“He shot a fellow agent?”
“Twice in the head.”
“He shot an American? Jesus, Paul. No wonder he’s in a wheelchair. Who put him there?” Her eyes got big. “You?”
“Vengeance ain’t my style, Jesse. You know that. There is no revenge. Not on this earth.”
“Yeah?” She stared at him probingly. “Then who did it?”
“He put himself in that wheelchair.”
“Come again?”
“Doug stepped off the roof of our embassy in Singapore.”
“Suicide?”
“That was his intention. But the body doesn’t always obey the mind. He’d done too many parachute jumps to auger passively into the ground. His body remembered how to fall. Saved his life, if not his spine.”
“Wow… But you said he got shot.”
“That was a different time.”
“When did you step in?”
“When I found him begging on Washington Boulevard in Ogden, Utah.”
“How’d you track him down? VA hospital?”
“He grew up in Ogden. When it all goes to hell, people go home.”
Jessica Kincaid shook her head. “Sometimes I feel guilty.”
“For what?”
“All the good stuff you do that I don’t.”
Janson laughed. “One crusader in the outfit is plenty—Seriously, Jesse, you’re young. You’re in a different place; you’re still honing yourself, learning your craft. Go tell Mike we’re going to Africa.”
Jessica Kincaid stepped to the front of the plane and opened the cockpit door. Forty thousand feet under the Embraer’s long nose fenced farmland stretched for as far as she could see. Fields were green in the sunlight. Creeks and rivers were fringed with trees.
She laid a hand each on the shoulders of Mike and Ed. “Boys, you know where Africa is?”
“Heard of it,” said Ed.
“The boss wants to go there.”
Mike asked, “Any particular part of Africa?”
“Port Harcourt, Nigeria.”
She observed closely as Ed brought the changed destination up on the Honeywell Flight Management System. New-generation software integrated the Embraer’s WAAS GPS, waypoint data, and the Future Air Navigation System for flying under transocean Procedure Control. He began charting a course to minimize distance and fuel burn.
“Hang a right,” he told Mike, showing him the course. “We’ll fuel up in Caracas.”
Mike said, “Better get some sleep.”
“Soon as I enter our passenger manifest for Customs and Border Protection.”
Mike tossed a grin over his shoulder at Kincaid. “Miss Jessica, if I were to move over while Ed sacks out, would you like some left-seat flight time?”
“You bet!” she said, always eager to fly the plane. She listened while Mike radioed Atlantic Air Traffic Control Center, through whose airspace they were flying, to request permission to change their route. When he received clearance to turn to a new course, he eased the big silver jet onto its starboard wing.
“Be right back,” said Kincaid. “Soon as I check on the boss.”
She hurried to the main cabin, braced against the tilt. Janson was seated on the high side, staring out the window at nothing but sky. It’s more than Doug Case, she thought. It’s more than the doctor. The Machine sensed that something didn’t fit. She thought of challenging him, of saying, “Something else is going on. What is it?” But even if Janson was ready to admit it, she knew by the tilt of his head that he could not put it into words, yet.
FOUR
In the Free Foree camp, hidden in the caves that honeycombed the densely forested mountainous center of the island state, seven frightened men waited with their arms tied around the trunks of broad-leaf evergreen ironwoods.
Shafts of sunlight pierced the ragged canopy seventy-five feet above their heads where rampant vines were killing the treetops. The drone of a swift stream racing down the mountain muffled the sounds of nearby activity, heightening the prisoners’ sense of isolation from events that would determine their fate. They could not hear the shouting in the cave that sheltered the field hospital.
“What did they do to my father?” an angry Douglas Poe demanded of Dr. Terry Flannigan. The son of the leader of the Free Foree Movement was a tall, dark-skinned twenty-five-year-old with a wiry build, a hard mouth, and cornrowed hair.
“About everything you can do to a man and not quite kill him,” the doctor replied, working hard at maintaining enough detachment to keep his head on straight. When you were trying to put a patient back together again it did not pay to dwell on the nature of his fellow human beings who had taken him apart.
