Helms smiled. “I am president of the Petroleum Division, Ms. Kincaid. I write my own checks. In fact, I carry a loose one in my wallet for emergencies.” He drew an Hermès wallet from his inside breast pocket, extracted a gold pen and a blank check, and placed the check on the back of the wallet. The breeze plucked the paper. Kincaid stepped closer to hold it down with her fingers. Helms wrote “Catspaw Associates, LLC” and the date.
“How much?”
Janson supposed that Helms’s limit was five million. He would have to ask the Buddha to clear higher amounts. Demanding seven or eight million dollars would make Helms—and the Buddha—believe that Janson really didn’t want the job. But before he could say eight million, Kincaid surprised him. Either Jess still didn’t want the job, or she was reading Helms better than he was.
“Ten million,” she said. “Expenses paid weekly.”
“Same price,” Janson added, “whether we fight her out or buy her out with your ransom money.”
Helms wrote numbers and words, signed the check, and handed it over, startling Janson almost as much as the next word out of Kincaid’s mouth.
“Sniper!”
SIX
Paul Janson kicked Kingsman Helms’s feet out from under him and knocked the executive to the pavement. A bullet passed through the space Helms had occupied and smacked through the window behind him. Kincaid pointed toward a cigarette boat thundering past, four hundred meters out on the river, and they both hit the deck. A slug twanged off the railing.
“Helms, don’t move!” Janson shouted. To Kincaid, he said, “Strollers behind us.”
Janson sprinted toward the south corner of the pier shed, keeping below the partial shelter of the railing. Kincaid raced for the north corner.
The “strollers”—the sniper’s finish team—rounded the corners with Glocks in hand and Bluetooth clips on their ears. They were wearing suits, masquerading as fit, young traders up at Chelsea Piers for a spinning class—except that traders didn’t leave their floor at nine in the morning, and traders’ tailors did not forget to remove the manufacturer’s label from the sleeves of new suits, a curious lapse by a professional kill team.
The Bluetooths meant that the sniper was directing them via cell phone.
Both took deliberate aim at Kingsman Helms, who was sprawled on the pavement equidistant between them. Neither saw an immediate threat in a small woman wearing yoga gear and an older man in a corduroy jacket. Kill the target, then the witnesses.
Kincaid slid a carbon-fiber blade from the bottom of her bag.
Janson was farther from his man. He went straight at him. The assassin noticed the rush and wheeled his weapon. Janson went airborne, low as a base runner sliding into second, boots-first into the stroller’s leading leg, and shattered his ankle.
Few men could have kept his grip on his weapon, but this one did, even as he crumbled to the pavement with a gasp of pain. Janson closed both hands on his wrist and smashed the hand holding the gun against the building. The stroller’s fingers splayed open. Janson caught the Glock, banged it twice against the man’s temple, and swept the walkway for his backup.
Thunder on the Hudson River behind him told him that the cigarette boat was racing to the rescue, closing fast on the pier. Janson braced the Glock on the railing, waited until the boat was within thirty meters, and fired repeatedly, aiming for the silhouette of the driver behind the windshield. The bullets starred the glass but didn’t penetrate. The sniper stood up, aiming his rifle. Janson fired again.
The boat jinked sharply left. Janson’s shot missed, but came close enough to make the sniper duck. The boat had to slew away before it struck the pier. The turn exposed the driver and the sniper. Janson fired again. The driver clutched his arm. The sniper grabbed the wheel and the boat turned tail toward the middle of the river.
A shout behind Janson whipped his head toward Kincaid. Blood was gushing from the second stroller’s face, and blood was streaming from his hand. He too had dropped his gun, but despite his pain and shock had thrown the much lighter Kincaid fifteen feet to the edge of the pier and halfway over the railing. Before she could untangle herself, he bolted around the corner. By the time Janson got there, he was racing down the walkway and headed for the nearest door to the parking garage.
Kincaid scooped up the gun and started after him.
The sniper on the river fired again, covering the stroller’s retreat.
