Jeff Abbott: Panic

‘Just tell me exactly what evidence you have against my brother.’

A horrible thought occurred to him. ‘You told Bricklayer to stay away. You didn’t want to be rescued. If you couldn’t get me back… you want to stay with these people. You really do believe Jargo. Not me.’

‘Evan.’ Mitchell looked at his son as though his heart were an open wound. ‘It doesn’t matter now. We can both go. Both hide. I know how. We never have to worry again.’

‘You answer me, Dad. You were Arthur Smithson. Mom was Julie Phelps. Why did you have to vanish?’

‘None of that matters now. It won’t make a difference.’

Evan gripped his father’s arm. ‘You can’t keep any more secrets from me.’

‘You won’t understand.’ Mitchell bent as though in physical pain.

‘I love you. You know that is true. Nothing you can say will make me not love you.’ Evan put his arm around his father. ‘We can’t run. We can’t let Jargo win. He killed Mom, he’ll kill Carrie. Doesn’t that matter?’ Evan’s voice rose. ‘You don’t even act like you miss Mom.’

Mitchell stepped back in shock, grief twisting his face. ‘My heart is broken, Evan. Your mother was my world. If I lost you as well…’

The cell phone in Evan’s pocket vibrated. Evan opened it. ‘Yes?’

His father stared at him, looking as if he wanted to reach for the cell phone. But he didn’t.

Razur had provided Evan with the phone, and only Razur had the number.

‘They really should name a computer after me,’ Razur said. ‘Or an entire programming language.’

‘You did it.’

‘I decoded the files. Bloody bitch of a job. The files even had passwords against them when decoded. One file was triple-locked, so it must be the grand prize. It’s just a list of names and pictures. It’s called CRADLE.’

Probably a code name for the client list. That would be the file most carefully guarded. ‘How can you get it to me?’

‘I’m uploading copies to your remote server account. You can download the files and the encryption software all at once. Can I delete the originals or trash the laptop?’

‘No. I may need them. But I would suggest you hide them someplace very safe.’

‘And here I was all tempted to mount that laptop on my wall. Like a tiger I’d brought down.’ Razur was merry with his triumph.

‘Thank you,’ Evan said. ‘Enjoy the money.’

‘I shall.’

‘You just saved lives.’

‘That’s a bonus, then,’ Razur said. ‘Drop out of sight for a while.’

‘I’m going on holiday. But you know how to reach me.’

Razur hung up and Evan erased the number from his call log. He folded up his phone. Time to decide if he could trust his dad.

‘Is there a computer and Internet access in this house?’

‘Who was that?’

‘Never mind. Tell me.’

Mitchell licked at his lips. ‘Yes. In the back bedroom.’

Evan went to the bedroom, found a PC connected to broadband. He fired up the computer, accessed the remote server account Shadey had set up for him when he’d called Shadey in Goinsville. ‘Where will Jargo take Carrie?’

‘To a safe house. For questioning.’

‘Call them. Tell them to let her go. Or Jargo’s client list is on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow morning.’

‘If you hurt him, he’ll just go underground and he’ll hunt us.’

‘Is it that you’re afraid of him or that he’s your brother?’

‘Both,’ Mitchell said. ‘But listen to me. You release that list, we’ll be hunted by far more than the Deeps. Intelligence services, criminal rings around the world, will put bounties on our heads.’

‘Stop with the global guilt trip. You got us into this, I am getting us the hell out of it.’ Evan tapped on the keyboard, downloaded Razur’s uploads. There were several. He opened the first one. Account numbers, a good three dozen, in various Swiss and Cayman banks. He clicked open a folder called Logistics: a file inside, one of many, held the requirements for his mother’s last assignment in Britain. A third held arrangements to meet with the Israeli Mossad and hand them a Hamas accountant who had reneged on a deal to provide information to Jargo. Photos of the murder of Hadley Khan, his slow torture, taken by Thomas Khan to prove his fealty, to document his loyalty to Jargo over family. And so on. Every document a page in the diary of a secret world.

A document that listed clients. For all the fear and death it had caused, the file was a simple spreadsheet. A few names at the CIA – including Pettigrew’s – at the FBI, at Mossad, at both Britain’s MI6 and MI5, at Russia’s SVR, at the Chinese Guoanbu, at the German and French and South African intelligence agencies. The Japanese. Both the Koreas. Fortune 500 companies. Military commanders. High-ranking government officials.

‘My God,’ his father said behind him.

Evan clicked back to the folder file for logistics. He opened a sub-folder named travel. He read the last three entries. A chill rose on his skin.

‘Dad. How did Jargo grab you when you came back to the States?’

‘I flew into Miami on Wednesday night, he called me back from my job early. He said there was a problem, he had to hide me. They took me to the safe house and he locked me up.’

‘Wednesday. Then what?’

‘He and Dezz went to Washington to get a lead on Donna’s contact at the CIA.’

‘No. They went to Austin.’ He pointed at a listing in the logistics file. ‘Khan arranged for a charter flight for them, from Miami to Austin on Thursday. They went to see Mom. Or to watch her. Maybe she spotted Dezz or Jargo, knew she was being trailed. That’s what triggered her to run Friday morning.’

His father stared at the screen.

Evan clicked down to another spreadsheet. UK operations. Money funneled into an account in Switzerland, from one to another. ‘Dad. Look. This transfer. Who is Dundee?’

His father had found his voice again. ‘An agent’s code name.’

‘Paid the day I arrived in London and Jargo tried to bomb me. Dundee is probably the bomb maker.’

Mitchell sank to the floor, still staring at the computer.

The final document – titled CRADLE – sat alone at the window’s bottom. Evan clicked it open as his father grabbed his hand and said, ‘Don’t, son, please, don’t.’

T oo late. Evan opened CRADLE. It held old photos – of children. Sixteen children. One of his father, with his wide smile. His mother was a blond wisp of a child, high-cheekboned, her hair twisted in a garish, girlish braid. Jargo at seven already had the flat, cold eyes of a killer. A sweet-faced girl looked like a childish version of the driver McNee. Names lay underneath each photo. He stared at his parents and Jargo. And Carrie’s father.

Arthur Smithson. Julie Phelps. John Cobham. Richard Allan.

‘Those were your real names,’ Evan said. ‘What happened to your parents?’

‘They all died. We never knew them.’

‘Where were you born?’

His dad didn’t answer. Instead he asked, ‘Did you download the encryption software?’

‘Yes.’

His father leaned over and clicked buttons. Dropped the CRADLE document on it again and the file reopened.

Not the CIA. Not an independent organization that Alexander Bast had started and Jargo had hijacked. New names lay beneath each schoolchild photo.

His mother. Julija Ivanovna Kuzhkina.

His father. Piotr Borisovich Matarov.

Jargo. Nikolai Borisovich Matarov.

‘No,’ Evan said.

‘We were a great, great secret,’ his father said behind him. In tears. ‘The seeds of the next wave of Soviet intelligence. The gulags were full of women, political dissidents, who were not allowed to keep their children. Our fathers were either other dissidents or prison guards who impregnated the women. Our mothers got to see us – once a month, for an hour – until we were two and then never got to see us again. Most of the children ended up in labor or re-education camps. Alexander Bast went through the camps. He found the female prisoners with the highest IQs – giving them legitimate tests, because the Soviets claimed dissidents were mentally damaged and had low IQs – and he tested their two-year-olds, and then he took a group of us away.’