Flannigan glanced warily at the son. Douglas Poe seemed thoroughly unhinged by the sight of his tortured father. One false move, thought the doctor, and he, too, would end up tied to a tree with the others waiting to be shot. Flannigan shivered. The air was markedly cooler on the slopes of Pico Clarence and even cooler inside the cave.
About the only part of the poor devil they hadn’t tormented was his face. His eyes were closed—Flannigan had given him enough morphine from Amber Dawn’s first-aid kit to see to that—but if you didn’t look at the rest of him what you saw in his face was a once-vigorous sixty-eight-year-old with salt-and-pepper mustache and eyebrows, a thick head of kinky hair, dyed black and growing out at the roots, big elephant ears, a narrow Portuguese nose, a strong jaw, and the double chin and round cheeks of a man who enjoyed himself at the dinner table. Flannigan found it hard to believe that Ferdinand Poe had given up his pleasures to lead a revolution. Almost as hard to believe that he was their prisoner.
“If he dies, you’re next!” vowed the son.
“Fuck you!” said the doctor, who had nothing to lose. He could say what he wanted. They wouldn’t hurt a hair on his head unless the old man kicked the bucket. But even though they needed a doctor for dozens of wounded, angry-son Douglas would pull the trigger if his father died. Just as Douglas was about to pull it on the jerks tied to the trees. Not that the doctor would grieve for those bastards. They were the commandos who had boarded Amber Dawn and shot everybody, so whatever they got they had coming.
But where it got strange was that Douglas the son, Ferdinand Poe’s son, was accusing his own soldiers of going rogue. Terry Flannigan did not know what the hell was going on. Except that the commandos’ leader, the South African psycho who had murdered Janet, had disappeared before the rest got tied to the trees. Poe had sent a hundred men out combing the jungle for him with orders to shoot to kill. But the doctor had seen the South African operate on the long boat trip into the island and the dangerous slog through the swamps and forests and he would be very surprised if they caught the animal.
Douglas Poe reached for his father’s hand and felt him flinch as he touched him. “I thought you gave him morphine!” Douglas shouted accusingly.
“I told you not to touch him,” said the doctor. “If I give him any more he’ll fall into a coma. Your cave is not equipped to monitor a patient in a coma.”
“But when—?”
Terrence Flannigan resorted to an answer as old as Hippocrates and probably still current with witch doctors: “He needs time.”
Douglas Poe drew his pistol from the holster strapped to his thigh, spun on his heel, and stormed out of the cave. The soldiers tied to the trees craned their necks to watch him coming. They tugged at the ropes holding them to the rough bark. A man cried out. Another groaned. Their sergeant addressed Poe in measured terms: “Douglas, Comrade, we only did what you ordered us to do.”
“I did not order you to kill them.”
“Yes, you did. You said to kill the oil boat crew and sink the boat.”
“I did not.”
“Douglas. Brother. Comrade. I heard you with my own ears on the radio.”
“Liar. I never spoke to you on the radio.”
“I heard you say it to Sergeant Major Van Pelt: ‘Shoot them. Sink the boat.’ ”
“You gave Sergeant Major Van Pelt the crew list.”
“I did not.”
“He told me you did.”
Douglas Poe cocked his pistol, pressed the barrel to the sergeant’s temple, and jerked the trigger. Then Poe hurried from tree to tree and shot the rest. It was over in thirty seconds. Terry Flannigan watched from the mouth of the cave, sickened and terrified. He wondered if he was strong enough to run for it like the South African?
Isle de Foree was thirty miles long and twenty wide. Six hundred square miles. The insurgents held the highlands in the middle, and held it tightly if the scores of heavy machine guns Flannigan had seen mounted in treetops and the burned-out wreckage of Iboga’s helicopters was any indication. The dictator controlled the lowlands that descended to the Atlantic Ocean, which seemed a very long way away. In between, where it was hotter and wetter, the forest thickened into lush jungle. Above the plantations. On the way up that had appeared to be no-man’s-land. The insurgents had been cautious moving through it.
Should he run for it?
