Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command

by Robert Ludlum; Paul Garrison

  He turned on his heel and left.

  Janson waited until he was sure Helms wasn’t coming back again and said to Doug Case, “You were listening like you knew the punch line.”

  “Last time it was a Pontiac.”

  “Tell me, what did you mean, you never heard it laid out that way? Never heard what laid out that way?”

  “The global corporation as buccaneer. Don’t you love Helms’s ‘They don’t mind taxing us, but they won’t protect us’?”

  “Gives him a lot of latitude.”

  “Total.” Case covered his face with his hands. After a while he spread his fingers and stared between them. “A million people work in U.S. intelligence. Right?”

  “Give or take.”

  “Do you think there’s room for another?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you suppose that with my credentials and your help explaining my checkered past I could go back to government service?”

  “What?” said Janson. Now he was the one surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m thinking of going back to serving my country.”

  “And kiss good-bye flying First Class in six-thousand-dollar suits?”

  “That’s just stuff. I don’t care about stuff. I never have— Don’t get me wrong; I love my ‘superchair.’ ” He patted the wheelchair’s controls-studded arms with deep affection. “You have no idea what it means to bop around so freely when you can’t. But I’ll bet the Phoenix Foundation would keep me in wheelchairs if I weren’t earning ASC bucks.”

  Janson nodded. “Count on it. Are you seriously considering leaving ASC?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mind me asking how long you’ve been thinking about it?”

  “Never considered it until ten minutes ago.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a new world, like Helms said. But not one I particularly like. Our government, most governments, at least the democratic governments, are completely distracted by their new main job—propping up collapsing economies. They’ll be coping with going broke for decades. That leaves a huge power vacuum. Global corporations are jumping in with all four feet.”

  “We’ve seen this building,” said Janson.

  “Yeah, but you and I came up in simpler times. Rogue government agencies were our villains. Bureaucrats with agendas using us like tin soldiers. Now governments are fading. The shift of wealth in our country from ordinary folks to rich people—and internationally from us to China—puts the globals in the driver’s seat. I see a world coming real soon where rogue corporations are more dangerous than rogue government agencies.”

  Janson nodded, silently pondering a far more sinister threat: How long before rogue global corporations partnered with rogue government agencies? How long before a covert agency helped a global corporation hire mercenaries like Securité Referral to dispatch a Harrier jump jet? How long before ASC and Cons Ops swung a deal to call in a Reaper drone missile attack? If they hadn’t already.

  “Why don’t we go next door?”

  “What’s next door?” asked Case.

  “The Tanglin Club. We can get a better lunch than here, talk about your plans.”

  It was a short walk in the Singapore heat, but even Doug riding his electric chair was perspiring when they reached the cool sanctuary of the Tanglin’s lobby.

  “Fancy or pub?” asked Janson.

  Case peered longingly into the formal Churchill Room with its plush banquettes and tables set with linen, silver, and crystal. “Pub. Something tells me I better get used to scaling down.”

  Janson led the way to the Tavern Bar.

  Dark beams, framed prints of dogs and horses, foxhunt horns hanging from the ceiling, and a crowded bar of dedicated drinkers all spoke “England.” Janson chose a table near the buffet. Chinese waiters and Malay busboys whisked away a captain’s chair to make room for Case. Janson sat diagonally from him so they could speak quietly. Case looked around at the men and women arriving for lunch while Janson ordered beers.

  “Heck of an ethnic mix. Like a Singapore remake of a Hollywood World War Two bomber crew.”

  “Old Singapore saying: Money doesn’t hate.”

  “Money for sure. These folks look like they own the city. How’d you wangle a membership?”

  “A friend put me up.… I have to tell you, Doug, your ‘global corporation as buccaneer’ is very troubling.”

  Case laughed. He seemed to be pulling back from their earlier intimacy and Janson regretted the change of venue. He had thought that Case would unburden himself more over lunch; now Janson realized he should have kept pressing him when he was in the mood at the American Club. He had to work him back to that mood.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “You’re one yourself,” said Case.

