Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (14 page)

S
econds before the explosion lit the night sky over Freedom Village, Janson pitched Heath Manningham's unconscious form from the window of Jina Jeon's second-floor guest room. He then hastened across the hall, lowered his head, and sprinted toward the mattress propped up against the window. He struck the mattress—and grabbed hold of its sides—just as he heard the pop of the exploding .45. As the bullet ignited the gas he'd leaked from the stove, he rode the mattress spread-eagled in a free fall until it struck the hard ground.

When it did, Janson felt as though he'd just been smacked in the chest with a baseball bat. Every last breath of air had been knocked out of him. He waited a moment before attempting a deep breath, hoping he hadn't broken a rib and punctured a lung. Once he'd convinced himself that wasn't the case, he rolled off the mattress, scrambled to his feet, and in a dash headed straight for the barn.

His entire plan was a gamble. He'd rolled the dice counting on the razor-slim possibility that Jina Jeon hadn't betrayed him. If she had, he'd likely be running into an ambush as he made for his go-bag. Even if Manningham's plunge and the subsequent explosion had created enough of a diversion to lure the agents away from the barn, he still intended to move forward with the plan that Jina Jeon herself had devised. Janson would snatch his go-bag and race north for the tunnel. If his means of crossing into the North had been given up by Jina Jeon, he was a dead man—even if he somehow managed to escape this initial attempt on his life.

He entered the barn cautiously, found no one. The purchases he'd made from Cal Auster in Chuncheon appeared intact. The lion's share would have to remain behind; he could only carry so much. He ran the zipper across the go-bag to make sure he wasn't strapping a bomb to his back; then he closed the bag and raced out of the barn, away from Jina Jeon's property, into total darkness, heading north.

K
ANG
J
UNG RETREATED
to her bedroom, her sanctuary. Lord Wicked's lair. She scanned her possessions for something she could use to defend herself against the intruder.

Damn, why do they have to make electronics so small these days?

She might have had a chance with one of those bulky computer towers that housed her first hard drive, but what the hell could she do with a MacBook Air—impress her attacker with its advanced video-editing features?

No, she thought. But I
can
create a live feed at a private web address and send the link to Janson.

It probably wouldn't prevent the intruder from killing her. But at least then the tall, dark, and handsome American could avenge her death.

She slammed her bedroom door, turned the lock, and pushed her small armoire in front of the door. It wouldn't stop the intruder, but it would hopefully buy her time.

A
S HE SCURRIED NORTH
toward the tunnel, Paul Janson felt a light vibration against his outer thigh. He didn't want to stop, didn't want to sacrifice his momentum or his adrenaline. But it could be Kincaid. She could be in trouble, and Janson couldn't risk ignoring the call.

He stopped dead in his tracks, dropped to the ground, and removed the BlackBerry from his pocket. It wasn't a call at all. It was a text message, from Kang Jung. There were no words, just an odd link consisting of nine numbers and ending with .kr—the two letters appended to all South Korean domains.

Don't click it, he thought, hearing Morton's voice in his head. Don't click anything, ever. One fucking click on an unknown—or worse yet, disguised—link, and you can inadvertently end the world as we know it.

Janson pictured Kang Jung's inexpressive face, heard her soft voice saying, “There's nothing out there for me.”

Could someone have gotten to her? Christ, she'd been the one who set up his meeting with Cy via an Internet Relay Chat. Janson had involved her in this. He alone was responsible for her safety.

Don't do it, Morton shrieked in his head. Don't fucking do it.

Janson clicked on the link in Kang Jung's text.

And found what appeared to be a live feed from a young girl's bedroom, though not your typical young girl's bedroom. Stuffed animals and eerily lifelike dolls rested among a small fortune's worth of state-of-the-art technology. In fact, were it not for the plush toys and figurines, what Janson saw could well have been a feed from an underground Apple store.

On the walls were posters: Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out. Carl Sagan staring off into the cosmos. Neil deGrasse Tyson eating a Yodel.

That answers my earlier question.

There was no doubt in his mind that this was Kang Jung's bedroom back in the Cheongwha Apartments in Itaewon.

Janson fought off a wave of panic. Once he'd established that he was looking at Kang Jung's bedroom, his first thought was that she'd been kidnapped.

From the BlackBerry's tiny speaker he could hear the rattling of a doorknob. At first he saw no door in the frame, then realized that a white wooden armoire was pressed against the door, concealing it, and a pang of fear clutched at his chest again. He punched up the volume and watched the scene unfold, helpless to do anything from thirty-five miles away in the demilitarized zone.

K
ANG
J
UNG STARTED
at the first pound on the door. Taking a deep breath for strength, she leaned over and peered into the eye of the MacBook's webcam.

“I know you can't get here in time,” she said, attempting to maintain a courageous calm but failing phenomenally. “And that's OK.” She flinched at another strike on the other side of her door. She turned and noticed that the armoire had shifted. She spun and spoke to the camera, annoyed because everything that came into her head sounded so damn melodramatic. “I ask of you only one thing,” she finally went with. “If I am killed tonight,
avenge me
.”

