The Jason Directive

by Robert Ludlum

  “May I say who’s calling?”

  “Alexander,” Janson said. “Richard Alexander.”

  A few more seconds. Then Agger’s voice came on the line. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name,” he said. His voice was neutral, unreadable. “I’m glad to hear it now.”

  “Fancy a glass of retsina?” Deliberately casual. “Can you get away now? There’s the tavernos on Lakhitos … .”

  “I have a better idea,” Agger said. “The café on Papadhima. Kaladza. You remember it. A little farther, but the food’s excellent.”

  Janson felt a small stab of adrenaline: the counteroffer had come too quickly. And they both knew the food at Kaladza was terrible; it had been a subject of their conversation when they last spoke, four years ago. “The worst in town,” Agger had said, taking a mouthful of doubtful calamari and looking green.

  Agger was telling him that they would both have to take precautions.

  “Sounds great,” Janson said heartily, for the sake of anyone else who was or would be listening. “Got a cell phone?”

  “In Athens, who doesn’t?”

  “Take it. If I get held up, I’ll let you know.”

  “Good idea,” Agger said. “Good idea.”

  From the café on Vassilissis Sofias, Janson observed Agger leaving from a side door and making his way down the street, toward the naval hospital and the street that would lead toward Kaladza.

  Then he saw what he feared he might see. In Agger’s wake, a woman and a man emerged from the bland, gray-brick office building adjoining the embassy and set off in his direction. He was being tailed.

  And the desk man did not have the rudimentary field skills to know it.

  Whoever had been listening in on their phone conversation had recognized the legend name and responded immediately. Janson’s relationship with Agger had doubtless been taken account of, the possibility of his making contact with the analyst anticipated.

  Now Agger joined a crowd of pedestrians heading toward the Parko Euftherias, and the man and woman merged into the sidewalk traffic.

  Kaladza was too dangerous; the rendezvous would be on a terrain he chose. Janson slipped a wad of drachmas beneath his coffee mug and left for the Lykavittós. The Lykavittós was the tallest hill in Athens, and its forested crest swelled from the city like a green dome. The Lykavittós was as good a candidate for an off-the-books briefing as any. What made it attractive to visitors was that it afforded a breathtaking view of the city. What made it attractive to him was that the high ground would make it hard for a surveillance team to take up position undetected—especially if he staked it out first. At the moment, he was armed with only a small pair of binoculars. Was he being paranoid to worry that this would not suffice?

  The funicular departed every twenty minutes from the top of Ploutárkhou Avenue, in the upscale Kolonáki district. Alert to any sign of professional interest, Janson rode the railway up the hill past the tiers of well-tended terracing; there was the gratifying sense of leaving the smog behind as they climbed up nearly a thousand feet. The summit was ringed with observation decks and cafés. At the very top was a small white chapel, Agios Geórgios, St. George’s, a nineteenth-century edifice.

  Now Janson telephoned Agger on his cell phone. “Change of plans, old bean,” he said.

  “They say change is good,” Agger said.

  Janson paused. Should he tell him about the tail? The slight tremor in Agger’s voice told him that it would be best not to. Agger would not know how to shake his followers, and an uninformed attempt would only make him an easier mark. Besides, being aware of them might overstrain the man’s nerves—might spook him, send him scurrying back to the office. Better to give him an itinerary that gave him a shot at shaking his pursuers willy-nilly.

  “Got a pen?” asked Janson.

  “I am a pen,” the analyst sighed.

  “Listen carefully, my friend. I want you to take this series of street trams.” Janson proceeded to detail a complex sequence of transfers.

  “A pretty roundabout route,” Agger said.

  “Trust me on this,” Janson said. What would hold back a professional watcher wasn’t the physical task of keeping up with him; it was the diminishing odds of doing so without being noticed. In a situation like this, covert operatives would desist surveillance rather than risk exposure.

  “Right,” Agger said with the voice of someone who knew he was in over his head. “Of course.”

  “Now, when you finally get off the cable car to Lykavittós, you’ll take the path toward the Theatre of Lykavittós. We’ll meet in front of the fountain of Elijah.”

