Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (26 page)

D
irector Edward Clarke stepped into the sumptuous banquet hall and turned 360 degrees, gazing up at the two-story ceilings with their dangling crystal chandeliers, the spotless egg-white walls that seemed to be a football field apart from each other, taking in all the empty space.

Christ, he thought. Our voices are going to echo in here as though we're in the goddamn Himalayas.

In the center of the room stood a great round table, topped with fine china and crystal water glasses. Seven men and one woman sat around the table exchanging silly banter. With a head of steam, Clarke finally approached.

“Whose fucking idea was all of this?” he said, motioning around the hall.

Bruce Javers, the thirty-something blowhard who'd founded Jupicon, Ltd., a multinational software company headquartered in Silicon Valley, jumped out of his seat, exhibiting a smile as wide as his ass.

“What are you talking about, Eddie? This place is fantastic.” He placed his rhino's leg of an arm around Clarke's shoulder, and it was all Clarke could do not to twist it into a pretzel and keep twisting it until the loudmouth squealed like a pig.

“First of all, Bruce, don't call me Eddie.” Clarke spoke loud enough for those at the table to hear. He didn't want to repeat this conversation. And he didn't want a repeat of this abomination to secrecy and security when it came time for their post-operation meeting in a few days.

“Has history taught you people
nothing
?” Clarke squawked.

Milhouse Hastings, CEO of defense contractor Leverton-Wells and another heart attack waiting to happen, looked up in surprise.

“You people?” Milhouse said. “What do you mean by ‘you people'?”

Clarke had fucking had it. This was a long time coming. “I mean you filthy-rich, white-bread dumbfucks who hold clandestine meetings that make the royal-fucking-wedding appear unpretentious.”

“What are trying to say, Ed?” This from Jacob Paltrow of Norvo Incorporated, the biotech giant that would one day make environmentalists consider giving Monsanto the Lady Bird Johnson Award.

“What I'm saying is,” Clarke shot back, “did all of you
sleep
through the forty-seven percent debacle? Look at this goddamn room. For all we know, Jimmy Carter's grandson could be sitting behind that wet bar, taping this entire meeting for
Mother Jones
. Hell, he could be standing there in plain sight, and we wouldn't be able to see him without binoculars given the size of this fucking place.”

Bruce Javers laid one of his beefy hands on Clarke's shoulder again. “Relax, Eddie, we had the place swept half an hour ago. It's cleaner than the Duchess of Cambridge's va—”

“
Shut up, Bruce!
We already have
one
international incident on our hands.” Christ, the guy was drunk; Clarke could smell the bourbon on his breath. “And
don't
call me Eddie.”

Clarke moved past him toward the table.

The place was swept, fine. Then let's get this the hell over with.

“F
IRSTLY,
” C
LARKE BEGAN
ten minutes later, “I want to thank everyone at this table for their patriotism.”

What a crock of shit, he thought as he continued with his preamble. The titans of industry sitting around the table—Bruce Javers, Milhouse Hastings, Jacob Paltrow—had lent their financial support to this operation for one reason and one reason only: to advance their bottom lines. Granted, Clarke agreed with their conviction that the current administration wasn't doing enough to combat the systematic data theft and cyber-espionage being committed against their corporations by the Chinese government. The three American companies represented at this table alone had been victimized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Hence, Diophantus. Collapsing once and for all the North Korean regime would create a unified Korea, one governed by an American ally, the democratically elected administration in Seoul. Once Korea became whole, the United States would have a friendly nation right on China's border. A strategic boon for America, a nightmare for the Chinese. No longer would their cybercrimes against US industry go unchecked. But even then, to call these three patriots, well, that was almost laughable.

“Without your support,” Clarke continued, “this operation would never have been possible.”

Clarke considered himself the only patriot in the room. Sandy Hildreth, the NSA director, was being paid handsomely for his role. Ella Quon was gunning for the position of director at the Central Intelligence Agency, and Douglas Albright, well, he simply wanted war. He'd been the administration's loudest critic when the president announced budget cuts for the Department of Defense. Albright was banking on becoming defense secretary once the right party took office, and he wanted to inherit a military that could fight
at least
two wars at a time. For years, Albright had been eyeing North Korea and Iran, quietly advocating military force to remove the regime in each. Word around the DOD was that Albright also had his sights set on Pakistan and half the Middle East.

Clarke cleared his throat and took a swallow of ice water. “Now, as you all know, we are not at this table to celebrate. That would be premature. However, we
are
here to discuss the
next
phase of Diophantus, which is just as, if not more, crucial to our success.”