  “One what?”

  “A rogue. Aren’t you bypassing governments with your Phoenix Foundation? Or do ‘Janson Rules’ give you a pass.”

  “They give me a clear eye.”

  “Yeah, right. But I find as I get older I’m less clear about so much. Then something like this comes along and I don’t know what the hell to do.”

  “Like what comes along? Global buccaneers pushing government out of their way?”

  The laughter left Case’s face. He nodded grimly. “If it’s true that ASC killed its own people to keep the reserve discovery secret until the war was resolved, then they’re already doing it.”

  Janson nodded back. “If true, then we were both used.”

  “Don’t I know it. They used me to use you to rescue the doctor so someone else could kill him.”

  “Who would that someone be?”

  “How would I know?”

  “You’re ASC security chief.”

  Doug Case said, “Hiring killers isn’t part of my job description.” He shrugged, adding, “At least not yet. If they hired killers, then there must be someone else in the corporation doing that—an unofficial security guy I never met. ’Cause I sure as hell didn’t hire any assassins.”

  “Who would they hire?”

  “The world is full of reliable killers.”

  Janson asked the big question and watched Doug’s reaction: “Do you know people at Securité Referral?”

  “No. What’s that?”

  “Outfit I ran into.”

  Case looked at Janson expectantly. But it was clear that Janson did not regard this lunch as a mutual intelligence-sharing event. “Care to fill me in on them?”

  “Not today.”

  Case shrugged, again. “Anyway, this kind of stuff has me thinking it’s time for me to make a move.”

  “Worth thinking about,” Janson agreed.

  “I’ve thought about it.” He looked around. Then he placed his hand emphatically on the wooden tabletop. “I’m leaving the fuckers.”

  Janson seized the opening: “Why not hang with them for a while?”

  “What the fuck for? These bastards are perverting my world— You know, for the first time I sort of get what you must have felt when you started Phoenix.”

  “It’s a big move you’re talking about. A complete life changer.”

  “Maybe I can’t change the whole world, but I can try and fix my world.”

  “Figuring out where to go will take some time. Then we’ll have to put out feelers for a new job. Until you find out where you want to serve why don’t you hang with ASC for a while longer?”

  “And do what?”

  “Keep an eye on things.”

  Doug Case gave Paul Janson a look that mingled astonished disbelief with deep admiration. “Work for you?”

  “You’d be your own boss. Just stay in touch.”

  “You’re asking me to be your mole inside ASC.”

  THIRTY

  Stay in touch.”

  “Got a number I can call?”

  “Quintisha Upchurch will patch you through.”

  “Wait a minute. Let’s be clear. Information mole? Or active mole?
Do you want me to spy? Or do you want me to do stuff?”

  Janson said, “No offense, but considering how they’ve kept you out of the loops, you’d have to be pretty damned active to come up with anything spectacular.”

  “What’s your idea of spectacular?”

  “Did you send the Reapers that defeated Iboga’s tank attack?”

  “Paul, I am not that high up the food chain.”

  “Who at ASC is? Helms?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The Buddha?”

  “Could be.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “What makes you think I haven’t been trying to? It’s a huge question. But I’m no closer than when I started asking.”

  “You know how to get ahold of me.”

  “Paul, what are you up to?”

  Paul Janson stood up from the table. “I already signed for lunch. There’s great Asian dishes at the buffet. Can you get back to the American Club on your own?”

  “I got to Singapore from Houston on my own. I think I can make it back to the American Club. Where are you going?”

  “Europe.”

  * * *

  JANSON SPENT THE rest of the day on the telephone in his room upstairs at the Tanglin.

  Late in the evening he went out to the airport and boarded the overnight Singapore Airlines flight to London, arriving at six o’clock in the morning Greenwich Mean Time. He passed through Immigration and Customs on his own passport and wandered Terminal 5 until he was sure he had not been followed. Suddenly he plunged into the long tunnels that connected to the Heathrow Express.