  “You’ll have to give me, what, an hour?”

  “See you then.”

  Janson tried to sound reassuring; Agger’s voice was nervous, even more nervous than usual, and that was not good. It would make him cautious in a counterproductive fashion, too attentive to incidentals, too indiscriminate in his vigilance.

  Janson wandered past a hillside café—a cheerful-looking spot with lime-colored plastic chairs, peach tablecloths, a slate terrace. Nearby was a sculpture garden planted with marble figures of modern vintage. Wandering through was a pair of teenagers wearing white muscle shirts that draped loosely around their unmuscular chests, whipped this way and that by the breeze. An addled-looking woman clutching a bag filled with stale pita fed already overfed pigeons.

  Now Janson stationed himself within a dense copse of Aleppo pine and took an inventory of the others in the area. On sweltering days, many Athenians sought refuge here from the heat and the smarting nephos. He saw a Japanese couple, one holding a tiny videocamera in his hand, the size of an old Instamatic, a testament to the ingenuity of consumer electronics. The man was posing his wife against the dramatic backdrop—all Athens at her feet.

  As five minutes stretched into ten and then fifteen, more people came and went in a seemingly random procession. Yet not everything was random. Thirty yards below to his left, a man in a caftanlike shirt was sketching the landscape on a large pad; his hand moved over it in large, looping gestures. Janson focused his binoculars, zooming in on his strong, powerful hands. One hand loosely gripped a stick of charcoal and was filling the pad with random squiggles. Whatever he was interested in, it wasn’t the landscape in front of him. Janson zoomed in on his face and felt a pang. This man was not like the Americans he had encountered earlier. The powerful neck straining at his collar, the dead eyes—this man was a professional killer, a gun for hire. Janson’s scalp began to crawl.

  Diagonally opposite, another man was reading the newspaper. He was dressed like a businessman, bespectacled, in a light gray suit. Janson zoomed in: his lips were moving. Nor was he reading out loud, for when his eyes darted off, he continued speaking. He was communicating—the microphone could have been in his tie or lapel—to a confederate, somebody with an earpiece.

  Anyone else?

  The redheaded woman in the green cotton dress? But no, ten young children were following her. She was a schoolteacher, taking the children on a field trip. No operative would expose herself to the chaos and unpredictability of a group of young children.

  A hundred feet above the fountain where Agger and he had arranged to meet at four o’clock, Janson continued to scan the scene. His eyes roved over the gravel paths and the wild, unkempt expanse of grass and scrub.

  Conclusion: an inexpert American tag team had been replaced with local talent, people who knew the terrain and could react quickly.

  But what were their orders?

  He continued to scan the figures on the sloping hill, alert to further anomalies. The businessman was now apparently napping, his chin resting on his chest, suggesting a postprandial siesta. Only the occasional movement of his mouth—murmured communications, if only to keep boredom at bay—betrayed the illusion.

  The two figures he’d identified, the businessman with his newspaper and the artist with his sketchbook, were clearly Greek nationals, not American; that much was plain f
rom their physiognomy, attire, even posture. And language, too: Janson was a poor lip-reader, but he could tell it was Greek, not English, that the man spoke.

  But for God’s sake, why the dragnet? The simple existence of incriminating evidence did not explain the willingness to accept its import. Janson had been an agent of one of America’s most secretive intelligence branches for twenty-five years: his profile was as thoroughly scrutinized as anyone’s. If he were after a big score, he could have arranged one long ago in a hundred different ways. Yet now, so it seemed, the worst had been assumed of him, no alternative interpretation of the evidence entertained.

  What had changed—something he’d done or was believed to have done? Was it something he knew? One of those things made him a threat to the planners in Washington, half a world away from this ancient hill in the center of Athens.

  Who else was there? The sun’s slanting rays made it hard to see, but Janson scrutinized every patch of ground that was visible to him, dividing it up like a quadrate grid, to the point that his eyes began to ache.

