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

  Janson looked around the cabin, confirming it was still safe to talk. No one had moved closer and the flight attendant had vanished. He said, “There’s fighting in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen.”

  “Gunrunners,” said Kincaid. Janson had a soft spot for arms traffickers who excelled at getting in and out of sticky places. He could tap weapons dealers he trusted for introductions.

  “Making friends and customers,” said Janson.

  “Any particular ones?”

  “Where there’s war in East Africa, there are Israelis.”

  “Are you going to Tel Aviv?”

  “I’ve got a call in to a guy in Zurich. Hoping he’ll know who’s busy on the ground.”

  “We,” Kincaid said, meaning the United States, “have Special Forces in Somalia hunting al-Qaeda. Gotta stay off their scopes.”

  “Affirmative.”

  The last thing Paul Janson could afford was to entangle Catspaw Associates in chain-of-command red tape. If that ever happened, the broad and deep network of contacts and mutually helpful friendships that he was so painstakingly building would dissolve overnight. He and Kincaid had to go in on their own, and, most important, get out on their own, off everyone’s scopes.

  “Guy I know,” said Kincaid, “is beta testing a two-person hydrofoil water scooter for the Navy.”

  She and Janson were constantly searching for inventions they could adapt to field use. Volunteering to trail-run cognitive-fingerprint keystroke-dynamics software for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency engineers, they now secured their laptops with DARPA’s “fingertip passwords” distinguished by core rhythms in their typing that were probably uncrackable.

  Janson was currently engaged in snagging an early look at a mini version of a hand-launched Switchblade “kamikaze” reconnaissance drone, and angling to try out a new ultra-lightweight night-vision goggle that employed GRIN gradient index polymer lens technology.

  Kincaid’s latest find, XG Sciences graphene woven fabric—thin, strong cloth of graphene oxide flakes, exfoliated graphene nanoplatelets, and carbon nanotube fibers developed to block electromagnetic interference and dissipate heat—was eleven times more bulletproof than Kevlar; a costume designer she was friendly with fashioned the graphene cloth into a burqa and kaffiyeh headdresses.

  “How loud is that scooter?” Janson asked.

  “Dead silent. It’s electric. Major stealth. Foils make no wake and it’s Kevlar and carbon fiber, so no radar signature.”

  “Except for the motor and the battery. What range?”

  “Sixty miles. It’s really cool. You can remote it—make it come to you. It’ll crack twenty-five knots, and the foils fold so you can fit it in a helicopter.”

  “Happen to know any guys testing a silent helicopter with a two-thousand-mile range?”

  “How about a helicopter off a ship?” Kincaid asked. She was not surprised when Janson answered with an unenthusiastic “Maybe.” Ships got complicated, and complicated took time. And Kingsman Helms was right about one thing: when the killing started from the get-go, there was no time to lose.

  * * *

  MONIQUE TRUDEAU FLIPPED OUT when the pirate chief ordered his men to throw Allen Adler’s body overboard.

  Allegra Helms could not believe her ears. Of all the horrors to fear, who cared what happened to Adler’s body? He was dead and they weren’t, yet. But the model suddenly started screaming in piercing French.

  “Don’t do that! Don’t do that!”

  They were on the steering bridge. Maxammed had ordered them all to be kept there so he could see them always. Hank and Susan tried to calm her. Monique jerked away from them and shook her head in a frenzy.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”

  The pirates lugging the body out the door as their chief had ordered took no heed.

  “You can’t just throw him in the sea!” Monique screamed. “It is not humane.”

  Allegra was the youngest of the hostages by far. But suddenly they all turned to her. “Countess Allegra,” shouted the imperious wife of the retired diplomat, “make her shut up before she gets us all killed.” And Susan, the real estate agent, cried, “Stop her for chrissakes!” Their husbands tried with no success to hush them.

  As Allegra tried to calm Monique, Maxammed, who had been anxiously pacing the windows, raced toward them, raising his long pistol. “What is she saying?”

  Allegra translated Monique’s French into Italian. “She doesn’t want you to throw the body overboard.”

