The Janson Command (30 page)
“Just talk. Sightings here and there. He’s not exactly nondescript.”
Janson smiled and gave her a story she would like to repeat. “An MI5 chap once told me that back when Idi Amin fled Uganda he was spotted in Saudi Arabia by a satellite.”
“Iboga is fatter than Amin. And satellites are more technologically advanced today.”
“What sightings have you heard about?”
“France. Romania. Bulgaria. Croatia. Russia.”
“Where in Russia?”
Mimi shrugged. Her dressing gown slipped off a round shoulder.
“How about Corsica?” Janson asked.
Mimi nodded. “I heard Corsica.”
“Really?”
“Just the other day, from a fellow down there on holiday. He didn’t actually see him, but he heard mention.”
“Where?”
Mimi shrugged again. “He was yachting. So I suppose by the sea.”
“Do you know about Securité Referral?”
“No. What is it?”
“Sort of a freelance union of rogue covert agents.”
“Drug smuggling?”
“Anything that makes money, I gather.”
Mimi warmed oil in a pan and began sautéing whole tomatoes. Janson grated cheese and sliced bread for toast. The guests arrived, Everest Orhii, a thin, middle-aged Nigerian in a worn blue suit and open shirt, and Pedro Menezes, a former oil minister of Isle de Foree, who was better dressed and looked extremely prosperous. Janson nodded his thanks to Mimi and murmured, “Pretty impressive on short notice.”
“You already knew I was impressive,” said Mimi. “Or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Minister Menezes gazed hungrily at the omelet Janson was dividing. Everest Orhii, the Nigerian, tore gratefully into the portion Mimi passed across the kitchen table. Both men, it turned out, were in exile, the Nigerian scraping by to spend money for lawyers in hopes of someday returning to Lagos. The Isle de Foreen was hoping to bribe his way back to Porto Clarence. Orhii had worked in the Nigerian oil ministry, though at a lower level than Menezes was at in Isle de Foree.
They each had cell phones, which were constantly ringing. Each would jump from the table, shout, “
Olá!
” or, “Orhii here!” and rush out to the garden for a private conversation.
“Before the civil war,” Menezes told Janson, “Isle de Foree resisted jointly exploring deepwater blocks with Nigeria.”
“Even though Nigeria was supporting Iboga?” asked Janson.
“The policy was initiated well before Iboga. The Nigerians had taken advantage years earlier when we were desperate. The shallow-water agreements were not fair.”
“No,” said Orhii, returning from the garden and redraping his napkin across his flat belly. “It was not that the agreements were not fair.”
“Then what?” demanded Menezes.
Orhii swallowed a slab of toast in two bites. “Isle de Foreens dislike Nigerians. They accuse us of being overbearing. It is reflexively typical of small nations to dislike big nations. As many nations hate America, so many hate Nigeria.”
“To have Nigeria as a neighbor is to sleep with a hippopotamus.”
“My nation and your island are separated by two hundred miles of open gulf.”
“Hippos can swim.”
“They all say we are pushy!” Everest Orhii shouted. “They say that we push ahead of the line and take all we want.”
Pedro Menezes’s phone rang and he rushed out to the garden.
Orhii motioned Janson closer. “If you want to know about petroleum exploration in the deepwater blocks, ask Everest about the bribes he took from GRA.”
“What is GRA?”
Orhii shrugged. “I don’t know. Sadly, they never visited my office. I suspect they dealt directly with my superiors, however.”
“Mimi?”
Mimi shook her head. “Not on my radar. Ask Pedro. He’s happy to talk. He’s so bored in London. He wants to go home and be oil minister again, but that will never happen. Ferdinand Poe will allow only the war veterans in his cabinet.”
Mimi carried her phone out to the garden, passing Pedro Menezes on his way in.
“What is GRA?” Janson asked when Isle de Foree’s ex–oil minister took his chair and addressed the remains of his omelet.
“Oh, them.” Menezes smiled. “Haven’t heard from them in years. Though why would I, stuck in London?”
“What are they?”
“Very generous.”
“What do you mean?”
“What he means,” interrupted Everest Orhii, “is that GRA paid him plenty to allow them secret access to explore deep waters south of the fields Isle de Foree was supposed to share with Nigeria.”
