Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Janson Option (Paul Janson) Page 12

Allegra extended the phone to Maxammed. “He wants to speak with you.”

  Maxammed said, “Tell him I am showing you’re alive—so Combined Forces don’t attack. Tell him.”

  “He says he’s showing that I’m OK so the Combined Forces don’t attack.”

  “Put him on, dammit!”

  Monique screamed. A pirate fired a single shot.

  Maxammed snatched the phone out of Allegra’s hand. Allegra saw Monique standing outside the bridge balanced on the railing of the docking wing, which extended over the side. Monique stretched to her full height, lifted her arms into a long, graceful stance, and dived at the sea forty feet below.

  Hostages and pirates rushed to the railing. The fashion model had cut the water cleanly and was swimming with strong, skilled strokes toward the beach. A pirate snapped a shot at her. Maxammed knocked the gun out of his hand.

  “Get in the skiff!” he ordered. “Catch her.”

  Three men ran to the distant stern, where the skiffs were tied.

  “Zambezi!” cried one of the khat chewers, and the others took up the cry, pointing at the water.

  Stunned, Allegra asked, “What does zambezi mean?”

  “Bull shark,” said Maxammed. He raised his long-barreled pistol and took careful aim. Now Allegra saw the shark’s fin cutting toward Monique. Maxammed fired. The bullets stitched into the water around the shark but had no effect.

  “There’s another!”

  “They usually hunt alone,” Maxammed said conversationally. “Sometimes in pairs.”

  “Shoot it!” Allegra screamed. “Shoot it!”

  Maxammed shrugged and fired again. The bull sharks veered toward Monique. Allegra saw their backs break the water, gleaming. They caught up with the woman and pulled her under.

  “Oh my God,” gasped Susan. “Oh my God.”

  Allegra stared at the empty waves with disbelief.

  Monique’s hands broke the surface, reached high, fingers grasping the air, and sank from sight again.

  “No escapes,” said Maxammed.

  * * *

  “JANSON! JANSON! Can you hear me?”

  Paul Janson was in the midst of paying cash for a royal-blue wind vest in an expensive boutique—one of several shops he had ducked into to ensure no one had followed him from the airport. Quintisha Upchurch had routed an urgent call from Kingsman Helms.

  “Janson. Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you. Hold on one moment.”

  Janson finished paying and hurried out of the store wearing the vest and carrying his jacket in a shopping bag. “What happened?”

  “Allegra telephoned.”

  “Good. What did she say about the ransom?”

  “Nothing. She said she is all right. But nothing about ransom. I tried to talk to the pirate and all of a sudden all I heard was screaming and shooting. And I don’t know what the fuck is going on now.”

  “What is going on,” Janson said calmly to settle Helms down, “is they want everyone to know she’s alive so they’re safe from attack. How did she sound?”

  “Like herself. Very cool.”

  “Good.”

  “But then the shooting started.”

  “Listen to me. We will know one way or another very quickly if she’s all right. They’ll be bound to call back.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s their shield. Hang in there, Kingsman. It’ll work out.”

  “You have to go in now.”

  “I’ll keep you posted.”

  Paul Janson hung up and immediately telephoned Nick Sayers in Mombasa.

  While the call went through he watched the street, intent on tracking shoppers, pedestrians, cars, police. He could not say he had a sixth sense he was being followed. The feeling was vaguer, more like what Kincaid called a “seventh sense.” He had seen absolutely nothing to back up the suspicion, and he knew he had come into Lebanon clean as a whistle on the Kurzweil passport. But the feeling existed, and he could not ignore it.

  He had chosen the wind vest for its intense color. If he was being followed, it would imprint on the watcher’s eye. Removing it would buy a few invisible seconds.

  “Now what?” Nick Sayers answered his phone.

  “I definitely wouldn’t send that dough.”

  “Listen.” The Lloyd’s of London man held his phone to the sky.

  Janson heard the sharp drone of a twin-engine prop plane clawing for altitude. Sayers said, “I’m standing on the tarmac. I’m watching him head east over the ocean. In a moment or two, he’ll turn left, and I will return to my hotel for a hard-earned G and T…Son of a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “He just turned right.”