  At four o’clock, a worried-looking Agger came into view; he was carrying his navy linen jacket flung over a shoulder, his blue striped shirt dappled with sweat, no doubt a vexing development for the fastidious analyst, who seldom ventured far from the air-conditioned ambit of office and residence.

  Now, as Janson could see from his perch in the pines above, Agger sat down on the long marble bench by the fountain, breathing heavily, looking around for his old drinking companion.

  Janson lowered himself to the ground

  The man with the artist’s pad: Muscle? Surveillance only? The fact that he was Greek concerned him. The observers on the street were, he had ascertained, Americans, part of the standard military intelligence detail attached to U.S. embassies. They weren’t amateurs, but they displayed no high level of professional skill, either. They were, he had concluded, the best that could be summoned on extreme short notice. Athens sector hadn’t had advance word that he’d be in town; after all, he had made the decision himself, at the spur of the moment, only twelve hours previously.

  But these Greeks: Who were they? Not CIA employees. These were professionals, to whom a job had been outsourced. The kind of men you kept at arm’s length—until you needed them. Often that meant a sanction, an act that no official members of a security detail could be entrusted with.

  But Janson was getting ahead of himself, he knew: there was no cause for a sanction order. Not yet, anyway.

  Janson crawled on his belly along the untamed arbor, staying close to a long retaining wall made of piled shale. The scrub of maquis impeded his progress. Blades of crabgrass tickled his nose; tall weeds sprouted in clumps every few feet, and Janson took care not to flag his presence by disturbing them. Two minutes later, he raised his head quickly above the berm line, verifying that he was within a few feet of the man with the sketchpad. That man was standing now, the stick of charcoal having been carelessly dropped to the ground like a cigarette butt.

  The Greek’s back was to him, and he could see how powerfully built the young “artist” was. The man’s gaze was resolutely on Agger, on the marble bench before the fountain, and his muscles seemed strained for immediate response. Then Janson saw him reach for something under his caftanlike shirt.

  Janson lifted a large piece of shale from the rock terrace, taking care to maintain absolute silence; any unexpected noise, such as the sound of two rocks rubbing against each other, would cause the Greek to whirl around instantly. Janson hoisted the rock above his head and flung it with all his strength, aiming for the back of his neck. The man had begun to turn when the shale struck him, and he staggered to the ground. Janson stepped over the low wall and seized the man by his hair, clamping his forearm against his mouth. He flipped him over the wall and onto his back.

  He yanked a flat-sided gun—a powerful automatic pistol, a Walther P99—from the man’s trouser band and saw that it had a perforated cylinder permanently attached. A silenced weapon: meant to be used, not displayed—a weapon for fulfilling threats, not simply making them. The man was a professional, with professional equipment. Janson ran his fingers along the man’s embroidered collar, feeling for the microphone, and made sure that the contactor switch had not been activated. He flipped over the fabric, exposing a small blue-black plastic disk with a copper wire running out from it.

  “Tell your friend it’s an emergency!” he said, whispering in his ear. He knew that the task would not have been outsourced to people who did not speak English and might misunderstand orders. “Let him know that you have been betrayed! As you have been!”

  “Den omilo tin Aggliki,” the man said.

  Janson pushed his knee against the man’s throat until he gagged. “Don’t speak English? Then I guess there’s no reason for me not to kill you.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “No! Please, I do what you say.”

  “And remember. Katalaveno ellinika.” I understand Greek. A half-truth, anyway.

  Pressing the hidden contactor toward the front of his collar, the Greek activated his microphone and began to speak, the urgency made more intense as Janson gouged his Walther into his temple.

  Once the message was relayed, he slammed the Greek assassin to the shale wall. The man’s cranium absorbed most of the impact; he would be unconscious for an hour, probably two.

  Through his binoculars, Janson saw the businessman in the light gray suit stand abruptly and stride toward the arbor. Something about the way he carried the folded newspaper made it clear that it was serving to conceal something else. The bespectacled businessman looked warily around as he made his way into the arbor, his hand still enveloped by the folded copy of Eleft-herotypia, the Athens daily.

