Panic

TUESDAY MARCH 15
25

E van watched the padded walls, and the walls watched back – the small dents in the fabric reminded him of eyes. He imagined cameras lurking behind the fabric. He wondered what dramas they had witnessed in this room. Interrogations. Breakdowns. Death. A faded stain marred the wall, about the height of a sitting man, and he imagined how the stain had got there and why it hadn’t been removed. Probably because the CIA wanted you to contemplate that stain and what it might suggest.

Two CIA men, one the pilot, flew them on the private jet out of New Orleans. Evan told them he would only talk to Bricklayer. They provided first aid to Carrie, left him alone, and brought him to this room after the plane landed in a small clearing in a forest. A private ambulance with NORTH HILL CLINIC written on it, with Virginia license plates, whisked them away. A medical team took Carrie away, and a thick-necked security guard put him in this room. He sat and resisted the urge to make faces at the wall, sure cameras watched him. Worried about Carrie, worried about Shadey. Worried about his father.

The door opened and a man stuck his head inside. ‘Would you like to see your friend now?’

It occurred to Evan the man might not even know Carrie’s real name. It occurred to him that he might not either. But he said, ‘Thanks,’ and followed the man down a brightly lit hallway. The man led him down three doors, and her room wasn’t padded; it was a typical hospital room. No windows, the light on the bed eerie and dim, like the glow of the moon in a bad dream. She lay in bed, her shoulder bandaged. A guard stood outside the door.

Carrie dozed. Evan watched her and wondered who she really was, in the spaces between flesh and bone. He took her hand, gave it a squeeze. She slept on.

‘Hello, Evan,’ a voice sounded behind her. ‘She’ll be right as rain real soon. I’m Bricklayer.’

Evan put her hand down gently and turned toward the man. He was sixtyish, thin, with a sour set to his mouth but warm eyes. He looked like a difficult uncle. Bricklayer offered Evan his hand. Evan shook it and said, ‘I’d rather call you Bedford.’

‘That’s fine.’ Bedford kept his face impassive. ‘As long as you don’t do it in front of other people. No one here knows my real name.’ He stepped past Evan, put a hand on Carrie’s forehead in a fatherly fashion, as though checking her for fever. Then he steered Evan into a conference room down the hall, where another guard stood watch. Bedford closed the door behind him and sat down. Evan stayed on his feet.

‘Have you eaten?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘I’m here to help you, Evan.’

‘So you said the first time we talked.’ He decided to test the waters. ‘I’d like to leave now.’

‘Oh, goodness, I think that very unwise.’ Bedford tented his hands. ‘Mr. Jargo and his associates will be hunting for you.’ His politeness was like an heirloom, given prominence on the table.

‘My problem. Not yours.’

Bedford gestured at the chair. ‘Sit for a minute, please.’

Evan sat.

‘I understand you grew up in Louisiana and Texas. I’m from Alabama,’ Bedford said. ‘Mobile. Wonderful town. I miss it terribly the older I get. Southern boys can be stubborn. Let’s both not be stubborn.’

‘Fine.’

‘I’d like for you to tell me what happened since your mother phoned you on Friday morning.’

Evan took a deep breath and gave Bedford a detailed account. But he did not mention Shadey, he did not mention Mrs. Briggs. He didn’t want anyone else in trouble.

‘I offer my deepest sympathies on the death of your mother,’ Bedford said. ‘I think she must have been an extraordinarily brave woman.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Let me assure you that her funeral arrangements will be taken care of.’

‘Thank you, but I’ll handle her memorial when I get back to Austin.’

‘I’m afraid you truly can’t go home again.’

‘Am I a prisoner?’

‘No. But you’re a target, and it’s my job to keep you alive.’

‘I can’t help you. I don’t have these files. Telling Jargo that I did was simply a bluff to get my dad back.’

‘Tell me again exactly what your father said. Since he blames us for your mother’s death.’