He was in lousy shape. He hadn’t worked out in years and he drank too much. He was no soldier, no jungle fighter. They would catch him and kill him if he didn’t get a long lead. Problem was, if the old man died they’d kill him anyway. He resolved to make a run for it, the sooner the better. A boy tugged at his arm, one of the kids who acted as orderlies. The only thing Flannigan liked about FFM was that they did not employ child soldiers. These were orphans kept safe in the camp running errands and bringing food and water. “He awakes.”
“What?”
“Minister Ferdinand awakes.” Ferdinard Poe had been foreign minister before Iboga seized power. They called him Minister.
Flannigan hurried to Poe’s cot.
Ferdinand Poe was staring at him, peering through the drug like an ancient mariner piercing the fog. He had a strong voice that seemed appropriate to the strong jaw and the double chin and the round cheeks. The voice of a man who believed in himself. “Who are you?”
“I’m your doctor,” said Flannigan, with a sinking heart. He wasn’t going anywhere. “How are you feeling, sir?”
FIVE
Janson’s diggers discovered that among the gunrunners supplying the Free Foree Movement was a tight-knit team of Angolans and South Africans. That explained their success in repeatedly breaking an island blockade. Tenacious Angolans had been fighting civil wars since the days of competing superpowers. Rebel diamonds and government oil had paid for tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets and they knew weapons and escape and evasion tactics like no one on the African continent. With the possible exception of the South Africans whose experience with advanced weaponry made them the mercenaries of choice.
The actual transporters were a young, recklessly brave pair—Agostinho Kiluanji and Augustus Heinz—nicknamed the Double As, of whom little was known, though Kiluanji was probably a nom de guerre taken from a heroic sixteenth-century defender against the invading Portuguese. Janson knew the type, poor but ambitious men putting their lives on the line to earn the money to become full-fledged weapons dealers. Money would talk.
But before the Embraer landed in Nigeria, the word came back on the sat phone that the Double As were not interested in ferrying two covert operators into the rebel camp.
“Increase the offer,” Janson ordered.
His negotiator in Luanda did and reported back that they still weren’t interested. “They’re afraid it’s a sting.”
“Offer them the Starstreak missiles.”
When his negotiator called back he sounded anxious. “What’s wrong?” said Janson.
“They turned down the Starstreaks.”
“And?”
“They say they’ll kill me if I ask again.”
“I like these guys,” said Janson.
“What?”
“They’re not greedy. Catch the next plane out of Angola. I’ll deal with it.”
Kruger in Zurich revealed the name of a Lebanese arms dealer, Dr. Hagopian, who supplied Augustus Heinz and Agostinho Kiluanji the weapons they delivered to FFM. Janson was surprised. Business must be tough. Selling contraband to warring Africans, while profitable, was one-shot bottom-feeding. Hagopian had been a key player since the days of arming Saddam Hussein against Iran on behalf of the United States. Maybe Dr. Hagopian was betting that FFM would win and become a sovereign client, where the steady money was. Maybe he needed the dough. Janson recalled a lavish estate on the Mediterranean and a mansion in Paris, elaborate security for both, and an equally costly wife.
His past dealings with Hagopian had left both of them satisfied. Now Janson instructed his eyes and ears in Europe to check Hagopian out, seeking leverage, some new chink in his armor that had not been known before. He, of course, had cultivated excellent contacts among U.S. intelligence, which allowed him to operate relatively openly, and no legitimate regime had him on its arrest list. And yet weapons was a slippery, fast-changing world. Word came back that Hagopian had acquired a chink, a deep one. Of his two sons, one was in the business with him; the other, Illyich, was reported to be a “troublemaker.”
“Troublemaker?” Janson asked. “How does an arms merchant’s son make trouble: join the clergy?”
“No,” answered the humorless Frenchman on the telephone. “The son has fallen in with thieves.”
* * *
JANSON PRIED SOME details out of the Frenchman, then polled a few others in Europe. Then he telephoned a beneficiary of the Phoenix Foundation and told him he needed his help.