Opposite Clarke, the blowhard Bruce Javers looked to be tuning out. But it didn't matter. He had a seat at the table because of his money, not his mind. With Congress watching every last penny being spent, an operation like Diophantus would have been impossible to keep secret otherwise. And, of course, it
needed
to be kept secret. Because even the goddamn neocons, who never met a war they didn't like, were opposed to military action in North Korea. At least out loud. Their pipe dream was that the regime would fall on its own. But if it didn't fall during the Great Famine of the nineties, when millions of North Koreans died of starvation and malnutrition, Clarke held out little hope that the leadership would collapse under its own weight anytime soon.

After all, how would it? The people of North Korea certainly weren't going to stage a revolution. Nothing like the Arab Spring was remotely possible in the DPRK. There was no freedom of assembly. There was no Internet, no social media platforms that could help citizens organize. And protestors wouldn't face just tear gas, rubber bullets, and fire hoses; they'd be shot dead in the streets. No, the people of North Korea weren't capable of collapsing the Kim regime.

And the regime
needed
to collapse, to be sure. Twenty years of failed diplomacy had gotten America and her allies absolutely nowhere. Administration after administration did
nothing
while the Kim regime advanced its nuclear weapons program right under their fucking noses.

What few seemed to comprehend was that the DPRK wasn't just a threat to the region; North Korea constituted a threat to the entire globe. As badly as that country needed money, who in the rational world could seriously doubt that Kim Jong-un would sell some of his nukes to al-Qaeda or Hezbollah or ISIS or some other terrorist organization hell-bent on spreading Sharia law to every nation in the world?

“As we've discussed before,” Clarke said, “we're looking at a hard landing in Korea. Once the Kim regime falls, we're going to face a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions. We're going to need to help Seoul deal with the flood of refugees. These people are going to need food, clothes, shelter, and they're going to need counseling. Integration isn't going to be easy. These folks have been brainwashed their entire lives. All that brainwashing is going to need to be undone. And once our boys take Pyongyang, the North is going to need a Marshall Plan. This is a war we're going to win, but war isn't pretty. We'll need to rebuild. We don't have a crystal ball; we can't see into the future. Nothing's a guarantee. But while we can't count on much, the one thing we can be damn certain of is that the American taxpayer isn't going to want to pay for the aftermath of the second Korean War.”

Edward Clarke folded his hands on the table in front of him and looked at Javers, Hastings, and Paltrow, one at a time. “And that, once again, is where you gentlemen—and your checkbooks—will come into play.”

J
anson is dead.”

Nam Sei-hoon took a deep breath and savored Ping's words. He received no pleasure from having his old friend killed. Only relief. Because Janson had made it clear that if he lived, Nam would die. And Nam Sei-hoon's country needed him. His life was only now getting started. In a few months, maybe even in a few weeks, Nam could finally emerge from the shadows and take his rightful place in history.

“Thank you,” he said into the phone. “Now we must deal with Kincaid.”

“Sin Bae informs me that Kincaid has returned to the area. She has the building under surveillance. But she has brought the Seoul police officer. In Sin Bae's condition, he cannot eliminate them both. He will need assistance. In fact, he should immediately be extracted. We believe he suffered broken bones in the accident, maybe even serious internal injuries. Besides, too many South Koreans have seen his face. Now that the cop is involved, I would like to get him out of Seoul as quickly as possible.”

Nam Sei-hoon sighed. “Very well. I will contact Clarke and have him send two of his people to the location.”

“And Sin Bae?”

“He is to remain until they arrive, of course. Then he may return to Shanghai for medical attention.”

“T
HE LITTLE MAN
will have Clarke send two agents to clean up.”

Sin Bae stretched his neck as he listened to Ping over the phone. The pain from the injuries he received in Beijing was getting worse, and he told Ping so.

“Once the agents arrive,” Ping said, “you may return to China. I will meet you in Shanghai and get you the medical attention you need.” There was a lengthy pause, followed by a barely audible sigh. “Once again, I apologize. The agent who was driving the Audi will be punished accordingly.”

“I would like for him to be in Shanghai when I arrive.”

“It will be arranged,” Ping said. “But I urge you to consider who is to blame. It was the woman with the bicycle who caused you to be in the road. Our man was only attempting to assist you in the capture of the boy by cut—”

“I asked for no assistance,” Sin Bae huffed and hung up.

N
AM
S
EI-HOON SAID
, “Absolutely not. Do not even
consider
leaving Seoul.”

Ambassador Owen Young remained quiet on the other end of the line. Then he said, “With due respect, we discussed this a long time ago and—”

“That was before you permitted one of your translators to overhear our plans.”

