Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command

by Robert Ludlum; Paul Garrison

  The session ended on a speech she delivered with wit and passion: “Australia should be a nation deeper than just a coal mine for China.” At that point she climbed up into the public gallery and dismissed their guide to lead the group herself. This act of hands-on egalitarian democracy blew the minds of his fellow tourists and gave a frightened Terry Flannigan an excellent idea for how to save his life.

  Those fit-looking Parliamentary Security Service officers with radios were responsible for the personal safety of their lovely legislator. Surely they would extend protection to her new friend when he was in her presence.

  Politicians were difficult—being equal parts exhibitionist and narcissistic—but fortunately he knew how to handle them, having had a long on-and-off thing with a Texas congresswoman. The trick was never to show you liked them. The second you showed a politician that you liked her, she was looking for the next one to like her. Look at me. Aren’t I wonderful? Think so? Good-bye.

  So, having made definitive eye contact, now when the comely senator smiled his way he looked away. Which only made her smile harder. It was like taking advantage of fish in a barrel, but people were trying to kill him, after all, so he really had to do what he had to do.

  The senator invited the entire group on a private tour, which included a stroll through the office of the prime minister. Then she quietly invited Flannigan to join her for lunch in the Members’ dining room. Her people peeled him deftly loose from the group headed for lunch in the cafeteria. As they did, the sweet little blonde, who saw exactly what was going down, slipped a folded piece of paper into his pocket with her cell phone number and the information that she would be in Canberra for the rest of the week.

  Admiring how fully the senator filled her skirt as she walked ahead to tell her staff that she would be tied up for the afternoon, Terry Flannigan recalled Sigmund Freud’s famous question: “What do women want?”

  Write this on your notepad, Dr. Freud: I am fifteen pounds overweight, losing hair and gaining jowls, with a roving, if not predatory, eye that should warn any woman with a brain to steer clear, but for some reason, bless their hearts, they want me. I am not saying I deserve it, but I am grateful.

  * * *

  DANIEL, A STURDILY built former U.S. Navy SEAL intelligence officer, resigned his commission after three tours in Iraq to quadruple his salary with a private security contractor. He was disdained by regular military as a showboat and overpaid hired gun, and his last memory of Baghdad was of leading a State Department convoy at high speed through narrow streets.

  He had awakened with a titanium plate in his skull a month later on the coast of Cornwall, England, in the Phoenix Foundation wing of a Methodist nursing home. The security contractor had gone out of business. Phoenix had paid the therapy and shrink bills, and when Daniel had felt capable of making his way in the world he fled to the Mediterranean island of Corsica and opened a dive shop for tourists.

  Today he was back in Cornwall, visiting a buddy, Rafe, who hadn’t been as lucky. Rafe, a former British officer, was still stuck in rehab. Daniel had bumped into another private contractor buddy, Ian the Brit, a tattooed bodybuilder who was living in England and visited Rafe regularly. The three men were bound together, as Ian put it, “by one bloody big bang.”

  The facility in which Phoenix rented its wing served what the Brits called the healthy demented, people who had lost their minds to Alzheimer’s and ischemic strokes but were still capable of walking. It was a pretty place built in a Roman villa style that embraced the sun. Even when the sea breeze was too cool to venture outside, the sunlight brightened the public rooms clustered around three sides of a courtyard that opened to the south.

  Elderly ladies dressed for an excursion were gathering outside the dining room, remarking that the restaurant appeared to be doing a brisk business today and inquiring how soon the bus would leave for Exeter. That such a vehicle was as fictional as the restaurant only became apparent when the staff opened the dining room doors and the residents took their accustomed chairs for lunch.

  “You never see old blokes in this place,” said Ian.

  “Men die young,” said Daniel.

  They were standing in the doorway watching the old ladies because Rafe had started crying and a counselor was trying to talk him down. Daniel and Ian looked back to Rafe’s room, where a salty wind made white curtains flap in the sunlight. Their eyes met and slid apart. Rafe was a mess. They’d been sketching maps of the shoot-out, kinda going through how the insurgents’ fire had channeled them straight into the mother of all improvised explosive devices, when Rafe started crying.