Evan did, repeating his father’s plea word for word, as best as he could remember. Bedford took a tin of mints from his pocket, offered Evan the tin, popped a mint in his own mouth after Evan shook his head. ‘Quite a story Jargo’s peddling. We didn’t kill your mother. He did.’

‘I know. I’m not sure why he cares what I think.’

‘He doesn’t. He just wants to manipulate you.’ Bedford chewed his mint. ‘You must feel like Alice, fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.’

‘Nothing wondrous about it.’

‘The fact that you survived an attack and a kidnapping is quite impressive. Mr. Jargo and his friends, they’ve stolen your life from you. They put a piece of wire around your mama’s throat and squeezed the last breath out of her. How does that make you feel?’

Evan opened his mouth to speak and then shut it.

‘It’s the kind of question you ask in your films. I watched them a couple of months back. How did that fellow in Houston feel, framed by the police? How did that woman feel when her son and her grandson didn’t come home from war? I was most impressed. You’re a good storyteller. But just like a reporter with his soul sucked out, you have to ask the dreaded question: “How does it make you feel?”’

‘You want to know? I hate them. Jargo. Dezz.’

‘You have every reason.’ Bedford’s voice went lower. ‘He made your mom and dad lie to you for years. I suspect it wasn’t entirely their choice to work for the Deeps, at least for as long as they did.’

‘The Deeps.’

‘Jargo’s name for his network.’ Bedford tented his hands.

‘Gabriel said he was a freelance spy.’

‘It’s true he buys and sells information, between governments, organizations, even companies. As far as we know.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘We’ve never been able to prove, conclusively, that he exists.’

‘I’ve seen him. So has Carrie.’

‘This is what we know. There is a man who uses the name Steven Jargo. He has no financial records. He owns no property. He does not travel under his own name, ever. Very few people have seen him more than once. He regularly changes his appearance. He has a young man who works with him, supposedly his son, and the son works under the name of Desmond Jargo, but there is no record of his birth, or his schooling, or him having anything like a normal life that creates a paper trail. They have a network. We don’t know if it’s just a few people or if it’s a hundred. We suspect, from the times the name Jargo has popped up, that he has clients, buyers for his information and his services, on every continent.’ Bedford opened up a laptop. ‘I’m about to show extraordinary trust in you, Evan. Please don’t disappoint me.’

Bedford pressed a button and activated a projector cabled to the laptop. The image of a body, sprawled on pavestones, one arm dangling in a turquoise pool. ‘This is Valentin Marquez. A high-ranking financial official in Colombia, one that our government was not fond of because he had connections to the Cali drug cartels, but we couldn’t touch him. His body was found dead in his backyard; four of his bodyguards were killed as well. Rumors surfaced that an American State Department official funneled money to a man named Jargo; he put a hit on Marquez. Given the political situation, this would not be an activity we want exposed: American officials illegally diverting taxpayer funds to hired killers.’

Click. Another picture. A prototype blueprint of a soldier wearing a formfitting jumpsuit. ‘This is a project the Pentagon has been working on, the next generation of ultralightweight body armor for field troops. This blueprint was found in the computer of a senior army official in Beijing by one of our agents, who was attempting to steal data on the Chinese conventional-weapons program. We kidnapped the official, and under duress, he told us he bought the plans from a group he called the Deeps. We found an attempt was made to sell the same armor prototype to a Russian military attache three weeks later. He refused the offer and attempted, instead, to steal the prototype from the seller. The seller killed the man, his wife, and his four children. The wife’s aunt, who was visiting, survived by hiding in the attic. She got a glimpse of the killer. Her description matches Dezz Jargo’s, although his hair was a different color and he wore glasses in Russia. Two months later, a major international armaments dealer made a proposal for a body armor that matched these specifications exactly. In short, Jargo works both sides of the fence. He steals from us, he sells to us.’

Evan closed his eyes.

