Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command

by Robert Ludlum; Paul Garrison

The operation itself they named biblically, in the Mossad tradition, “Operation Sword Fall.” Janson had protested. He had read the Old Testament to prepare for his posting to Jerusalem, and knew that facing capture by Philistines, Saul had fallen on his own sword.

  They meant the other Saul, the Stern Gang laughed. The one who became a Christian and built the Catholic Church. “Paul before he went native,” Donner had joked.

  Still, the mission they laid out verged on the suicidal.

  The best thing about it was that no one would ever know. Not the U.S. State Department, not Consular Operations, not the CIA, not the South African Security Service, not even the Mossad. The Stern Gang used their still-formidable connections within the Mossad to fill the blank weeks in Janson’s record with tantalizing hints of Janson’s participation in a top-secret operation in Iraq. To this day that legend had stuck and Paul Janson’s first killing was still a secret. Not even Jessica knew.

  * * *

  JANSON MADE HIS pitch to the retired spies while they sipped tea at the shaded end of the swimming pool. Donner’s and Grandig’s tea was iced and sprinkled with mint leaves, old Weintraub’s hot in a glass and sucked through a sugar cube.

  Janson described in colorful and precise detail the Harrier rescue of President for Life Iboga and how he had subsequently learned that the commando who had escorted the dictator aboard the jump jet with blazing guns claimed to be with an outfit called Securité Referral. They listened closely, intrigued by the boldness of the operation and its flawless execution. “A brave man, this diver,” Grandig said of the commando.

  “He handled himself well,” Janson admitted.

  “A dangerous combination. What are the chances of turning him to your side in this matter?”

  “They were slim when he was trying to kill a man I’m being paid to keep alive. Now they’re nonexistent, since he came up short tangling with one of my people.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Here’s something even more fascinating.” He told them about the Reaper intervening in the climactic battle on Pico Clarence. When he finished, they were sitting forward in their chairs and exchanging incredulous glances.

  “You lead an interesting life, Saul.”

  But when Janson asked Donner, Weintraub, and Grandig to use their contacts around the world to identify Securité Referral, they resisted. He was not surprised. He had expected to find them old and cautious and deep in the grip of habits of discretion. But primarily, Janson knew, the old patriots were asking themselves the question they had always asked: Is it good for Israel?

  Their resistance took the form of pooh-poohing their ability to help.

  “Who do we know anymore at our age?” asked Grandig, the youngest.

  “Your age?” Weintraub echoed disdainfully. “Everyone I know is dead.”

  “I was not thinking so much of you as your acolytes,” said Janson. “Your protégés hold key intelligence and security positions in various parts of the world.”

  “Our protégés aren’t getting any younger, either.”

  “Then their protégés,” Janson coaxed. “Gentlemen, I am fully aware that few men have contacts like yours. Poll your people for me. The name Securité Referral is bound to ring some bells.”

  They stared into their empty glasses.

  He looked at Miles, who had been listening silently. Miles had taught him, “If you have something to say, don’t until you know what you want its effect to be.” Now Miles said, “Two phrases you will not hear often in Israel, my friend: ‘Excuse me.’ And, ‘Thank you.’ ”

  Janson squared his shoulders. “I don’t expect thanks. I do believe I have earned the right to ask a favor as small as this.”

  “Maybe we owe you,” Weintraub grumped. “Maybe we don’t. Sword Fall was not exactly a one-man operation.”

  “One man got close enough to do the job,” Janson said grimly. “He’s come back to collect.”

  Weintraub shrugged his scrawny shoulders. “Who loves the bill collector?”

  Janson saw that he had succeeded in maneuvering them into a position where none were comfortable.

  Finally, Grandig raised a new objection: “What sort of bill collector would demand that we risk our friends’ cover asking them questions?”

  Janson glanced again at Miles Donner. The English Jew winked, acknowledging that Grandig had given Janson the opening he was working toward. Janson pulled a plastic sack from his shoulder bag and upended it. The contents clattered on the table. “Go phones. With prepaid SIM cards. No one will know who called who.”

