Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Janson Option (Paul Janson) (9 page)

W
hen the taxi driver saw the fifty euros, he stomped his brakes.

Kincaid shoved the money in his hand and jumped out, shouting, “
Continuate!
Via!
Go! Go! Go!”

The cab raced ahead of the tram. The tram tore after it. She darted beside it, using it for cover, and seconds later strode into an Oysho boutique. She lingered in the pajama section, inspecting a leopard-patterned hoodie, until she was sure Cirillo’s man hadn’t seen her enter. A salesgirl approached. Kincaid bought red pants, a white blouse, and a yellow scarf to cover her hair and left the store carrying her blazer and tracksuit in a plastic shopping bag.

She walked back toward Ciro.

The slope of land rising gently from the Bay of Naples steepened when she crossed the Via Toledo, and the streets narrowed. Tenements loomed over lanes that were paved with swirls of cobblestones and squeezed by cars and trucks and motor scooters parked on the sidewalks. Neo-melodic music—sappy tunes sung to guitar and synthesizer in old-fashioned 1980s disco style—blared from windows and scooters. Far off in the distance she could see a green hill framed by the narrow alley walls. A classical stone building crowned it. But overhead, balconies, laundry and scaffolding, clotheslines and electric cable and telephone wires attenuated the sliver of blue sky that shone between the rooftops.

She saw some tourists, but the people were mostly local. Having observed them earlier on her way to meet Cirillo, Kincaid was not the only woman in bright pants and blouse carrying a plastic shopping bag. She stopped, leaning against a car covered in canvas while she adjusted her shoe and looked back.

No Cirillo as far as she could see. She tried to picture Kingsman Helms here and found it impossible. The steep, cluttered lanes, the packed tenements, the sewage and garbage smells, and the mind-numbing racket of scooters and motorbikes and disco seemed closer to Mars than the hushed and spacious halls of his Houston office tower. A little kid running down the center of the lane tripped on a sewer grate and went flying. Kincaid caught him before he hit the cobblestones and set him on his feet. He reached with a lightning grasp to snatch her bag. Kincaid was too quick for him. His hand closed on air. He whirled away and fled. Twenty feet on, he skidded to a stop, grabbing at his belt, and looked back in disbelief.

Kincaid beckoned. He slunk closer. She tossed him his cell phone.

She turned off Vico d’Afflitto onto Vico Tre Regine and kept climbing.

Just beyond a small church she found a hole-in-the-wall grocery shop fronted by fruit and vegetables on a sidewalk table. A red Volkswagen Polo and a red Smart car were parked half on the walk. A pair of platinum blondes with thick bangs covering their foreheads and major mascara and shadow ringing their eyes flanked the door. Both were armed, and neither was making a secret of it. The heavy woman on the right had an automatic clearly identified by the bulge in the pocket of her stretch pants. The wraith-thin girl on her left had something Beretta-sized in an ankle holster too big for her skinny leg.

Kincaid stepped between them, making no eye contact.

The shop smelled of fruit and bread and damp plaster, and seemed to be exactly what it looked like, a neighborhood
groceria
. Shelves held colored boxes of pasta, cans, and jars; a cooler offered milk, juice, and bottled water. A tall man who looked English paid for a bottle of wine and cigarettes. Kincaid waited until he went out the door and approached the woman at the cash register. She was dark-haired and quite attractive, with a narrow face and coal-black eyes that reminded Kincaid of the handsome deputy commissioner Eddie Thomas for whom her former student had been so hot. She wore no earrings or necklace but had diamond wedding and engagement rings on her left hand and more diamonds on her right. Kincaid put her age around thirty.

She looked at Kincaid expectantly.

Kincaid spoke Italian at half the local speed. “I bumped into Sabastiano Bardellino in New York.”

The woman stared.

Kincaid said, “Sabastiano Bardellino told me this was a good shop to buy eggs.”

The woman shouted. The bodyguards scrambled into the shop. The woman behind the counter said something too fast for Kincaid to understand. The heavy woman yanked her automatic from her pocket.

Kincaid took it away, swept her feet out from under her, and dropped her on her back with a crash that knocked the breath out of her. The skinny one was drawing her ankle gun. Kincaid racked a round into the automatic, pointed it at the woman at the register, and gestured at the floor. The woman she was pointing the gun at shouted and the skinny bodyguard lay down as Kincaid ordered.