‘Those are the closest cases we can tie to Jargo. We have several others where we suspect his involvement but can prove nothing.’

‘My parents could not have been involved with a man like that. It just can’t be.’

‘That’s what Carrie thought, I’m sure,’ Bedford said. ‘Her father worked for Jargo. Jargo killed her mom and dad. Or rather, had them killed.’

‘Shit.’

‘Her real name is Caroline Leblanc. Her father ran a private security service after a long career in military intelligence. He had come to the Agency and met with me, let me know that Jargo had operatives working in the Agency and people buying his services within the Agency. I asked him to remain in place, keep working for Jargo, but report to me. Jargo found out, or Carrie’s father slipped up. Jargo made her think the CIA was responsible for her father’s death. But Carrie came to us after her father’s death – she learned additional details that convinced her that Jargo was behind her parents’ murders. At tremendous personal risk, Carrie joined us and became our double agent within the Deeps.’

Evan found his voice after a moment. ‘Jargo killed her folks. And she kept working for him. My God.’

‘Yes. It was difficult but she knew it had to be done. Carrie is our single operative who’s gotten close to Jargo, although she’s only seen him face to face less than five times.’

‘So who sent her into my bed, you or Jargo?’

Bedford let the words die on the air. ‘A man like you, who looks for truth in the world, knows that life is complicated. I asked her to watch out for you. I didn’t order her to kiss you, sleep with you, or to care about you. She’s not who you thought she was… but she’s still Carrie. Does that make sense?’

He didn’t know. ‘Why were you and Jargo interested in me?’

‘I, simply because Jargo sent Carrie to watch you.’ Bedford cleared his throat. ‘He wanted to know what film you were making next.’

‘Film? I don’t understand. Wasn’t he watching me because of my parents?’

‘That would be the natural assumption. But he wanted Carrie to find out about your film plans. That seems to have been the genesis of his interest in you.’

‘He wanted me for this network. Like Carrie.’

‘Possibly. But then he’d have gotten your parents to recruit you. Like how John Walker talked his friend and his son into becoming spies for the Russians.’

Evan tried to imagine his parents sitting him down for that talk. The picture wouldn’t form.

‘But… Jargo never said a word to me about my films. He said I had files he needed. He wanted them in exchange for my dad.’

‘He told Carrie the files are information on his clients – the people in the CIA and elsewhere who hire him to do their dirty work. I don’t know why your mother went against Jargo, but she did. We think she contacted Gabriel to extract her and you. In return, she would have given him Jargo’s client list. Gabriel would have taken the list public, to shame the CIA – we fired him, because no one believed his stories that we had freelance spying occurring within the Agency – and to bring down Jargo.’

‘How did Mom get these files?’

‘Unknown. She must have worked for Jargo.’

‘So Gabriel was telling me the truth. Well, partially.’

‘Mr. Gabriel let his personal weaknesses and biases cloud his judgment. Both here and after he left the Agency. It’s very sad. I’ve asked the FBI to move his family to a safe location, hide them until we bring Jargo down. We told both the family and the Bureau that Mr. Gabriel gave us information on a drug cartel before he vanished.’

‘So… how long ago did Jargo order Carrie to get involved with me?’

‘Three months.’

‘When did my mother steal these files?’

‘I’m not sure, but we believe she contacted Gabriel last month.’

‘So Carrie was watching me… before Mom stole the files. That doesn’t make sense.’ Evan stood up, paced the room. ‘I never thought, never talked, about making a documentary about spies or the CIA or intelligence work of any sort. Why would he tell Carrie to watch me because of my films?’

‘He never gave her a more specific reason,’ Bedford said.

‘So she’s told you about what films I’ve made or might make.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, you must have an idea about what sparked Jargo’s interest.’

‘Tell me what your planned subjects were.’

‘Hasn’t Carrie reported all this to you anyway?’

‘I’d like to hear it from you, Evan. Tell me everything. This might be the key to locating Jargo. We find him, we get your father back.’