  This was Daniel’s first visit to the poor bastard, and he was thinking he could not wait to get the hell home. He knew that on many levels he was personally so distant he might as well be living on Mars, but at least he was out. And Ian was getting better, too, since he “graduated,” driving an intercity bus between Birmingham and London, hoping to meet a girl.

  Out of nowhere Daniel heard himself saying, “We kept Coalition officials alive while Iraqi officials were the star attraction at a turkey shoot.”

  “Coalition paid better,” Ian replied gloomily.

  “I read,” said Daniel, “that an IED blast changes how your brain works, if you’re close as Rafe was.”

  “We weren’t that far, either.”

  “But Rafe was closer.” Rafe had been leaning off the running board at ninety miles an hour firing warning bursts at civilian vehicles when the lead car detonated the IED. “It screws up your prefrontal cortex. That’s the part that makes you who you are. Rafe was a happy guy, before.”

  Ian’s expression said he could not bear to talk about Rafe’s prefrontal cortex, which could have been his prefrontal cortex. He changed the subject, with a bitter smile.

  “You know what the Old Man calls us?”

  “What?” Daniel asked with sudden interest. The “Old Man” from Phoenix had dropped in once while Daniel was still in rehab. If the Old Man asked him to lead a convoy into Hell, Daniel would ask only if there was time to suit up or were they going in naked.

  “I heard him tell the head doc.”

  “What did he call us?”

  “Banished Children of Mammon.”

  “Did he really?”

  “I didn’t get what he meant,” said Ian.

  “It means contractors like you and me and poor Rafe get no vets hospital, no pension, no health care.”

  “I know that. And I know ‘banished.’ What the fuck is Mammon?”

  “Money. We did it for the money and now we get zip.”

  Ian nodded. “Yeah, I get that. ‘Mammon’ means ‘money’? How come?”

  “Like a money god.”

  “So we prayed to the fucker and got our asses in a sling.”

  Daniel was surprised to feel his face break into a smile. “Exactly…You hear anything on the Old Man?” he asked.

  “He was putting feelers out the other day. He’s looking for Iboga.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Don’t you watch the news?”

  “I don’t watch the news,” said Daniel. “I don’t read the papers. I don’t surf the Internet. If I walk by TV in the airport, I look the other way. Whatever is going on out there, I don’t give a flying fuck. Who’s Iboga? Why’s the Old Man hunting him?”

  “He was an African dictator who stole the country’s money when the insurgents kicked him out. The Old Man must have hired on to get it back.”

  “African? What does he look like?”

  “Big black bastard weighs twenty-five stone at least.”

  “Give it to me in pounds.”

  “Three hundred.”

  “Does he sharpen his teeth?”

  Ian looked at Daniel. “Why do you ask?”

  “I seen him.”

  “Go on!”

  “I did. Didn’t get a good look, but how many three-hundred-pound guys are black with pointy teeth?”

  “Where?”

  “Corsi
ca. Where I live.”

  “What, he’s just walking around Corsica?”

  “No, he’s holed up with a crew on Capo Corso. Up north. I seen him last week at Bastia, where the ferries come in from Nice and Marseille.”

  “If you didn’t get a good look, how do you know his teeth are sharpened?”

  “A guy who was closer told me. They got off a yacht, piled into SUVs, and convoyed north.”

  “Why are you saying they’re holed up?”

  “The locals were saying they were like a crew hiding out or setting up a job. The locals are into that shit, so they keep track of the competition. Corsica’s a wild place.”

  “Tell me again what you’re doing there?”

  “I’m down in Porto-Vecchio, way down south. Other end of the island.”

  “Mind me asking what you’re setting up?”

  “Nothing. I got a dive shop for the tourists.”

  “Really?” asked Ian. “Was that expensive, to set up a dive shop?”

  “No big deal. I always saved my money. No way I was going to get treated like garbage and come out of it poor. Hey, you should come down sometime. I got room in my house. Beautiful water. Beautiful fish. Beautiful girls. Nice people, Corsicans, long as you don’t piss ’em off. Don’t fuck with them and they’ll give you the shirt off their back.”