  Right was south. The remote dirt-runway airfields of Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar were all to the south. Somalia was north.

  Janson said, “I hope you advised your bosses not to send the dough, because your courier would very likely steal it.”

  “I took your advice,” said Sayers, “and I recommended not trusting him.”

  “Are your recommendations against trusting your courier enshrined in London’s files?”

  “E-mail, text, and fax,” said Sayers. “I owe you one, Janson.”

  * * *

  “ISSE? WHY YOU LOOK so miserable?” asked Ahmed. “We’re home. It is so cool. Everything’s happening.”

  Hope in Mogadishu was sparking a boom. New houses were being built and the old ones painted in cheery pastel pinks and yellows. Electric, water, and cable companies were digging trenches for wire, coax, and pipes. Brickyards were springing up in vacant lots. The huge Bakaara Market, formerly an al-Shabaab stronghold, was open for business, guarded by soldiers and police, and packed with customers. Mercedes, SUVs, pickups, and AMISOM armored cars were shoving donkeys off the streets.

  “Splish-splash!”

  Ahmed pumped a cheerful fist at a bunch of guys swarming a Mercedes with buckets and sponges. “There’s more carwashes than khat stands. One on every block. And check out the money changers. There’s a racket for you. Dude, we got here just in time.”

  But Isse despaired. He was not just in time, no way. He had returned too late for the city he had dreamed of. The traitorous president Mohamed “Raage” Adam and the foreign invaders of AMISOM had driven al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu. The righteous were scattered into the bush, and everywhere Isse looked he saw the city spinning out of control.

  Infidels, the unbelieving kuffar, swaggered. Music blared. Women threw off their veils and walked with men. Men shaved their beards and thronged the streets during prayer times. And no one but him seemed to notice the starving refugees, abandoned children, and prostitutes huddled in the wreckage of bomb-shattered buildings not yet painted in cheerful pastels.

  FIFTEEN

  33°54' N, 35°29' E

  Zaitunay Bay

  Beirut, Lebanon

  The first time Paul Janson had set foot on the Beirut waterfront, Druse artillery on the hills outside the city was shelling the Christian-controlled port, and ships were fleeing to the open sea. Since then, Lebanese civil-war rubble had been pushed into the Mediterranean. On the rubble now sat the Zaitunay Bay development, a brand-new yacht basin ringed by luxury hotels, shops, and restaurants.

  Pedestrians strolled a promenade with views of floating piers at which were moored speedboats and motor yachts. It was oddly quiet for Beirut, as the buildings and gardens separated the promenade from noisy roads and the only automobile access was to the breakwater on the far side of the moorings. The newness, cleanliness, and order reminded Janson more of an airport shopping mall than a cosmopolitan waterfront. But when the wind shifted out of the east, he was strongly reminded of the way things used to be. Then, as now, a change in the weather carried the stench of the port’s cattle boats, slaughterhouses, and tanneries.

  “Cool vest,” Barorski greeted Janson. The vest had come in handy as the shift in wind brought a chill down from the mountains. Barorski was shivering.

  “You�
��re looking pretty sharp yourself,” Janson said, though it was hard to imagine that Barorski would believe it, slouched over a little café table and looking anything but sharp. He was about Janson’s height and build, but there the resemblance ended. He was fifteen years younger and soft in the middle. His belly bulged under his T-shirt. He had a thin mustache and a stubble beard and eyes habitually darting with envy.

  “Strange choice to meet here,” said Barorski.

  “Not at all strange,” said Janson. “I want you to introduce me to Genrich Moscow.”

  He watched Barorski’s gaze shoot across the basin, past the floating piers toward a boat moored stern-to on the outer breakwater. It looked similar to most in the marina—eighty feet of sculpted carbon fiber, dark glass, and electronic arrays. Moscow’s was the fastest, Janson’s sources had informed him, a supposition that he judged to be fantasy. The Russian arms merchant had not thrived as long as he had by selling AKs from his own boat.

  “Why,” Barorski asked, “should I give you this incredibly valuable introduction?”