All Phoenix “graduates” had telephones fitted with an encryption chip that made conversations with Janson impenetrable to surveillance. Not all beneficiaries knew that Paul Janson was behind the foundation, but Micky Ripster, like Doug Case, was an old friend.
“Why me?”
“I need it done immediately in London and you’re in London.”
“Well, that’s not very flattering, is it? Geography trumps talent.”
“It’s my good fortune you’re on-site. No one else could pull this off.”
“But you forget that you paid me to retire.”
“I am paying for your rehabilitation, not your retirement. Don’t worry; it’s for a good cause.”
“And now you expect my help killing for ‘a good cause’? Isn’t that how we got into trouble in the first place? What’s different about killing for your causes?”
“The difference is that now we play by Janson Rules.”
“Which are?”
“No torture. No civilian casualties. No killing anyone who doesn’t try to kill us.”
“No torture?” Micky Ripster repeated. “No civilian casualties? No killing anyone who doesn’t try to kill us? Don’t be put off by that strangling noise you hear on the telephone. It is not the encoder chip. It is merely me smothering my laughter.”
“You owe me,” Janson said in a voice suddenly cold. “I’m collecting, now.”
There was a long pause. “So, uh, what Janson gives Janson takes back?”
“What Phoenix grants Phoenix retrieves to pass on to the next guy.”
Ripster sighed. “All right, Paul. Who do you want killed?”
“No one.”
“I thought—”
“It’s not a killing job. It’s a gamesman job and I never met a better gamesman than you. Syrian intelligence still believes that Israeli bombs destroyed their Dayr az-Zwar plutonium collection.”
“Ah, well,” Ripster demurred modestly, “it’s what they want to believe.”
Janson laid out what he needed.
Ripster asked, “And what do I get out of this? Other than the pleasure of what I must admit is an interesting challenge.”
“The satisfaction of doing the right thing. And five times your day rate.”
“That’s generous.”
“Not at all. You’ve got one day to do it, starting this minute.”
* * *
ILLYICH HAGOPIAN, WHO had received his Christian name from his doting Russian mother, pedaled a three-speed vintage Raleigh bicycle with a wicker basket round and round London’s Berkeley Square. Hagopian was young, handsome, and had the pouting mouth of a spoiled child. A yellow cashmere sweater was draped over his shoulders, its arms tied carelessly across his chest. The few people seated on park benches who noticed his repeated circles assumed he was posing for a commercial photo shoot or rehearsing until the photographer arrived.
It was a perfect day for setting a magazine advertisement in Mayfair. The afternoon sky was deep blue, immense plane trees filtered the sunlight that shimmered on limestone houses and green grass, and it might have been a long-ago afternoon when Queen Victoria reigned, except for the center-city buzz of taxis, delivery vans, and motorbikes.
On nearby New Bond Street, at the exclusive Graff Jewellers, a security guard and a salesclerk were unlocking the door with pounding hearts. If that wasn’t Mick Jagger climbing out of a black BMW and heading for their shop with a bejeweled blonde on his arm, he surely looked like him. They opened the door and ushered the fabulously wealthy rock star and his expensive-looking girlfriend inside. Seen up close Jagger’s skin looked oddly crepey, even for a performer who had been at it since the sixties. But the pistol he was suddenly holding in his gloved hand seized their attention, as did the blonde’s. She, the clerk reported later, might have been in drag.
The guard, a retired Royal Marine, was having none of it. He grabbed for their pistols but saw reason, the clerk reported, when Mick Jagger fired a single shot into the carpet. Things moved quickly after that. The thieves filled velvet bags with the best necklaces, bracelets, rings, and watches. Guard and clerk were made to lie down behind the counter, and the pair were out the door and into the BMW in moments.
The black car shot down New Bond Street, turned right onto Bruton, and right again onto Bruton Place to Berkeley Square. They jumped out, leaving latex masks, guns, and wigs on the floor, bumped into a bicyclist who was waiting to cross the street, apologized politely, and climbed into a waiting London black cab. The cabdriver pulled into the traffic heading down Berkeley Street toward Piccadilly. The bicyclist untied the sleeves of his cashmere sweater and dropped it in his basket.
Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command Page 5