by Jeff Abbott
‘I don’t know who actually pulled the trigger. One of the other Deeps or a hired hit man. Jargo wouldn’t soil his hands. He made sure I was with him and Dezz when it happened. He wanted me to be sure that I thought the CIA was responsible.’
‘Tell me about your parents.’
She stared at him. ‘Why?’
‘Because now you and I do have truly a lot in common.’
‘I’m sorry, Evan. I’m so sorry.’
‘Tell me about your folks.’
She let go of his hands, knotted the sheets with her fingers. ‘My mother wasn’t involved with the Deeps. She was an advertising copywriter for a small firm that did direct mail. She was pretty and kind and funny – just a really great mom. I was an only child, so I was her everything. She loved me very much. I loved her. Jargo killed her when he killed my father. That’s about it.’
‘And your dad?’
‘He worked for Jargo. I thought he had his own corporate security firm.’ She took a sip of water. ‘I suspect he mostly did corporate espionage – finding people inside companies willing to sell secrets. Or setting up compromising situations where they were forced to sell.’
‘Did your mother know?’
‘No. She wouldn’t have stayed married to him. He lived a life we didn’t know about.’
‘How long ago did they die?’
‘Fourteen months. Jargo decided my father had betrayed him, and he killed them both. It was made to look like a robbery. Jargo stole their wedding rings, my dad’s wallet.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I was already working for Jargo. Through my dad. He recruited me.’
‘Jesus. Why would your father have drawn you into this mess?’
She looked at him with haunted eyes. ‘I don’t know why… I assume he thought it was good money, better than I was making. I have a degree in criminal justice from the University of Illinois, I went into police work… he told me I could make a lot more money doing “corporate security.”’ She drew quote marks with her fingers around the last two words.
‘What kind of work did you do?’
‘Low-level stuff. I’d be the go-between from Jargo to other agents or client contacts. I filled dead drops – you know, secret places where you leave documents and the client picks them up. I never even saw Jargo or the client’s contact. I never got the location of the dead drop until the last minute, so it was much more difficult for Bricklayer to watch. I hadn’t done a job for Jargo in three months when he ordered me to Houston.’
‘Bedford says you came to him to fight Jargo.’
‘I never bought the robbery story… my father was trained to fight, he wouldn’t be taken so easily. I was on a job in Mexico City and I went to the embassy. They put me in touch with a CIA official, he got Bedford down fast on a plane. He asked me to stay in place, keep working for Jargo, feed them what information I could. But it was hard. I wanted out. I wanted to shoot Jargo dead. I’ve wanted to kill Dezz. But Bedford ordered me not to – we needed to wrap up the whole network, and their clients. I kill them, another Deep simply takes over and we’re back to square one.’
‘I still don’t see why they can’t put their hands on this guy.’
‘Evan. He’s extraordinarily careful, and he’s been doing this a long time. I’d get my instructions – encoded – in what would look like an innocent e-mail. Then I’d pick up from a dead drop the materials for the client that another Deep had stolen, go to a second dead drop, often in another city or country, and leave them. If the CIA picked up whoever picked up the goods, Jargo would know his network was blown, and we wouldn’t get any closer. The best the CIA could do was to replace the information I was dropping off with data that was similar but not quite right. He never uses the same e-mail twice. Never the same base of operations twice. Everything is handled through third-party companies that are simply fronts, and as much with cash as he can. He’s really, really hard to stop. He’s killed four people in the past few days.’ Tears threatened her eyes. ‘I thought I could do it alone, but I couldn’t.’
He kissed the top of her hands and put her hands back onto the blanket. ‘I’m going to find the files my mom stole. Jargo still has my father, I’m getting him back. Do you know where he is?’
‘I think in Florida. Jargo has a safe house there, but I don’t know where.’
‘Bedford has agreed to help me.’
‘Let Bedford hide you, Evan. If your dad can get away from Jargo-’
‘No. I can’t wait. I can’t let my dad down. Bedford already said I won’t be able to talk you out of this. Will you help me?’