  “Excuse me, young man,” said a small voice.

  The two big men looked down at a tiny white-haired woman carrying a handbag on her arm.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Is this where we get the bus to Exeter?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Daniel. “It’s back there in the restaurant, where they’re serving your lunch.”

  * * *

  QUINTISHA UPCHURCH ANSWERED her “graduates’” line, the phone number that was given to the growing flock of Janson’s saved. Calls came in for help and to help. She could tell by the tone of the voice which it would be. This was a “to help” call, and she recognized the British Midland accent as belonging to a boy named Ian.

  “Ms. Upchurch, if you were in communication with Mr. Janson, you might mention that a certain former president for life was spotted in Corsica. Up north on Capo Corso.”

  Quintisha Upchurch promised to pass it on.

  The professional qualities that had convinced Paul Janson that she was the woman to administer CatsPaw and Phoenix included a habit of discretion grounded on innate reticence. She would never dream of mentioning that Daniel, the rough American with whom Ian had been discussing Iboga in a Cornwall nursing home, had telephoned her minutes earlier with the same message. Or that since similar messages were flooding in from widely scattered parts of the globe, she would first shunt them through the research person assigned to collate and vet before they were passed to the boss.

  * * *

  IN THE PRIVACY of a First Class sleeping pod, Paul Janson worked the airline phone. His first priority was to drastically reduce his flying time to Sydney. He called a general in the Royal Thai Air Force. Their conversation got off to a bad start.

  “I recall that you were against me,” said the general, a fighter pilot who had risen quickly in the ranks thanks to excellent connections and ordinary skills enhanced by extraordinary bravery.

  “You recall,” Janson replied bluntly, “that I determined you were the lesser of two evils.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Recompense for that action.”

  “Why?”

  “You profited by it. You’re an active serving general. The other guy is dead.”

  Thai Chinese, like all overseas Chinese, were not the sort to pontificate about honor and respect. They weren’t like Pakistanis and Afghans, proud of “honor killings,” or Italian Mafia clinging to their secret societies and omertà. But these children of the Chinese diaspora who peopled the merchant class of Southeast Asia practiced a code of honor no less strong for their reserve. As strangers in strange lands, they divided the world into two categories. Strangers were by definition enemies. People they knew were friends. What Janson had always admired most was the fluidity—once they knew you, once you had done business or traded favors or shared a kindness or taken their side, you were a friend.

  After a long silence, the general asked, “What do you need?”

  “The fastest jet in Bangkok capable of flying four thousand, six hundred, and eighty-five miles to Sydney ahead of my commercial connection.”

  “That’s all?”

  Janson could not tell whether the general was being sarcastic. But they both knew he could have asked for so much more than a fast long-haul jet. Janson thanked him warmly. The debt was settled. That which was needed most was most valuable.

  Janson left urgent messages with a contact in Sydney who worked undercover for the Australian Crime Commission, thinking he could look out for Jessica at the airport. While Janson waited for a response, he followed up on the SR names. Bloch, the French mercenary, was believed to be in a Congo jail. Dimon, the Serbian computer wizard, was reported active in the Ukraine. Viorets, the Russian, was currently on leave from the SVR, and the Corsican Andria Giudicelli had been seen days earlier in Rome. Van Pelt, Janson already knew, was headed for Sydney.

  Iboga, who had supposedly left a trail through Russia, the Ukraine, Romania, and Croatia, had now been seen simultaneously on the French island of Corsica and in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, which were six thousand miles apart.

  Janson closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He was wondering what light, if any, the doctor might shed on ASC and Kingsman Helms’s schemes in Isle de Foree. He was really no closer to Iboga than when he took the job from Poe. He had learned SR existed and must have fielded the Harrier jump jet, but not enough more to do anyone any good. He knew nothing yet about who had launched the Reaper attack. And so far he hadn’t added a single dollar to the Phoenix Foundation’s treasury. Five percent of zip recovered loot was zip.