“There was no connection,” Menezes retorted disdainfully. “No Nigerian rights.”
“The geology is incontrovertible. It’s the same patch.”
“The geology is as clear as the history and our sovereignty. They are our waters and our sea bottom. Not Nigeria’s!”
“It would never stand up in court.”
“It doesn’t have to, now.”
“You ripped us off.”
Janson laid a big hand on each man’s arm and said, “Gentlemen, what do the initials ‘GRA’ stand for?”
“Ground Resource Access,” answered Menezes. “I believe.”
“Believe?” snorted Everest Orhii. “You must know who gave you all that money.”
“Their business cards read: ‘Ground Resource Access.’ I never found it listed on any exchange, however, or in any professional society.”
“Ground Resource Access?” Days earlier Janson had listened to Kingsman Helms say, “The problem with the supply side of oil is a problem of accessing the resources in the ground.” Coincidence? But, as Janson had told Helms, he had heard it from other oilmen. Common nomenclature.
“Was it an American company?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Were the people you dealt with American?” he asked patiently.
“The man who called on me appeared to be American.”
“What did he look like?”
“Rather like you. Fit, like a former soldier.”
“Could he have been a soldier?” asked Janson, thinking perhaps GRA was a front company for a U.S. covert service.
Menezes shrugged.
“Do you recall whether his card read ‘Limited’ or ‘Incorporated’?”
“ ‘Inc.’ He was American. No doubt about that.”
“And when was this?”
“Four years ago.”
Someone was taking the long view of Kingsman Helms’s assertion that “a purely logistic problem becomes a political problem when governments claim access.”
Mimi returned. Janson gave her a shadow of a nod. Time to move along. He had learned all he could here. CatsPaw’s freelancers could research the name.
“Finish your breakfast, my friends,” said Mimi. “Thank you so much for coming.”
In minutes she had them firmly out the door. “They weren’t much help, were they?”
“Every bit helps. Thank you.” He glanced at his watch.
“Don’t rush off,” said Mimi.
“I have a full schedule.”
“But I have another guest for you.”
“Who?”
“An angry policeman.”
Janson stifled the impulse to leave. Mimi was gaming him, but with a smile that suggested she had something special in mind. “What do you mean?”
“He is a Frenchman. He held a very high position in security. He ran afoul of the French president, who was not known for treating his officers kindly. He was demoted, unfairly.”
“Are you thinking he knows something about Sécurite Referral?”
“No— I mean for all I know he might, but that’s not why I telephoned him.”
“Then what?”
“Guess where he held his high-security post?”
“Princess!”
“Corsica.”
Janson smiled back at her beaming face. “Bless you, Mimi.”
“He’ll be here in an hour. Would you like a shower or something? You’ve been on a plane all night.”
“A shower would be terrific.”
* * *
DOMINIQUE ONDINE HAD
served most of his career on the island of Corsica, a French province, where he had battled national separatists, Union Corse mafia, and the contentious clans that warred over slights, insults, and long-simmering feuds. He was a pale-skinned man who appeared to have worked mostly indoors or at night.
“My life I give my country. My life is snatched from me by a politician.”
It was still not noon, but Dominque Ondine had had several cognacs by the smell of him. Mimi poured him another, which he gripped tightly in a thick fist with scarred knuckles. Janson nursed his as they spoke across Mimi’s table, which was now laden with a hamper’s worth of cheese, bread, and sausages that the nearby Harrods Food Hall had wheeled to her house in a pram.
“Madam Princess informs me that you are traveling to Corsica.”
“Yes, I’m meeting up with an associate there.”
“I hope for your sake you are not in the business of developing property.”
“Why is that?”
“Corsica teeters on the brink of anarchy. The nationalist movement protests ever more vehemently against ‘colonization’ by rich tourists. They hate developers seizing beachfront property for hotels.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m a corporate security consultant.”
Ondine raised a bushy eyebrow, blinked through a haze of cognac, and gave Paul Janson a closer look. Shaved, showered, and wearing a crisp blue dress shirt borrowed from Mimi’s collection, the American with the pleasant demeanor had struck the Frenchman as a banker, physician, or lawyer on a London vacation. Now Ondine wondered.