“Down!” said Janson, and he and Kincaid hit the deck, again. Chasing the stroller would get civilians killed. They slithered toward the center of the pier, where Helms was flat on the paved deck watching in wide-eyed disbelief.
“Were they trying to shoot me?”
“Who were they?”
“How would I know?”
Paul Janson dialed 911.
“Pier Sixty,” he told the dispatcher. “Chelsea Piers. Sniper on a cigarette boat bearing south at fifty knots. One gunman in the parking garage, bleeding from the face. One gunman secured at the river end of the pier with a broken leg.”
Jessica Kincaid dropped her carbon-fiber blade into the river and dialed a former close-combat student who was a captain in the New York Police Department.
A roving NYPD Emergency Service Unit drawn by the gunfire responded in two minutes. A police launch arrived in five, and within ten minutes of the last shot fired a hundred cops had swarmed into the Chelsea Piers complex. Kincaid’s student, a raven-haired beauty in a dark-blue Counterterrorism Bureau polo shirt, arrived on a motorcycle.
* * *
THE SNIPER ATTACK cost Janson and Kincaid twelve precious hours as they cooperated with the cops who were piecing together what had happened. Nine o’clock at night found them still pretending patience in a conference room on the sixth floor of One Police Plaza, where Kingsman Helms sat flanked by lawyers from the venerable white-shoe firm Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock.
Janson thanked the gods for Kincaid’s former student. Without the counterterrorism officer’s clout, it would have been worse. She even got them permission to use their phones so that they could use much of the long day to continue gathering intelligence on the Somali pirates.
Catspaw Associates contractors had of course shifted into high gear. No contractor was required to drop another client in mid-course, but the pay was top and the work intriguing, and they tended to gather quickly.
A Somali-American college student had been hired on to translate. A kid recently paroled from jail had been recruited to explain the pirate culture of his distant homeland and compile a list of pirate cell-phone numbers. The best get was a Somali-American real estate mogul who found properties for emigrating Somali businessmen. He was setting Janson up with introductions to movers and shakers in Mogadishu.
Janson and Kincaid had to clear one more hurdle to get out of police headquarters and on their way to Somalia: Deputy Commissioner Eddie Thomas, a Brooklyn-born former gold-shield detective, who stood five-feet-six in a 54 Short sharkskin suit. Thomas had cock-of-the-walk looks that Kincaid’s former student found interesting, judging by her acquisitive expression. When he finally looked up from his underlings’ reports stacked on the table in front of him, his black eyes glittered like anthracite.
“Do I get this straight? The cigarette boat was abandoned in St. George on Staten Island, minus the sniper and crew. The gunman who witnesses saw bleeding profusely from a fall he apparently suffered while escaping has not shown up in any emergency rooms. The other gunman, who broke his leg somehow, is identified as Sabastiano Bardellino, an assassin who works for the Camorra, the Naples mafia, which explains why Mr. Bardellino has not uttered a word and he never will, even if he was sentenced to life in prison, which he won’t be because the only crime we can charge him with is waving a pistol in public, which is not the most unusual occurrence in our city, and he never fired it.”
Deputy Commissioner Thomas paused to stare at Kingsman Helms and the lawyers. He glanced at Janson and Kincaid, and his lips tightened. He looked down at the reports in
front of him. “In regards to the sniper’s target, Mr. Helms denies any knowledge of who would want to assassinate him, and he pleads complete ignorance about the Camorra, knowledge of which would not fall within the purview of a Texas oil company executive, it has been pointed out repeatedly to me by Mr. Helms’s counselors. So mistaken identity seems as plausible as any other suggestion I’ve heard today. And Mr. uh, Janson, here, did not bring with him the Glock that he fired in panic, shall we say, at the cigarette boat, but merely snatched it from Mr. Bardellino to protect his companion, Ms… um, Kincaid, and subsequently dropped it in a similar panic into the river, where Marine Unit divers recovered it along with numerous other discarded firearms and knives, including this carbon-fiber blade of the sort that does not show up in metal detectors.”
Commissioner Thomas picked the blade up, held it to the light, and smiled thinly at Kincaid. “In other words, all asses are covered.”