  “Who sold you these untraceable prepaid minutes?” asked Grandig. “The phone shop at Ben Gurion Airport otherwise known as Mossad-dot-com?”

  “With Subscriber Identity Modules programmed by Shin Bet,” Weintraub chimed in, “so the security agency can eavesdrop on the people we call?”

  “No, I paid cash in Sadr City. As soon as your protégés tell me where Iboga’s jump jet went and who runs Securité Referral, you are welcome to protect your friends by swallowing the SIM cards.”

  TWENTY

  Three days later Janson was still in Israel. The old men were slow. Weintraub napped between telephone calls and insisted on being driven home to spend each night in his modest flat on the far side of Tel Aviv. Grandig camped on Donner’s couch. Janson dozed in an armchair during the very few hours that Donner himself would actually sleep. Slow as the old men were, they stuck to it, at first honoring their obligation to Janson but soon caught up in the chase, making call after call overseas to younger men and women in the field. As Donner explained on the drive back from delivering Weintraub to his flat, “Retirement is a spectator sport. But it is more satisfying to do than to watch. They won’t thank you, but they are happy you gave them a job.”

  “Are you happy I gave you a job?”

  “It is always a pleasure to watch an old acquaintance in action.”

  Like a photograph coming into focus as pixels hardened on a monitor, an image of Securité Referral formed around bits and pieces garnered from scores of queries. The details resembled what Janson had already seen in action on the palace pier in Porto Clarence. Securité Referral did exist. The outfit appeared to have been organized by a tight-knit group of renegade clandestine officers with the express purpose of providing safe havens in rogue and criminal states for deposed rulers and war criminals and the fortunes spirited out of their countries.

  It appeared to be a new operation, which would explain why few had heard of it. The old men’s telephone calls revealed two rescues before Iboga: the exfiltration under the noses of the DEA of a Colombian drug lord about to be extradited to the U.S. and the rescue of a Kyrgyzstan general who had reigned over the ex-Soviet vassal state just long enough to steal $10 billion. Securité Referral had established a niche business rescuing what international prosecutors called politically exposed persons.

  “Sounds like a sort of anti–Phoenix Foundation,” Kincaid drawled when he filled her in on the telephone. “Providing a fresh opportunity for bad guys to be really bad.”

  “I’ll admit it sounds a little cartoonish.”

  “The Klingons of corporate security?”

  “Except that we’ve seen them operate.”

  “Porto Clarence was mighty slick,” Jessica agreed.

  Janson said, “Think about what happens if that Kyrgyzstan general gets back in power. Or they rescue some Balkan warlord who ends up controlling a rogue state like Croatia. All of a sudden Securité Referral will be operating under the wing of a sovereign nation.”

  The names of a few top operators surfaced, the sort of ethically unrestrained specialists Janson would expect to be recruited by a freewheeling outfit that answered only to itself: Emil Bloch, a highly skilled French mercenary he knew only by reputation; Dimon, a Serbian computer wizard; Viorets, a Russian foreign intelligence service officer who slid smoothly between official duties for the SVR and private work for Gazprom and LUKOIL. There were some more French, and a de
adly Corsican—Andria Giudicelli. Grandig had run into Giudicelli twenty years ago in France, while thwarting an attempt to burn EL AL’s Paris office. No politics, he said, Giudicelli was loyal to the highest bidder.

  Nothing emerged about Securité Referral’s leader. Then a protégé of Miles relayed rumors of a South African mercenary who had engineered with Emil Bloch the assassination of a Russian exile hiding in Switzerland. Kruger in Zurich told Janson he had heard of the assassination, had heard nothing about Emil Bloch, but had heard rumors of a South African.

  Jessica Kincaid had judged by his accent that the guy she tangled with in Cartagena was South African. And Janson recalled that Ferdinand Poe had at one time had South African mercenaries running guns to his camp.

  Janson telephoned Poe’s chief of security, Patrice da Costa.

  “Hadrian Van Pelt,” da Costa answered. “Traitorous bastard.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “I never saw him. I was in Porto Clarence. But I gather he wormed his way into Douglas Poe’s trust when President Poe was in Black Sand— May I tell Acting President Poe that you are closing in on Iboga?”

