The Janson Command (41 page)
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you a brave patriot: Acting President of Isle de Foree Ferdinand Poe.”
“Good evening,” said Poe. “Or night. It’s late. I know you all traveled a long, long way to our island nation and I will make two brief remarks. One, a splendid commercial oil discovery is being confirmed in Isle de Foreen waters by this drill ship on which we stand—good news for the people of Isle de Foree and good news for consuming nations dependent on Nigeria’s dwindling reserves.”
He stared past them as though collecting his thoughts, but he was looking into the shadow where Janson hid, waiting for news about Iboga. One of the reporters, a tall man in a white shirt, followed Poe’s gaze.
Tsk.
Janson had his earpiece plugged into his sat phone. He brought the phone to his lips. “Go ahead.”
“It’s over.” She sounded utterly wiped out.
“Good job.”
“Can we go home now?”
Paul Janson stood and flashed Poe the thumbs-up.
As he did, the reporter in the white shirt dropped his camera. Stooping as if to pick it up, the reporter slid a pistol from an ankle holster and charged straight at Janson, cocking the gun with the practiced grace of a trained professional. Janson barely had time to raise the MP5 and thumb the fire selector off AUTO. But the real reporters were directly behind the imposter, and he couldn’t fire—even on semiautomatic—without risking killing an innocent.
Janson dropped his weapon and stepped forward, raising his hands.
“No prisoners,” the gunman said, and Janson could see in his eyes that he meant to kill him. A woman screamed. Men shouted and dove to the deck. But by then Janson’s step forward had brought the gunman within range of his combat boots. The sound of a knee breaking was almost as loud as the shot the gunman managed to squeeze off as he fell.
The bullet burned across Janson’s leg and pierced the online DP unit. An alarm shrilled and the backup cut in automatically.
Janson kicked his fallen attacker twice more and the man lay still. “Case!” Janson shouted. “Call your boys off. You’ve only got one DP left.”
Bruce Danforth raised his voice before Case could speak. “Security, stand down. No one move. No one.” With a tight smile, he added, “Excepting the masked operator with the gun. Your call, sir. What do you want?”
Paul Janson stepped back into the shadows. “I want President Poe to complete his remarks. I want the reporters to listen carefully. Continue, please, President Poe.”
“Two,” said Ferdinand Poe. “I am gratified to announce that a clumsy attempt to overthrow my government by former dictator Iboga has been put down. Bloodshed was minimal. I stand before you alive and well, and the former dictator has been captured.”
“Killed,” Janson interrupted.
“Killed,” Poe echoed. He stooped to lay his machine gun on the deck and stood displaying empty hands.
Janson smiled. He had backed a winner.
“I say to my soldiers and their officers—all their officers—the brutal days of Iboga are done forever. Iboga is gone forever. I am also pleased to announce that a sizable portion of the treasury Iboga stole has been recovered. It is a good day in Isle de Foree.… Do you have any questions?”
The reporters looked over their shoulders to where Janson had stood, looked at the fallen security man with one leg twisted at a terrible angle, and turned around again to look agape at Poe. The woman Janson remembered from Afghanistan recovered first.
“Would you call it a fortunate coincidence, or did you just happen to be aboard the
Vulcan Queen
when the coup was launched?”
“Fortunate, in that I was not present to be killed.”
The bridge rang with laugher.
“And a happy coincidence,” said Poe. “Because when the good news came of Iboga’s surrender we were already celebrating negotiating new terms of our royalty contract with the fine people of the American Synergy Corporation who have agreed to allow other oil companies to participate in developing Isle de Foree’s spectacular new reserves. A consortium will be formed. Its board of directors will include Isle de Foreen government ministers.”
Ferdinand Poe thrust his scarred hand at Kingsman Helms.
Helms shook it with a ghastly smile.
Janson watched Doug Case’s face as the journalists pushed past his wheelchair to get close to Poe and Helms. For the life of him, he could not read what Doug was thinking.
* * *
THE EMBRAER HELD
too many ghosts. They flew commercial to Lisbon, slept round the clock in a fine hotel, then boarded a plane to New York. Janson read about Czar Alexander’s defeat of Napoléon. Kincaid watched movies, stared out the window, and paced the aisles. They caught a cab into Midtown and walked the sidewalks, working out the travel kinks.
“You still don’t believe in revenge?” Kincaid asked.
Janson hesitated. “Generally that is still true. I wish I could say never, but not this time.”
“But you didn’t kill them.”
“I don’t know which one to kill. I do not know which of them is the bad guy. One of them? Two of them? All of them? But at least I took away what they wanted.”
“You took away Isle de Foree.”
“And left them alive to live with their defeat.”
“What makes you think they won’t try again?”
Paul Janson grinned, suddenly optimistic, hoping that he could fix what was broken. “What makes
them
think I won’t stop them again?”
“Why do you have such an Achilles’ heel for Doug Case?”
Taken aback, Janson asked, “In what way? What do you mean?”
“You’re so quick to believe him. The story you told me about how he shot the operator who was torturing an asset? How do you know it’s true? Who knows what really happened and why he shot the guy?”
“Doug’s story is true.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“I was there.”
“You were there?
You were there?
I didn’t realize that.… I’m surprised you didn’t shoot the guy yourself.”
“It wasn’t an option.”
“Why not?”
“My hands were tied.”
Kincaid looked at him, her big eyes growing bigger. “
You
were the asset being tortured by the agent Doug Case shot?”
“The agent was a sadistic lunatic—one of those people who look for an excuse to feel righteous causing pain. He convinced himself I was a traitor. I wasn’t. Doug intervened on my behalf. But it was traumatic. He knew the guy well, had been through the wars with him. It pretty much destroyed him.”
Kincaid nodded her head for a long time. At last, she said, “Wow.”
