The Janson Command (13 page)
As was their custom, Kincaid went first: “We already know I stayed too long in the tree. Should have obeyed orders, because you were in a position to see what I couldn’t.”
Janson was still shaken by that and not in a forgiving mood. “You made me a promise when we hooked up. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“What did you promise me?”
Kincaid glared back and answered between gritted teeth, “Quote: ‘Teach me. I’ll be the best student you ever had.’ ”
“And what did I say?”
“You said, ‘Paul Janson’s protégés have a nasty habit of getting killed.’ ”
“It’s dangerous work. If I tell you to move, I mean move now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything else?” Janson asked.
“That’s it for now—Wait!” Her eyes widened. “Jesus, Paul, Iboga’s shooter who dove off the pier? I missed it at the time—but he wasn’t wearing a yellow scarf like the other presidential guards.”
Janson pictured the two shooters swapping magazines. “I missed it, too. Wonder who he was? It was like he delivered Iboga to the Harrier and said, ‘Okay, my job’s done.’ ”
“Brass-balled dude diving into the enemy’s harbor.”
“Five’ll get you ten he had a guy waiting with scuba gear.”
“How about you, sir? Did The Machine make any screwups?”
Janson looked her in the eye. “Big one. My decision to push toward the FFM camp in daylight was a near-fatal mistake. We should have waited to take advantage of our night gear. The only reason we didn’t get shot by the sentry was that you spotted him and didn’t let him spot you.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m sure plenty will come to me in the morning—but for tonight, victory. The doctor rescued and, incidentally, a righteous revolution won.”
Jessica Kincaid raised her glass and locked eyes with him. “To free doctors and free Foree!”
They touched glasses and sipped champagne.
“Nice. What is this?”
Janson unwound the towel around the bottle and showed her the label. “Mumm.”
“Excellent.”
They ate a little bit of the lobster, some salad, some bread, and a little bit of steak, a few sips of an Argentine Malbec, and every pastry on the plate. Ed cleared the dishes and closed the door to the front of the plane.
“Tired?” Jessica asked.
“Body yes, brain no. You?”
“Not right now. I’ll probably crash for two days starting tomorrow.… Any bruises?”
“A few,” said Janson. “… You?”
“Want to see them?”
“Oh, yes.”
T
he red-light district of Porto Clarence was near the cruise ship pier, a well-lit walk guarded by smiling policemen.
Terry Flannigan noticed that the only ship docked was a sea-beaten Bulgarian rust bucket with a big neon name board that read: “Varna Fantasy,” Varna being the Black Sea port from where she sailed, Fantasy being Bulgaria’s cruise line. So the Bulgarian tourists had had front-row seats to an African war and now were probably crowding the massage parlors. He had inquired of Minister Poe’s new security chief where a gentleman might go for “some fun,” and Patrice da Costa, who had spent the war spying in the city, had telephoned a warm introduction to a brothel the Bulgarians couldn’t afford.
Flannigan was welcomed royally, told the night was on “Chief da Costa,” and treated to a glass of wine while he watched a demonstration video of the staff hard at work. The HD preview was new in his experience but circumvented nicely the problem of choosing in front of all, which meant rejecting some to their faces. He chose a stocky blond Ukranian who looked a little bit like Janet Hatfield.
Face-to-face, he had to admit the resemblance was minimal, but he wasn’t really going to be looking at her face, was he? In fact, he was probably going to keep his eyes closed. Or turn out the light. He did both. Then the damnedest thing happened. He couldn’t get it up.
“This has never, ever happened to me before,” he told the girl, who didn’t seem to speak English but was very kind, so he felt a little less like a complete schmuck. It was good that she didn’t understand English. In the dark he felt free to say, “This friend of mine got killed. And she was a good person. A lot better than me. But she was fun, too, sure of herself, and very, very steady. A girl to ride the river with, which is an admiring expression from where I come from. Funny thing was, it fit her doubly since she was a boat captain.”
Funny thing, too, he felt tears streaming down his face.
Someone knocked at the door.
“It’s paid for the night,” he said, his voice cracking. “Go away.”
