Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (22 page)

A
n hour and a half after Yun Jin-ho left to return to the surface, Janson spotted the door he'd been searching for.

It had been a rough ninety minutes, Janson navigating the maze of underground tunnels using nothing but the miniature Maglite and his memory of a crude map Yun Jin-ho sketched at the table back at the safe house.

Now that he'd finally reached his destination, Janson extinguished the Maglite and dropped onto his haunches to search his go-bag for the items he needed for the next phase of his mission.

No killing anyone who doesn't try to kill you
can be a tricky rule. Obviously, had Janson not tunneled across the border in the demilitarized zone, the two soldiers he'd killed would still be alive. But then, in Janson's world not everything was black-and-white.

The gauge he found himself increasingly using was:
Is this for the greater good?

Whenever feasible, of course, Janson used nonlethal force.

Toward that end he removed from his bag a dart gun containing the incapacitating fluid known as carfentanil. An analogue of the synthetic opioid analgesic fentanyl—a popular painkiller frequently prescribed in patch form—carfentanil had a potency ten thousand times stronger than morphine and a hundred times stronger than fentanyl itself.

Janson double-checked the .33-gauge needles and 1-millimeter vials of carfentanil citrate. The dosage was sufficient to take down a bear. Janson had earlier worried that it would be lethal to North Korean soldiers whose growth had been stunted by the Great Famine of the nineties. But there were few alternatives. In the end he'd decided carfentanil citrate was by far his safest bet—and theirs.

With his go-bag on his back and the dart gun in his hand, Janson reached for the door handle in the darkness. When the handle began to twist under the weight of his fingers he experienced a mixed sensation of relief and apprehension. He was about to enter the palace.

He turned the handle and swung the door open, raising the dart gun as he stepped into the frame.

The door opened onto a long, narrow hallway, as white and sterile as a hospital wing. At the far end of the hallway, a single soldier from the Guard's Command sat on a metal folding chair, his head leaning back against the white wall behind him. His eyes were closed. And he was snoring.

Janson gently closed the door behind him and started up the hallway. Of course, he couldn't leave it to the Sandman to determine when the guard awoke, so as Janson drew near, he fired a dart into the center of the guard's chest.

The guard stirred for a few seconds, just long enough to open his eyes and look up at Janson.

“I'm just a dream,” Janson whispered.

The guard's eyelids fell shut and his breathing became shallower.

Janson plunged his fingers into Sleeping Beauty's front shirt pocket and relieved him of his key card. Then he checked the guard's pulse—
you'll be just fine, buddy
—and moved on.

He turned right down the next hallway, at the end of which was a closed metal door with a card reader. He casually slid the guard's card through the reader as though he were purchasing a pack of gum with a debit card at the local 7-Eleven. Then he cautiously opened the door.

As he entered another short corridor, he immediately heard multiple sets of footfalls. Quickly he pressed his back against the far wall.

The two men who were approaching seemed to be making chitchat, but of course Janson couldn't make out a word they were saying. According to the layout Janson had memorized, they could only be coming to check on Sleeping Beauty.

Both men laughed as they turned the corner.

Janson threw his left arm around the throat of the man closest to him and fired a dart into the other.

As that second guard dropped to his knees, Janson fired a dart into the lower back of his captive.

The guard instantly slumped in his arms.

As Janson was setting him down he noticed a blue-and-white metal canister slipping from the fingers of the guard's left hand.

He tried to pluck it from the air but the metal canister hit the ground from about two feet up and rolled all the way to the opposite wall.

Janson grimaced at the noise and backed up against the wall, ready to fire again.

After several tense seconds his pulse began to slow. He knelt next to the canister and immediately identified its contents.

Xpec3 shaving foam manufactured in South Korea.

Janson absently ran his hand through his beard. Then he turned over one of the fallen comrades and found a small green feather duster jutting out of his mustard-colored waistband.

Janson smiled as he considered the prank that the two guards were about to play on Sleeping Beauty.

Maybe you're not so different from us American bastards after all.

He pushed himself to his feet and continued up the new corridor.

Stepping through another door, he entered a hall in which the lights were dimmed. At the end of the hall stood a red steel door. There was no guard in sight. He took a deep breath and moved quickly.

Once more Janson slid the card through the card reader. The door came unlocked. Janson swung the door open.

On the other side a large guard went for his weapon.

Janson fired a dart before the guard could get a shot off.

The dart struck the man in the side of the neck. He crumpled immediately.

Janson stepped into the anteroom.

This is it, he thought.

At the opposite end of the room was a final door. On the wall to its left was a metal keypad.

Janson moved briskly across the room and entered Yun Jin-ho's six-digit pass code from memory. The electronic lock clicked.

Janson opened the door. And stepped forward into Kim Jong-un's War Room.

A
t the Shangri-La China World Hotel in Beijing, Kincaid closed the door to their luxury suite and told Gregory Wyckoff to relax and have a seat. But when she turned and entered the room the boy was already sprawled out atop the exquisite red-and-gold comforter on the king-size bed, fast asleep.

Poor kid, she thought. Kincaid knew what it was like to be running for days. And she could certainly sympathize with anyone who was being chased by Sin Bae. Had it not been for Park Kwan spotting his gun on the floor of the coatroom in T-Lound, Kincaid would have already been counted as one of his victims.

Like Lynell Yi, she thought, the kid's girlfriend. From what Kincaid knew about their relationship, Gregory and Lynell had been closer than close, a young couple experiencing the world together as though they owned it. And when you were that much in love, that's exactly what life felt like.

That was how Kincaid felt when she was with Janson.

I should have heard from him by now, right?

Not necessarily. If something had happened to him in North Korea, she would have learned about it. At least that was what she kept telling herself.