  The airport train raced past highway rush-hour traffic into Paddington Station.

  Janson checked again that he had no one in his wake and took a taxi across Hyde Park. He hopped out at Exhibition Road and walked circuitously to a cobblestone mews in Ennismore Gardens where he rapped a bronze griffin-shaped knocker on a sturdy black door. While he waited for sounds of stirring inside the house, he heard the echo of ironshod hooves of horses of the Household Cavalry clattering from Knightsbridge Barracks.

  A tall, full-bodied woman in a sky-blue silk dressing gown threw open the door. She had shiny black skin, a regal stance, and enormous bright eyes. Her hair had been hastily stuffed under a turban that matched her dressing gown. Her full lips twitched in a smile.

  “Have you any bloody idea what time it is?”

  “Hoping I’m not too early for coffee.”

  “Breakfast, too, I suppose?”

  “I’ll cook the breakfast.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Information.”

  “Janson, there was a time you would have jumped at ‘anything else’ before you asked for information.”

  “You’re too exquisite to be rushed,” said Janson, “and I am in a major rush. May I come in?”

  “Princess” Mimi was the daughter of a piratical Lagos property developer who made millions erecting international hotels and luxury condos on prime public land deeded over to him by his cronies in Nigeria’s government. Mimi herself was not a crook. But Mimi lived very comfortably in the house in Ennismore Gardens that would be her father’s place of exile the inevitable day he had to flee prosecutors or, far more likely, the chaos of Nigeria imploding in corruption and civil war.

  Among the lovers she chose to bless briefly were top men in Nigeria’s army and oil ministry. She had a great gift for friendship; men she dropped still squired her around London’s best restaurants and still boasted of their accomplishments, hoping to win her back, which made her a font of the sort of gossip and rumor that usually turned out to be fact. Ironically, she maintained in her larcenous father’s future safe house a salon for Nigeria expatriates of every persuasion. Out-of-favor politicians, banished journalists, and revolutionaries with prices on their heads argued politics in her drawing room, vastly expanding Mimi’s knowledge of West African schemes and machinations. From Lagos to Cape Town, if it happened in Africa, Princess Mimi knew it first.

  “I heard you were in Angola,” she remarked as she poured coffee in her immaculate tiled kitchen, which overlooked the communal gardens behind the house.

  “Passing through.”

  “Did you enjoy the seafood?”

  “Enormously.”

  “Do no secrets ever pass your lips?”

  Janson got off the kitchen stool, stood to his full height, and kissed her on the mouth. “Not today.”

  “You kiss like a man in love with another woman.”

  “I kiss like a man in a rush. Mimi, I need help. You can give it to me. And you can help me even more if no one knows we’ve spoken.”

  Mimi smiled. “My lips will be sealed the instant you leave. What do you want?”

  “Could we start with the Nigeria–Isle de Foree connection?”

  “The military connection or the oil connection?”

  “I thought they were the same.”

  Mimi smiled again. “I am testing your depth of knowledge.”

  She picked up a telephone, carried it out the door into the garden, and spoke rapidly. When she came back indoors she said, “I invited a couple of boys to come straight over to brunch. Do you still cook omelets?”

  Janson started warming a pan on her huge AGA range and broke a dozen eggs into a bowl.

  “What else?” she asked.

  “Iboga. Is he possibly hiding in Nigeria?”

  “Impossible. He would be brought to book. No one would protect him.”

  “Not even the army?”

  “Iboga is toxic. Nigeria has got enough image problems on the continent without sheltering bloodthirsty dictators. We’ve not yet recovered from our own. And may never.”

  “Do people you know talk about where he might be?”

  “Just talk. Sightings here and there. He’s not exactly nondescript.”

  Janson smiled and gave her a story she would like to repeat. “An MI5 chap once told me that back when Idi Amin fled Uganda he was spotted in Saudi Arabia by a satellite.”

