The Janson Command (7 page)
J
anson’s diggers discovered that among the gunrunners supplying the Free Foree Movement was a tight-knit team of Angolans and South Africans. That explained their success in repeatedly breaking an island blockade. Tenacious Angolans had been fighting civil wars since the days of competing superpowers. Rebel diamonds and government oil had paid for tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets and they knew weapons and escape and evasion tactics like no one on the African continent. With the possible exception of the South Africans whose experience with advanced weaponry made them the mercenaries of choice.
The actual transporters were a young, recklessly brave pair—Agostinho Kiluanji and Augustus Heinz—nicknamed the Double As, of whom little was known, though Kiluanji was probably a nom de guerre taken from a heroic sixteenth-century defender against the invading Portuguese. Janson knew the type, poor but ambitious men putting their lives on the line to earn the money to become full-fledged weapons dealers. Money would talk.
But before the Embraer landed in Nigeria, the word came back on the sat phone that the Double As were not interested in ferrying two covert operators into the rebel camp.
“Increase the offer,” Janson ordered.
His negotiator in Luanda did and reported back that they still weren’t interested. “They’re afraid it’s a sting.”
“Offer them the Starstreak missiles.”
When his negotiator called back he sounded anxious. “What’s wrong?” said Janson.
“They turned down the Starstreaks.”
“And?”
“They say they’ll kill me if I ask again.”
“I like these guys,” said Janson.
“What?”
“They’re not greedy. Catch the next plane out of Angola. I’ll deal with it.”
Kruger in Zurich revealed the name of a Lebanese arms dealer, Dr. Hagopian, who supplied Augustus Heinz and Agostinho Kiluanji the weapons they delivered to FFM. Janson was surprised. Business must be tough. Selling contraband to warring Africans, while profitable, was one-shot bottom-feeding. Hagopian had been a key player since the days of arming Saddam Hussein against Iran on behalf of the United States. Maybe Dr. Hagopian was betting that FFM would win and become a sovereign client, where the steady money was. Maybe he needed the dough. Janson recalled a lavish estate on the Mediterranean and a mansion in Paris, elaborate security for both, and an equally costly wife.
His past dealings with Hagopian had left both of them satisfied. Now Janson instructed his eyes and ears in Europe to check Hagopian out, seeking leverage, some new chink in his armor that had not been known before. He, of course, had cultivated excellent contacts among U.S. intelligence, which allowed him to operate relatively openly, and no legitimate regime had him on its arrest list. And yet weapons was a slippery, fast-changing world. Word came back that Hagopian had acquired a chink, a deep one. Of his two sons, one was in the business with him; the other, Illyich, was reported to be a “troublemaker.”
“Troublemaker?” Janson asked. “How does an arms merchant’s son make trouble: join the clergy?”
“No,” answered the humorless Frenchman on the telephone. “The son has fallen in with thieves.”
* * *
JANSON PRIED SOME
details out of the Frenchman, then polled a few others in Europe. Then he telephoned a beneficiary of the Phoenix Foundation and told him he needed his help.
All Phoenix “graduates” had telephones fitted with an encryption chip that made conversations with Janson impenetrable to surveillance. Not all beneficiaries knew that Paul Janson was behind the foundation, but Micky Ripster, like Doug Case, was an old friend.
“Why me?”
“I need it done immediately in London and you’re in London.”
“Well, that’s not very flattering, is it? Geography trumps talent.”
“It’s my good fortune you’re on-site. No one else could pull this off.”
“But you forget that you paid me to retire.”
“I am paying for your rehabilitation, not your retirement. Don’t worry; it’s for a good cause.”
“And now you expect my help killing for ‘a good cause’? Isn’t that how we got into trouble in the first place? What’s different about killing for your causes?”
“The difference is that now we play by Janson Rules.”
“Which are?”
“No torture. No civilian casualties. No killing anyone who doesn’t try to kill us.”
“No torture?” Micky Ripster repeated. “No civilian casualties? No killing anyone who doesn’t try to kill us? Don’t be put off by that strangling noise you hear on the telephone. It is not the encoder chip. It is merely me smothering my laughter.”
“You owe me,” Janson said in a voice suddenly cold. “I’m collecting, now.”
