Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Janson Option (Paul Janson) Read online

  “Six or eight,” said Lynds. “But either the expense was too great, or he was less interested in saving his guests than saving himself. We sold it to a Russian oligarch who will need to escape from the police when he runs afoul of Putin.”

  Janson and Kincaid exchanged an almost invisible glance.

  Survivors keep far-fetched standing by.

  Dream it up before the lead flies.

  Small subs were common. There were thousands in the world, some were rich men’s toys, some used for tourist rides. Most served undersea research and offshore petroleum infrastructure. But in every case, their range was limited. To reach the remote Eyl, a small submarine would have to launch from, and return to, a nearby mothership. Janson thought immediately of tapping an old friend at Woods Hole. The Oceanographic Institution very likely had a research vessel working in the Indian Ocean. He dropped the thought as quickly. There was no way to sneak a slow-moving research vessel into Somali waters; not only would the pirates not be fooled, they would eat it for breakfast. The same would hold for petroleum explorers or seabed-pipeline installation ships.

  But a yacht, thought Janson—a fast megayacht that secretly carried a submersible escape boat—would be a mothership beyond suspicion. He saw in a flash how to make the pirates welcome it with open arms.

  “Which oligarch?” Kincaid asked casually.

  Lynds demurred. “I am sorry, but a secret escape hatch must be secret. A secret submarine, even more so.”

  ELEVEN

  Finally, a photo of Mrs. Helms.”

  Janson tilted his computer screen toward Kincaid. Catspaw’s Embraer had just lifted off from Hamburg, bound southeast for a fuel stop in Cairo on the first leg of the five-thousand-mile flight to Mogadishu.

  “Wow!” said Kincaid. “A long-haired, fair-eyed gal. Helms sent this?”

  “He said her father took it a couple of years ago.”

  Until now, they had only seen Allegra Helms in group photos of schoolgirls clowning for iPhones or paparazzi rich-and-famous shots of a blonde hiding behind Ray-Ban Wayfarers. Her father had captured a face from the Renaissance—long and heart-shaped, with a straight nose and a high brow. Her lips were expressive, her eyes reserved.

  “If I were a pirate dude,” said Kincaid, “you couldn’t pay me enough ransom. She’s a keeper.”

  Janson said, “Makes you wonder why she’s camera shy.”

  Quintisha had forwarded a rundown on the other hostages, who were well-off but not rich enough to raise huge ransoms: Adler’s New York realtor and her husband, a French fashion model, and elderly in-laws he’d stayed friendly with despite a long-ago divorce.

  They got busy on their sat phones.

  Janson started by putting out feelers to link up with more trustworthy gun runners than the one Barorski might introduce him to in Beirut. It was unlikely he would do better in that part of the world on short notice, but it was always worth a try.

  Next, he spoke with people he could trust to inquire discreetly into the name and current location of a Russian oligarch’s megayacht with a hidden submarine. It was less of a long shot than would appear. Yachts, like geese, migrated with the seasons. The fierce winds of the southwest monsoon had moved on to the subcontinent, which made it the time of year to cruise the Indian Ocean. The oligarch, or at least his yacht, was likely near Somalia, either visiting Persian Gulf sheiks or puttering around the Seychelles Islands.

  Kincaid rounded up gear, using Catspaw intermediaries to purchase and ship. She still did not know how they would use an electric hydrofoil water scooter, but there was no way she would pass up a fast craft that could deliver them a fair distance in silence. She arranged for the Slovenian manufacturer to airfreight a Quadrofoil to Nairobi and another to Victoria, capital of the Seychelles Islands. She also ordered up advanced CCR scuba-diving outfits. The closed-circuit rebreathers employed computer-blended gas mixes and carbon-dioxide-absorbent canisters to prolong the time they could operate underwater and eliminate telltale bubbles. The sleek new side-mount type was simpler to operate and considerably less bulky.

  Janson gingerly continued his discussions with Lloyd’s of London. Maxammed’s Mad Max reputation was spooking them. They repeated again and again that the situation was “volatile.” He ran that by Kincaid, and she suggested that Lloyd’s no longer trusted their own negotiators.