She opened her desk drawer and withdrew an antique letter opener she'd bought at a flea market. The seller had told her it was used by an American general during the Korean War. She'd known the seller was full of shit but she'd bought it anyway, because the seller had been a sixteen-year-old boy and he'd been cute, even if he had been a complete dullard.

Kang Jung held the letter opener out like a sword, then turned it in her hand so that the blade was pointing down. It reminded her of the deranged man dressed like his mother in the shower scene from
Psycho
.

The sound of a female voice emanating from the other side of the door surprised her. The woman spoke with an Eastern European accent.

“Jung,” the voice said, “I just want to talk to you for a moment, honey. There's a very bad man on the loose—a killer—and we know you've been communicating with him. I just need to ask you a few questions and then I'll leave, I promise. I'm not here to hurt you, dear.”

Kang Jung gripped the letter opener and wondered if the female was the only one out there. If so, maybe Kang Jung could take her. The girls in school used to mess with her. Until two summers ago when she learned tae kwon do and returned to school and kicked some major mean-girl ass. She grinned. This woman on the other side of the door clearly didn't know who she was fucking with. Not Kang Jung, the socially insecure computer geek.

Here in her room surrounded by her computers—
you stepped onto my turf, bitch
—she transmogrified into Lord Wicked.

J
ANSON, TOO, WAS SURPRISED
to hear a female voice emanating from the opposite side of Jung's door. But it didn't diminish his fear. If anything, hearing that female voice amplified his alarm for the teenage girl who'd so selflessly assisted him. If his instincts were correct—and they usually were about things like this—on the other side of the door stood the woman who had followed his taxi from Seoul Station. And if so, her sweet voice was no more authentic than the gold Rolex watch a young man tried to sell him a few months ago in Shanghai. If this woman was working with Cons Ops, no matter what her background, she'd invariably be a heartless killer.

On his tiny screen, the armoire began to slide. Kang Jung stood just to the side of the camera, carrying what looked to be a small knife, but was more likely something as simple as a paperweight or letter opener.

What could Janson do? He quickly ran through his options. The police would never make it in time; even if they did, they would be walking into a slaughter. Most of the force wasn't even armed. Kincaid and her new friend Park Kwan remained in southern Seoul, searching for Gregory Wyckoff. Even if they could cross the Han River in time, as much as he'd like to tell himself differently, their mission to locate the senator's son was the more important one. Kang Jung's life was at stake, but so were the lives of countless others.

That left Nam Sei-hoon.

“
I was finally able to gain access to the boy's computers
,” Nam Sei-hoon had said. “
As you suggested might be the case, the hard drives have been wiped
.”

Janson had cursed.

“Not so fast, Paul. Remember, I am not a man without resources. I've had one of my trusted allies in the cyber-intelligence unit take a look at these hard drives. He was able to identify one of the individuals whom Gregory Wyckoff communicated with online via an IRC…It just so happens that the kid he chatted with is being watched vigorously…”

Cy, Janson thought. The National Intelligence Service was listening in on—or reading, as the case may be—Cy's Internet Relay Chats.

That's how they found Kang Jung—she'd arranged the meeting with Cy using an IRC.

On-screen, a young woman materialized. He couldn't be sure but Janson thought that she indeed looked like the woman in the dark SM5 who had followed his taxi out of Seoul Station.

Christ, Janson thought. It was neither Jina Jeon nor Cal Auster who had betrayed him. The treachery had come from one of Janson's oldest and closest friends.

Nam Sei-hoon.

N
ika Vlasic looked upon Kang Jung and saw a girl not much older than Nika was when she opened the vein in her right wrist. This girl looked nothing like she had. She was clean, she was dressed in fresh pajamas, she was surrounded by thousands of dollars of technology that would help her to learn and go to college and succeed in the world without killing, the little bitch.

This girl wasn't the product of ethnic cleansing. She wasn't violated when she was nine. She didn't become pregnant by rape at age twelve, wasn't forced by the man who'd raped her to undergo an abortion in a burned-out factory.

Nika grinned as she stared at the letter opener the girl held in her fist. Then she looked squarely into the girl's eyes and began to swell with anger at the resentment this child harbored for her.

What the fuck did I ever do to you, kid? I told you I only came here to talk.

Nika ignored the threat from the letter opener and advanced, though she wasn't going for Kang Jung as the girl probably thought. She went for the girl's mobile phone instead. Quickly she scrolled through the call log.

No calls in the past half hour. Good. Even though a couple of agents were posted downstairs to delay or divert the cops, Nika didn't want to deal with making a hasty escape from a high-rise apartment building.

The girl attempted to shuffle by her, but Nika snatched the collar of her pajamas and in one fluid movement tossed her onto the bed. As Nika drew near to her, the girl lashed out with the letter opener.

Swing and a miss.

Nika grabbed the girl's right wrist and twisted it until the letter opener clanged to the floor.

“Why so hostile?” Nika said evenly.

“What do you
want
from me?” the girl cried.