There was a long pause. “So, uh, what Janson gives Janson takes back?”
“What
Phoenix
grants Phoenix retrieves to pass on to the next guy.”
Ripster sighed. “All right, Paul. Who do you want killed?”
“No one.”
“I thought—”
“It’s not a killing job. It’s a gamesman job and I never met a better gamesman than you. Syrian intelligence still believes that Israeli bombs destroyed their Dayr az-Zwar plutonium collection.”
“Ah, well,” Ripster demurred modestly, “it’s what they want to believe.”
Janson laid out what he needed.
Ripster asked, “And what do I get out of this? Other than the pleasure of what I must admit is an interesting challenge.”
“The satisfaction of doing the right thing. And five times your day rate.”
“
That’s
generous.”
“Not at all. You’ve got one day to do it, starting this minute.”
* * *
ILLYICH HAGOPIAN, WHO
had received his Christian name from his doting Russian mother, pedaled a three-speed vintage Raleigh bicycle with a wicker basket round and round London’s Berkeley Square. Hagopian was young, handsome, and had the pouting mouth of a spoiled child. A yellow cashmere sweater was draped over his shoulders, its arms tied carelessly across his chest. The few people seated on park benches who noticed his repeated circles assumed he was posing for a commercial photo shoot or rehearsing until the photographer arrived.
It was a perfect day for setting a magazine advertisement in Mayfair. The afternoon sky was deep blue, immense plane trees filtered the sunlight that shimmered on limestone houses and green grass, and it might have been a long-ago afternoon when Queen Victoria reigned, except for the center-city buzz of taxis, delivery vans, and motorbikes.
On nearby New Bond Street, at the exclusive Graff Jewellers, a security guard and a salesclerk were unlocking the door with pounding hearts. If that wasn’t Mick Jagger climbing out of a black BMW and heading for their shop with a bejeweled blonde on his arm, he surely looked like him. They opened the door and ushered the fabulously wealthy rock star and his expensive-looking girlfriend inside. Seen up close Jagger’s skin looked oddly crepey, even for a performer who had been at it since the sixties. But the pistol he was suddenly holding in his gloved hand seized their attention, as did the blonde’s. She, the clerk reported later, might have been in drag.
The guard, a retired Royal Marine, was having none of it. He grabbed for their pistols but saw reason, the clerk reported, when Mick Jagger fired a single shot into the carpet. Things moved quickly after that. The thieves filled velvet bags with the best necklaces, bracelets, rings, and watches. Guard and clerk were made to lie down behind the counter, and the pair were out the door and into the BMW in moments.
The black car shot down New Bond Street, turned right onto Bruton, and right again onto Bruton Place to Berkeley Square. They jumped out, leaving latex masks, guns, and wigs on the floor, bumped into a bicyclist who was waiting to cross the street, apologized politely, and climbed into a waiting London black cab. The cabdriver pulled into the traffic heading down Berkeley Street toward Piccadilly. The bicyclist untied the sleeves of his cashmere sweater and dropped it in his basket.
As police sirens began echoing shrilly in the narrow streets, he walked his bicycle across Berkeley Street and into the square. Behind him, a yellow and blue Smartcar police car hooked around the corner of Burton Place and stopped beside the abandoned BMW.
The bicyclist, a cool-headed young man—despite appearances and the disappointments he had dished out to his father—stared innocently at the commotion over his shoulder and kept walking the bike. A Flying Squad car came down Berkeley Street at high speed, a large Volvo with siren screaming. Armed robbery specialists jumped out, pistols in hand, and peered into the empty BMW. Pedestrians pointed toward Piccadilly. The Flying Squad roared off.
Having crossed the narrow square, Illyich Hagopian was mounting his Raleigh when two men, one dressed in a pinstripe suit, the other in jeans and windbreaker, rose from their benches and took his arms.
“Don’t yell,” they told him. “Or we’ll call the cops.”
“And show them what’s in your basket.”
A van pulled up. It had room for his bicycle. They snapped a set of handcuffs to his right wrist and the bike, ending any thought of jumping out of the van at a traffic signal. Then they took the velvet bags out of the basket and sealed them in a number of small padded postal envelopes. When Illyich Hagopian saw the printed address labels he thought he had lost his mind.
