by Kyle Mills
The wife took a key from her pocket and opened the door to number 9, the room in which Wyckoff and Yi had stayed. It was located in the newer section of the hanok. Kincaid was surprised to find that the two-day-old crime scene was already immaculate. There was no yellow police tape, no blood or footprints or any other evidence to be seen. According to the husband, a team had rushed in and cleaned the place up and down the moment the police indicated they were finished. Kincaid made a mental note to check whether this was normal procedure in the Republic of Korea.
The room itself was cozy, about half the size of a one-car garage. But it was also elegant in an understated way. There were no beds or chairs, just traditional mats, a pair of locked trunks, and a small color television set you probably couldn’t purchase in stores anymore. She’d seen the room in evidence photos, but the pictures didn’t do the place justice.
Kincaid walked to the window, which was made of a thin translucent paper that allowed in natural light. She placed her hand on one of the speckled walls and thought that if she gave it a solid punch, her fist would land in the next room. So much for proving that fellow guests couldn’t possibly have overheard an argument between the victim and the accused. But what truly puzzled her was that the police noted no signs of a struggle. Given the size of the room, that seemed all but impossible, especially considering the fact that Lynell Yi had apparently been the victim of manual strangulation.
“Tourists from the West still love to stay in hanok,” the husband said, collapsing her thoughts. “They do not come to Seoul to stay in a high-rise they can see in New York City or London.”
Kincaid nodded. She understood his passion, and unlike Janson, she could certainly understand why the young lovers might have slipped away from their modern apartment nearby to experience an amorous night in a traditional Korean home. Maybe she was just more romantic than Paul—or maybe Paul had previously been inside a hanok and had been reminded of the six-by-four-foot cage he’d been kept in during the eighteen months he spent as a prisoner of the Taliban in Afghanistan. That would certainly be reason enough for him to dismiss the hanok as a desirable place to stay. Either way, Kincaid didn’t think Janson’s theory that the young couple had been on the run held much water.
Following her visit to the Sophia Guesthouse, Kincaid waited in line for a dish of spicy chili beef then headed south back to the U.S. Embassy. By then it was nearing five o’clock Korean time, and she was hoping to catch Jonathan exiting the embassy after calling it a day. Jonathan was probably in his mid- to late twenties, not a teenager but certainly closer to Lynell Yi in age than most people employed at the embassy. And when Kincaid asked if there was anyone in the office who knew Lynell Yi well, the ambassador’s glance toward the doorway made her suspect that Jonathan might hold some of the answers to questions she had about Yi’s job, maybe even her relationship with Gregory Wyckoff.
Jonathan exited the embassy at a quarter after five and walked to the subway station at Chongyak. There he took the 1 line, and Kincaid hopped into the subway car trailing his. He got off just two stops later and boarded the 3. On the 3 train, he seemed to settle in for a lengthy ride. And lengthy it was; he didn’t step off the train again until they were south of the Han River in Gangnam-gu, the district made famous—or infamous—by that obnoxious pop song Kincaid heard over and over at clubs around the world.
Sweet Jesus. Now that she’d thought about it, she couldn’t get the damned song out of her head.
Kincaid continued to watch the restaurant. As she held her arms across her chest against the cold, she experienced that feeling again. That odd sensation that while she was watching Jonathan, she too was being watched. But by whom?
She searched the faces of the few people on the street braving the freezing weather. She eyed a group of teenagers huddled at the far corner of the park. She counted four males and two females, all probably under the age of eighteen. An unlikely bunch of spies, to say the least.
To her left, she spotted a vagrant hunched over on a park bench.
A vagrant? In these temperatures? How could he possibly survive the night?
The sun was dipping low behind the mountain; dark was falling fast. If she didn’t identify her stalker soon, it would be all but impossible. She reached into her pocket for her phone to call Janson but then thought better of it. She’d already informed him that she’d followed Jonathan to the restaurant. She could handle this on her own.
She turned away from the restaurant, retreating back into the park. The group of teens paid her no attention. The vagrant didn’t stir. Two males were walking fast straight toward her, but as they approached she noted they were holding hands, exposing their fingers to the cold. In this weather, that was true love.