“Thank you, Commissioner,” chorused the lawyers.
* * *
ON PEARL STREET outside a back door, Kingsman Helms broke loose from his lawyers.
“Janson, can I assume that you are at least preparing to rescue Allegra in case ransom negotiations fall through?”
“We’re on our way.”
“Where?”
“First stop, Hamburg.”
“Germany? What’s in Germany?”
“The shipyard that built the Tarantula.”
Helms started to ask another question.
Janson cut him off. “What are you doing to ensure your safety?”
“It was mistaken identity. They thought I was somebody else.”
“I’d lay low if I were you. Your HQ in Houston is a fortress. You’ll be safe there.”
Helms said, “Actually, I’m leaving for Africa on a company Gulfstream. ASC gives me bodyguards when I travel. The best.”
“Will you be in Somalia?” asked Kincaid.
“My work takes me all over East Africa.”
She asked, “Does it strike you as a funny coincidence that your wife was pirated to Somalia while you’re working there?”
“Rotten luck, not coincidence. Allegra was finishing appraising a collection in the Seychelles and we planned to meet in Mombasa. The yacht was spur of the moment. Allegra was introduced to the owner in Victoria. He happened to be sailing to Mombasa and she decided to catch a ride.”
“Did you plan to meet him?”
“I assumed we would take him to dinner in Mombasa. You know, as a thank-you—Janson, I have to know exactly what your next move is.”
Janson said, “Your wife is camera shy. I want you to e-mail me any photographs you have in which she is not wearing sunglasses. I’ve got tons of schoolgirl photos, but nothing that shows her face since she was a teenager.”
* * *
“I AM BAFFLED,” he told Jessica Kincaid in the car racing to Westchester Airport. Ten thirty at night, midweek, their driver was weaving through homebound theatre and restaurant traffic. “Italian hit men try to take out our client. Makes no sense.”
“The guy was definitely aiming at Helms,” Kincaid agreed.
“And when the strollers came around the corner, they were aiming for Helms. Why would Camorra hit men try to kill Kingsman Helms?”
Their driver passed the airport terminal, continued on to a chain-link fence, and stopped at a security speakerphone. “Eight Two Two Romeo Echo.”
“Do you buy Allegra on that particular yacht being coincidence?”
“Sounds like one. Funny thing, though,” mused Janson as the gate slid open, “speaking of coincidences.”
“Yeah?”
“Somalia was an Italian colony.”
“What, eighty years ago?”
“Mussolini’s Africa Orientale Italiana.”
Kincaid said, “Hooking Helms to Mussolini is mighty far-fetched.”
She was not surprised when Janson turned very serious. “When options run out, survivors have far-fetched standing by.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Jess.” Paul Janson grabbed her hand and squeezed hard. “Operators who ignore far-fetched get killed. Operators who dismiss options get killed.”
“OK, Paul.”
“When in doubt, remember London.”
“I remember Amsterdam.” Her Lambda sniper team had been assigned to kill a rogue agent who had betrayed Consular Operations. The rogue had not been easy to kill. He had turned the London operation on its ear, and her into a first-class football clod.
And when she finally had him in her sights, in Amsterdam, the Machine had taught her a whole new definition of far-fetched: Paul Janson had convinced her that he was not a rogue agent; Cons Ops had betrayed him; and Jessica Kincaid had come within a nanosecond of letting the bosses trick her into killing the wrong man.
“I’m alive today,” said Janson, “because as young and dumb as you were back then, you opened your eyes to far-fetched.”
“Thanks for the history lesson, Old-Timer.”
“Let’s see if Mussolini’s waiting on the plane.”
SEVEN
Catspaw’s fourteen-passenger Embraer 650 stood by itself in the dark at the edge of the runways, which were speckled with blue, yellow, and green taxi and runway lights. Janson had had most of the seats removed to upgrade the big silver jet with a full galley, study, a sleeping area, dressing room, and shower. With fuel capacity for a four-thousand-mile transoceanic range and broadband satellite data links, they could go anywhere in the world on short notice and arrive fed, rested, geared up, and informed.