Kincaid spoke slowly. “Good. Sensible. No one gets hurt.”

“What do you want? Money?”

“Why did Sabastiano Bardellino try to shoot Kingsman Helms?”

The woman looked at her as if she were out of her mind.

“Simple question,” said Kincaid. “You know who I mean. Give me an answer and I’m out of here.”

The woman took a deep breath. She seemed less afraid than incredulous. Kincaid let silence build between them.

“Who are you?” asked the woman.

“I am from another planet. I don’t care about anything you’ve got going on here. Nothing. I don’t care about Il Sistema. I don’t even care about Kingsman Helms. But you’re in my way and I want to know why.”

The skinny blonde at her feet lunged for her bag, which had fallen near her, and whipped out a second gun. Kincaid stomped her wrist and kicked the weapon aside without her eyes or the automatic leaving the face of the woman she was interrogating.

“When I’m done with Kingsman Helms, you’re welcome to kill him,” she said. “But right now I need him alive.”

“You are crazy.”

“Yes, I am,” said Kincaid. She raised the gun so she could sight down the barrel at the woman’s forehead, and tightened her finger on the trigger. Then she laid down her Il Sistema trump card.

“Live or die. It’s all the same to me.”

The woman looked into sniper eyes and believed her.

“Helms is a wife murderer.”

It was the last thing Kincaid expected, and she had to struggle to hide her shock. “Explain!”

The woman exploded in an angry torrent of Neapolitan dialect that Kincaid could not follow. “Stop. Stop. Slower. What did he do?”

“You think kidnapping by pirates was coincidence?”

“Coincidence to what?”

“Ten years to the
month
after they marry? Coincidence? He’s a murderer. A wife killer.”

“What does it have to do with being married ten years?”

The woman’s eyes, which were bulging wide with anger, narrowed as if she doubted Kincaid’s intelligence. “Prenup,” she said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “Do you know what prenup is?”

“A prenuptial agreement is about who owns what if the marriage fails.”

“Her father was ordered to demand a prenup. But she refused to do it for longer than ten years. After ten years, no matter what happened, Kingsman Helms would own her money if she died.”

Kincaid thought that she had heard it all. Even Janson, who really had heard it all, wouldn’t believe this. She said, “Let me get this straight. You believe that Kingsman Helms arranged for Somali pirates to kidnap his wife so she would get killed and he could inherit her money?”

The woman crossed her arms. “It cannot be coincidence.”

Kincaid shook her head. She had learned a lot more about Kingsman Helms than she could have imagined. But she could not imagine such a convoluted scheme.

“Prenups with a lapse date are not unusual. A gal I know told me it was like getting married again, for real.”

“Her stupid father allowed this,” the woman shouted. “Weak man. Pussy.”

Staring into her raging eyes, Kincaid recognized an abyss of willful ignorance and unshakeable belief that was not unique to a Naples slum. Down home in Kentucky, folks whose people had lived way back in the hollows for countless generations could conjure up tales about the world beyond theirs as paranoid as this woman’s and cling to them as fiercely.

“What do you have with Kingsman Helms?” the woman demanded. “Business?”

“Business.”

“Not friends?”

“Definitely not friends.”

“He is a wife killer. We will get him.”

“She’s not dead, yet. But like I told you, you’re welcome to him when I’m done. Until then, stay out of my way.”

A shadow loomed in the doorway.

Kincaid, who was shielding the weapon with her body in case a customer came in from the street, tucked it closer. A man walked in. It was Ric Cirillo. He glanced down at the bodyguards on the floor, exchanged cold nods with the woman, and said to Kincaid, “I thought I would find you here.”

“If you give me a lift to the airport, I’ll tell him you were helpful.”

TRAVEL WARNING
US Department of State
Bureau of Consular Affairs
LEBANON

P
aul Janson entered Lebanon at Beirut International Airport on a Canadian passport that named him Adam Kurzweil. Ordinarily he used his Kurzweil cover when posing as a weapons buyer. On this particular morning his business card read Advisory Committee, Association of Canadian Travel Agencies.

Temporary one-month entry visas were issued at the airport. He wrote under Purpose of Visit: “Ministry of Tourism’s ‘Smile Lebanon 50/50 Campaign.’”

