Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (13 page)

J
anson figured he needed a solid four hours of sleep, so he set the alarm on his BlackBerry for 3
AM
sharp. He placed the phone on the nightstand next to the utilitarian double bed in Jina Jeon's second-floor guest room and kicked off his shoes before lying down fully clothed and staring up at the dark ceiling in thought.

When the alarm woke him he'd gather his things and head north to the tunnel. The tunnel wasn't his first choice for crossing into the North, but Jina Jeon had assured him it was his best chance at success. Personally, Janson had preferred the idea of entering North Korea through Kaesong in North Hwanghae Province. The city of nearly two hundred thousand was the site of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint North-South venture just north of the DMZ and one of only two locations in the DPRK accessible from the South. Built a decade ago, the eight-hundred-acre complex represented part of South Korea's experimental Sunshine Policy, a reaching out—in this case through economic exchange—to their neighbor in the hope of advancing reform and appeasing the irascible regime in the North.

Janson had hoped to find one of the thousand South Koreans employed at the Kaesong Industrial Complex and cut him a deal similar to the one he'd cut with Silent Lynx in Shanghai. He'd pay the employee a large enough sum of money that the man would never have to return to work, and could retire to a third, more desirable country. But Jina Jeon convinced Janson that the plan would never work; in addition to the one thousand South Koreans employed at the complex were nearly
fifty
thousand North Koreans, most of whom remained loyal to the Pyongyang regime. Besides, she'd said, security procedures at the industrial complex were no less stringent than those at a supermax prison in the United States.

In the darkness of the guest room, Janson closed his eyes and envisioned the tunnel. Thirty years ago a joint South Korean–US investigation team assigned to the DMZ tripped a North Korean booby trap, which killed one American and wounded several others. The incident led to the discovery of an infiltration tunnel running under the demilitarized zone. A year later a second infiltration tunnel was discovered. Confronted with the discoveries, North Korea initially denied building the tunnels. Following a close inspection, which revealed drill marks for dynamite clearly pointing toward the South, the DPRK insisted that the tunnels were dug for coal mining—despite the fact that none of the discovered tunnels contained any coal.

Officially, the South had discovered four such incursion tunnels. But as Jina Jeon explained, the actual number was closer to twenty.

“There are seventeen more that I know of,” she'd said. “Their discoveries were never made known to the public. Partly because South Korea doesn't want to show their entire hand, and partly because the Blue House didn't want to antagonize the palace while the Sunshine Policy was in effect. Some people believe that there are another half dozen or so tunnels that have yet to be discovered.”

“But if the North dug these tunnels and the South knows about them,” Janson had argued, “surely they're guarded heavily on both sides.”

“True,” Jina Jeon had told him. “But the North are not aware of the tunnels dug by the
South
. Many were started, but only one such tunnel was ever completed. For years it has been used by South Korean fugitives attempting to flee the country.”

“And you know its precise location?”

“I do,” she'd said. “The tunnel is guarded by no one on either side. But be warned; it is short and narrow and absolute
hell
to pass through.”

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
Janson was dreaming of Kabul. Of walking alone along the rugged mountain terrain in the darkness.
Alone?
Where were his men? He'd lived this dream more times than he could count and his men had always been with him. Where were they now? Was this not a dream at all? Was he walking north across the expanse of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, heading for the incursion tunnel dug by the South?

Confusion as dense as an autumn fog enveloped him.

Janson wasn't in a dream at all; as far as he knew, he'd never even thought it was a dream. He heard the crackling of a small rock, tumbling down the hillside from his right. He spun and reached for his weapon, but the men were already upon him, circling him with raised Kalashnikov assault rifles—AK-47s from another era—shouting at him to get facedown on the ground, to spread his arms and legs like an eagle.

But the men weren't speaking Korean, they were speaking a language Janson knew too well.

Pashto?

As the men swarmed in on his prostrate figure he lifted his head as high as he could and saw the stone-cold, bearded faces of the Taliban.

Breathing rapidly, Janson shot up in the bed in Jina Jeon's guest room, drenched in a cold sweat.

As his breathing became even and his pulse slowed to near normal, he listened to the nothingness of the house. He was thirsty but didn't want to creep downstairs at the risk of waking Jina's mother. But, no, that wasn't right; when they'd returned from the meeting with Cal Auster in Chuncheon, Jina had informed him that she'd be taking her mother to Seoul for the night, for an early appointment with her mother's cardiologist the next morning. He was welcome to stay and rest before he left for the tunnel.