  “Is she his girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “What does she care?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know her. I just met her,” she added, feeling like a coward for trying to disassociate herself from the poor woman.

  “I know you just met her. But you speak French. Tell her to shut up.”

  Allegra extended her hands pleadingly to the model. “He wants you to stop screaming. Please, Monique. You better stop before something happens.” But even as she tried to calm Monique, her mind locked on the pirate’s words. I know you just met her. He hadn’t attacked this yacht by accident, Allegra realized. He had known who was on board.

  “They can put him in the refrigerator!” Monique shouted. Her eyes were wild.

  “What does she say?”

  Allegra tried to make her translation sound reasonable. “She suggests putting the body in the ship’s refrigerator if you’re concerned about it rotting so that later it could have a proper burial.”

  “Tell her to shut up.”

  Before Allegra could translate the pirate’s command, the distraught woman ran after the pirates dragging the dead man. Maxammed moved like lightning to block her. Monique’s long straw of a body stiffened with a righteous anger. Suddenly she was not afraid, not even hysterical. She drew herself up. Whether for dramatic effect or heartfelt emotion, Allegra thought, you could never tell with the French. The answer came as a shock. Disdainful as a proud Parisian insulted by a rude waiter, Monique slapped the tall pirate.

  Maxammed hit her with his gun and blood spurted from her face.

  FIVE

  40°74' N, 74°00' W

  Chelsea Piers

  New York City

  Paul Janson watched for chinks in Kingsman Helms’s armor.

  Pacing where Janson had told him to wait, Helms looked hopelessly out of place, a man in a fine suit spooked by crowds. People rushing to the Chelsea Piers Sports Center jostled him. He lurched into a power walker, got tangled in a dog leash, and recoiled from a herd of schoolchildren that teachers’ aides were urging toward the skating rink. He also looked like an imperious executive whom few dared to make wait. Ignoring the arresting century-old photograph of the ocean liner Lusitania towering above horse-drawn hotel coaches and hansom cabs, he glared irritably up and down the long corridor that connected the three piers and out at the slips where yachts for hire were tied.

  But Kingsman Helms had been aloof and impatient long before his wife was kidnapped. Only when he failed to notice a beautiful woman stop and stare in open admiration at his wavy blond hair and startling blue eyes did Helms reveal that he was desperate, Janson concluded with cold satisfaction.

  Janson was forty feet away, dressed in a corduroy blazer, T-shirt, and khakis—the image of an equity trader recently fired or a Chelsea gallery owner on his way to open shop—watching from the entrance to a bowling alley, where he just had bought breakfast for FBI Special Agent Walt Laughlin, a Phoenix “graduate.”

  Laughlin, like Doug Case, was a Phoenix success story. He had returned to federal service, working for the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, and was now the prosecutor’s number-one expert at extracting confessions to indict captured pirates. Laughlin had filled Janson in on the latest he knew about Somali pirates while pointing out the drop-off of attacks as ships improved their defenses and naval patrols got better at surveilling the vast Indian Ocean. As they parted, Janson asked who in the FBI conducte
d ransom negotiations.

  But after having clawed his way back from chaotic despair, Laughlin was now a straight-arrow, by-the-book company man who would not compromise the FBI out of gratitude to Janson for saving him. “The United States government does not pay ransom,” he answered staunchly. “‘Not one cent for tribute,’ we told the Barbary pirates two hundred years ago. ‘Nada,’ we tell Somali pirates today.”

  Janson did not volunteer to Laughlin that he had already spoken with Lloyd’s of London and that Lloyd’s was already negotiating with a Somali who had represented pirates in previous hijackings. Nor did he mention that Lloyd’s was afraid of getting taken for a ride on this one.

  “No one,” he said, “shuts every door.”

  “Oh yeah? A federal judge just sentenced a Somali-American negotiator named Mohammad Shibin to life for piracy and hostage-taking. Shibin was no angel, but he was negotiating ransoms—which is going to make other negotiators change careers.”

  “Understood. But this is the wife of a leading petroleum executive. So if you happen to hear of any officials ‘unofficially’ involved, could you put me in touch?”