Janson said, “The experience left me with warm feelings toward Doug.”
They crossed Broadway and walked a half block through tourists and crowds of people getting out of the theaters. Somewhere a loudspeaker was blaring “Shake That Thing.”
Kincaid asked, “Can we agree on something?”
“Anything.”
“Can we agree that you are not entirely clearheaded on the subject of American Synergy Corporation’s president of security?”
“Agreed,” said Paul Janson.
They walked into the Hotel Edison and down a steep flight of stairs.
The Nighthawks were playing “Blue Skies.”
The curly-haired brunette knockout who took the cover charge never forgot a face. “Welcome back,” she said to Kincaid. “Good to see you, again.”
Paul Janson got the dazzling smile reserved for new customers.
I want to thank my old shipmate Hunt Hatch; my old schoolmate Mike Coligny; my generous cockpit host Ed Daugherty; and Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome “mechanician” Christopher Ford for helping me understand airplanes. And thank you Alasdair Lyon and Ken Pike for showing me what astonishing machines helicopters are.
For a young writer starting out in New York, few pleasures equaled being hailed across a crowded publishing party by Robert Ludlum. He would burst from a circle of admirers, his big, cheery face alight with a welcoming smile, throw an arm around my shoulders, hug hard with astonishing strength, and announce to the scores of literary kings and queens within range of his mighty voice, “Meet the best writer I know.” This style of introduction was pure Bob Ludlum. That it was typical of his generous support and boundless enthusiasm toward new writers in no way diminished the thrill.
When, years later, I was invited to create a new series based on Consular Operations “Machine” Paul Janson, the haunted hero of one of Bob’s later novels, the first thing I remembered was basking in the affectionate glow of his enthusiasm. I remembered, too, the upbeat ending of
The Janson Directive
—a finely plotted thriller of betrayal that was a stylistic throwback to the taut novels he was writing way back when he and I first met.
I recalled that the end of the novel reflected the Robert Ludlum I knew—the big fellow with his arms wide, a scotch in one hand, a smoke in the other, flashing the hope-filled smile of a man who celebrated everyone’s dreams.
I reread
The Janson Directive
to see what, if anything, I could bring to it. It was good. It was exciting. It had some dauntingly gorgeous writing, and some equally daunting research, and the end was even better than I remembered.
In the end, Paul Janson wins a partner—a deadly young woman whom he admires for her strength, bravery, skills, and determination to be the best she can be. Paul Janson, “The Machine,” the best of the best and the deadliest, is in awe of young Jessica Kincaid’s fighting skills and has never seen a better sniper. And Jessica is equally in awe of the older Janson’s experience and undiminished strength and his chameleon-like ability to be almost invisible.
But the best part is that Paul Janson is keenly aware that in Jessica Kincaid he has been given a great gift. This reflected deeper layers of the writer I had known, the married Robert Ludlum whom I had observed at smaller, more intimate gatherings minus the mob of publishers. For no man ever loved a wife more madly than he loved Mary. He was thrilled by her existence.
The gift of Paul Janson that Robert Ludlum left his readers is a hero who has faced his grim past and now hungers to atone. Paul Janson is a man who reviews his life in small ways on a constant basis. He is a man who is against his own record, who has come to wonder whether sanctioned killings in the service of his country were also serial killings.
From my point of view—that of a writer invited to create Janson’s future—a hero who looks into the mirror with a cold eye and swears to redeem himself is a dramatic hero who hungers to stand up to huge challenges and immense danger. That Janson has a partner covering his back makes him all the more formidable. That he might fear for her makes even “The Machine” vulnerable.
The Janson Directive
’s ending was the essence of the man Robert Ludlum was. But it was also an invitation to continue the story. Ludlum’s hero had journeyed to a new place. A new place is a jumping-off point for new journeys, and if that isn’t the definition of a splendid series, it ought to be the rule for how to write one. Clearly, Robert Ludlum was not thinking of
The Janson Directive
as a one-off book but the beginning of something new. That was all the freedom I needed to accept the invitation to journey on with
The Janson Command
.
Paul Garrison
Connecticut
2012
ROBERT LUDLUM was the author of twenty-six international best-selling novels, published in thirty-two languages and forty countries. He is perhaps best known as the creator and author of three novels featuring Jason Bourne:
The Bourne Identity
,
The Bourne Supremacy
, and
The Bourne Ultimatum
. Ludlum passed away in March 2001.
PAUL GARRISON is the author of the critically acclaimed thrillers
Fire and Ice
,
Red Sky at Morning
,
Buried at Sea
,
Sea Hunter
, and
The Ripple Effect
. Raised on the stories of his grandfather who wandered the South Seas in the last of the square-rigged copra-trading vessels, he has worked with boats, tugs, and ships. He is currently writing the next novel in the new Paul Janson series.
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Welcome to Robert Ludlum’s blockbuster international thriller series
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.
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THE ARES DECISION
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Available wherever books are sold
ONE
Above Northern Uganda
November 12, 0203 Hours GMT +3
T
he roar in Craig Rivera’s ears combined with the darkness to make everything he knew—everything real—disappear. He wondered if astronauts felt the same sense of emptiness, if they wondered like he did whether God was just at the edge of their vision.
He looked at a dial glowing faint green on his wrist. The letters were Cyrillic, but the numbers tracking his altitude and coordinates were the same as the government-issue unit he trained with.
Rivera tilted his body slightly, angling north as he fell through fifteen thousand feet. A hint of warmth and humidity began to thaw the skin around his oxygen mask, and below the blackness was now punctured by widely scattered, barely perceptible points of light.
Campfires.
When his GPS confirmed that he was directly over the drop zone, he rolled on his back for a moment, staring up at a sky full of stars and searching futilely for the outline of the plane he’d jumped from.