  “For money.”

  “Money goes without saying. But why else?”

  Janson reached under his vest. Barorski flinched. Janson smiled. “I promise not to shoot you on a busy promenade.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Though I probably should.”

  “That is purely a matter of misinformed judgment. You haven’t any facts.”

  “If I didn’t have any facts, you would not be here. You ripped off the wrong people and left a trail. I swept it up, investing in a treacherous young man who has a peculiar talent for arranging introductions thanks to his extremely well-connected father and uncle on whose reputations he trades.”

  Barorski conceded the point with a nod. “Why do you want this introduction?”

  Janson said nothing.

  Barorski asked, “What is that in your hand?”

  Janson flashed the German passport. Barorski wanted it so much he did not even try to conceal his interest. “Is it fresh?”

  “It awaits only your photograph and signature.”

  “When should I telephone Mr. Moscow?”

  Janson said, “Understand the ground rules. Hello is not enough. An introduction has to be more than hello. Only when Genrich Moscow agrees to do business with me do you get your reward.”

  * * *

  JANSON WATCHED Genrich Moscow watch them walk the circle of the promenade to reach his yacht. They did not pass muster, entirely. The guard at the gangplank was joined by two more who moved like they could handle themselves—Al Qod–trained Hamas commandos, Janson rated them. Proof, as always, that arms traders were equal-opportunity employers. They inclined their heads toward their earpieces, stepped aside with blank expressions, and followed them onto the yacht. Janson was not surprised that its mooring lines were tied with slipknots for a quick exit.

  A uniformed steward, a light-on-his-feet muscle goon, led them to a breeze-swept flying bridge atop the wheelhouse. Genrich Moscow stood up and looked Janson over. He was a trim forty-five-year-old, with a face ridged by shrapnel scars. His left eyelid drooped from the wounds, but the eye appeared intact.

  Janson waited quietly, returning a level gaze. Barorski watched anxiously. At last Moscow said in a vague accent that could be Polish or Russian or even Israeli, “Welcome aboard, Mr. Saul.”

  “I appreciate your seeing me on short notice.”

  The guards retreated and took up positions one deck below.

  “What did you pay this one to vouch for you?” Moscow asked, indicating Barorski with a contemptuous nod.

  “I took it off his tab.”

  The arms merchant laughed. “You can bet you’re not the only one he owes. He has a gift for needing rescue, don’t you, Danielek?”

  “Can I go inside?” asked Barorski. “I am freezing.”

  “No,” said Moscow.

  Janson said, “Go wait in the café—Here…” He shrugged out of the vest and handed it to Barorski. “Good job,” he said. “Take this. Warm up. I’ll catch you there when we’re done.”

  Barorski scurried past Moscow’s guards and down the gangplank. Moscow watched him speculatively. “Fools know no limits.”

  “I believe he is growing up at last,” said Janson.

  “He’s running out of time—Mr. Saul, what do you want from me?”

  “Tell me about your Otter.”

  Genrich Moscow affected puzzlement. “Otter? What is this ‘Otter’?”

  “Your de Havilland DHC-3T float plane. The ‘T’ indicates conversion to turbine power—hopefully a Pratt & Whitney PT6A.”

  “PT6A-27,” Moscow admitted, correcting him with pride. “Pratt & Whitney makes the best motor. Seven hundred horsepower. Very, very dependable. Very, very quiet.”

  “All the better,” said Janson. “How old is she?”

  “Older than the pilots,” said Moscow. “They stopped building them in 1967. But she is perfectly maintained.”

  “So I heard.”

  “From whom?”

  “An admirer of yours.”

  “Why didn’t you ask him to introduce us, instead of Barorski?”

  “He saw no profit in asking you for a favor.”

  “Why didn’t you buy what you need from him?”

  “He doesn’t have what I need. Only you do.”

  “That puts you in a lousy bargaining position.”

  “I didn’t come here to quibble,” said Janson.

  “Might I know your friend’s name?”

  “You would, and you would respect it.”

  “But you won’t tell me. Is he possibly based in Zurich?”

  “Is it true that you converted your Otter’s floats to RAPT?” Janson asked.