  He gave up on sleep and telephoned the forensic accountant leading the Iboga money hunt. They’d had some success, some indications of accounts in Switzerland and Croatia. “These days,” the accountant warned Janson, “Zagreb’s a tougher nut than Zurich.”

  “Can we get to the dough?”

  “At this point,” she said, “we’re still in locating mode.”

  When the airliner began its descent into Bangkok, Janson dialed Quintisha Upchurch. “Have you heard from Ms. Kincaid?”

  “No, Mr. Janson. I’ve left messages.”

  Janson heard a familiar loud noise in the background and smiled despite his concern. The blatting roar of a compression-release “Jake” brake slowing a forty-ton eighteen-wheel Peterbilt 379EXHD told him that Quintisha was in CatsPaw’s rolling “home office,” a Brinks armored tractor-trailer driven by her husband.

  Jessica had named Quintisha’s husband “the single scariest dude I have ever laid eyes on.” A former Force Recon Marine officer and a deeply troubled vet until he married Quintisha, Rick Rice drove the interstates delivering Brinks bulk shipments of credit cards, precious metals, and casino tokens. The tractor’s cab was bulletproofed and fitted with gun ports, but as Jessica had noted, “When the driver looks like he’s hoping you’ll try to rob him, folks tend to go rob something else.”

  Guarded by her husband and always on the move as they crisscrossed the United States, Quintisha administered CatsPaw and Phoenix from the phones and computers in the Peterbilt’s stand-up sleeper. On Sundays, they parked the truck in VFW lots. Rick would hoist some beers with the vets while Quintisha, an ordained deacon, would take herself to the nearest African Methodist Episcopal church and sing in the choir, teach Bible study, or preach a sermon. Sunday supper would be at the home of some local police chief or a highway patrolman who had served under Rick in the Gulf War, Iraq, or Afghanistan.

  “I was about to telephone you, Mr. Janson. A couple of your young men report sighting Iboga in Corsica.”

  “Who? Daniel?”

  “Yes. And Ian, in England.”

&n
bsp; Janson called Protocolo de Seguridad’s HQ in Madrid. “Freddy, can you tap any Coriscans?”

  “Does it matter if they’re on the run?”

  “They have to be able to go back to Corsica.”

  “That eliminates most of them.” Freddy pondered a moment. “I’ll find a couple.”

  “There’s a chance Iboga’s hiding up in Capo Corso. See what you can find out.”

  * * *

  “ARE YOU AWARE that you are bleeding?” asked the civilian fuckhead in the South African Airways seat next to Hadrian Van Pelt.

  Beads of blood were popping from the stitches in his forearm. Ninety red dots, one for each stitch, had spread until they joined their neighbors, soaking the bandage and oozing through his shirtsleeve. He should have worn red. Or he shouldn’t keep squeezing a hard rubber ball, rhythmically as a heartbeat. But he was obsessed by a weird fear that the muscles in his right arm would shrink like beef biltong if he didn’t work them. That’s what the bitch had done to him. It was crazy how bad it was bugging him. He had been wounded, before. No big deal. It went with the business. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that she had exposed the flesh of his arm like a slab of dried meat.

  “I say, sir. Are you aware you’re bleeding?”

  “Yes, I am aware I am bleeding,” he answered in measured tones so the fuckhead didn’t summon the flight attendants, who might signal the air security agent pretending to be a businessman in the back row of the Business Class cabin. “I was in an automobile accident.”

  The fuckhead reached for the call button. “Shall I summon help?”

  “No, thank you,” Van Pelt said, adding a cool smile to shut the fuckhead up. “It’s not as bad as it looks. My doctor changed the dressing just before I boarded the plane.”

  He picked up the handset in his armrest and checked yet again for text messages. At last!

  Arrangements complete. We’ll have her waiting for you in Sydney.

  Awesome. Van Pelt’s hard mouth parted in an anticipatory smile. But a second text message was anything but excellent. The American hired by Ferdinand Poe to hunt Iboga was changing planes in Bangkok, from a commercial flight to a faster aircraft provided by the Royal Thai Air Force.