But the girl turned on the light and pressed her ear to the door, then beckoned urgently. The old woman who ran the joint, who had sat with him while he watched the video, was whispering frantically. Flannigan opened the door.
“Dangerous man. Dangerous man. He’s looking for you. I sent him away, but he didn’t believe me that you weren’t here. You must go.”
Flannigan did not bother asking who the dangerous man was. This cinched what he had feared earlier. The soldier running with Iboga had indeed been Van Pelt, the rabid South African who had led the massacre on
Amber Dawn
.
Flannigan dressed, pressed money in the girl’s hand, and let the madam guide him out a side door into a reeking alley. “Where will you go?” she whispered.
“Where I’ll be welcomed with open arms.”
He glanced into the street, saw the way was clear, and broke into a run toward the waterfront, sprinting as fast as he could, around a corner and onto the cruise ship pier. The
Varna Fantasy
had singled up her mooring lines in preparation to sail. The last lines were going slack as a tugboat pressed her against the pier and stevedores awaited the order to cast off.
A ship’s officer stopped Flannigan at the top of the gangway.
Flannigan said, “Get the purser.”
“He’s sleeping.”
“I guarantee you he’ll be glad you woke him. He’ll even thank you. If you don’t, he’ll fucking keelhaul you.”
The purser appeared sleep lined and rumpled in a white jacket over his pajamas.
Flannigan said, “Good evening, sir. If your ship’s doctor didn’t jump ship here, he’s probably disembarking at your next port of call, or the one after that. Correct?”
“What is it to you?” the purser asked warily.
“I am a physician. A trauma surgeon. I have additional specialties in coddling cruise ship passengers, healing crew of sexually transmitted diseases, and ensuring that your dining rooms don’t serve dysentery. I have served on ships like yours for many years.” He opened the waterproof wallet that never left his person, not in a world where paperwork was everything, and chose carefully from the contents. “Here is my passport and certificates and licenses to practice. Show me to my cabin.”
Terry Flannigan knew that he did not have to advise the purser to leave his name off the manifest until the ship had left Isle de Foree waters. The purser, whose responsibilities included the health of two thousand passengers crammed into a small space, was not about to blow this unexpected stroke of luck by alerting the local authorities that a last-minute crew member was anxious to leave town secretly. Whatever the stranger might have done ashore, a qualified doctor was a priceless commodity.
Night
3°11′ S, 14°13′ W
Forty thousand feet above the South Atlantic Ocean
W
hy don’t we do this more often?” Jessica Kincaid whispered.
They always started slowly, like swimmers wading toward deep water in starlight. And they celebrated rituals: Inspection of Bruises. Healing Hands. Kiss to Make It Better. Now she lay on top of Paul Janson with her breasts pressed to his muscled chest, their lips brushing, legs intertwining, breath growing short, hearts racing.
The Embraer growled through the night sky. She thought Janson hadn’t heard her over the drone of the engines. “Why—”
“Because my entire carcass would implode from an excess of pleasure?”
“No lies.”
“What is the penalty for lying?”
“No evasions. Answer the question, Paul. Why don’t we do this more often?”
“We’re afraid,” Janson whispered into her mouth. He cupped the back of her head with one hand and ran the other slowly down her spine.
“Of what?” she demanded, departing from his lips with a flick of her tongue to string kisses down his neck.
“We’re afraid that one day one of us will come home from a job alone.”
He had stolen a march on her. The hand behind her head had materialized between her thighs. “I’m not afraid,” she whispered.
“Good. I wish I could say the same.”
She crouched on her knees and straddled him. He rose to join her.
“Give me your hands,” she said.
He held up both hands. With them balanced palm to palm she planted her feet on the bed and began to move. “I cannot believe we will ever be alone.”
“At this moment,” Janson gasped, “I’m inclined to agree with you.”
“Boss?”
Mike, the pilot, spoke on the intercom. “Awful sorry to bother you.”
“What?” The cabin microphones were voice activated.
“Quintisha is calling on the sat phone. She says it’s major.”