  Laughlin looked him in the eye. “Paul, you saved my life, but—”

  “It’s not tit for tat,” Janson interrupted. “You don’t owe me that way. You pay back the next guy who needs something. All you owe me is to decide whether the job I’m doing is the right job to do. If, in your opinion, it is, then I will accept your help.”

  “I don’t mean to sound weaselly. But I would need deniability.”

  “Deniability is a fantasy,” said Janson. “No blame, no game. If you’re not a player, you’re not calling shots.”

  “I’m not calling the shots. I’m just a donkey doing his job. If someone else captures pirates, I’ll get them indicted. You’re a freelancer, Paul. If I were to expose our ransom guy to a freelance operator, I need cover.”

  “You’ll have it. What’s ransom running these days?”

  “Five million for a ship and crew. Half million for an individual. But when you’re negotiating, you first have to lower expectations. They get big numbers in their heads, based on a whole ship. Don’t forget, the pirates have Google like everybody else. The lady is rich. They’ll know her value. So in her case, sky’s the limit. Plus you gotta factor in the fifteen percent al-Shabaab militia tax, if they’re operating on al-Shabaab turf.”

  “Shrinking turf,” said Janson. “Al-Shabaab have lost their bases in Mogadishu and Kismayo.”

  “Fifteen or twenty thousand heavily armed boys who’ve known nothing but war since they were born don’t vanish overnight. When they lose the towns and cities, they retreat to the bush. If the armies of the African Union Mission in Somalia drive them out of the south, they’ll head north, where your lady is.”

  The special agent took Janson’s arm in a gesture of friendship and urgency. “Paul, if I were you, I wouldn’t take the job. You’ll be butting heads with amateurs who have nothing to lose.”

  “Amateurs?”

  “A third of the pirates who put to sea never make it back alive. They can’t find a victim, or they sink in a storm, or they run out of fuel and drift till they die. Who takes two-to-one odds they’ll survive except desperate amateurs?…Hang on.”

  Laughlin reached for his phone and turned away. Janson watched Helms pace until Laughlin pocketed his phone.

  “Here’s another reason to reconsider. Rumor that’s usually right says the pirates who seized Tarantula are led by a scumbag named Maxammed. His last hijacking ended in three dead hostages. They call him Mad Max, as in ‘When in doubt, shoot.’”

  “At least he’s not an amateur.”

  Expression opaque, the FBI agent extended his hand. “Good luck. Don’t believe what you read in the papers about the new parliament and their new president. Somalia is still a mess—suicide bombings, assassinations, criminal gangs, drug running, shooting journalists, graft, and corruption. You know why? Because bad people love failed states.”

  “All the more reason to back the good people,” said Janson.

  With a brusque nod, Agent Laughlin turned left, downtown, to the Federal Courthouse. Janson turned right, glided through the pedestrian scrum, and appeared suddenly before Kingsman Helms, blocking his path with a pleasant smile.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  Jessica Kincaid appeared just as suddenly from the other direction, a sweatshirt draped over her shoulders and a handbag under her arm. Her hair was slicked back from a sweaty workout as if she lived in the neighborhood and showered at home. Like other young women walking by in yoga pants, she could have left her kids with the nanny, or perhaps she was just waking up from a late-night restaurant shift. Janson saw that she was on edge, her eyes hyperactive, not loving his choice for the meet with its myriad walkways crowded with civilians and the dense pack of cars in the shadowy parking lots under the pier shed.

  Janson took Helms’s elbow. “Let’s walk.”

  He steered him outdoors into the morning light. The pier thrust west two hundred meters into the Hudson River. There was a narrow walk between the two-story pier shed and the slip. The parking-garage doors were open to the breeze. The slip was filled with charter yachts and dinner boats moored alongside. Kincaid trailed, watching the cars and the boats.

  “My wife’s family is pressuring the Italian government,” Helms said. “They have influence.”

  “To do what?”

  “Enlist the military. What’s your opinion of Italian Special Forces?”

  “They invented underwater commando tactics, back in the day. But they’re not SEALs. I’ll say it again, pirates are either a US Navy job, or you pay the ransom.”