  The Embraer had just crossed out of German airspace when news came that the men and women of Tarantula’s crew had been discovered seasick and sunburned, but otherwise healthy, adrift in one of the yacht’s tenders. Reports from several sources suggested that the only hostages the pirates held were the owner’s wealthy guests.

  “Much better,” said Kincaid. “Six instead of twenty-six.”

  They were flying across Serbia, and Kincaid was just unlocking a concealed overhead storage compartment to take a break by field-stripping her Knight’s M110 semiautomatic rifle, when Quintisha Upchurch routed a call from a Catspaw contract researcher assigned to Allegra Helms.

  Janson ejaculated a startled “What?”

  “What?” asked Kincaid.

  “If you find it hard to believe that Camorra assassins slinging lead at Kingsman Helms was coincidence, this nails it.”

  “What?”

  “Countess Allegra Helms’s aristocratic family has Camorra cousins in Naples.”

  “Helms is married to gangsters?”

  “All we know for sure is that his wife has gangster cousins.”

  Janson raised his voice and called, “Hey, ladies!”

  The mikes to the cockpit were voice activated.

  “Yeah, boss,” Lynn answered.

  “Hang a right. We’re going to drop Jess in Naples.”

  * * *

  IN THE TWENTY MINUTES it took their pilots to get ATC permission for the course change and bank the big private plane on its starboard side, Kincaid studied a digital map of Naples and Janson tried to find her some friends on the ground.

  Alessandro Mondazzi, a director of the oil conglomerate Eni, with whom he had coordinated the Yousef exfiltration, would not take his call—blowback, probably, from Yousef flying the coop. When Janson tried a well-connected acquaintance at the Farnesina, he was told the Ministry of Foreign Affairs officer had retired.

  The third Italian he telephoned took his call. They spoke briefly, after which Janson told Kincaid, “I got you a late lunch date with a SISDE field officer I partnered with on a NATO thing. Italian domestic intelligence. He’s a cop now. Take him to Ciro a Santa Brigida. It’s a little touristy, but Ric’s nuts for bufala and they have the best. It’s off Via Roma, where it butts into Via Toledo.” He showed her on the map.

  “What’s the dress code?”

  “Ladies and gents for the locals. Sweats for the tourists.”

  Kincaid hurried back to the clothes lockers. As the plane descended, she returned wearing a snug-fitting tracksuit under a black blazer, low heels, and tousled bed hair.

  “Let Ric choose the wine. Don’t let him get you drunk.”

  “Appreciate the heads-up.”

  “He wasn’t my first choice. Don’t tell him anything you don’t have to.”

  “How bent is he?”

  “Old Neapolitan saying,” said Janson. “I won’t even try to put it in Naples dialect, but roughly translated: ‘The walls between good guys and bad guys are porous.’”

  “Why would he help you?”

  “He knows I respect his bravery, though I don’t admire him. He also knows I know enough about him to get him killed, which of course I would never spill without major provocation. You can remind him of that if you like, but it probably won’t be necessary.”

  “How well does he know the Camorra?”

  “You can’t be a cop in Naples and not know the Camorra.”

  “Are we really looking at a connection with Hassan’s so-called Italian?”

  Janson shrugged. “At this point anything is possible. Watch your back. Look out for the women. And try not
to get mugged. Little kids steal ladies’ pocketbooks.”

  Kincaid slipped her new pistol into its holster at the small of her back and slid a fresh carbon-fiber blade inside its slot under her clutch. “I’ll try not to get mugged.”

  As Lynn Novicki was lining up on final approach into Capodichino, a call came in from an officer who had seen the US Navy drone video. “Another hostage got shot.”

  “Which one?”

  “It looks like an older woman.”

  Janson signed off and said to Kincaid, “Fast as you can.”

  TWELVE

  40°53' N, 14°17' E

  Naples Capodichino Airport.

