Panic

by Jeff Abbott

  ‘Admirable,’ Dealey Todd said. ‘Interest in your parents. My own daughter lives down in Cleveland and can’t be bothered to phone more than once a month.’

  ‘Dealey,’ Mrs. Todd called from the kitchen. ‘They don’t care about that, honey doll.’

  The honey doll made a sour face. ‘Okay, the orphanage.’ He shrugged, returned to his smile, sipped at his black coffee. ‘Orphanage got built, then it burned ten years later. So you might be in for a long, difficult haul to find records.’

  Evan shook his head. ‘There has to be a source for records. Who built it? Maybe whatever charity sponsored it has what I need.’

  ‘Let’s see.’ Dealey closed his eyes in thought. ‘Originally a nondenominational charity out of Dayton started it up, but they sold it to’ – he tapped on his bottom lip – ‘let’s see, I want to say a company out of Delaware. You could probably find a record of sale at the county clerk’s office. But I remember they went bankrupt, too, after the fire, and no one rebuilt the orphanage.’

  A bankrupt owner. God only knew what had happened to the files. But Evan knew from his documentary interviews that dead ends often had left turns, just out of view. He thought for a second and asked, ‘How did the town view the orphanage?’

  ‘Y’know, not that Goinsville isn’t a charitable place, ’cause it is, but many folks around here weren’t overjoyed with the orphanage. Kind of a not-in-my-backyard feeling. Bunch of so-called church ladies were just tight-jawed about it-’

  ‘Dealey, honey doll, don’t exaggerate,’ Mrs. Todd called from the kitchen.

  ‘I thought when I retired from the paper I left editors behind,’ Dealey said.

  Silence from the kitchen.

  ‘I’m not exaggerating,’ he said to Evan and Carrie. ‘People didn’t like in particular that young ladies in trouble could go to Hope Home and drop their precious loads. You get the sinners along with the end product.’ He stopped suddenly, the smile now uneasy, remembering that he was speaking of Evan’s parents and grandmothers.

  ‘Did anyone dislike the place enough to burn it?’ Evan asked.

  ‘Everyone thought it was an accident at first, the wiring. But six months after the fire, a teenager named Eddie Childers shot his mama and himself. The police found souvenirs from both burn sites – baby socks, a girl’s uniform from the orphanage, family photos from the workers at the courthouse. All stashed under his bed. I’ll never forget that, I was there when the officers found the stuff. And he left a note taking responsibility. He was a wild kid. Sad, very sad.’

  ‘So the records of any children born at the Hope Home were destroyed,’ Evan said. ‘Because both the orphanage and the county courthouse were gone, and the owners went bankrupt.’

  ‘Yes, basically,’ Dealey said. ‘I remember I wrote a few stories about the company that owned the orphanage after it burned… because, you know, it brought about twenty or so jobs to the town. People hoped they’d rebuild. Twenty jobs is twenty jobs.’

  ‘Well, we’ll look up those stories at the library,’ Carrie said.

  Evan thought, This is a dead end, this is nothing. It couldn’t be. And then he thought, That is the point, Goinsville is a dead end. Someone wanted it to be the end of the road for anyone who ever came looking for Evan’s parents. It can’t be. You can’t run a business that takes care of kids and have every bit of its history vanish…

  ‘Thanks for your time,’ Carrie said.

  ‘Twenty jobs,’ Evan said suddenly. ‘Hey, do you know anyone who worked at the Hope Home that might still be alive?’

  Dealey bit his lip in thought. Mrs. Todd emerged from the kitchen. ‘Well, Dealey’s cousin’s wife worked at the orphanage as a volunteer. Read the kiddies stories every Wednesday, you know. Get ’em interested in books because you know that’s the key to success. I remember because Phyllis won a volunteer-of-the-year award, and my mother-in-law nagged at me for weeks to volunteer myself. She might be able to help you, or give you the names of the employees.’

  ‘Does she by any chance still live around here?’ Evan asked. ‘I could show her pictures of my mom and dad, see if she would remember them.’

  ‘Sure,’ Dealey said. ‘Phyllis Garner. She lives five streets over.’

  ‘Phyllis is as sharp as a tack,’ said Mrs. Todd. ‘Honey doll, shame it don’t run in your family.’