A minute later she moved past the couple, deeper into the park. She stole another look over her shoulder. Had any of the people she’d seen earlier followed her? None that she could tell. But she felt a pair of eyes on her nevertheless.
Kincaid quickened her pace as her pulse sped up and her head filled with images of men in fedoras and dark trench coats, with handguns hanging at their sides.
In the center of the park, she spun around and spotted movement in a copse of trees. An animal? No. Unless a grizzly bear escaped from the Seoul Zoo, this creature was too large to be anything but a human being.
She continued moving forward as though she’d seen nothing. But she heard a rustle and was suddenly sure that whoever was following her knew he’d been made. Which meant that he was probably a professional.
With no one else in sight and the cover of dusk protecting him, her attacker finally made his move and launched himself out of the shadows.
Kincaid didn’t hesitate, didn’t bother looking back, just took off in a sprint across the park in the direction of the river. Over the shrieking gusts of wind she heard her pursuer make contact with bushes and low tree branches as he cut a parallel course north toward the Han, attempting to overtake her.
But Kincaid was fast. Fastest in her class at Quantico, where her professional life began. In the time since she’d left Virginia to join the FBI’s National Security Division, she’d put on a few years but not a single extra pound. And her world hadn’t paused since she’d been stolen away by the State Department after catching the eyes of some spooks from Consular Operations.
It was times like this when brimming with confidence counted, and that was a trait she’d had in spades all the way back to her childhood in Red Creek, Kentucky. She’d taken that confidence with her when she’d boarded a Greyhound bus, leaving her daddy behind for the first time in her life. And over the years that confidence had been refined, first by the Bureau, then by Cons Ops, and most recently by Paul Janson.
She charged through a row of bushes and found herself back on a street. She paused a moment to catch her breath, which was billowing in large white puffs before her eyes. Through the mist she eyed a taxi, and her arm shot up almost instinctively.
The orange taxi slowed and pulled to the curb and Kincaid opened the door and dove into the backseat, shouting, “Go, go, go.”
As the taxi peeled away Kincaid raised her head just in time to see a tall Korean man breaking through the bushes, stopping on a dime, then raising his arms with a gun in his hands. She watched him take aim and nervously waited for the sound of a gunshot, the shattering of window glass, the buzz of a bullet as it streaked by within inches of her face.
Mercifully, the assassin never fired.
About the Authors
ROBERT LUDLUM was the author of twenty-seven novels, each one a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 225 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. He is the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancellor Manuscript, and the Jason Bourne series—The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum—among others. Mr. Ludlum passed away in March 2001. To learn more, visit www.Robert-Ludlum.com.
KYLE MILLS is the New York Times bestselling auth
or of over a dozen novels including Rising Phoenix and Lords of Corruption. He lives with his wife in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where they spend their off hours skiing, rock climbing, and mountain biking. To learn more, you can visit his website at www.KyleMills.com or e-mail him at [email protected].
THE COVERT-ONE NOVELS
The Hades Factor (by Gayle Lynds)
The Cassandra Compact (by Philip Shelby)
The Paris Option (by Gayle Lynds)
The Altman Code (by Gayle Lynds)
The Lazarus Vendetta (by Patrick Larkin)
The Moscow Vector (by Patrick Larkin)
The Arctic Event (by James Cobb)
The Ares Decision (by Kyle Mills)
The Janus Reprisal (by Jamie Freveletti)
The Utopia Experiment (by Kyle Mills)
The Geneva Strategy (by Jamie Freveletti)
THE JASON BOURNE NOVELS
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Bourne Legacy
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Betrayal
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Sanction
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Deception
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Objective
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Dominion
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Imperative
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Retribution
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
The Bourne Ascendancy
(by Eric Van Lustbader)
THE PAUL JANSON NOVELS
The Janson Directive
The Janson Command (by Paul Garrison)
The Janson Option (by Paul Garrison)
The Janson Equation (by Douglas Corleone)
ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM
The Scarlatti Inheritance
The Matlock Paper
Trevayne
The Cry of the Halidon
The Rhinemann Exchange
The Road to Gandolfo
The Gemini Contenders
The Chancellor Manuscript
The Holcroft Covenant
The Matarese Circle
The Parsifal Mosaic
The Aquitaine Progression
The Icarus Agenda
The Osterman Weekend
The Road to Omaha
The Scorpio Illusion
The Apocalypse Watch
The Matarese Countdown
The Prometheus Deception
The Sigma Protocol
The Tristan Betrayal
The Ambler Warning
The Bancroft Strategy
ALSO BY KYLE MILLS
Rising Phoenix
Storming Heaven
Free Fall
Burn Factor
Sphere of Influence
Smoke Screen
Fade
The Second Horseman
Darkness Falls
Lords of Corruption
The Immortalists
PRAISE FOR THE COVERT-ONE SERIES
THE GENEVA STRATEGY
“[Freveletti’s] grasp of fast-action suspense and understanding of international politics, as well as martial arts combat training, brings real-life action to a continuance of Robert Ludlum’s original creations.”