‘Won’t he just kill my dad? If my mom betrayed him, he’ll think my dad did as well.’

‘Carrie tells me Jargo has been rather protective of your father. I’m not sure why. Now tell me about your films.’

‘I thought about telling the story of Jameson Wong, the Hong Kong financier. He had the franchise for a number of luxury brands in Hong Kong. But he made bad investments, got grossly overextended, lost his fortune. When he got on his feet, he started funneling money from wealthy expat Chinese to groups that support reform in China. He went from being a self-involved CEO to a real voice for democracy.’

‘How did you choose him?’

‘I read an article about him in the New York Times. Is he connected to Jargo?’

‘Perhaps. Continue.’

‘Um, Alexander Bast. He was kind of the king of the London social scene about thirty years ago. High roller, slept with lots of famous women. Renaissance man, for a partyer. Ran three famous nightclubs but also two art galleries, a modeling agency. He lost it all, I think his accountant stole it from him, and then he started a small publishing company, of all things, publishing books by Soviet dissidents. Then he was murdered in a robbery of his home.’

‘How did you find out about Bast?’

‘Well, he was semifamous already, simply because he was such a friend to so many famous people. But I was in the UK a few months ago, lecturing at the London Film School, and I got an anonymous package indicating that Alexander Bast would be a good subject for my next film project. It included clippings about Bast, his murder, his life.’

‘That’s rather unusual, isn’t it, for someone to pitch you a film idea anonymously?’ Bedford cupped his hands over his chin, leaned forward on the table.

‘Everyone has an idea for a movie, I get ideas tossed to me by nearly everyone I meet.’ Evan took a long sip of water. ‘But, yes, an anonymous package, this was odd. I hadn’t ever heard of Bast. But the story about him – rich party animal embraces social change – was interesting, and he was certainly an intriguing character. Most pitches are beyond boring – they just don’t have meat enough for a movie.’

‘Did you ever find out who left the package?’

Evan shifted in his chair. ‘The head of the documentary department at London Film, Jon Malcolm, told me that a man named Hadley Khan had been asking him if I’d mentioned doing a film on Alexander Bast. I told Malcolm about the anonymous package I’d gotten, because it was odd.’

‘Hadley Khan.’

‘Yeah. He’s from a wealthy Pakistani family based in London. I had met him at a Film School cocktail party. His family donates money to a number of London cultural interests. Malcolm told me Hadley had mentioned my work to him a couple of times, pushed for me to get an invite to speak at the Film School. I figured Hadley sent the package.’

‘What did he talk to you about at the cocktail party? Do you recall?’

Evan thought, let the silence take hold of the room. ‘I only thought about it later, when it became clear he’d sent me the anonymous package.’ He closed his eyes. ‘He asked about my next film project. I don’t discuss my ideas, and I gave him the polite answer that I wasn’t sure yet. And frankly, I really wasn’t sure what I’d do. He told me how much he admired biography as a focus, that London was full of fascinating characters. It was all harmless and vague. But I remember his face – he reminded me of a rookie car salesman, gearing up for the pitch but lacking the spine to close the deal.’

‘Did you ever ask Hadley Khan about the information on Bast?’

‘No. Malcolm didn’t tell me about Hadley having sent me the package until I was back in the States. I e-mailed Hadley but never got a response.’ Evan shrugged. ‘It was strange, but I found out a long time ago all sorts of people want to get close to the film business. I figured, since he had money, he probably wanted to be a producer. Get a credit on a film. It’s very common. I thought he was just an amateur.’ Evan shook his head. ‘It definitely sounds more sinister now. Knowing what I know.’

‘Alexander Bast was a CIA agent,’ Bedford said. ‘A low-level courier. Not important. But still on our payroll, until the day he died.’

Evan leaned back in the chair. ‘Nothing in the material Khan gave me on Bast indicated he had a CIA tie.’