  The Embraer stopped rolling long enough for Kincaid to disembark at a private apron. Sky Services had a car waiting that took her to Capodichino’s main passenger terminal. By the time she stepped out of the limo at the terminal, the Embraer was taking off again. She watched it disappear on a course farther to the east than a beeline to Cairo, where they had been scheduled to refuel. Maybe air traffic control had routed it that way. More likely, Janson was pulling a disappearing act.

  She walked around the passenger concourse, forcing herself to put in the time until she felt comfortable that no one was following her, then boarded a bus to the Napoli Centrale train station. She wandered the station as she had the airport; when Janson said “fast,” he did not mean risking cover. She took a taxi to the Renaissance Hotel Mediterraneo, went in the front, went out the side, and walked narrow streets for an hour, absorbing the city and watching her back.

  The Church of Santa Brigida fronted the sidewalk closely, like a New York apartment building. Continuing along the Via Santa Brigida and into Ciro, she passed through the pizzeria on the ground floor and up a flight of stairs to a dining room packed with stylish locals and tourists in sweatsuits. The restaurant was a quarter mile from the Bay of Naples, and the densely built maze of streets blocked any view of the water, but the light streaming in the second-floor windows was unmistakably maritime—soft, yet oddly penetrating.

  The captain of the dining room bowed and smiled her across the crowded room to a corner table for two, where a swarthy, dark-haired guy in a suit with razor-sharp creases swept to his feet. Ric Cirillo was about Janson’s age and reeked of cigarettes.

  She let him kiss her hand.

  He had a big, warm smile and spoke English with a flourish. “Signora, our mutual friend failed utterly to paint a portrait worthy of your beauty and your youth.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, thinking, Jesus, I’m going to have to move things along, or we’ll be here all day.

  “No problem. No problem. In Napoli, who knows the time when we have a good time? Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Come. We will tour the antipasti and they will bring us what we love.”

  He led the way to an immense spread of cured meats, pickled vegetables, breads, sausages and cheeses, bright peppers in oil, octopus, squid, countless fish she had never seen before, and huge mounds of mozzarella with rinds as shiny and white as porcelain.

  When they had seen it all, Kincaid said, “I know what I want, if I can have it.”

  “They’ll bring you anything you want.”

  “I want a big old slab of that mozzarella di bufala.”

  “You speak Italian with an excellent accent.”

  “And I want olive oil and a hunk of bread.”

  “Perfect. You heard the lady,” he told the waiter. “For her and for me, the same! And your best bottle of Falanghina.”

  At the table, Kincaid said, “I’m afraid I have a better accent than a vocabulary. I really appreciate your speaking English. The Neapolitan dialect is so fast it makes my head spin. Have you had a chance to look into the connection between—”

  His eyes widened.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I won’t say it out loud. But you know the connection I mean.” Even this she spoke in a low voice that did not carry to the nearby tables, and she saw him relax, slightly, as if he had decided that Janson hadn’t saddled him with a moron. “I want to meet them,” she said.

  “They won’t talk to you.”

  “Then you talk to me.”

  He nodded. “It is my pleasure, for the sake of our mutual friend.”

  “You know the connection.”

  “I know a little. I have heard stories. I have heard rumors. It is an unusual connection. Rare and unusual.”

  The waiter brought a bottle of pale yellow wine, opened it ceremoniously, waited for Cirillo to approve, and poured with a flourish. Cirillo raised his glass. “Welcome to Napoli.”

  “How rare and unusual?”

  “The classes don’t mix in Italy. Yes, an elderly widower might marry his housekeeper, but it is not common. In the case that has engaged your interest, an aristocrat from the north made love to a beautiful peasant girl from Campania, the region surrounding Naples, and instead of dallying with her, married her. Perhaps he took pity on an orphan, perhaps he fell in love.”

  “How closely connected is she to the woman we’re talking about?”

  “Her mother.”

  “I didn’t realize the connection was that close. Can we talk to any of them?”