With neighboring Syria in fiery civil war, a desperate Lebanese tourist industry was trying to snag visitors by knocking 50 percent off Middle East Airlines tickets, hotels, and restaurants. The travel agencies card got him comped into an airport lounge, where he caught up by phone with Nick Sayers, a troubleshooter for Lloyd’s. Sayers was at the Mombasa Airport awaiting orders from London to attach a parachute to a waterproof shrink-wrapped package of one million dollars in fifty-dollar bills.

Janson said, “You’re there and I’m not. But I have a powerful feeling you’re dealing with the wrong pirates. They asked for too little, too soon. The real ones will want more.”

“Except your so-called real ones still haven’t asked for a penny.”

“So far,” Janson admitted. “But I just have an awful feeling these guys are taking you for a ride.”

Sayers said, “Mine is not to question why, mine is to put the money on the plane when the London honchos tell me to.”

“On the bright side,” said Janson, “when they get fired for paying scammers a million bucks, you’ll get promoted.”

A
LLEGRA CLUNG
to one bit of hope. Maxammed, the pirate chief, had commanded that the hostages be kept on the bridge, where he could see them at all times. She prayed he would not change his mind. It was a large, airy space with everyone in full view of everyone else. The lack of privacy would drive her crazy, ordinarily. But as a captive, she dreaded being alone with only one or two guarding her and no one to witness abuse.

“Are you OK, Allegra?” Susan whispered. The New York realtor and her husband, Hank, were eyeing her. The fear must have been showing on her face.

“Yes, yes,” she whispered back, and she felt tears well into her eyes, undone by unexpected kindness. They were watching her as if they were sincerely concerned even though they had to be as frightened as she was. She glanced across the bridge to where Maxammed was sleeping in a blanket thirty feet away.

Was it safe to talk? The boy at the helm stared ahead, jaws grinding steadily on a mouthful of khat leaves. Three others on guard were hunched up at the back of the bridge, also chewing. The old diplomat was huddled in a chair, as silent as he had been since his wife was killed. Monique was curled up in another armchair, half her face covered by blue swollen bruises where Maxammed had hit her.

“OK?”
Susan mouthed.

“Yes,” Allegra whispered, and to change the subject she asked a question. She had become fascinated by the couple. They seemed connected as tightly and flexibly as layers of gold leaf. “May I ask you, do you always hold hands, or is it just while this is happening?”

They looked at each other. Hank shrugged. “I don’t know. Yeah, most of the time.”

“Do you never fight?”

“Not yet.”

“How long have you been together?”

Susan said, “Seventeen years.”

“How do you never fight? Such a thing is not possible.”

Susan said, “People ask all the time.”

Hank winked. “It helps to adore each other.”

“How did you mee—”

“Shut up!” Maxammed yelled. “No talking.” He kicked off the blanket, jumped up, and ran at them. Hank and Susan shrank back. Monique pressed both hands to her mouth and moaned like a cat mewing.

Maxammed ran straight at Allegra. He reached into his flak vest. Then he jerked a cell phone out of it and thrust it into her hand.

“Call your husband.”

She stared at the phone in disbelief. Maxammed pointed out the windows, across the water at the cellular tower on a hill behind the beach. “Call your husband.”

She dialed his cell. If he didn’t answer, she could try his sat phone. What was going on? Why would the pirate suddenly allow her to call Kingsman?

“It’s ringing.”

“You tell him you’re OK.”

“Do you want me to ask for ransom?”

“Just tell him you’re OK.”

“But can I tell him what you want to free us?”

Maxammed shook his head, suddenly angry. “No!” he shouted. “Do what I say. Tell him—”

“Hello! Hello!”

“Kings?” she blurted. The connection was awful, but it was him. “Kings, it’s me.”

“Are you all right?”

“I am perfectly fine.”

“They haven’t hurt you, have they?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh God, don’t say it that way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“All right, let’s get to it. How do I pay the ransom?”

“I don’t know. ”

“What do they say?”

“Nothing to me. Didn’t they ask you?”

“Lunatics—put him on. Let me talk to him!”

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.

“J
ANSON
! J
ANSON
! 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.”

“I
SSE
? W
HY 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.