Panic

37

‘Y ou were very persuasive, Mitchell,’ Jargo said. ‘I’m proud of you. That was a difficult conversation.’

‘I don’t want him hurt.’ Mitchell Casher closed his eyes.

‘None of us want Evan hurt.’ Jargo set coffee down in front of Mitchell. ‘I hate to criticize, but you should have told him about us long ago.’

Mitchell shook his head. ‘No.’

‘I told Dezz, as soon as he was old enough to understand. We get to work together. It’s very nice to work with your son.’

‘I wanted a different life for Evan. The way you wanted a different life for all of us.’

‘I applaud the sentiment, but it’s misplaced. You didn’t trust him, so you put him in greater danger, made it more likely he could be used by our enemies.’ Jargo stirred his own coffee. ‘You seemed to win his trust back, at least to a degree.’

‘I did,’ Mitchell said in a hard voice. ‘You don’t need to doubt him. Your tape convinced him. He’s got a false ID, he’s got cash, he can get back here.’

‘It bothers me he wouldn’t let us come fetch him. Bothers me a lot. This could be a CIA trap.’

‘Your contacts would tell you if he’d been found.’

‘I hope.’ Jargo sipped at the coffee, watched Mitchell. ‘He seemed to soften toward you, but I’m not convinced.’

‘I can persuade my son our best interests are his best interests. You trust me, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do.’ And behind the frown of family concern, Jargo allowed himself a regretful smile. What was the opening line of Anna Karenina? Bast had given Jargo a copy of the book a week before Jargo had killed him. The line was arch nonsense about every unhappy family was unhappy in its own way. The Jargos and the Cashers, he decided, were truly unique in their misery.

He left Mitchell alone in his room and went downstairs to the lodge kitchen. He wanted quiet in which to think.

The boy might be lying about having Khan’s laptop, but Jargo decided he wasn’t. He wanted his father back too badly. He wondered if Dezz would fight so hard for him. He thought not. That was good, because to fight for what could not be won was stupid.

And he loathed stupidity. He’d lightened the world’s burden of two idiots today. Khan had gotten too lazy, too complacent, too self-important. Losing him, losing Pettigrew as a client, were setbacks but not a crippling loss. He could let Galadriel take over Khan’s duties; her loyalty was unquestioned, and she had no bitter offspring to get underfoot, no ego cultivated in boardrooms. Pettigrew had been slow to pay for a hit on a senior CIA official in Moscow whom he personally disliked, and whose job he coveted. Thank God Khan had no involvement with Jargo’s American properties; otherwise staying here at the lodge, under the empty black skies, would have been too risky.

Jargo poured a fresh cup of coffee, studied its steam. The boy couldn’t crack the laptop; at least Khan had done one thing right. And Mitchell had, if words were to be believed, snared his own child into a death trap.

He would have a Deep operative do the hit on Evan, after he had delivered the client list and Khan’s laptop. Without killing Mitchell, of course: from a distance, with a high-powered sniper’s rifle. He suspected Mitchell would want to talk to the boy alone. An attack staged on father and son, he decided, and poor Evan just stepped the wrong way and put his brains in a bullet’s path. He liked the approach because it would stoke Mitchell’s fury, make him easier to manipulate. Evan dead, Donna dead, that grief could make Mitchell even more productive in the years to come.

But he had to prepare for every eventuality, act as though meeting Evan was a CIA trap, and seal every exit. He picked up a cell phone, made a call.

Jargo then crushed a sedative into a glass of orange juice to keep Mitchell calm and took the doped drink back upstairs. He had a long night ahead of him.