  “It’s too late for ransom. They killed the yacht’s owner.”

  Janson said, “We’ve learned that Mr. Adler was a hothead used to getting his own way. He made his pile taking huge risks trading currency. Hotheaded gamblers used to getting their way make fatal mistakes when they fall in with the wrong crowd.” He kept the “Mad Max” Maxammed rumor to himself.

  Helms shook his head impatiently, clearly uninterested in Adler beyond what his death augured for his wife’s safety. “You continue to fail to understand my point. I have seen you both in action. I know what I’m asking for. The best.”

  Janson raised his eyebrows and cast Kincaid a look as if he were asking, How do we get out of this? Kincaid was frowning at the dinner cruise boat Bateaux Celestial, where busboys and waiters setting tables for lunch could be seen only murkily through a smoked glass canopy.

  “You’re not qualified to judge the best,” Janson said bluntly. “But if you’re hell-bent on going the private-enterprise route instead of using your considerable clout to engage the Navy, why not hire the president of your Global Security Division?”

  “Doug Case? He’s in a wheelchair.”

  Janson stopped walking. He held on to Helms’s arm, which stopped him abruptly. “You say you’ve seen us in action, Kingsman. You have no idea what you’ve seen. I have seen Doug Case in action. And I am qualified to judge the best. Even in a wheelchair Doug can outfight and outsmart any pirate on the Indian Ocean. And he’s got the contacts in East Africa, where ASC is exploring for oil, are you not?”

  “Damned straight we are. The East African rift is one of the last great oil and natural-gas deposits on the planet.”

  Janson shot an unreadable glance in Kincaid’s direction. “‘Rift’ is the operative word,” he said, and quoted from the Catspaw reports he had commissioned to prep for meeting Helms.

  “There are currently three Somalias: Somaliland—a functioning state in the north; Puntland—a semifunctioning, clan-dominated state in the middle; and southern Somalia—a chaotic region supposedly governed by Mogadishu, the capital city, where the situation is fluid to say the least. Today they build a new hotel, tomorrow somebody blows it up. They write a constitution to elect a parliament. Then clan elders whose warlords savaged the country for twenty years buy votes to elect the parliament
. And the parliament appoints the president. Shall I go on?”

  “At least you’re not pretending you don’t know your way around Africa.”

  Paul Janson tightened his grip on the executive’s elbow and resumed walking. Africa was where he had killed his first man, when Kingsman Helms was in seventh grade.

  “The new parliament is defended, sort of, by Somali forces, but still largely by AMISOM—African Union Mission to Somalia—Ugandan soldiers, mostly, who are still fighting hard-line Islamist al-Shabaab rebels for control of the countryside. Meanwhile, Kenyans invade from the west, and Ethiopia attacks from the north. If you’re having trouble keeping track, think of it this way: Mogadishu still can’t control itself, much less Puntland—where the pirates took your wife.”

  “I know all this,” said Helms.

  “Then you know to let ASC Security field your rescue team. Why not keep it in your family?”

  Helms said, “I can’t trust Doug Case. We’re fighting for the same job.”

  That answered that question: the Isle de Foree trouncing had upended the gang that ran ASC, and Doug Case had pulled alongside Kingsman Helms in the perpetual race to take over when the fabled Buddha finally fell dead on his desk. While security was not ordinarily on the corporate leadership ladder, American Synergy was no ordinary corporation. The Buddha, its CEO, was a former spy who had retired from Consular Operations many years before Janson served, and its extraordinarily autonomous divisions were commanded by outsized men and women who would be more at home in a Somali clan war than most holders of master’s of business administration degrees. Janson recalled Doug Case describing the division presidents’ committee as a viper’s nest, with Helms the head viper. Janson glanced back at Kincaid, who regularly reminded him that Doug Case had fangs too.

  “Is Doug Buddha’s latest fair-haired boy?”

  “I just admitted as much,” said Helms. “Let’s stick to the subject of rescuing my wife.”

  Jessica Kincaid forged alongside and settled cold eyes on Helms. “You may want us. But Doug Case is president of ASC Security. Who’s going to write our check?”