“You just finished telling me that everyone has been dealt with,” the ambassador cried. “I
beg
you. At least allow me and my chief aide to take leave. Jonathan is the one who caught our eavesdropper in the first place. Without his help, we would not even have known Diophantus was in jeopardy.”

“It is far too risky at this point. If the American ambassador is seen fleeing Seoul less than twenty-four hours before the conflict, it will implicate us all.”

“You speak of
risk
,” Young hissed. “You are putting our very
lives
at risk by not allowing us to leave the capital.”

“Do not be absurd, Ambassador. With the aid of American forces, this war will not last a week.”

“But it
is
war. And I have
family
, goddamn it. I have
children
.”

“And they will be safe, Ambassador, because the North will never get anywhere near Seoul.”

“We do
not
know all their capabilities.”

“You are wrong.
You
do not know all the North's capabilities.
I
do. You are speaking to the National Intelligence Service's head of North Korean Affairs, or have you forgotten?”

“North Korea is an
intelligence black hole
.”

Nam Sei-hoon wanted to reach into the phone and grab Young by the throat.

“Do you really believe that, Ambassador? What if I were to tell you that I have been running a deputy director in Pyongyang for the past five years?”

Ambassador Young fell silent once more.

Nam Sei-hoon felt something shift in his gut. This was a secret he had kept close to the vest since the very beginning. Other intelligence agents in North Korean Affairs knew about Nam's people in the Guard's Command and the Ministry of State Security. But no one knew he had someone in the leadership at the palace.

Nam hung up the phone.

He stood and walked over to the wall that displayed a map of Korea. The map would soon need to be replaced. The demarcation line would be erased, the demilitarized zone known by a new name. After a century of occupation and division, Korea was once again about to become whole.

And Nam Sei-hoon would be the man responsible for returning the peninsula to its long-forgotten glory.

K
incaid badly wanted to see Janson. But it would have to wait. Just now she was needed as a lure. Sitting in a plush chair in room 1708 at the Westin hotel, she leaned her head back so that Jina Jeon could get a better look at her nose. In the bedroom of the suite, the baby began bawling.

“Sorry,” Jeon said as she went to check on the child.

Kincaid lifted her head. “Where did the mother say she was going again?”

“She didn't,” Jeon called back to her. “Not really. She just said she'd be back in thirty minutes. That was three hours ago.”

“Maybe she got lost.”

“Doubtful,” Jeon said as she reentered the room. “I gave her one of my two phones with my other number and the number of the hotel plugged in. She would have called if she were lost.”

“Did you try calling her?”

“Twice. Both calls went straight to voice mail. The phone's shut off.”

“You think someone took her?”

“No, I don't. What I think is…” Jina Jeon trailed off.

“What?” Kincaid prodded. Every time she spoke, the left side of her face felt as though it were on fire.

“I think she was under the impression that she couldn't be a good mother to her daughter here in Seoul. I think she looked around the city and felt like she'd landed on another world. I think she was scared.”

“So what are you going to do?” Kincaid said. She had been certain she wasn't going to like Jina Jeon, but she'd been wrong. And she was kind of disappointed about it.

“Nothing. Until I know for sure.” Jeon returned to her position behind Kincaid's chair. “Lean your head back again.”

Before Kincaid could comply, the hotel phone began to ring. Kincaid leapt from her chair to retrieve it.

Hearing Park Kwan's voice felt like ten milligrams of Valium melting under her tongue. “Kang Jung and I are both safe and sound and back in Seoul,” he said.

“Thanks so much for returning my call so quickly.”

“Would you like us to come to the hotel?”

“No,” Kincaid said. “Just continue taking care of Kang Jung until all this blows over.”

Kincaid gave Park Kwan the number to Jina Jeon's phone.

She hung up the phone and retook her seat.

“Lean your head back,” Jina Jeon said.

There was a knock on the hotel room door. Kincaid hopped off the chair again. “I'll see who it is.”

“It's my mother,” Jina Jeon said as Kincaid put her eye to the peephole.

“It's your mother,” Kincaid said as she opened the door.

Jina Jeon's mother gave Kincaid a hug and asked her how she was feeling.

“Fine,” she lied.

“Great. Now where's my little girl?”

“Right here, Mom.”

“Not you, silly. The baby.”

“She's sleeping in the next room.”

“Let me go have a look at her.”

Jina Jeon pointed at the chair. “Jessie?”

Kincaid pointed to her watch. “No time. We have to go.”

K
INCAID MOVED ON
the signal. She crossed the street toward the apartment complex, her eyes darting left and right. The image of Sin Bae's body bouncing off the Audi A7 in Beijing remained fresh in her mind.

