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.’
43
T oo late. Evan opened CRADLE. It held old photos – of children. Sixteen children. One of his father, with his wide smile. His mother was a blond wisp of a child, high-cheekboned, her hair twisted in a garish, girlish braid. Jargo at seven already had the flat, cold eyes of a killer. A sweet-faced girl looked like a childish version of the driver McNee. Names lay underneath each photo. He stared at his parents and Jargo. And Carrie’s father.
Arthur Smithson. Julie Phelps. John Cobham. Richard Allan.
‘Those were your real names,’ Evan said. ‘What happened to your parents?’
‘They all died. We never knew them.’
‘Where were you born?’
His dad didn’t answer. Instead he asked, ‘Did you download the encryption software?’
‘Yes.’
His father leaned over and clicked buttons. Dropped the CRADLE document on it again and the file reopened.
Not the CIA. Not an independent organization that Alexander Bast had started and Jargo had hijacked. New names lay beneath each schoolchild photo.
His mother. Julija Ivanovna Kuzhkina.
His father. Piotr Borisovich Matarov.
Jargo. Nikolai Borisovich Matarov.
‘No,’ Evan said.
‘We were a great, great secret,’ his father said behind him. In tears. ‘The seeds of the next wave of Soviet intelligence. The gulags were full of women, political dissidents, who were not allowed to keep their children. Our fathers were either other dissidents or prison guards who impregnated the women. Our mothers got to see us – once a month, for an hour – until we were two and then never got to see us again. Most of the children ended up in labor or re-education camps. Alexander Bast went through the camps. He found the female prisoners with the highest IQs – giving them legitimate tests, because the Soviets claimed dissidents were mentally damaged and had low IQs – and he tested their two-year-olds, and then he took a group of us away.’
‘Bast was CIA.’
‘And KGB. He was a KGB-dangled double agent. His loyalty was to the USSR. He played the CIA for fools.’
Evan touched the screen, the photo of his mother. ‘He transformed you into little Americans.’
‘In Ukraine, the Soviets built a replica of an American town. Called Clifton. Bast had another complex near it. We had the best English and French teachers, we spoke it like natives. We were even taught to mimic accents: Southern, New Englander, New Jersey.’ Mitchell cleared his throat. ‘We even had American textbooks, although our instructors were quick to point out Western falsehoods in favor of Soviet truth. And from an early age, we were taught tradecraft. How to fight, if needed. How to kill. How to lie. How to spy. How to live a completely double life. We grew up in constant training, programmed for success, for fearlessness, to be the best.’
Evan put his arm around his father.
‘At the time, Soviet intelligence was in disarray,’ Mitchell said. ‘The FBI and the CIA kept rolling up and shutting down Soviet operations and agents in the States, because so many of the American-born agents had ties to the Communist Party before World War Two. And if you were a Soviet diplomat, the FBI and CIA knew you were also likely KGB – it tied the spies’ hands, constantly. The illegals – spies living under deep cover – were more successful. Or at least Bast sold the upper echelon of KGB on this idea. Very few knew of the program. It was identified under a training program called CRADLE on budgetary documents and reports, and given an extremely low profile. No one could know. The investment that would have been lost was too much, much more than training an adult agent.’
‘Then Bast brought you to the orphanage in Ohio.’
‘He bought it. Set us up in our new names and identities…’
‘And then promptly destroyed the orphanage and the courthouse. Giving you a fallback position if your identity papers were ever questioned. And a source for new identities when needed.’
Mitchell nodded.