“Where is the American?”

“Which American?”

Nika smiled, glanced down at the girl's right wrist, which she continued to hold in her grip. Just as Nika suspected, this young girl had never attempted to kill herself. How nice that must be. She'd probably never been raped either. Probably she was still a virgin, the little bitch.

“If you want to live,” Nika said calmly, “do not play games with me.” She twisted the girl's wrist again. “Understand?”

The girl yelped but nodded. Tears spilled freely from her eyes.

“Now tell me,” Nika said. “What is the American doing in the demilitarized zone?”

J
ANSON FROZE.
If Kang Jung told her what she knew—about Diophantus and the Wikipedia entry and the South Korean spy Yun Jin-ho in Pyongyang—the operative would be left with no choice but to kill her. And if Kang Jung revealed what Janson was doing—crossing into the DPRK to locate the South Korean spy—his mission was over. Nam Sei-hoon would never allow Janson to get near Pyongyang. He'd start a war with the North if he had to.

Kang Jung's only chance was to remain silent.

On his screen Kang Jung spoke so softly he could barely hear her, even in the quiet of the pitch-black field.

“The American told me that the Hivemind sent him there. He went to see a hacker named Cy at the university. I don't know exactly who or what he was after, but Cy told him he'd find it in a secret Hivemind facility in the DMZ.”

Amazing, Janson thought. Even better than keeping silent, Kang Jung had fed the operative a plausible lie.

Unless they've already gotten to Cy.
Then the woman would know Jung was lying, and it would cost the girl her life.

“This facility,” the woman said, pulling at her own jacket sleeve as she hovered over Kang Jung on the bed, “is that where Gregory Wyckoff is being hidden?”

Kang Jung shook her head slowly. “I swear to you, I don't know. The American gave me only the information I needed to help him connect with Cy and…”

“And
what
?”

“And help him locate the facility.”

“And you did this?”

“Yes.”

“
Where is it?
” the woman hissed.

“About forty kilometers north of Seoul. There's a castle that looks as though it belongs to a fairy princess.”

The woman sneered. “You're fucking with me, kid.” She gripped Kang Jung by the throat. “I assure you, fucking with me is
not
a good idea.”

“No, I'm
not
,” Kang Jung rasped. “I swear. You can look the castle up yourself on my computer. The facility's in the basement of the castle at Everland Resort.”

“Everland Resort?” The woman loosened her grip.

Janson watched in amazement at the girl's brisk thinking in the face of peril, as Kang Jung drew a desperate breath and said, “It's a water park.”

K
ANG
J
UNG SLOWLY
sat up on the bed as the dangerous woman stepped over to use her laptop computer. The woman unwittingly stared directly into the camera.

Kang Jung suppressed a satisfied grin.
Now he knows your face, bitch
.

She wriggled her butt toward the right side of her bed, keeping her eyes locked on the woman. Technology had made everything smaller, too small to be made into weapons. But it had also transformed all her devices into wireless creatures. Creatures that once or twice a day needed to be charged. So as not to lose any, Kang Jung assiduously kept all the wires and adapters in one drawer. In her nightstand. On the right side of her bed.

The woman glanced over but said nothing. Kang Jung could see that she'd pulled Everland Resort up on the screen. The woman was staring at the fairy princess's castle.

“You're not making this shit up, are you, kid?”

“No,” Kang Jung said. “Several of the Hivemind are teenagers who work at the park. That's how they gain access to the castle anytime they want.”

The woman nodded as if to say,
Makes sense
. Her eyes remained glued to the monitor.

Kang Jung reached behind her and with a pinkie surreptitiously opened the tiny, soundless drawer. She reached her slender hand inside and pulled out the first wire she touched. It felt magnificently familiar, of course; it was the USB cord she used to connect her laptop to her printer when the Wi-Fi connection was down.

With her hands tucked behind her, she wound each end around one of her wrists to ascertain the size of the cord.

Briefly she wondered if she'd have entertained such a devious thought had the intrigue surrounding the American translator's murder not come directly to her door.

Well, it did come to my door, didn't it?

She glanced back at her nightstand. Unwound one end of the USB and snatched the TV remote control next to her lamp. She placed the remote in her lap on the bed and wound the USB around her wrist again, this time with both hands out in front of her.

She drew a deep breath.

Stabbed at the power button on the remote.

The television across the room blinked to life. On the screen, several scantily clad women danced vigorously to earsplitting K-pop.

The woman immediately spun toward the television.

When she did, Kang Jung launched herself from the bed. Swinging the USB cord around the woman's neck, Kang Jung clung to the woman's back for her life.

Beneath her the woman bucked like a mechanical bull, trying to throw her off. But Kang Jung only tightened the cord around her throat, wrapped her strong legs around the woman's waist, and rode her harder.

As the woman thrashed from one side of the room to the other, Kang Jung swung her head in the direction of the camera.

Madly determined—but still terribly frightened—at the top of her lungs, she bellowed five blissfully histrionic words: “If I die,
avenge me
!”