“Ready when you are, boss,” Lynn Novicki, their senior pilot greeted them at the top of the retractable stairs, which entered the ship right behind the cockpit. “Have you guys eaten?”
“Police Department takeout. What’s that I smell? Cumin and cinnamon and ginger.”
“Camel burgers on flatbread. Sarah found a Minneapolis grocery to feed the Somalis something they’d like.” First Officer Sarah Peterson was in the right-hand cockpit seat, talking to the tower.
“We’ll take off in thirty minutes.”
Three tall, thin men with light-brown skin and prominent brows rose eagerly when Janson and Kincaid stepped into the forward cabin. The student and the parolee were young. Isse, the student, was dressed in a white shirt and jeans. Ahmed, the parolee, sported a black “Somali Coast Guard” T-shirt with a skull and crossed AK-47s. The real estate mogul was in his forties and wore a pricy blue suit and a bright-yellow tie.
Catspaw had vetted all three. Salah Hassan, a wealthy businessman with his feet in many seas, was the best source. The kids, no one was sure about: Ahmed’s jail time had been for selling khat—a Somali stimulant that was illegal in Minnesota—on a business scale larger than dealing to friends. Isse, whose parents were professionals, had lived a sheltered suburban life. Janson extended his hand. “Paul, Mr. Hassan. Thank you coming along on such short notice.”
“If we knew what cooks your pilots are, we’d have come sooner.”
“Awesome burger,” said Ahmed.
“My first ever,” said Isse.
Janson introduced Kincaid. “Jess, my colleague.”
Kincaid had streamed a video about Somali customs on her phone while stuck at police headquarters. She knew to offer the peace greeting, Assalamu alaikum, but not shake hands with the men.
Janson said, “We will fly you gentlemen to Mogadishu by commercial airline after debriefing you in New York, but I wanted a moment with you first. I’m assuming you’re comfortable flying into Mogadishu?”
“Things are better,” said Hassan. “I was there only last month. I would not dub the city ‘restored to former splendor,’ but it is possible to do business.”
“Isse and Ahmed, you were born in America. Isse, do you speak fluent Somali?”
Isse nodded.
“Fluent enough to translate?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, Ahmed,” he said to the parolee. “You can translate Som
ali too?”
“No prob. My parents spoke it all the time.”
“I understand that you have a clansman who used to be a pirate.”
“Saakin. My cousin. My father’s cousin actually. He’s younger than my father, but older than me. Major pirate. One of the first. Made a ton of dough.”
“Any idea what induced Saakin to reform?”
Ahmed grinned. “He lost his taste for it when he got shot.” His grin faded. “Now he’s kind of hobbling around on a walker.”
“What can he do for us?”
“He has everybody’s cell-phone numbers.”
“Don’t they change them?”
“Every day. But he stays friends.”
Janson looked skeptical. Ahmed explained, “He brings them stuff they need.”
“Got it.” Cousin Saakin was acting as supply sergeant. “Ahmed, what do pirates want?”
“Money.”
“For what?”
“To buy khat, SUVs, and wives,” said Ahmed.
“What’s their religion?”
“SUVs and wives and getting high chewing khat leaves.”
Janson grinned back at him. “And the same goes for politics?”
“You got it.”
“No,” interrupted Isse. “Ahmed’s T-shirt is not a joke to everyone. A lot of them are trying to protect Somali fishing waters from foreign trawlers that wreck the seabed and kill all the fish.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Ahmed. “Until they start chewing khat. Then it’s talk, talk, talk. And wife, wife, wife.”
“It’s more complicated,” said the student. “They have a mission.”
“Heroes?” scoffed the parolee. “Laugh out loud. They’re criminals.”
“What were you in jail for?”
“I got caught learning entrepreneurship,” Ahmed answered with another open grin. “But at least I’m bringing home business skills that’ll help Somalia a lot more than ramming ‘missions’ down people’s throats.”
“Missions?”
They were raising their voices, which Janson did not take seriously, recalling that throughout Africa, Somalis were as famous as Nigerians for high-decibel debate.
The Janson Option Page 6