—BookReporter.com
“Exciting . . . Freveletti offers a savory mix of intense action and cynical politics.”
—Publishers Weekly
THE UTOPIA EXPERIMENT
“Mills offers an interesting new premise for action-adventure . . . [and] rockets the action around the world.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Ludlum fans will enjoy the frantic pace and dramatic shifts in plot . . . Mills’s genius is making ‘extra-human capabilities’ seem not merely possible but almost already available, echoing the prescience of Jules Verne. We are all headed into this brave new world. Here, Mills helps us enjoy the ride while we consider the consequences.”
—Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star (VA)
“Well-written . . . This book is a winner.”
—BookReporter.com
“A fast-paced book with great characters . . . Mills is a very good writer.”
—Bubblews.com
THE JANUS REPRISAL
“From the opening sentence that literally starts with a bang, the latest Covert-One novel speeds along at a breakneck pace . . . Freveletti, who has an amazing talent for action scenes, has written one of the top entries in the Covert-One series, which has established itself as the best of the numerous series based on Ludlum characters.”
—Booklist
“Wonderful . . . Award-winning novelist Freveletti lends her imaginative talents to the Covert-One series with a book that is nearly impossible to put down and moves at the speed of light without pause . . . [It] races forward with the energy of a super-charged Bourne film.”
—BookReporter.com
“A fast-moving, well-written thriller.”
—Oklahoman
“Freveletti turbocharges tension to nonstop levels in this Covert-One thriller.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Masterful . . . The action is quite cinematic, the characters well-drawn, and the plot as tight as they come.”
—CriminalElement.com
“Exciting . . . Great read, really well-done, and a great finish.”
—BestsellersWorld.com
THE ARES DECISION
“The action never flags . . . Mills nicely integrates relevant military and scientific details into the story line, while his skill at characterization will leave many hoping he’ll become a permanent posthumous collaborator with Ludlum.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A tight and tense page-turner . . . Mills does the large-scale thriller better than anyone else working the genre today.”
—Booklist
“Fast-paced and action-filled, with iconic characters and contemporary themes, the story is a stand-alone-worthy entry in the Covert-One series . . . Fans of Ludlum and Mills thrillers will find The Ares Decision right on target.”
—Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star (VA)
“Plenty of comfort food for those with an appetite for the thriller genre.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“It should have the dual effect of sustaining interest in the series and moving Mills onto the must-read list of many. If your boat is floated by thriller novels that are set in the real world and have the ability to scare the pants off you, you will absolutely love this one . . . I can think of no greater compliment than to tell you that portions of the novel made my skin crawl. And I loved every minute of it.”
—BookReporter.com
“The pacing and the premise are pure Ludlum.”
—WomanAroundTown.com
“Filled with action, intrigue, and a plot that puts the team in a tight spot and their lives in constant danger. The end result is an exciting read.”
—TheSunDaily.my
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
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67
Epilogue
Teaser Opener
Teaser Chapter 1
Teaser Chapter 2
About the Authors
The Covert-One Novels
Praise
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Myn Pyn, LLC
Excerpt from The Janson Equation copyright © 2015 by Myn Pyn, LLC
Cover design by Wes Youssi/M80 Design
Image of man © CollaborationJS/Arcangel Images
Image of woman © Stephen Carroll/Trevillion Images