  Cirillo’s eyes widened again, as if reconsidering her intelligence. Ignoring her question, he said, “The count’s family had a fit. But then things changed. His family was feckless and lost their money. Her family—her uncles—were Camorra and at the same time that his family was losing their money, the Camorra—both the slum poor and the country peasants—rose to great wealth and power by making a new Italy.”

  “How?”

  “They emerged from ordinary drugs, prostitution, garbage collection, protection, and gunrunning. They transcended the traditional bribing of officials. They became titans of international arms trafficking, and the international clothing industry, which has many factories here, and cement, and construction, and money laundering. They made partners of powerful politicians.

  “The mother’s uncles had no children of their own left alive. They had all been killed along with their wives in the clan fighting. So they shifted masses of wealth to the mother, perhaps from kindness, more likely out of a scheme of money laundering, establishing businesses, industries, in her name. Suddenly, the mother, their niece, died. The woman you’re asking about had just become of age, so they shifted the money—the masses of freshly laundered now-legitimate money and enterprises—to her.”

  Cirillo sipped wine, smiled, and shook his head at the vagaries of fate.

  “Imagine she was twenty-one, a countess, and suddenly very, very rich. What did she do? She fell in love with an American. And suddenly those back-alley peasants saw their little girl in the clutches of a powerful, ambitious business executive. It was too late to cut her off. I am told that her father tried to intercede. Probably ordered to, probably threatened with grievous harm. Whatever, he was obviously not successful, as she married the man.”

  “Is she Camorra?”

  “That is highly unlikely.”

  “Why? Women often replace mafia men.”

  “First of all, remember this is not mafia. This is not Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Nor is it the Cosa Nuova, ‘New Thing,’ of Calabria. This is Il Sistema—the System—which is the true name of Napoli’s Camorra. Here, among the System, each clan chooses its own course. In Sicily, old-man bosses have to be asked permission to conduct murders. In Naples, the bosses are young, very young, younger every day, and Camorra families decide for themselves. That means more killing—they slaughter each other with knives, bullets, bombs, fists, and boots. No one fights like them. They mean it—and their enemies know they mean it—when they boast, ‘Live or die, it’s all the same to me.’”

  “That doesn’t mean there’s no room for a woman boss.”

  “I did not say that there are no women bosses. It’s not that Il Sistema doesn’t have women in charge. But the woman who you are asking about lives abroad, married a foreigner
, travels the world. No one can run the System from far away.”

  “But you said they’ve expanded abroad.”

  “Each new family that forms abroad tends it own affairs, locally, whether in Spain or Brazil or North America. No. I can assure you that the woman in question darting about the world like a rabbit is not running any criminal enterprises.”

  “Then why did they try to kill her husband?”

  “Killing is like breathing to them. It would be a mistake to overestimate the importance of them deciding to kill him. Perhaps he cheated them, perhaps he insulted them, perhaps he irritated them.”

  “Why didn’t they kill him at the get-go? Back when she first married?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would he even know these people? He’s a corporation man. Totally dishonest in his own way—totally corrupt—but not the sort with the guts to hang with gangsters.”

  “Very unlikely he knows them,” Ric Cirillo admitted. “In fact, she likely does not even know the connection.”

  “She wouldn’t know?”

  “How would she? It is very likely her father and mother hid the past from her. Remember, they shipped her off to America to school. That is very rare, except for children of the diplomatic corps. If they want boarding school, there are plenty in Switzerland. But to send her to America?”

  Kincaid had another question, her most important. She waited while they drank more wine, ate the fabulous cheese, and let the waiters bring plates of fish. Ric Cirillo probed repeatedly about Paul Janson. Kincaid deflected his questions with noncommittal answers. Cirillo pushed harder, demanding, “Does Janson never doubt this mission of his?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “Has he no internal conflict?”

  Whenever she razzed Janson about the paradox of atoning for violence with violence, Kincaid always came away with the feeling that Janson saw no choice except to act. But to Cirillo she would say only, “He knows himself.”

  Cirillo stared into his glass. “That was always his strength,” and fell into a morose silence.