A creak downstairs made him recall the crackling of the lone rock rolling down the hillside.

The sound shouldn't have been there. Not in his nightmare, where he was alone. And not now, while he was alone in the house.

Maybe Jina Jeon had dropped her mother off at her hotel in Seoul and returned home?

By the time he finished the thought, Janson was already out of the bed and in his shoes, searching the room for items that could be turned into improvised weapons.

Unfortunately the room was spartan. He'd left his equipment—even his go-bag—in the barn out of respect for Jina's mother. Now he wished he'd held on to his go-bag. Jina's mother would never have known what was in it.

But then, it was
Jina's
suggestion—no, her
request
—that he leave all weapons outside the house.

Something in his chest sank like a stone, but he quickly pushed it aside and readied himself for whatever was to come.

First he considered escape routes. The ground below the window in his room would be covered. As would all easily identifiable points of ingress and egress. And if Jina Jeon had indeed betrayed him, the intruders would know the layout of the entire house.

They'd know precisely which room he was in.

Which he could make work to his advantage.

Janson opened the door an inch or so, sneaked a look out into the hall, and listened. As far as he could tell, whoever had entered the house had not yet made it up to the second floor.

Perhaps Janson had yelled when he was startled awake? If so, he'd inadvertently bought himself some time.

He eyed the door across the hallway—Jina's bedroom? Yes, he remembered Jina saying that her mother slept in the lone bedroom on the first floor so that she didn't have to deal with the stairs.

Janson darted across the hall without making a sound. Jina Jeon's bedroom looked nothing like the guest room. All the furniture was made of strong, dark wood, expensive but nothing frilly. The bedding was black, as were the curtains that covered the wide windows. Nothing particularly feminine. Arranged in the Japanese tradition of feng shui, if he wasn't mistaken.

As he searched for makeshift weapons, he heard the creak of one of the lower stairs leading up to the second floor. No time; the intruder was on his way.

Probably intruder
s
, plural. If Cons Ops was coming for him, they'd come heavy and they'd come prepared.

They knew what Janson was capable of. Sources inside Cons Ops told him that operatives and officials alike still referred to him as the Machine.

Janson stood next to the door frame with his back pressed against the wall. He'd closed the door to the guest room but left Jina Jeon's door ajar, not just in the hope of duping the intruder but so that he could see and hear what was happening on the rest of the floor.

Light footfalls in the mouth of the hallway caused the hair on his arms to stand up straight as nails. But with the fear came the adrenaline. His head instantly cleared. He relaxed his fingers even as the rest of the muscles in his body tensed.

He flashed on Cal Auster saying: “
Be prepared
.” Saw the monstrous grin on his face. “
That's right. Paul Janson's a Boy Scout now. Or so I've heard.
”

Could it have been Auster who set him up? Could it even be Auster's man who'd come to eliminate him, maybe the captain/bodyguard back on Auster's boat? Auster had felt threatened when Janson mentioned the drones. Could he have felt threatened enough to kill Janson?

What was the arms dealer whispering in Jina's ear when Janson stepped back into the cabin after taking some fresh air upstairs?

Would Cal Auster have come himself?

No, Janson thought. Not in a million years.

Someone's on the other side of this wall.
He could sense a presence. Almost smell the predator's scent like highly attuned prey.

He lowered his center of gravity.

Turn the hunter into the hunted.

The muzzle of a Beretta came into view. Sent into the bedroom as though it were a scout.

What it was, was a mistake.

Janson waited until he could see the pale finger held against the trigger, then he reached out and gripped the barrel of the weapon. First he thrust the gun up and away, so that it wasn't pointed at him. Then he twisted the barrel with every bit of strength he had in his right hand. Twisted it brutally, until he heard the gunman's finger break—
snap
like a decrepit piece of wood—inside the Beretta's trigger guard.

With his left hand he chopped at the gunman's throat, silencing the yelp of pain resulting from the broken finger before it reached the killer's lips. He followed with a powerful palm to the nose, pushing up and inward toward the brain.

Blood from the gunman's shattered nose spurted onto Jina Jeon's immaculate hardwood floor.

Janson yanked the assassin into the room and thrust him up against the wall Janson had been leaning against twenty seconds earlier. He pressed his left forearm hard against the gunman's throat.

“How many?” Janson breathed.

“Fuck you,” the gunman croaked.

In the inky blackness of Jina Jeon's bedroom, Janson recognized the voice before he recognized the face. His eyes widened in disbelief. Widened in anger. Worst of all, widened in betrayal.