  A quick phone call determined that Mrs. Garner was home, watching the same soap opera as Mrs. Todd. They drove over the five streets with Dealey Todd to an immaculately maintained brick home, shaded by giant oaks. Mrs. Garner wore a lavender sweater set, was perfectly coiffed, and was eighty-five if a day.

  Phyllis Garner gestured them to sit on a floral couch.

  ‘I know it’s been many years, ma’am.’ Evan showed her current photos of his parents. ‘Their names were Arthur and Julie Smithson.’

  Phyllis Garner studied the photo. ‘Smithson. I think I do recall that name. James!’ Phyllis called to her grandson, who was puttering around in her garage. ‘Come help me a minute.’ They vanished down into a basement, leaving Dealey, Evan, and Carrie to talk about the weather and college football, two of Dealey’s keen interests.

  Phyllis returned fifteen minutes later, dusty, but smiling. The grandson carried a box. He set it on the coffee table and left to finish his puttering.

  Phyllis sat down between Evan and Carrie, opened the box, and pulled out a yellowing scrapbook. ‘Photos of the kids. Mementos. They’d draw me a picture and sign it for Miss Phyllis. One girl always signed it for Mommy, told me she needed to practice on me, for the day when she got herself a real mother. It broke my heart. I wanted to bring her home but my husband wouldn’t hear of it, and it was the only argument I never won. My heart bled for those children. No one wanted them. That’s the worst thing in this world, to be unwanted. I hope you recognize your parents in here.’ She flipped through pages. Phyllis Garner, radiant and beautiful and probably every orphan’s dream. Evan wondered if she had been conscious of how the bereft children must have ached for her to slip her hand into theirs and say, You’re coming home with me. It might have been less painful if such an angel had kept her distance.

  She pointed at a photo of a group of six or seven children. Evan’s eyes went to the children first, looking for his father and mother in every face. No. Not them. Then he noticed the man standing behind the children.

  The man was short, balding, but not completely bald. He wore glasses and a thin, academician’s beard. But the shape of the face, the sureness of the stance, were the same. Evan had seen the face several times, in the news clippings left anonymously for him at his lecture four months ago. The man’s smile was tight, as though bottling in the scintillating personality that had made him such a force in London.

  Alexander Bast.

  ‘That man. Who’s he?’ Evan asked. He kept his voice steady.

  Phyllis Garner flipped the picture over; she had a list of names written in tidy cursive on the back. ‘Edward Simms. He owned the company that ran Hope Home. He only came here once, that I recall. I asked him to pose with a group of the children. In honor of his visit. My God, he smiled, but you would have thought I scalded him. He acted like the children were dirty. The other ladies found him charming, but I don’t have to count scales to know a snake.’

  Carrie’s hand closed around Evan’s arm. Hard. She pointed wordlessly at a tall, thin boy standing near Bast. Shock on her face.

  ‘What’s the matter, dear?’ Phyllis asked.

  29

  A fter a long moment Carrie said, ‘Nothing. I thought… but it was nothing.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Evan asked.

  She nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘This was the last batch of kids that came in before the fire, I believe.’ Phyllis Garner laid the open scrapbook on her lap, ran her fingers along the page. ‘I remember they were shy at first. And of course, they were older kids, not babies. Sad that they hadn’t been adopted yet. People wanted babies.’

  C
arrie pointed at one tall, lanky kid. ‘He was in the picture with Mr. Simms.’ She kept her grip on Evan’s arm.

  Phyllis pried the picture out of the plastic page cover. ‘I wrote their names on the back… Richard Allan.’ She frowned at Carrie. ‘Honey, are you okay? You still look upset.’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you. You’re right, it’s sad, these older kids not finding homes.’ Carrie’s voice was normal again.

  ‘It was just so unfair,’ Phyllis said. ‘The focus on finding babies. This was an appealing group of kids. Nice-looking, bright, clearly well cared for, well spoken. At the orphanage, you’d see kids, and all the hope had died in them. Hope that they would not just find families, but have a life beyond low-end jobs. Orphans face such an uphill fight. These kids, they don’t look very broken at all.’

  Evan flipped a page. A picture of two teenage girls, a teenage boy standing between them, brownish hair thick, a wide smile on his face, a scattering of freckles across high cheekbones, a tiny gap between his front teeth.