  “Iboga is fatter than Amin. And satellites are more technologically advanced today.”

  “What sightings have you heard about?”

  “France. Romania. Bulgaria. Croatia. Russia.”

  “Where in Russia?”

  Mimi shrugged. Her dressing gown slipped off a round shoulder.

  “How about Corsica?” Janson asked.

  Mimi nodded. “I heard Corsica.”

  “Really?”

  “Just the other day, from a fellow down there on holiday. He didn’t actually see him, but he heard mention.”

  “Where?”

  Mimi shrugged again. “He was yachting. So I suppose by the sea.”

  “Do you know about Securité Referral?”

  “No. What is it?”

  “Sort of a freelance union of rogue covert agents.”

  “Drug smuggling?”

  “Anything that makes money, I gather.”

  Mimi warmed oil in a pan and began sautéing whole tomatoes. Janson grated cheese and sliced bread for toast. The guests arrived, Everest Orhii, a thin, middle-aged Nigerian in a worn blue suit and open shirt, and Pedro Menezes, a former oil minister of Isle de Foree, who was better dressed and looked extremely prosperous. Janson nodded his thanks to Mimi and murmured, “Pretty impressive on short notice.”

  “You already knew I was impressive,” said Mimi. “Or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  Minister Menezes gazed hungrily at the omelet Janson was dividing. Everest Orhii, the Nigerian, tore gratefully into the portion Mimi passed across the kitchen table. Both men, it turned out, were in exile, the Nigerian scraping by to spend money for lawyers in hopes of someday returning to Lagos. The Isle de Foreen was hoping to bribe his way back to Porto Clarence. Orhii had worked in the Nigerian oil ministry, though at a lower level than Menezes was at in Isle de Foree.

  They each had cell phones, which were constantly ringing. Each would jump from the table, shout, “Olá!” or, “Orhii here
!” and rush out to the garden for a private conversation.

  “Before the civil war,” Menezes told Janson, “Isle de Foree resisted jointly exploring deepwater blocks with Nigeria.”

  “Even though Nigeria was supporting Iboga?” asked Janson.

  “The policy was initiated well before Iboga. The Nigerians had taken advantage years earlier when we were desperate. The shallow-water agreements were not fair.”

  “No,” said Orhii, returning from the garden and redraping his napkin across his flat belly. “It was not that the agreements were not fair.”

  “Then what?” demanded Menezes.

  Orhii swallowed a slab of toast in two bites. “Isle de Foreens dislike Nigerians. They accuse us of being overbearing. It is reflexively typical of small nations to dislike big nations. As many nations hate America, so many hate Nigeria.”

  “To have Nigeria as a neighbor is to sleep with a hippopotamus.”

  “My nation and your island are separated by two hundred miles of open gulf.”

  “Hippos can swim.”

  “They all say we are pushy!” Everest Orhii shouted. “They say that we push ahead of the line and take all we want.”

  Pedro Menezes’s phone rang and he rushed out to the garden.

  Orhii motioned Janson closer. “If you want to know about petroleum exploration in the deepwater blocks, ask Everest about the bribes he took from GRA.”

  “What is GRA?”

  Orhii shrugged. “I don’t know. Sadly, they never visited my office. I suspect they dealt directly with my superiors, however.”

  “Mimi?”

  Mimi shook her head. “Not on my radar. Ask Pedro. He’s happy to talk. He’s so bored in London. He wants to go home and be oil minister again, but that will never happen. Ferdinand Poe will allow only the war veterans in his cabinet.”

  Mimi carried her phone out to the garden, passing Pedro Menezes on his way in.

  “What is GRA?” Janson asked when Isle de Foree’s ex–oil minister took his chair and addressed the remains of his omelet.

  “Oh, them.” Menezes smiled. “Haven’t heard from them in years. Though why would I, stuck in London?”

  “What are they?”

  “Very generous.”

  “What do you mean?”