He knew this man, not just from Consular Operations.

But from the Phoenix Foundation.

Phoenix had been infiltrated.

“You went back to them,” Janson spat. But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true, just wishful thinking. The man he was looking at wasn't merely an ungrateful or unsuccessful Phoenix graduate. Janson's initial presumption had been correct; his had been an outright betrayal. “No, you didn't, did you, you son of a bitch? You had never left them.”

Janson brimmed with fury. So many questions, so much to sort through, so many lies. But now wasn't the time.

Janson leaned into Heath Manningham's face. “I will break you into so many pieces, Clarke will think I shoved a pipe bomb down your throat. Now come clean—how many inside, how many out?”

The young Londoner attempted a smile as crimson leaked out from between his teeth. “You think it will matter?” he said with the slightest of British accents. “You think you'll walk away from this house alive?”

“Are you
really
ready to die for those bastards?” Janson hissed.

“Weren't you?” Trembling, Manningham met Janson's gaze. “God knows you were willing to
kill
for them. It's the life we chose, isn't it? You know better than anyone, Machine, you can't just walk away.”

“I
did
walk away,” Janson growled. “And I thought I'd helped you do the same.”

“Walked away, did you?” Manningham said, managing to steady his voice. “You're still trying to sell that heap of shit to yourself, are you? Tell me. How many have you done since you ‘walked away'?”

“I have
rules
.”

“Right, the rules.
Kill only those who try to kill us.
Guess I qualify then, don't I, mate? Why don't you feed me the bullet sitting in that chamber and drop the bloody curtain on this charade?”

K
ang Jung was just about to log off her computer. It was late and even Lord Wicked needed her beauty sleep (
ha!
) from time to time. As she backed up her systems to an anonymous server in Estonia, she heard the landline ring in her mother's bedroom. It was unusual for her mother to receive a call so late (she didn't receive many calls at all), so Kang Jung went to her wall, placed her water glass against her ear, and listened.

Her mother sounded upset, but Kang Jung couldn't make out what she was saying.

Almost immediately after she last heard her mother speak, Jung's door flew open. She dropped her glass to the floor and it shattered to pieces as she turned to find her mother standing slumped over in the door frame. Her mother's eyes appeared red and puffy, but they didn't so much as twitch toward the fallen water glass.

“I have to go out,” her mother said in Korean. “I am afraid it is your grandfather.”

“Grandfather?”

“He is at the hospital. He was apparently having chest pains. Luckily, his neighbor found him and called an ambulance.”

Kang Jung felt her features crumple with worry. Grandfather was one of the few people in this world whom she adored. She'd feared something like this ever since his wife died of complications from a stroke nine months ago. Kang Jung was not nearly as fond of the woman who had replaced her grandmother six years earlier, but she knew Grandfather had loved the woman and was suffering greatly over her loss. Suffering, perhaps, more over the loss of his second wife than he had over his first.

“I want to come with you to see Grandfather,” she heard herself saying. It wasn't true, however; Kang Jung didn't deal well with death. She accepted it as a fact of life, but she didn't dare watch people suffer. She didn't go to hospitals, she didn't attend funerals or memorial services, no matter how much she cared for the person who died. She wanted to remember her few loved ones as they were: healthy and alive.

Maybe it was selfish to avoid hospitals. But as far as funerals and memorial services went, who but the survivors (most of whom she
didn't
care about) would know?

“You stay here,” her mother said. “It is a school night. You need to sleep. Keep your phone near your bed and leave your ringer on. If things look bad, I will call you, and you can take a taxi to the hospital. I will leave money on the kitchen table.”

She almost refused the money, but then remembered: Her personal wealth wasn't something she could ever explain. To anyone, really, and certainly not her mother.

“Thank you, Mother” was all she could manage.

Then her door closed and her mother was gone.

It wasn't until after her mother left that she found it strange that a neighbor would have discovered Grandfather. Like her, Grandfather kept largely to himself. He often told her he had no friends in his apartment building, and he wanted none. Had he really stepped out into his hallway and called for help instead of dialing for the ambulance himself?

Maybe people behaved differently at death's door. She thought not.

She left her room and stepped into her mother's. She picked up the landline to see the name of the neighbor who had just called. Oddly, the listing was restricted. No name. No telephone number. And certainly no address.

She thought of phoning Paul Janson.

He would think I am just another silly kid with an unruly imagination.

She admired the American too much to allow him to think such a thing.