  Jargo. His eyes were the same, cold and knowing.

  ‘My God, my God,’ Carrie said. It was almost a moan.

  Sweat broke out on Evan’s back.

  ‘Did you find your dad?’ Phyllis asked brightly.

  Evan looked down the rest of the page. Two photos down were two kids, a girl, blond with green eyes, memorably pretty but with a serious cast to her face. A boy standing with her, holding a football, sweaty from play, light hair askew, grinning, ready to conquer the world.

  Mitchell and Donna Casher, young teenagers. Frozen in time, like Jargo.

  ‘May I?’ Evan asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Phyllis said.

  He loosened the picture from the plastic cover, flipped it over. Arthur Smithson and Julie Phelps, written in Phyllis’s neat script.

  ‘Smithson,’ Phyllis said. ‘Oh, that’s it! Are they your folks?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ His voice was hoarse. He forced himself to smile at her.

  ‘Honey, then you take that picture, it’s yours. Oh, I’m so glad I could help.’

  Carrie tightened her grip on his hand. ‘Phyllis, did any of this last group of kids die in the fire?’

  ‘No. It was younger kids. The older kids all got out.’

  ‘Do you remember where any of these kids went after the fire? Specific other orphanages?’ Evan asked.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I don’t even know that I was told.’ Phyllis leaned back in her chair. ‘We were told it was best for us not to stay in touch with the kids.’

  ‘May we borrow these photos? We can make copies, scan them into a computer, give them back to you before we leave town,’ Evan said. ‘It would be huge for us.’

  ‘I never did enough for those kids,’ Phyllis said. ‘I’m glad someone finally cares. Take the pictures, with my blessings.’

  After waving good-bye to Phyllis and Dealey, they drove toward the airport, where a computer and a scanner waited on the jet.

  ‘My father,’ Carrie said, her voice shaking. ‘That boy in the picture next to Alexander Bast, it’s my dad, Evan, Jesus, it’s my dad!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Our parents knew each other. Knew Jargo. When they were kids.’ She jabbed at one of the photos. ‘Richard Allan. My dad’s name was Craig Leblanc. But this is him, I know it’s him. Don’t go to the jet. Let’s go get coffee for a minute, please.’

  They sat in a corner of a Goinsville diner, the only customers except for an elderly couple in a booth who exchanged laughs and moony smiles as if they were on a third date.

  ‘So what the hell does this mean?’ Carrie studied the picture of her father as if he might have the answers. Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Evan, look at him. He looks so young. So innocent.’ She wiped the tears away. ‘How can this be?’

  This evil – Jargo – that had touched their lives went far deeper than Evan had ever imagined. It intertwined his life with Carrie’s even before they were born. It frightened him, made the threat against them seem like a shadow always looming over them, both of them unaware that they lived in darkness.

  Evan took a steadying breath. Find order in the chaos, he decided. ‘Let’s walk through it.’ He ticked the facts on his fingers. ‘Our parents and Jargo were all at an orphanage together. The home burned down with all its records. The kids get dispersed. Then the county courthouse burns a month later, and it’s all blamed on a firebug who commits suicide. Alexander Bast, a CIA operative, runs the orphanage under a false name.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘The answer’s in front of us, if we were looking for these kids’ pasts. The records. The birth certificates. You could create a false identity very easily, using Goinsville and the orphanage as your place of birth. You can say, yes, I was born at the Hope Home. My original birth certificate? Unfortunately destroyed by fire.’

  Carrie frowned. ‘But the state of Ohio would have issued them new ones, right? Replaced the records.’

  ‘Yes. But based on information provided by Bast,’ Evan said. ‘He could have falsified records so that he could claim every orphan living at Hope Home was born at Hope Home. Maybe those kids had different identities before they came to this orphanage. But they come here and they’re Richard Allan and Arthur Smithson and Julie Phelps. After the fire, they have new birth certificates in those names, forever, without question. And then you just ask for replacement birth certificates in the names of any of the dozens of kids at Goinsville.’

  Carrie nodded. ‘A whole pool of new identities.’

  Evan took a long sip of coffee. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the photo; his mother had been so beautiful; his father, so innocent-looking. ‘Go back further. Back to Bast, because he’s the trigger. Tell me why a London nightclub owner, friend to celebrities, dabbles in an American orphanage.’