‘We don’t generally advertise,’ Bedford said dryly.

‘Bast has been dead for twenty-plus years. If there was a connection to him and Jargo, why would Jargo care now?’

‘I don’t know. But that has to be part of the reason Jargo was interested in you. Bast was CIA, Jargo has contacts in the CIA. You were in England before Jargo got interested in you. So was your mother.’

‘She had a photographic assignment for a magazine.’

‘Or she had work to do for Jargo.’

Evan decided to broach the subject. ‘Jargo said your people killed my mother.’

‘We covered that already. He lied, of course.’

‘But what you’re doing is illegal. Last I heard the CIA isn’t supposed to operate on American soil. Yet here you are.’

‘Evan. You’re correct. The CIA charter doesn’t permit the Agency to conduct clandestine ops on U.S. soil or against citizens.’ Bedford shrugged. ‘But the Deeps are a very special case. If we bring in the FBI, we hopelessly complicate the situation. We can act and act decisively.’

‘ Complicate means “expose”, and that’s what you don’t want. The fact is you have active traitors and rogues in the Agency.’

‘I don’t want them to know we’re on their trail. All our activities will come to light once the bad guys are down. We still have congressional oversight, you know.’

‘All I care about is getting my dad back from Jargo.’

‘Without the files,’ Bedford said, ‘we don’t have a lot of options.’

‘I don’t know where any of the files on the Deeps are.’

‘Oh, I believe you. If you knew, you would have given them to us.’ Bedford crossed his legs.

‘My mother had to have stolen them from somewhere. If this network is as fragmented as you say, she wouldn’t have easily amassed a list of the clients. She would have to steal this list. From a central source.’

‘I think it likely.’

Evan got up and began to pace the floor. ‘So. Jargo gets interested in me because he hears I’m doing a film that threatens him. That means he has a connection to Hadley Khan. He inserts Carrie into my life to watch me. Then my mother steals these files… why? Why does she turn against Jargo, after so long?’

‘Maybe she learned of Jargo’s interest in you. It was probably a protective measure.’

Evan’s head spun. His mother. Set her own death in motion, trying to save him from Jargo.

‘You get the client list, what do you do with it?’

‘The CIA has only a few bad apples. I think Jargo knows most of them. We take them down. Jargo has to be stopped.’

‘And you getting a list of Jargo’s other clients, that doesn’t hurt you, either.’

‘Of course not. The British and the French and the Russians want to know about their own loose cannons. But my primary concern is in cleaning our own house. If you might help us figure out where she hid another copy of the files, that would-’

‘I told you, I don’t have the files,’ Evan said. ‘So we should steal the files again.’

Bedford raised an eyebrow. ‘How?’

‘Go backward from when my parents vanished from Washington all those years ago. Find another path into Jargo’s organization.’

‘He’ll have destroyed the files.’

‘But not their essence. He still has to have a way of tracking clients, payments made to him, deliveries he does. That information still exists. We have to crack his world.’

‘Stop saying we.’

‘I want my father back. I can’t just sit around a hospital room forever.’ Bedford leaned back. ‘And you think you could do it.’

‘Yes. If I start getting close to Jargo, he’ll try and grab me. Or he’ll think I’m working with you now and he’ll want to grab me to see what you know.’

‘Or grab Carrie.’

‘No. He nearly killed her. She doesn’t go anywhere near him.’ Evan shook his head. ‘Where were you, by the way, in New Orleans? You sent her alone.’

‘Carrie is an excellent agent, but she’s strong-willed.’

‘Oh. That’s not an act?’ Evan said, and permitted himself his first smile in days.

Bedford gave a soft laugh. ’No, that’s who she is. She risked everything to save you.’

‘I don’t want her near Jargo.’

‘That’s not your choice, though, is it?’

‘Get another agent.’