“Arson and dynamite,” he told Janson, “are the Corsican’s weapons of choice. Vendetta his ‘court of law.’ Corsicans are a people who look in, not out. Such an attitude complicates the task of guaranteeing security for outsiders who annoy them. You’ll have your hands full.”
Janson answered casually, although with earlier Iboga sightings neither as credible nor as current as the ex-SEAL Daniel’s, he was already working up a legend to cover an operation on the island. Jessica Kincaid was there already, doing recon and feeding information back to CatsPaw. Freddy Ramirez’s Protocolo de Seguridad was recruiting an exfiltration force. Quintisha Upchurch was marshaling intermediaries to lease helicopters, boats, and a freighter.
“Fortunately,” Janson told Dominique Ondine, “we have contracted only to guarantee the legitimacy of foreign investors. Their physical safety falls to others.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your government, the French government, desires not to run afoul of EU laws against money laundering. It is my job to vet potential investors in development projects that have French government support. In other words, if a drug smuggler wants to put his illegal profits into a Corsican beachfront hotel he will fail to pass scrutiny and his money will not be allowed into the project.”
“Ah. You’re more of an accountant.”
“Precisely,” said Janson, putting on his wire-rimmed glasses.
“I repeat: Corsica teeters on the brink. If the separatists attack and you happen to be among those sipping champagne in a millionaire’s holiday palace at Punta d’Oro, angry Corsicans may not honor the distinction.”
“Thank you for the warning.” Janson raised his glass and inclined it toward Ondine. “I will avoid the bubbly and stick to honest cognac.”
Ondine smiled at last.
“Tell me,” Janson asked. “In your experience, which Princess Mimi assures me is broad and deep, have you come upon an organization named Securité Referral?”
“Non.”
Ondine cut a length of sausage, slapped it on a chunk of bread, and chewed mightily. Janson noticed Mimi’s bright eyes zero in on the Frenchman. He’s lying, Janson thought.
“Does the name Emil Bloch ring a bell? Possibly one of their people.”
“There was a mercenary named Bloch,” said Ondine. “A former Legionnaire.”
“But you’ve not heard his name in connection with Securité Referral?”
“Non!”
“Another I have heard mentioned in connection with Securité Referral is a Corsican. Andria Giudicelli.”
“Merde.”
Ondine looked like he would spit on the floor if he weren’t in Mimi’s kitchen.
“You know him?”
“Know him? I arrested him twenty years ago.”
“On what charge?”
“Corsican recycling.”
“I beg your pardon? Recycling?”
A smile twitched Ondine’s lips. “‘Recycling is what Corsicans call arson. He burned down a rival’s factory. His friends broke him out of prison and he fled. Hasn’t been on Corsica since.”
“Could he have joined up with Securité Referral?”
“I don’t know what Securité Referral is, so how could I answer that?”
“Did I understand correctly that you are retired?” Janson asked.
Ondine finished chewing and wiped his hands on a napkin. “I do occasionally what you do—consult. It is better than sitting around.”
Janson gave him a Janson Associates card. “I wonder if I might have your card so I could call on your services.”
“But of course.” Ondine produced a card and stood up from the table. “
Merci
, Princess. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Janson.”
“I hope to call you soon,” said Janson. They shook hands.
Mimi saw the Frenchman to the door and came back. Janson was shrugging into his jacket.
“Where are you going?”
“As I told the man, Corsica.”
“He lied about Securité Referral.”
“I believe so.”
“Why?”
“Either he’s heard of it and fears it or he works for it. From what I’ve seen, he’s the type they look for: sharp, professional, connected, and on the edge. On the other hand, he’s a bit over the hill.”
“Why didn’t you question him further?”
“Because he would not expect such questioning from an ‘accounting fellow.’ ”
“But you will follow up?”
Janson kissed her on the cheek. “You have been wonderful. As always.”
A
fire-gutted hotel was the first sight to greet Paul Janson as he steered a motor yacht he had chartered in nearby Sardinia into Porto-Vecchio, a sailing and tourist town that occupied a deep indentation in the rocky southeast coast of Corsica. Shattered windows gaping like dead eyes, walls blackened by smoke, the burned-out twelve-story tower stood grim sentinel over the gleaming boats that crowded the inner harbor. Spray-paint graffiti reading “
Resistenza!
”
and “
Corse pour Corsicans
”
left no doubt how the fire had ignited.