  ‘The answer is he’s not just a London party boy,’ Carrie said.

  ‘We know he was CIA.’

  ‘But low-level.’

  ‘Or so Bedford says.’

  ‘Bedford’s not a liar, Evan, I promise you.’

  ‘Never mind Bedford. This might have been a way for the Agency to create new identities more easily.’

  ‘But they’re just kids. Why would kids need new identities?’

  ‘Because… they were part of the CIA. Long ago. I’m just theorizing.’

  Her face went pale. ‘Wouldn’t Bedford know about this if the Deeps were part of the CIA’s history?’

  ‘Bedford got the job to track down Jargo only about a year ago. We don’t know what he was told.’ He grabbed her hands. ‘Our folks left their lives. Quit being Richard Allan and Julie Phelps and Arthur Smithson and took on new names. Bedford might have been told it’s a problem he’s inherited, rather than a terrible secret.’

  Evan went back to the stack of photos. ‘Look here. Jargo with my folks.’ He pointed at a picture of a tall, muscular boy standing between Mitchell and Donna Casher, his big arms around the Cashers’ necks, smiling a lopsided grin that was more confident than friendly. Mitchell Casher bent a bit toward Jargo’s face, as though asking him a question. Donna Casher looked stiff, uncomfortable, but her hand was holding Mitchell’s.

  Carrie traced Jargo’s face, looked at Mitchell’s. ‘There’s a resemblance with your dad.’

  ‘I don’t see it.’

  ‘Their mouths,’ she said. ‘He and Jargo have the same mouth. Look at their eyes.’

  Now he saw the similarity in the curve of the smile. ‘They’re both just grinning big.’ He didn’t want to look at the men’s eyes – the nearly identical squint. It couldn’t be, he thought. It couldn’t be.

  She inspected the back of the photo. ‘It just says Artie, John, Julie.’

  He flipped over to the other picture of Jargo that Phyllis had shown him. ‘John Cobham.’

  ‘Cobham. Not Smithson.’ She clasped both his hands in hers.

  ‘The photos are faded,’ he said in a thin voice. ‘It blurs features. Makes everyone loo
k the same.’

  She leaned back. ‘Forget it. I’m sorry. Back to what you said. Whether Bedford knows. He must not, he wouldn’t have bothered to send us here.’

  ‘So what are you going to tell him?’

  ‘The truth, Evan. Why not?’

  ‘Because maybe, maybe this is a CIA embarrassment Bedford doesn’t know about. Bast brought these kids here, set up names for them, made it hard for anyone to ever trace their records, and he worked for the CIA.’ Evan leaned forward. ‘Maybe the CIA took these young kids and raised them to become spies and assassins.’

  ‘That’s a crazy theory. The CIA would never do this.’

  ‘Don’t take the CIA’s side automatically.’ Evan lowered his voice, as though Bedford sat in the next booth. ‘I’m not attacking Bedford. But don’t tell me what the Agency – or maybe a small group of misguided people in the Agency – might or might not do, or have done over forty years ago, because we don’t know. Bast was CIA. He brought our parents here. For a reason.’

  Carrie held up a hand. ‘Assume you’re right. But, at some point, this group took on new names and new lives, and they all went to work for Jargo. Why? That’s the question.’

  ‘Bast died. Jargo took over.’

  ‘Jargo killed Bast. It has to be.’

  ‘Maybe. At the least, Jargo had a hold on our parents and maybe these other kids. An unbreakable hold. I want to go to London.’

  ‘To find out about Alexander Bast.’

  ‘Yes. And to find Hadley Khan. He knew about the connection between Bast and my parents. It can’t be coincidence.’

  ‘It can’t be coincidence, either, that your mom picked now to steal the files, to run. She knew you’d been approached about Bast.’

  ‘I never told her. Never. You know I don’t talk about my films when I’m concepting. You were the first person I told.’

  ‘Evan. She knew. You e-mailed Hadley Khan, trying to find out why he left you that package about Bast. She could have looked on your computer. Maybe she saw Bast’s name in an e-mail to Hadley. Or when she met me… maybe I reminded her of my dad. Maybe she was afraid you’d be recruited. And she just wanted a permanent escape hatch for your family.’