‘I can’t. Fighting Jargo is not official CIA policy, son, because we don’t want to admit he’s a problem.’ Bedford put the smile back on. ‘You’re at a secret CIA clinic in rural Virginia. The locals think this is a sanatorium for rich alcoholics. On our books you’re listed under a code name, which in the records is a nonexistent Croatian Muslim college student living in D.C. wanting to trade information on Al Qaeda in Eastern Europe that will, of course, not pan out. Your flight from New Orleans will be logged as me traveling back from a meeting with a journalist from Mexico who had information to share on a drug cartel that is financing terror activities in Chiapas. You see how the game is played? Until we identify who Jargo has in his pocket in the Agency, we dare not tip our hand. No one in the Agency can know we’re hunting Jargo and the Deeps. According to Agency records, Carrie is assigned deep cover to an operation in Ireland that doesn’t exist. You don’t exist. I sort of exist, but everyone thinks I’m just an accountant who travels a lot checking Agency books.’ Bedford smiled again.

‘Then let me find the files. You don’t risk anything and I’m the only one who you know can draw Jargo out.’

‘You’re a civilian. Carrie goes with you.’

‘No.’

‘Because you don’t trust her or because you love her?’

Evan said, ‘I don’t want her hurt again.’

‘She saved your ass, son. She wants the people who killed her parents to go down, and she’s worked this for a year. She’s an extraordinary young woman.’

Evan stood up, paced the room. ‘I just wish… you had been watching my mom instead of me. You had to have checked on me, on my family, when Jargo assigned Carrie to me.’

‘We did. Your parents had extremely good legends.’

‘Legends?’

‘Background stories. There was nothing to make us doubt them, until we went back and found no pictures of them in the high school yearbooks they supposedly were in.’

‘Then why weren’t you watching them?’

‘We were watching your father. But very carefully. We thought he had the connection to Jargo, as Carrie’s father did. These people are extremely good. They’d spot surveillance unless it was perfect.’

‘Once again, you didn’t want to tip your hand. You left us out in the cold.’

‘We didn’t know what was happening. We couldn’t find it out.’

Evan let it go. ‘If my dad wasn’t in Australia, like Mom said…’

‘He spent the last week in Europe. Helsinki, Copenhagen, Berlin. We lost him in Berlin last Thursday.’

His father. Evading the CIA. It didn’t seem possible.

‘Either Jargo grabbed him in Germany or he returned to the U.S. without us knowing, and then Jargo nabbed him.’

‘If I get the files back, what happens to me and my dad?’

‘Your father tells us everything he can about Jargo and his organization. In exchange for immunity from prosecution. You and your father get new lives, new identities overseas, courtesy of the Agency.’

‘What about Carrie?’

‘She gets a new identity. Or she keeps working for us. Whatever she wants.’

‘All right,’ Evan said quietly.

‘I’m surprised, Evan. I had you pegged as more self-involved.’

‘I find out what was in the files my mom stole, I don’t just get a negotiating tool to get my dad back. I find out the truth about who they are. Who I am.’

Bedford gave him a smile. ‘That’s true. It could be the first step in having your life back.’

‘I don’t have my laptop, it got left behind when I escaped from Gabriel’s house, but I have my music player… it contained the files my mother sent, I think, but I couldn’t decode the files again when I downloaded them a second time. And the player was in my pocket when I jumped in the water in the zoo. It’s ruined.’

‘Give it to me. We’ll try.’

‘I have a passport that Gabriel provided. South African.’ Evan pulled it from his shoe. ‘I had other passports, but they got left behind in my motel room in New Orleans.’ He supposed Shadey took them when he fled.

Bedford studied the passport, handed it back, gave him a critical look. ‘We can improve your hair colour. Change your eyes. Do a new photo. It’s probably best the world still thinks you’re missing. You’d be besieged by the media if you surfaced right now.’

‘All right.’

‘Evan. Understand this. One mistake and you’re dead.

Your father’s dead. And worse – the Deeps get away with everything.’