‘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.’