  Janson glanced at his wristwatch. Too much time was passing; Agger could easily be overtaken by anxiety and decide to return to the office. That was standard procedure anyway with a no-show: one was not to wait beyond a limited amount of time.

  Quickly, Janson positioned himself at the end of the arborway. As the man emerged, Janson lunged, swinging the Walther P99 into his face, shattering teeth and bone. Blood spewed from his mouth and spattered on his white shirt and jacket; the paper dropped and the silenced weapon it concealed clattered to the stone underfoot. Swiftly Janson turned over the man’s lapel, exposing a small blue-black disk, identical to the one worn by the other Greek.

  Janson returned the Walther to his waistband and rubbed a small spot of blood from his hand. An inner bleakness was creeping upon him. In the past few days, he had fallen back into everything he had once prayed he’d left behind him—the violence, the gambits, the lethal subterfuge, a career’s worth of ingrained habits. Still, this was no time to gaze into the abyss. He had to focus, to analyze, to act.

  Were there others? None that he’d detected, but he could not be certain. The Japanese tourist? Possible. Unlikely.

  He would have to take the risk.

  Now Janson strode over to Agger, who was still on the marble bench, perspiring heavily.

  “Paul,” Agger said. “Thank God! I was starting to worry that something had happened to you.”

  “Traffic on the Vas Sofias. I forgot what a bitch it is this time of day.” Janson decided it was important not to alarm him just yet. Agger’s was a world of cables and keyboards; such a rendezvous was beyond his customary bailiwick, and, in fact, in violation of procedures. The approach even of a member or former member of the U.S. intelligence community, according to the rule book, required a memorandum of conversation to be filed promptly. Agger was already stretching the rules—and probably his nerves—simply in agreeing to the meeting.

  “God, with all those crosstown transfers, I was thinking, What am I, a spy?” A wan smile. “Don’t answer that. Look, I’m so glad you called, Paul. I’m been worried about you—really worried. You cannot believe the garbage they’re talking about you.”

  “Take it slow, old friend,” Janson said.

  Agger seemed reassured by Janson’s
steadiness and composure. “But I know we can get the whole thing straightened out. Whatever it is, I know we can make it go away. Leave those Washington bureaucrats to me. Trust me, nobody knows a pencil pusher like another pencil pusher.”

  Janson laughed, mostly for Agger’s sake. “I guess I first got wind something was up this morning. I walk down Stadíou, and it’s like a class reunion of the embassy security detail. I didn’t used to be so popular.”

  “It’s crazy,” Agger said. “But they’re saying that you took a job, Paul. A job you shouldn’t have taken.”

  “And?”

  “Everybody wants to know who you did the job for. A lot of people want to know why you took it. Some people think there are sixteen million answers to that one.”

  “Christ almighty! How could anybody think that? I’m a known quantity.”

  Agger’s gaze was searching. “You don’t have to tell me that. Look, they’re all wound up about it. But I know we can get this whole thing straightened out.” Almost bashfully, he added, “So … it’s true you took the job?”

  “Yes, I took the job—for Peter Novak. His people contacted me. I owed him one, big-time. Anyway, I was a referral. From State.”

  “See, the thing is, State denies it.”

  “What?”

  An apologetic shrug. “The State Department denies it. The Agency, too. It doesn’t even know what went on in Anura, exactly. Reports are conflicting, sketchy at best. But the word is that you were paid to make sure Peter Novak never left the island.”

  “That’s insane.”

  Another helpless shrug. “Interesting you should use that word. We’ve been told that you may have gone insane, though the actual words are a lot fancier. Dissociative disorder. Post-traumatic abreaction …”

  “Do I seem crazy to you, Agger?”

  “Of course not,” Agger said quickly. “Of course not.” An awkward pause followed. “But look, we all know what you’ve been through. All those months of VC torture. I mean, Jesus. Beaten, starved—that’s got to mess with your head. Sooner or later, it’s got to mess with you. Christ, the things they did to you …” In a quieter voice he added, “Not to mention the things that you did.”