She nodded, took his hand. ‘Yes. And…’
‘What?’
‘I know it’s hard to trust anyone now. But you can trust Bedford.’
‘All right.’
She put her hand on his cheek. ‘Lie down here with me.’
‘Um, I don’t want to hurt your shoulder.’
She gave him a slight smile. ‘You’re just lying down, ace.’
She scooted over and he stretched out next to her and held her and she fell asleep in a few minutes, her head on his shoulder.
Bedford sat watching a monitor that showed Carrie and Evan lying in the hospital bed, whispering quietly, talking. Love at twenty-four. It was the intensity of it that could frighten a man, the sureness of it, the belief that love was a lever to lift the world. He had already lowered the volume; he didn’t need to hear what they said. He was a spy but he did not want to spy on them, not now.
Carrie slept and Evan stared off into space.
I wonder, Bedford thought. I wonder how much you really know, or really suspect.
‘Sir?’ A voice behind him, one of his techs.
‘Yes?’
The man shook his head. ‘The damaged music player… we can’t recover any encoded files from it. Whatever process was used, it did not leave any other files hidden inside the music files when he transferred them to the player. I’m very sorry.’
‘Thank you,’ Bedford said. The tech left, shutting the door behind him.
After a moment Bedford switched off the monitors and went down to the clinic’s kitchen to make himself a sandwich.
He heard a noise behind him after he spread the mayo on the rye.
Evan stood behind him, a slightly crooked smile on his face. ‘I know where we can start. We can make a move that Jargo will never anticipate.’
Galadriel looked at the readouts while sipping decaf and eating a chocolate doughnut. She knew she shouldn’t, but stress made her crave carbs. She had hacked into the FAA database, examining every plane takeoff in Louisiana and Mississippi since Jargo and Dezz had lost Carrie and Evan in New Orleans. Every flight accounted for, recorded, logged. But no flight that led to a place where it should not. Which meant that they hadn’t flown, they had driven out of New Orleans. Or they could still be in New Orleans.
But she had already been through every hospital record she could acquire, stealthily weeding through the databases, and no young woman matching Carrie’s description had been admitted to a hospital in that area. She would have to widen the search, cover Texas to Florida.
She sipped her coffee, nibbled at her doughnut. Shame that Carrie was a traitor. She rather liked Carrie, although she had never met her and had only talked with her on the phone a few times. But Carrie and Evan were young and stupid, and sooner or later they’d poke up their heads, via a travel document or a credit activity, and Galadriel would see them. Then Jargo would unleash his dogs and end this particular mess.
She had an unusual protocol to follow, designed by Jargo years ago, in case he feared the network was in danger of exposure. Panic mode. She was to monitor phone lines used only for emergency communications by certain Deeps, to ensure that no one was running. She ran a program that would feed cleaned money into banks around the world. And for some odd reason, he added another request last night: she was to track cellular phone call patterns to and from a small chunk of southwestern rural Ohio. Glean every cellular call ma
de, incoming or outbound, then deliver the data to Jargo.
She wondered, exactly, what the hell Jargo was looking for in Ohio. Or what conceivable danger could lurk for him on such quiet country roads and fields.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 16
27
W ednesday morning Evan and Carrie regarded each other’s new look over breakfast.
‘You don’t look like you,’ Evan said.
‘Welcome to Salon Bricklayer,’ she said.
Evan’s hair was now a rich auburn and cut in a cleaned-up military burr, his hazel eyes hidden behind brown contact lenses. He wore a dark suit with white shirt, a shift from his normal colorful clothing. Carrie’s dark hair had been lightened to blond and cut short. She wore tinted glasses that made her eyes look brown instead of blue.
‘Call me chameleon boy,’ Evan said.
‘Hope and pray that this is the last time you ever have to go through a transformation.’
After reviewing their plans with Bedford, Evan and Carrie boarded the small government jet that had brought them from New Orleans. They flew to Ohio, landing at a small regional airport east of Dayton.