Graff Jewellers
New Bond Street
London W1
(Attention: Lost & Found)
The van stopped. The man in pinstripes hopped out and stuffed the envelopes through the slot of a post office pillar box and walked away. The van continued on. The mystified would-be jewel thief noted that they were following the signs to the M4 and Heathrow Airport and, once there, toward Airfreight.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home to Mummy.”
* * *
PAUL JANSON’S EMBRAER
flew eleven hundred miles from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, into Luanda, Angola. It landed at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport, with Mike and Kincaid, who was sitting in for Ed in the first officer’s seat, paying strict attention to tall oil derricks poking into the sky. They taxied through crowds of giant 747 air freighters and oil corporation passenger charters.
Dr. Hagopian’s Angolan agent, operating under the guise of a translator of Portuguese, met Janson in the terminal and ushered him through a special section of passport control. He was half-Portuguese, half-Angolan, of the Fang tribe, a tall and handsome man in middle age with courtly manners. In the car he professed astonishment at the high regard in which Hagopian held Paul Janson: “The doctor said I am to treat you as if you were he. I will admit freely to you, sir, that he has never said a thing like that before.”
“Don’t worry; I’ll be gone soon.”
They drove twenty minutes to O Cantinho dos Comandos, a restaurant in the Old City, situated on the ground floor of a pink stucco building that housed an Angolan Army club.
The gunrunners themselves were not there but were represented by a young guy in a cheap leather jacket. Janson would have pegged him for a nightclub manager or car salesman. He seemed eager to please and started by saying, “I am in your debt, mister. A very important supplier who has both First Class and Economy Class clients informs me that from this day on I will fly First.”
“My pleasure,” said Janson. “You know what I want. I give you my word we will be no trouble. Just get us onto the island and set us loose. We will not get in your way and no one will ever know that you helped us.”
The young man spread his hands in a gesture that feigned emotional devastation. “If only I could help you, I would. But the ship has sailed.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. She is approaching Isle de Foree as we speak.”
“Why didn’t she wait?”
“The captain, he decided…” The man trailed off. Janson exchanged looks with Hagopian’s agent, who appeared mortified by the screwup or betrayal, whichever it was.
The gunrunner said, “It is as well, my friend—the situation has changed on the island. Iboga has acquired a shipload of tanks.”
“What kind of tanks?”
“Amphibious snorkel-equipped T-72s.”
A tank attack on the FFM stronghold would be bad news for the doctor, thought Janson. There was no time to lose if they were going to get him out of there. “Where’d they get T-72s, the Nigerians?”
Hagopian’s agent nodded. “Nigerian Directorate of Military Intelligence has not, shall we say, kept its fingers out of that pie.”
“You would not want to be there when the tanks come,” said the gunrunner.
“I want to be there.”
“As I say, if there is anything I could do to help, my friend.” He opened hands even wider to Hagopian’s agent. “Anything. You need only to ask. But the ship has sailed.” He turned back to Janson. “Anything.”
“I’m taking you up on that right now,” said Janson, which elicited a tentative, wary, “If I can…”
“You can and you will. Radio your captain that we will catch up with his ship. Tell him to stay fifty miles off until we get there.” That would put the ship well beyond Isle de Foree’s territorial sea and contiguous zone.
“I don’t know how long he can stall. There are schedules, rendezvous.”
“He can wait eight hours,” said Janson, and Hagopian’s agent nodded cold agreement.
Back in the car on the way to the airport, Janson said nothing until Hagopian’s agent finally broke the silence. “The tanks?”
“What shape do you suppose they are in?” Janson asked.
“Usable,” said the agent. “And, of course, as everyone knows, Isle de Foreens are excellent mechanics.”
Janson nodded. Island people were always good mechanics. “Who will drive them?”
“The presidential guard are Angola veterans. They are no strangers to Russian tanks.”
Janson pondered that. Not that he was looking for a fight with the dictator’s forces, but if he ran into them he had to be prepared.
“May I propose a thought?” the agent said.
“Please.”
“It is possible that Dr. Hagopian might know of some respectable, trustworthy individual at the airport who might have access to some RPG-22s.”
