as the bombing site, the police and MI5 would be poring over Thomas Khan’s house. If the slightest connection pointed back to the CIA – if she was found there and questioned by British authorities – it would be a public relations disaster for the Agency. She couldn’t go to Khan’s. Not enough time to search before the police arrived.