Bedford had arranged for a car to be left for them, and while the pilot hurried to fetch it, Carrie and Evan waited under the canopy in front of the airport. Rain weighed the pewter sky, the wind blew damp and constant. Evan had an umbrella, from the plane, and he abandoned the idea of talking to her under it, even surrounded by the open lot. There might be a mike hidden inside the umbrella’s shaft. There might be a mike hidden in the car. The pilot might report every word he spoke back to Bedford. He wondered how his parents had coped with the burden of endless deception. Perhaps it explained their silences toward each other, the gentle quiet of the love that demanded few words.
Goinsville – where Bernita Briggs had told him that the Smithson family, his family, was from – lay ten miles west of the slant of Interstate 71. The pilot drove. Evan sat in the backseat. Carrie’s arm rested in a sling and she seemed tired but relieved. Relieved, Evan decided, to be out of her bed, to be taking action against Jargo.
They left the CIA pilot drinking coffee and ordering a second breakfast in a diner at the edge of town, working through a thick magazine of crossword puzzles.
Evan drove into Goinsville and parked in the town square. Four junk shops angling for antiquers’ dollars; an outdoor cafe with weathered tables, empty under the rain-bottomed clouds; an optometrist’s office; a law office; a title office. A normal, anonymous town.
‘Goinsville never quite got going,’ he said. He drove a block off the square and parked in front of a small, newer building with GOINSVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY in metal letters mounted against the brick.
Evan told the librarian on duty that they were researching genealogies.
The woman – small, dark, pretty – frowned. ‘If you’re looking for birth certificates, you’re out of luck before 1967.’
‘Why?’
‘County courthouse burned down. We’re the county seat. All the records went up in smoke with them. Anything from ’68 on, we can do.’
‘What about your local newspaper?’
‘On microfilm back to the 1940s,’ the librarian said. ‘We’ve also got old phone books – in original form, if that helps. What’s the family name?’
‘Smithson.’ First time he could claim the name as his own, first time he had said it aloud in public. Arthur and Julie Smithson. They used to live here. They grew up here.
‘I don’t know any Smithsons,’ the librarian said.
‘My parents grew up in an orphanage here.’
‘Goodness. No orphanage here. Closest one would be in Dayton, I’m sure. But I’ve only lived here for five years.’
She showed them the microfilm machines, told them to ask if they needed any help, and retreated back to her desk.
‘The orphanage must be closed,’ he said. Or Mrs. Briggs was mistaken. Or a liar. ‘Start with the current phone books, look for any Smithsons. I’ll start with the paper. I got to go to the bathroom though.’
She nodded and he returned to the entry foyer. Next to the rest-room was a pay phone. He fed it quarters, dialed Shadey’s cell phone.
‘H’lo?’
‘Shadey. It’s Evan. I only have a few seconds. Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, man, where are you?’
‘I’m fine. I’m with… the government.’
‘Please be kidding.’
‘I’m not. Did you make it back to Houston?’
‘Yes. Charged a plane ride back on my Visa, man, you owe me.’ But the earlier bite in his tone, when he and Evan had talked in Houston, was gone. ‘You sure you okay?’
‘Yes, and I’ll make sure you get your money.’
‘I… I don’t mean to sound cheap. It’s just now I’m scared, Evan.’
‘You should stay out of sight.’
‘I am. I called in sick at work, I’m staying at a friend’s house.’
‘Good idea. Did you get Jargo and Dezz on film?’
‘Crystal clear. Got Dezz grabbing that little mama, him shooting and missing that guard, too. That’s called attempted murder in Louisiana, I do believe.’
‘I need you to upload the film to a remote server where I can get it. Do you know how to do that?’
‘No, but my friend knows computers. Where do you want it?’
Evan gave him the name of a remote server service he’d used to back up dailies of his films, so he always had an off-site backup in case his computer was stolen or his house burned down.
Shadey repeated back the information. ‘I’ll set up an account under my stepbrother’s name. Password is evanowesme.’
‘Thanks. Stay low, Shadey.’