* * *
QUINTISHA UPCHURCH WAS
general operations manager for both CatsPaw Associates and the Phoenix Foundation. She was the only person in the world who could find Paul Janson anywhere, day or night.
“Switch it here, Mike, and turn off your end.”
Breasts heaving, eyes blurring, Jessica stared down at Janson. “What the hell time is it? Doesn’t that woman ever sleep?”
Janson said, “Hello, Quintisha.”
“You didn’t answer your sat phone, Mr. Janson.” It occurred to Janson, not for the first time, that her honeyed, resonant voice combined the primness of a deacon’s daughter with the steely resolve of a night court magistrate.
“Yes.”
“Jessica didn’t answer, either.”
“I am under the impression that Ms. Kincaid is taking the evening off. What’s up?”
“Douglas Case of American Synergy is in a state. He said to tell you, quote: ‘The doctor flew the coop.’ ”
“What?”
“Mr. Case used extreme language demanding your private numbers. I hung up on him, of course, but as we’re expecting five million dollars from ASC I thought it best to telephone the airplane.”
Janson thought hard.
Quintisha Upchurch said, “We could use the five million, Mr. Janson. That airplane does not come cheaply.”
“Tell Mr. Case I will deal with it.” He spoke Mike’s name. The voice recognition system routed him back to the cockpit. “Mike, have you passed your point of no return?”
The point of no return was not the middle of the ocean. Whether the Embraer could return to Africa or had to keep moving ahead to South America depended as much upon weight and wind resistance as distance already flown. It weighed less, thanks to burning off fuel, so it needed less power to maintain speed. Turning westerly headwinds into tailwinds would also allow Mike to fly with throttles pulled back. The math was complicated. Pilots like Mike did their “PNR” in their heads, minute by minute, as automatically as breathing.
“Twenty-nine minutes to point of no return.”
“Hang a one-eighty. Back to Porto Clarence.”
“One-eighty back to Porto Clarence—soon as I get clearance.”
Jessica spoke up. “Mike? When you get clearance, be gentle.”
“Say again?”
“Take it easy turning the airplane,” said Janson. “We don’t want anything falling off back here— Over and out.”
They were still holding hands, palm to palm, and steadied each other when the Embraer banked.
“Don’t you want to call your friend Doug?”
“Not before we know what happened.”
“Which we won’t know until we get to Porto Clarence.”
“Which won’t be for three hours.”
“Time to reach a point of no return?”
“Time to reach several points of no return.”
I
’m afraid I was a bit short the other day with your Ms. Upchurch,” Doug Case apologized on the sat phone.
“She understood you were under pressure,” Janson said.
From the windows of the front room of Ferdinand Poe’s hospital suite he could see the Presidential Palace across the Porto Clarence harbor and a broad gray-blue swath of the Atlantic Ocean to the east and north. Isle de Foree’s flag—a gold, green, and black horizontal tricolor slashed by a diagonal band of red—had been raised in place of Iboga’s yellow banner. It stirred spasmodically in the intermittent breeze.
That same breeze had cleared the usual equatorial sea haze.
Janson could see for miles. An enormous vessel was growing slowly larger on the northern horizon. He had been watching her for the past hour, while waiting for Doug Case to return his call. She was too slow to be a cruise ship or an oil tanker.
Doug Case said, “I’ve had time to cool down. It’s not your fault the doctor lit out. Your check’s been cut. We’ll overnight it.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Hang on to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Send the check when we send the doctor.”
“We’re talking about five million bucks, Paul.”
“But not ours, yet. Don’t worry; we’ll run him down.”
He had nailed his first lead within minutes of landing at the airport. Poe’s audacious spy, Patrice da Costa—joking that he was now “temporary security chief” of “temporary president Poe’s temporary presidential guard”—took Janson to interview the madam of the brothel to which he had steered Flannigan the night before. The frightened woman acknowledged that the doctor had been there, although she did not know when he had left or where he had gone. In retrospect, Janson realized that Flannigan had not trusted him and had meant to run at the first opportunity.
“And when I do,” Janson promised Doug Case, “I’ll march him directly into your office.”
