by Jeff Abbott
‘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.’
26
C arrie was awake when Evan returned to her room. The guard shut the door behind him, left them alone.
‘Hey. How are you feeling?’ he asked. A dinner tray of comfort food sat before her: chicken soup, mashed potatoes, a chocolate shake, glass of ice water. Mostly untouched.
‘You’re not hungry?’ He wasn’t sure how to start this conversation. She had been unconscious much of the time on the fast flight out of New Orleans, and he couldn’t talk to her in front of the CIA guys.
‘Not really.
’
‘Bedford said your wound wasn’t too bad.’
Color touched her cheeks. ‘More gouge than bullet hole. It caught the top of my shoulder. It’s sore and stiff but I’m feeling better.’
He sat in the chair, bolted to the floor, at the foot of her bed. ‘Thank you. For saving my life.’
‘You saved mine. Thanks.’
Awkward silence again.
He got up and sat on the bed next to her. ‘I just don’t know what to believe right now. I don’t know who to trust.’ He heard Shadey’s words in his head: Don’t trust unless you must. Maybe Carrie had spotted Shadey in the crowd – recognized him from Ounce of Trouble – but she still made no mention to Bedford. Protecting his friend. Showing him, through her silence, that she could be trusted. He didn’t dare mention Shadey’s name – the room was probably bugged. He just hoped Shadey was safe and lying low.
‘Trust yourself,’ Carrie said. Now she looked at the tangle of sheet around her waist.
‘Not you?’
‘I can’t tell you what to do. I have no right.’
‘Bedford says you’ll want to help me get my dad back.’
‘Yes.’
‘At great risk to yourself.’
‘Life is nothing but risk.’
‘You don’t have anything to prove to me.’
‘You and your father are the best hope we have of breaking them. It’s not a matter of force. It’s a matter of subtlety. That’s all I want, Jargo broken. And for you to be safe.’
He leaned forward. ‘Listen. You don’t have to play a role anymore. You don’t have to pretend to love me. Or even like me. I’ll be fine.’
‘Don’t sell yourself short, Evan. You’re easier to love than you think.’
His face felt hot. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?’
‘I couldn’t put you in that danger. Jargo would have killed you.’
‘And you would have lost your chance to take him down.’
‘But you’re more important to me than Jargo.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I didn’t let myself get close to anyone after my parents died. You were the first.’
He held her hands. ‘Bedford says Jargo killed your folks.’