As she entered the courtyard, her nerves began to rattle. She kept herself from checking Jina Jeon's position for fear of giving away her cover. But she surveyed the bushes, the trees, expecting someone to jump out at her at any time the way Sin Bae had back at Dosan Park.

Halfway through the courtyard, Kincaid heard a thump.

She hurried to the door of the building and found it propped open with a crushed can of Hite Queen's Ale.

I sure could use a beer or twelve when all this is over
.

She opened the door and heard a second thump from behind her.

Then in her ear, Jina Jeon's silky voice.

“All clear.”

U
PSTAIRS IN THE
master bedroom of the safe house, Kincaid stared at one of the Cons Ops agents, who was out cold, restrained to the chair she'd been restrained to just hours earlier.

He was dark-skinned. Maybe Indian. A pair of pewter eyeglasses lay on the nightstand on the left side of the bed. Round frames, like John Lennon's. Only this guy didn't look like he was about to wake up and belt out a couple of verses of “Imagine.”

She stepped out of the room. And came face-to-face with Sin Bae.

She stared into the assassin's eyes with a hatred reserved for a select few.

She stepped aside to the right and walked past him. She entered the kitchen and found Jina Jeon filling a bucket of water from the tap.

When Jina Jeon saw her, she shut off the faucet.

“I don't trust him,” Kincaid said, touching her fingers to her throbbing cheek.

Jina Jeon tilted her head and looked at Kincaid with sympathetic eyes. Finally, she sighed. “Your presence has been requested in the second bedroom,” she said, lifting the heavy bucket out of the sink.

Kincaid bit down on her lower lip. She wasn't
entirely
sure she trusted Jina Jeon either.

Silently she moved to the back of the apartment, tapped on the door to the second bedroom, and entered without waiting for a response.

The second Cons Ops agent, tied up to a similar chair as the first, was just beginning to stir. He lifted his head groggily before it fell forward against his chest.

This agent was Caucasian, young, with olive-colored skin that Kincaid guessed was either Greek or southern Italian.

He lifted his head again. This time his eyelids fluttered open. He stared up at the man standing before him.

With the croak of a lifelong smoker he said, “You're supposed to be dead.”

Janson said nothing.

A
FTER TWENTY MINUTES
of interrogating the two dazed Cons Ops agents, the four of them—Kincaid, Jina Jeon, Sin Bae, and Janson—regrouped in the living room to discuss a new strategy.

Sin Bae was the first to speak. “We know their training. They will tell us nothing unless we break them.”

Jina Jeon said, “I prepared a bucket. It's in the kitchen.”

Kincaid swallowed hard and turned to Janson.

“No way,” Janson said. “No torture.”

Kincaid's eyes fell on the cuts around Janson's throat. Following Sin Bae's attack in the coatroom she'd suffered similar lacerations, but fortunately she'd been spared the sight of them until they had sufficient time to scab over.

Jina Jeon said, “Paul, they're leaving us no choice.”

Janson shook his head. “There's always a choice.”

Kincaid glanced at Jina Jeon. Was she really going to protest against the Janson Rules? She was a Phoenix Foundation graduate. She should know better.

Sin Bae stepped away from the conversation. Kincaid remained unclear as to just how Janson had turned him. Janson had only told her, “
He's a lot more like you and me than either of us could have imagined
.”

Jina Jeon said, “What about protecting Seoul? What about the greater good? We know the
what
. But it does us no good without knowing
when
and
how
and precisely
where
.”

“No civilian casualties,” Janson said. “No killing anyone who doesn't try to kill us. No torture.
No
exceptions.”

Janson folded his arms across his chest. A sure sign, Kincaid knew, that he wasn't about to budge on this issue. Although she understood him, probably understood him better than anyone else in the world—at least as well as anyone
could
understand Paul Janson—she had to admit, their options were few and time was fast running out.

“Maybe they don't even know the details of Diophantus.”

Janson shook his head again. “One of them does. Probably Vik Pawar. I know Clarke. He's not going to have trusted Nam Sei-hoon well enough to leave the entire operation in his hands, especially if he was allowing Nam to control some of his agents. Believe me, Clarke isn't unrepresented here in South Korea.”

“What about Sin Bae?” Kincaid said. “They haven't seen his face. They don't know you turned him.”

Janson gave her a sideways glance that said,
We can't trust them alone together
.

Kincaid understood. Sin Bae may have turned but he was fragile. With the right psychological pressure, an experienced agent like Vik Pawar could turn him back.

