Jeff Abbott - Panic

He jabbed a screwdriver into the desk lock with caution; after the trick pepper-spray lighter he could not take anything on face value. But there was only the click of the metal against metal.

He picked up a hammer and with four solid blows cracked open the locks on Thomas Khan’s desk. In one drawer he found papers relating to the ownership of the house. It had been bought last year by Boroch Investments. Boroch must be a front for Khan; if there was no obvious connection to Khan, the police wouldn’t come here. Thomas Khan wouldn’t show his face if he could help it in digging his escape tunnel.

In the desk drawer he found stationery and envelopes for Boroch Investments, a passport from New Zealand, one from Zimbabwe, both in false names with Thomas Khan’s pictures inside. There was a phone, in need of a charge but working. He dug out the charger from the back of the drawer and began to power the phone up. He checked the call log; the list was empty.

He forced the lock on another desk drawer. It held a metal box, containing bricks of British pounds and American dollars. Beneath that an automatic pistol and two clips. He counted the money. Six thousand British pounds, ten thousand in U.S. funds. He set the cash on the desk. The side desk drawers were empty.

He attacked the credenza with a hammer, a screwdriver, and then a crowbar. Dizziness oozed into his brain, from lack of eating, from exhaustion, from the pepper spray, but he knew that he was close, so close to getting what he needed. So close.

The door cracked under the crowbar. Empty.

No, it couldn’t be. Couldn’t. Khan would need data files, he would need to access new accounts, erase old ones. There had to be a computer in this house aside from the PDA. Unless the bastard kept it all in his head. Then Evan was back to zero.

He searched the room. The small closet held office supplies, old suits, a raincoat. He went through the guest bedrooms – practically bare – and the downstairs bedroom. He searched carefully, knowing he was no pro, but reminded himself to be disciplined and thorough. But he found nothing, and the chance to close his hands around Jargo’s throat started to turn to smoke.

In the darkened den, he risked a reading light. The bookcase. Khan had hidden his gun behind the volumes.

Evan searched the rest of the bookcase. Nearly every inch filled with good books, leftovers from Khan’s store. How could such a psychopathic bastard have such excellent taste in reading? But nothing else lay concealed behind the books. He rifled through the kitchen cabinets and pantry. He dumped canisters of salt and flour on the floor. Nothing. A freezer full of frozen dinners, but he ripped them open, dumped them in the sink, hoping a disk or CD might be hidden inside. Suddenly he was hungry and he microwaved a frozen chicken-and-noodle dinner, nauseated at eating a dead man’s food. He decided to get over it.

He sat down on the floor and forced himself to calm down as he ate. The food was tasteless but filling. His stomach settled. The jet lag and the fade of his adrenaline rush swamped him, and he fought the urge to just lie down on the floor and close his eyes, slip into sleep. Maybe there was nothing more to find.

The basement. The one room he hadn’t searched. He went down the darkened steps. Past the sheeted bodies. The basement was small. Square, with a stacked washer/dryer on one side and metal shelving on the other. The shelves held an assemblage of junk. More books, boxed. He went through them all. A television set with a cracked screen. A box of gardening tools, clean of mud, probably never used. A couple of cases of canned soups and vegetables and meats, in case Khan had to hide a fellow operative.

His gaze went back to the TV with its cracked eye. Why would anyone keep a small broken TV? TVs were cheap now. To repair the screen, you might as well buy a new one. Maybe Khan was driven by a sense of waste not, want not. But he had been well-to-do. A broken TV was nothing.

Evan took the TV down from the shelf. He retrieved a screwdriver and unfastened the back.

The television had been stripped of its guts. Inside was a small notebook computer and charger. Evan powered on the laptop; it presented a dialog box prompting him for a password.

He entered DEEPS.

Wrong. He entered JARGO.

Wrong. He entered HADLEY. Wrong. The CIA could crack this, but he couldn’t. Even if he deduced a password, Khan might have encrypted and passworded the files on the system. He would be a fool not to take that precaution.

Evan stared at the screen. Maybe he should just take the computer and go to Langley, the CIA’s headquarters. Turn himself in…

… and not save his father.

His father’s face floated before him in the darkened basement, and he stared at the father-and-son bodies of the Khans. If he believed the past few days, his father was a professional killer who had stamped out lives the way others stamped out ants. But that wasn’t the father he knew. It could not be, the truth could not be that harsh or that simple. He had to have the data to rescue his father.

Or, he thought, he had to create the illusion that he had the data.

The laptop. He didn’t need the data, he just needed the laptop itself to barter for his father. It might hold the exact same files his mother had stolen. At the least it was a negotiating point: he could always threaten to turn over the laptop to the CIA unless his father was released. Jargo couldn’t know with certainty that the files were, or weren’t, on Khan’s machine. Even if this didn’t hold the client list, it might hold enough data – financial, logistical, personal – to destroy the Deeps.

His mother might have stolen the files from this very laptop. He tried to imagine how she had done it. She’d snapped pictures in Dover, stolen the military data. Delivered the goods to Khan. But probably not here, not in his safe spot. She’d probably handed him the stolen data and photos on a CD, in a park, in a theater, in a cafe. But maybe she follows Khan here after they part ways. Then… what? Khan loads the data she stole on the computer to send to Jargo. He leaves. She breaks into the house, finds the laptop. She must have software to bypass the passwords – a necessity if she routinely stole information.

If she did it – it could be done. He could steal the same files.

He tried the laptop once more. Entered BAST. Nothing.

OHIO, because of the orphanage. No.

GOINSVILLE. Refused.

He found Khan’s car keys on the kitchen counter, put the laptop and the money in the car’s trunk. He went back inside and put Khan’s PDA, gun, and phone into his jacket pocket. He wanted to sleep, and he wanted to believe that Khan’s hiding place could be his hiding place. But it wasn’t safe to stay here.

Fort Lauderdale. His mother’s mention of Florida to Gabriel. It was his best bet.

He got into the borrowed Jaguar. Realized he had never driven a car designed for the left side of the road and, for the first time in days, really laughed. This would be an adventure.

Nerves on edge, Evan drove into the darkness. A cold rain began to fall. He had to concentrate entirely on retraining his driving reflexes. He headed slowly, like a rookie driver, back toward London and found a decent hotel in Lewisham. He treated himself to a real meal of steak and fries in a small pub, drank down a pint of ale, watched a couple and their grown son laugh over lagers. He paid and went back to the hotel, lay down on the bed.

He turned Thomas Khan’s cell phone back on and it chimed that there was a message. He didn’t know Khan’s voice-mail password. But he found a call log, listing a recently missed number.

He opened Khan’s PDA and activated the Voice Memo application. Then he dialed the number on the new call log.