Panic

42

H is father drove Evan to a house in Hollywood. The homes were small, with metal awnings, painted from a palette of sky: sunrise pinks, cloudless blues, light eggshell the shade of a full moon. Fifties Florida. Stumpy palmettos lined the road. A neighborhood, of retirees and renters, where people came and went without attracting attention. Evan remembered reading, with a chill in his chest and spine, that a group of the 9/11 hijackers had lived and gone to flight school in Hollywood because no one got noticed there.

Mitchell Casher steered into the driveway and doused the lights.

‘I’m not abandoning Carrie.’

‘She ran. She abandoned you.’

‘No. She drew them away from me. She knew the laptop was empty, she knew they’d follow her. Because I can still bring down Jargo.’

‘You put a lot of faith in a girl who lied to you.’

‘And you put no faith in Mom,’ Evan said. ‘She wasn’t leaving you. She wasn’t running without you. She was coming to Florida to get you.’

Mitchell’s mouth worked. ‘Let’s go inside.’

As soon as they stepped in the door, Mitchell closed his arms around Evan. He leaned into his father’s embrace and hugged him back. Mitchell kissed his hair.

Evan broke down. ‘I… I saw Mom… I saw her dead…’

‘I know, I know. I am so sorry.’

He didn’t break the embrace with his dad. ‘How could you have done this, how could you?’

‘You must be hungry. I’ll make us omelets. Or pancakes.’ Dad was always the weekend cook, and Evan sat at the island counter while his dad chopped and mixed and skilleted. Saturday breakfast was their confessional. Donna always lounged in bed and drank coffee, left the kitchen to the men and stayed out of earshot.

He thought of that kitchen, his mother’s strangled face, him hanging from the rafters at the end of a rope, dying, stretching his feet toward the counter before the hail of bullets cut him free.

‘I can’t eat.’ He stepped away from his father. ‘You’re really not much of a captive, are you?’

‘Be happy I’m free.’

‘I am. But I feel like I’ve been played for a fool. I risked my life… so many times in the past week, trying to save you…’

‘Jargo only agreed to let me talk to you this way today. Just today.’

‘He made it sound like he would kill you.’

‘He wouldn’t have. He’s my brother.’

Evan’s stomach twisted. It was the truth of a fear that had lurked in the back of his mind since he’d seen the photos from Goinsville. It explained his father’s gullibility, his torn allegiance. He looked in his father’s much-loved face for echoes of Jargo’s scowl, Jargo’s cold stare.

‘I don’t know how you can claim him as your brother. He’s a vicious murderer. He tried to kill me, Dad. More than once. In our home, at Gabriel’s, in New Orleans, in London. And just now.’

Dad poured them both glasses of ice water. ‘Let me ask you a few questions.’

This was worse than being interrogated with a gun at your head. Because this was reality given an awful twist. Acting normal, talking normal, when nothing was normal.

‘Do you know where the files your mother stole are?’

‘No. Dezz and Jargo erased them. So I went to the source.’

‘Khan. What did you actually take from him?’

‘Plenty.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

Evan knocked the water glass out of his father’s hand. It shattered on the floor, sprayed cubes and liquid across the carpet. ‘I don’t even know you. I came here to rescue you, and you want to fucking grill me, Dad. We need to go out, get in the car, and get Carrie. Then we run. Forever. Jargo killed Mom. She wanted to protect me from this life, and you know it.’

‘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.’