J
ANSON DIDN'T KNOW
whether he had an additional two or three minutes, so he decided to forgo the air choke and applied a blood choke instead. He spun Heath Manningham around and took him to the floor while hooking the bend of his right arm around Manningham's neck. He clasped his hands together and exerted intense pressure with his biceps and forearms on both sides of Manningham's carotid artery, cutting off oxygen-rich blood to the brain. In eleven seconds the double-dealing Phoenix graduate was out cold. Janson checked the spy's pulse then rose and exited Jina Jeon's bedroom.

With Manningham's .45 Beretta in hand, Janson quickly cleared the guest room and headed downstairs. Although Manningham wouldn't talk, Janson was sure there would be more agents outside. He stayed clear of all windows, since his would-be assassins could well be snipers. He couldn't rule out their taking over one of the neighboring houses or barns as a staging area. If Jina Jeon was involved—even more of a likelihood now that he knew about Manningham—setting up snipers' nests around the house would have been easy as cake.

Jina Jeon.

It butchered him to learn he'd been betrayed by Heath Manningham, but if he was to discover he'd been double-crossed by Jina Jeon, it might be more than he could take. Her treachery could well spell the end of the Phoenix Foundation.

Janson couldn't lie to himself, couldn't pretend that it might be for the best; he was too invested in Phoenix and too proud of what he'd accomplished. He didn't believe in “signs” or a god that worked in mysterious ways. At least in Manningham's case—and who knew how many others?—he'd failed extraordinarily, by any measure. He and his team did their due diligence on Manningham, yet Edward Clarke and Consular Operations had outsmarted him. Janson would never again underestimate State, and he would never again question whether Cons Ops was an adversary or an ally. He only hoped it wasn't too late, for him, or for Kincaid.

She was right all along.
He grinned despite the grave situation.
If we both survive this, I'm never going to hear the end of it.

With the fingers on his left hand he cautiously parted the blinds in the living room. The Jeon farm had a good deal of property, but several neighboring houses and barns remained within sniper range. Ducking low, he crossed under the large bay window and entered the kitchen.

Dare he?

Go big or go home, he thought as he scanned the room in which he'd eaten dinner with Jina Jeon and her mother just hours earlier.

After eyeing a block of cutlery, he opened several drawers and cabinets, as quickly and as quietly as he could. In one of the drawers he found a pristine set of silverware, in another a number of towels, hand and dish, and a couple of washcloths. He was surprised to find a bread box, less surprised to find it stocked with bread. In the cabinets, the usual things: dishes, glasses, canned and dry goods, and spices galore. Nothing called out to him as a viable alternative to his original idea.

In the end, there was no debate to be had.

He would do what had to be done.

A
LL INTELLIGENT PEOPLE
are lonely, Kang Jung told herself as she sat on her bed. We live in our heads.

As she surveyed her room in the faint light, locking briefly on her iMac, her MacBook Air, her iPad and her iPad Mini, her iPod and her iPhone, the irony wasn't lost on her: she was so
connected
that she was
disconnected
. Kang Jung had hardly any life at all; Lord Wicked was world renowned.

As a criminal, she thought sadly.

Oh, how to escape this wasteful melancholy? She was worried for Grandfather; that was all. When you loved so few, you loved those few so deeply.

She trudged into the kitchen in her oversize pajamas. The linoleum was cold, almost cold enough to make her run back to her bedroom to fetch her slippers. But she'd be in and out. All she wanted was something to drink.

Opening the refrigerator door, she started at a light rap on the front door.

Janson?

No. Janson didn't know that her mother had left; he'd have texted her, not just dropped in unannounced. Besides, he was in the DMZ, preparing to cross the border into North Korea. He wasn't in Seoul making social calls.

The phone call her mother received earlier continued to nibble around the edges of her thoughts. Something about the call wasn't right. Grandfather wouldn't have stumbled into the hallway seeking help if he was having chest pains. Even if it was an emergency Grandfather was still Grandfather, as obstinate and self-reliant as ever. Despite his age, he'd retained all of his mental faculties. If he'd been experiencing chest pains, he would have picked up the phone and called for an ambulance himself.

Another rap at the front door, this one more insistent.

She eyed the ottoman in the living room. She could drag it in front of the door and peek through the peephole.

But what if whoever is standing on the other side has a gun?

A moment later it didn't matter. The man or woman on the other side of the door had stopped waiting for her to answer and started working the lock with a key or some other device. She had only seconds to think.

Nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide.

She was trapped like a rat in a cage. And whoever stood on the other side of the door would not be standing there for long.

The dead bolt was unlocked.

The doorknob began to turn.