  “So far we have reports that Iboga has been sighted in Russia, Romania, the Ukraine, and Croatia and on the French island of Corsica. Either he’s traveling a lot or more likely we’re just catching rumors.”

  “Iboga is a very large, very black, very frightening-looking African, with ritual scars on his face and a crazed gleam in his eye,” said da Costa. “One would think he stands out. Even when he isn’t wearing a yellow headdress.”

  “One would think,” Janson agreed mildly. He liked da Costa but was disinclined to explain to a client’s underling that a planet housing five billion people offered many places to hide for a well-heeled fugitive protected by professionals who had a major stake in his future—a future that Securité Referral must know could include seizing control of oil-rich Isle de Foree if they could keep Iboga alive and free long enough to launch the counterattack that Ferdinand Poe feared.

  Janson passed the name Hadrian Van Pelt to Freddy Ramirez in Madrid.

  Freddy got back to him within the hour, deeply embarrassed.

  “Sorry about this, but we screwed up. The Catalan police took a guy to the hospital they found passed out in Barcelona. We missed it. Barcelona’s a long, long way from Cartagena. His passport said ‘Hadrian Van Pelt.’ ”

  “What did he pass out of?”

  “Blood loss. It took ninety stitches to close up his arm.”

  That’s my girl, thought Janson. “Where is he?”

  “Snuck out of the hospital. Stole a Mercedes which they found in Madrid. My friend at Immigration tells me a dude his size with his arm in a sling flew to London under the name Vealon, Brud Vealon, and changed planes to Cape Town, South Africa.”

  Where Jesse was now, Janson thought uneasily.

  “Do we have anything on Van Pelt and Vealon?”

  “Nothing on Vealon. There was a South African Olympic swimmer named Van Pelt. Common name down there, but from your description sounds like the same guy. He was disqualified from the Athens games for doping. Research can’t find a word about him since 2004.”

  Janson texted Kincaid a heads-up that “the diver,” likely named either Hadrian Van Pelt or Brud Vealon, was headed her way. He telephoned Suzman in Cape Town to ask for his help in shadowing Hadrian Van Pelt. Suzman knew the name not only as a disgraced athlete but also as a mercenary soldier. “Fell off my radar years ago.”

  “What did you think it meant when he fell off?”

  Janson heard shrugged shoulders in Suzman’s answer. “I never paid it any mind. I assumed he got shot in the Congo or someplace.”

  Exactly what someone like Van Pelt would want government security officers to assume, if he was moving up to something as big as Securité Referral.

  * * *

  IN THE BACKSEAT of Miles’s car that evening, Zwi Weintraub, who was snuffling on his oxygen, suddenly awakened. “You see the pattern?”

  “What pattern?”

  “Referral’s operators are all self-starters. Men who can run an operation are in the field. They do their own work. The workers are the leaders; the leaders are the workers.”

  “You mean there’s no headman?”

  “Any one of them is capable of being the headman.”

  “All chiefs, no Indians?” asked Donner. “How do they keep from killing each other?”

  “A good question,” said Weintraub, closing his eyes again. “Perhaps they’ve found a method to alter human nature.”

  “A pact,” said Paul Janson. “They’ve sworn to band together against anyone who tries to take control.”

  “A confederation of musketeers.” Miles Donner smiled. “All for one and one for all.”

  * * *

  JESSE TELEPHONED FROM Cape Town. “Got your text. ’Fraid I’ll miss the diver. I’m in a cab to the airport.” She was hoping to catch a plane to Johannesburg, where she would transfer to a long-haul Qantas flight to Sydney. “Where I think the doc is.”

  “How’d he get all the way to Australia?”

  “Jumped ship with the Varna Fantasy’s purser’s wife, dumped her in Cape Town, hooked up with a Qantas flight attendant named Mildred. Mildred got him comped onto a flight to Sydney. He’s either the horniest bastard on the planet or running scared. The purser’s wife thinks he’s running scared. Of course the poor thing has to tell herself something to explain the fix she’s in.”