‘When are you coming back to Houston?’
‘I don’t know. Thanks for everything. I’ll wire you your money.’
‘Man. Don’t worry about it. Watch your back.’
‘I will. I got to run, Shadey. Stay safe. I’ll call you when I can.’
He walked back to the table and Carrie gave him a smile as he sat back down.
‘Not much to look for in the phone books, the last twenty years,’ she said. ‘No Smithsons. I’m already on the newspapers. You start on that set.’
Evan put in the microfilm to search through the town paper. He was conscious of Carrie’s closeness, of the smell of soap on her skin, of what it would be like to kiss her and pretend none of this nightmare had happened.
It wouldn’t ever be the same between them, he knew. The innocence was gone forever.
‘Your parents could have lied to your source,’ Carrie said.
‘It bothers you I won’t tell you the source’s name.’ He had not told anyone Bernita Briggs’s name or how he’d found the information tying his family to the missing Smithsons. Bedford hadn’t pressed him.
‘No. You’re protecting that person. I’d do the same in your shoes.’
‘I want to trust you. I know I can. I just don’t want Bedford to know.’
‘You can trust him, Evan.’ But she went back to her search.
He started on a set of microfilmed newspapers that began in January 1968. Goinsville news was full of civic events, farm reports, pride in the school’s students, and a smattering of news from the wider world beyond. He spun the film reader’s wheel past car crashes, births, football reports, a saints’ parade of Eagle Scouts and FFA honorees.
He stopped at February 13, 1968, when the county courthouse burned. Read the article. The fire completely consumed the papers in the old courthouse. In the following days, arson rose its head and had also been suspected in the orphanage fire three months before. Investigators were attempting to find a link between the two fires.
‘Are you to the end of 1967?’ he asked.
‘No. Halfway through ’63.’
‘Go to November ’67. I found it. Orphanage fire.’
In a few minutes, she found the newspaper account. The Hope Home for Children sheltered the illegitimate unwanted in Goinsvi
lle after World War II. The stray seeds of southwest Ohio that didn’t end up at church homes in Dayton or Cincinnati apparently found root at the Hope Home. It housed both boys and girls. In November 1967, fire erupted in Hope’s administrative offices, tearing like wind through the rest of the complex. Four children and two adults died of smoke inhalation. The rest of the children were relocated to other facilities throughout Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia.
The Hope Home never reopened. Evan went back to the courthouse fire story. Most articles written about the orphanage tragedy and the courthouse fire carried the byline of Dealey Todd.
‘Let’s look him up in the most recent phone book,’ Evan said.
Carrie did. ‘He’s listed.’
‘I’ll call him and see if he’ll talk to us.’ Evan did. ‘His wife says he’s retired, at home and bored. Let’s go.’
28
‘T hose poor kids,’ Dealey Todd said. He hovered near eighty, but he wore the unfettered smile of a child. His hair had beaten a long-ago retreat, leaving a trail of freckles mapped across his head. He wore old khakis that needed a wash and a shirt faded with loving wear. His den held a rat’s nest of old paperbacks and three TVs, one tuned and muted to CNN, the others tuned to a telenovela, also muted.
‘Learning Spanish,’ he said.
‘Watching pretty girls,’ his wife said.
Evan’s throat tightened as CNN played. His face had been on CNN repeatedly in the past couple of days, although other stories had now bumped his from the news. But Bedford’s disguise seemed to work; Dealey Todd hadn’t given him a more curious look than he would have given any other stranger when Evan introduced himself and Carrie as Bill and Terry Smithson. Probably Dealey paid more attention to the telenovela bosoms than he did the news feeds.
Mrs. Todd was a bustling woman who offered coffee and promptly vanished into the kitchen to watch yet another television.
Evan decided to play a sympathetic hand. ‘We think my parents came through the Hope Home orphanage, but their records were destroyed,’ said Evan. ‘We’re trying to locate any other alternative source of records, and also to learn more about the Home. My parents died several years ago, and we want to piece together their early lives.’