  Again, the pride. “Just last month.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Retractable Amphibious Pontoon Technology, RAPT, recently developed in Australia, enabled a seaplane to reduce its inherent aerodynamic drag by tucking its bulky floats under its belly in a streamlined shape. “What did you gain?”

  “Twenty knots of airspeed and two hundred miles of range.”

  “Congratulations,” said Janson. Moscow was exaggerating. It would be more like ten or fifteen knots and one hundred miles of range, in itself a valuable improvement worth the modest investment in RAPT.

  “Will you let me charter it?”

  “Charter it? I don’t rent planes. I deliver weapons.”

  “I don’t want your weapons. I want your plane. Briefly.”

  “Do you know how to fly a float plane?”

  “I want your pilots, too.”

  “They are the best.”

  “I’ll pay for the best. I also want to rent two tanker dhows.”

  Moscow’s eyebrows rose. “Two? How long a flight are you intending?”

  “Four times longer than a helicopter. We will land on the water and refuel at sea exactly the way you do when you deliver Kalashnikovs from Mozambique.”

  Moscow stared, greatly annoyed. “Your sources are impressive.”

  “‘Impressive’ was the word my sources used to describe your method of in-flight refueling. ‘Pioneering’ was another.”

  “Well, we rise to the situation.” Moscow smiled.

  “We will return the same way. The pilots will refuel after they drop us, and they’ve put down, again, to refuel halfway home. Two tankers.”

  “The plane will be heavily laden. There won’t be much room for you.”

  “No, I don’t want her laden. I want her empty. I’m not paying to share space with your arms run. I want her capable of carrying eight people, in addition to your pilots.”

  “An empty run costs me money.”

  “One more question. Is it true that when you converted to turbine, you also installed an extra-wide cargo door?”

  Moscow said, “We occasionally deliver extra-wide cargo. The door folds down like a ramp.”

  “Name your price.”

  Moscow did. Janson offered half the numb
er. Moscow suggested splitting the difference.

  Janson nodded. “Throw in a pair of Micro Tavors, and you’ve got a deal.” Silenced, with fast-acquisition reflex sights, and almost as small as a big pistol, the Israeli Defense Forces MTAR Micro Tavor 5.56 bullpup assault rifle was among Kincaid’s favorites. An excellent weapon for fighting in a yacht’s cramped spaces.

  “All the money up front.”

  “I have no problem with that,” said Janson.

  Moscow took Janson’s acquiescence as a threat. He crossed his arms and stared hard. “I do not like the menace in that statement—the implication that you know where to find me if I happen to take your money but provide no Otter.”

  Paul Janson said, “I would be shocked if it came to that.”

  “I am not without defenses.” Moscow indicated his bodyguards.

  Paul Janson repeated, as mildly, “I would be shocked if it came to that.” He thrust out his hand. “Can we shake on this deal before we hammer out the details?”

  Moscow studied Janson closely. Janson gazed back, eyes neutral. According to his friend Neal Kruger in Zurich, Genrich Moscow was treacherous but not suicidal. Abruptly, the arms merchant smiled. “You can trust me, Mr. Saul. We can shake.”

  As Janson clasped hands with Moscow, both men’s eyes swiveled toward a sudden bustle across the basin. A motor scooter with a rider on back had slipped in from the road that led to the seawall. Instead of continuing onto the seawall, it raced onto the promenade, scattering pedestrians.

  Barorski, who was leaning over a table talking to two girls in high heels and short skirts, ran. The scooter charged after him. The rider stood on the stirrups, raised a pistol, and fired twice. The slugs knocked Barorski to the boardwalk. The scooter slowed beside him and the rider leaned over and fired a bullet into his head.

  The scooter careened toward the gardens, leaning so sharply its kickstand trailed sparks on the pavement, bounced through them, and raced away. People edged from doorways and cement garden planters, and rose from under tables where they had taken cover to converge tentatively on the body.

  “Interesting,” said Moscow. “He was wearing your vest.”

  “So he was,” said Janson, pocketing his monocular lens. “Did you happen to recognize the shooter?”