  “Good job.”

  “I feel like a divorce lawyer’s gumshoe.”

  An hour later Miles Donner awakened Janson from a catnap with a grim face. “They’re shutting us down.”

  “Who?”

  “Shin Bet.”

  Israel’s security agency had been alerted to heavy overseas phone traffic emanating from Nordiya, Miles reported. “I was given advance warning by an old friend.”

  “Just from some extra calls? There are thousands of expats living in this area, calling home to London and New York. Our calls couldn’t have made a blip Shin Bet would notice.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what happened?” Janson asked, sensing the answer even as he spoke.

  Miles said, “I suspect that somewhere in Europe some friend of Securité Referral tipped Shin Bet about all the questions.”

  “But why would Shin Bet—”

  “They’re doing their job. They’ve been alerted to unusual traffic. They have to act. Internal security is their responsibility. Securité Referral knows that, of course.”

  “Securité Referral is hitting back. Destroy the phones.”

  “I already have,” said Miles. “The operation is terminated. Get out of Israel while you can. I’ve arranged for a chap to drive you to the airport. Hurry, my friend. The car is at the service entrance.”

  “Lie down on the floor until we reach the highway,” the driver told him as Janson emerged from rows of black plastic garbage bags outside the facility’s kitchen.

  “An ignominious retreat,” Janson said to Donner as they shook hands good-bye.

  The old man winked. “Be known by your failures.”

  * * *

  JANSON WAS STANDING in line at Ben Gurion waiting to buy a ticket to Paris when Suzman called back from Cape Town. “Your boy’s come and gone. Never left the airport. Changed planes for Sydney. Which is, I believe, where your ‘interesting company’ just boarded a flight to.”

  “Is there any way you could stop him?” Janson asked.

  “Not without shooting down a commercial airliner. He connected in Johannesburg with the SAA flight to Perth.”

  “You said Sydney.”

  “He missed the direct Sydney connection. He’ll have to change in Perth to get across Australia.”

  Janson could not raise Kincaid on the telephone. He left messages but got no replies. He texted her a warning that Van Pelt would probably arrive in Sydney several hours after her. And again, he did not hear back.
<
br />   Cursing that he didn’t have the Embraer close at hand, he hunted frantically for the fastest flight to Australia. Sydney was nine thousand miles from Israel. He had to change planes in Bangkok. With the layover, the trip would take nearly twenty-four hours. Kincaid would land in Sydney with Van Pelt close behind, ten hours before Janson caught up.

  He held fast to the mantra she is predator, not prey.

  PART THREE

  Blind Side

  35°18′29″ S, 149°07′28″ E

  Canberra, Australia

  TWENTY-ONE

  Dr. Terry Flannigan reckoned he had less than a day before the people trying to kill him caught up in Canberra. They’d already tracked him from Dakar to South Africa and certainly by now the Qantas flight to Sydney. Back-tracing him to Mildred, they would discover that the flight attendant had gotten him a package trip to Australia’s capital including his hotel and this morning’s guided tour of Parliament House.

  He had to do something fast, but he didn’t know what.

  A sweet little blonde gave him a shy eye as they trooped off the bus. She looked fresh faced as a country schoolteacher. Flannigan guessed she had recently broken up with a lousy boyfriend and had signed onto this package tour by herself to recover; now she was lonely and feeling brave. But how could she help him stay alive? Even if she smuggled him home to some godforsaken Outback kangaroo ranch, how long would it take them to catch up?

  He stuck close to the group as they were herded into the parliament. Inside he felt the most secure he had in two weeks, guarded by fit-looking Parliamentary Security Service officers with radios. Not supercommandos like The Wall and Annie Oakley, but backed up by Federal Police and the Australian Army.

  When they were led into the Senate Chamber itself, he relaxed and began to enjoy himself. Then an excellent brunette Green Party senator noticed him noticing her from the public galley. She was single. He saw no wedding ring. Besides, married ladies in public life didn’t hook up with strange men in public places and Madame Senator was definitely sending hookup signals.