No one spoke for several minutes. Finally, Janson unfolded his arms and turned to Jina Jeon.

“Get me the bucket,” he said.

J
ANSON DIDN'T SO MUCH AS
glance in Vik Pawar's direction as he stepped into the room and set the bucket down on the floor. His body language, however, exuded reticence. Any objective observer could see that Janson was uncomfortable with what he was doing. Disgusted, even. There was a self-loathing in his eyes, an inwardly directed anger evident on his face.

His sluggish movements as he tossed the double mattress aside betrayed the turmoil in his mind. As he separated the plywood from the rest of the bed frame, he mouthed a silent curse at himself. Shook his head like a drenched dog, as though he were attempting to free himself from whatever was weighing him down.

After testing its strength, Janson arranged the plywood lengthwise at a moderate angle, then lifted the heavy bucket of water and set it down next to the plywood's lower edge. He took a step back to appraise his work, a tear plainly forming in the corner of his left eye, his mouth set in a severe frown.

“I'm not going to lie, Vik,” he said quietly without looking at his prisoner. “I'm not going to pretend you have this coming in order to appease my own conscience.
No one
has this coming.”

Janson finally gazed up at Vik Pawar. He looked at him as he'd looked at so many others during his years in Consular Operations. Expressionless. Not like a human being beholds another. But like a machine.

Janson said, “But I'm also not going to pretend that I have all the time in the world to convince you to talk. Because I don't. You know that at least as well as I do.”

Janson stepped over to the bedroom door and rapped on it three times. “My conscience,” he said to Vik, “will just have to accept that I'm doing this for the greater good.”

Jina Jeon entered the room and handed Janson a stack of clean forest-green towels. Janson thanked her and said, “In two minutes, bring in Sin Bae and the rope and cords. This is a three-person job. If we do it right, Vik lives. If we do it wrong, he dies. Let's agree to try to do it right.”

When Jina left the bedroom, Janson turned to Vik with something close to compassion in his eyes. “Ever do this before?”

Vik's head moved to the side ever so slightly.

“Ever have it done to you?”

Again, Vik's head twitched almost imperceptibly. But he refused to look at Janson. His eyes instead remained fixed on the door.

“Me neither,” Janson said. “This will be a first for both of us. Like two virgins on prom night. Only I bet we both wish our dates were a hell of a lot prettier.”

Vik Pawar said nothing.

“I've seen it done, though,” Janson continued. “I know enough not to buy into the official lie. That it merely ‘simulates' drowning. That's complete bullshit. You'll only feel like you're drowning because I'll be
drowning
you. I won't be simulating jackshit. CIA lawyers can argue the point until they're blue. But there's no truth to it. Not a shred. I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said, ‘If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.'”

Their eyes finally met.

Janson said, “See these cuts around my neck? They're from just a few hours ago. I was sitting right there in the chair you're sitting in now. Sin Bae had a garrote around my throat. He was strangling me to death.” Janson paused. “Want to know what changed his mind?”

Vik Pawar said nothing, so Janson answered for him.

“Sure you do. I told him what little I knew about Diophantus. About how many innocent civilians are going to die. On both sides of the demarcation line.”

Vik's gaze moved back to the door.

Janson followed it. “That son of a bitch out there is a monster,” he said. “He was going to kill me, he was going to kill Kincaid. He was even going to kill a thirteen-year-old girl. But Diophantus, that was too much for him to stand. Even he had to draw a line.”

There was a rap on the door.

“Thirty seconds,” Janson called out.

He turned back to Vik Pawar and lowered his voice again. He spoke as softly as he would in a church or a library. “That's how I know I'm doing the right thing here. With you, I mean. Because you
know
the consequences of Diophantus. And of the ten million people in this city, you're the only one with the power to stop it. That you won't makes you even more of a monster than Sin Bae. And
that's
why I can set aside my convictions tonight and pour water down your throat and nostrils, maybe until you drown.”

Vik finally looked Janson directly in the eyes. But there was nothing in those eyes. Certainly no life, no humanity. Janson's eyes appeared completely dead.

“I'm sorry for what's about to happen, Vik,” he said in a mechanical voice. “I truly am, no matter how much of a monster you are.”

Another rap on the door.

“Ten seconds,” Janson called out.

He looked back at Vik. “I'm sorry that I am about to torture you. And I'm sorry that you're going to die tonight. Because as much as I'd like to con myself into believing otherwise, I know that's the only way this night ends. In five seconds, once Sin Bae steps through that door and allows you to see his face, I know there is no way in hell he's going to let you leave this room alive. That's something I'm just going to have to live with. Tonight and every night until I die.”