Kincaid sat in the room's soft leather chair and planted her elbows on the oversize mahogany writing desk. She stared at the phone. She needed to reach out to Senator Wyckoff and his wife, to let them know their son was safe. But she'd lost her own phone and, as gorgeous and modern as it was, she didn't trust the hotel to provide her with a secure line. Especially in China.

She also wanted to call Park Kwan. He and Kang Jung would be worried about her. Surely they'd connected the incident outside Tiananmen Square with her missing their rendezvous. But she wanted to get in touch with them to make sure that they were safe and to let them know that she and Wyckoff were alive and as well as could be expected. Still, she harbored little doubt that both their phones were hot. By calling them, she could be giving away her and Wyckoff's location, and putting Park Kwan and Kang Jung in further danger. No, she couldn't do that. Park Kwan was a cop, a
smart
cop, and she had to trust him to take care of himself and Kang Jung.

Instead she phoned the Embraer 650, which as far as she knew was still sitting on the tarmac at Incheon International.

“CatsPaw. Kayla speaking.”

Kincaid made a face and mimicked the words silently.
CatsPaw. Kayla speaking.

“
Hell-o?
” Kayla said.

“Hey, Kayla, it's Kincaid.”

“Oh,
Jessie
,” she said, “it's so good to hear from you. Are you and Paul all right?”

Kincaid swallowed the bitterness in her throat. “Janson and I are fine. Listen, I need a favor. I need you to contact our client via a secure line. The number is in the file.”

“OK, sure. What's the message?”

“Tell the client we have the package and we're going to deliver it to Washington safe and sound as soon as possible. Details to follow.”

“Got it,” Kayla said. “Anything else?”

“Yes. Tell the pilots we need the Embraer in Beijing right away. The IATA code for the airport is PEK. Terminal three. Have the jet prepared for a flight to DC. File a zero-one flight plan.”

“A zero-one?”

“They'll know what I mean. Be ready to depart PEK six hours from now.”

Once Kincaid hung up the phone, a weary voice tapped her on the shoulder.

“I don't have to return to Seoul, do I?”

Kincaid spun in her chair. Gregory Wyckoff was sitting up on the king-size bed. Dark, puffy flesh engulfed his eyes.

“No,” Kincaid said with a slight smile. “I wouldn't send you back there. I know you're innocent.”

Wyckoff bowed his head. “Thank you.”

Kincaid folded her hands in her lap. “Do you feel up to talking about all this?”

“If I'm leaving Beijing in six hours, I suppose we'd better.”

“OK,” she said, leaning forward. “Why don't you start with Lynell?”

Wyckoff cleared his throat and began speaking softly.

“A few days ago—Christ, I've really lost track of time.”

“It's all right.”

Wyckoff intertwined his fingers atop his head and closed his eyes to collect his thoughts. When he opened them, he said, “Lynell came home—and by home I mean our apartment in Seoul—one night and seemed all bent out of shape, as though she was preoccupied with something. I knew she'd been going through a particularly tense time at work.”

“She was working as a translator,” Kincaid said to help move him along.

“Right. She was a contractor, hired just six months ago, specifically for the four-party talks. She worked out of an office at the US embassy, but the actual talks are being held at the Joint Security Area in the demilitarized zone. That was where she'd been that day.”

“Go on.”

“She worked directly for the US envoy. For the past half year they've been negotiating a host of issues, from the UN sanctions to the North's nuclear program. The chief US negotiator had been complaining recently that as soon as they make a few steps toward progress, the North begins moving the goalposts and acting erratically.”

“How so?”

“Well, for instance, the North is currently holding three US citizens on vague charges of espionage. Each of the individuals was in the country on a tourist visa, and they
were
, in fact, tourists. The US would make some concessions, offer to ease some restrictions, and the North would agree to release the—for lack of a better word—hostages. But then the next day, joint US-ROK military exercises that were scheduled nine months in advance would take place, and the North would suddenly go nuclear, no pun intended. They'd renege on the agreement and all parties would have to return to Go without collecting their two hundred dollars.”

“I assume that's a Monopoly reference?”

“Sorry, yeah. What I'm trying to say is that things have been getting intense recently, from what Lynell had been telling me. So when she came home upset, I thought maybe she'd made a mistake, ya know. In the translation. I figured she got reamed out, maybe by the chief US negotiator, maybe by Ambassador Young, who could be a real dick. But after a couple of hours, I realized it was much more than that. Something was definitely wrong; something weighty was on her mind.”

“Did you press her on it?”

“I asked, but Lynell wouldn't tell me anything at our apartment. At first I figured she simply didn't want to talk about it. I was resolved to try again in the morning. If she wouldn't give by then, I'd wait until she came home from the Joint Security Area the next day to see whether the mood had passed, or something was continuing to trouble her.”

Kincaid nodded but said nothing.

“At around eight that night I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When I came out, there was a sheet of paper on the coffee table. There was a message scrawled in Lynell's handwriting; it just read, ‘Not in here. O/s.'”

“O/s?”

“‘O/s' was her shorthand for ‘outside.' So I went outside and she started talking right away. She said she inadvertently overheard something Ambassador Young was saying. She said she only heard bits and pieces.” As he spoke, Wyckoff looked past Kincaid as though staring through the wall into the room next door. “The ambassador had been speaking to someone Lynell never met before. Someone from the South Korean delegation. A younger man, she said, maybe thirty or thirty-five years old. She heard Young use words like ‘provocation,' ‘incursion,' and ‘ground war.' Then she heard them discussing troop numbers from the United States.” Wyckoff shook his head sadly. “That was essentially it. That and the name of some operation. The operation was called Diophantus.”

“How long had she listened?”

“Not long,” Wyckoff said. “No more than thirty or forty seconds. But when she spun around to leave she walked straight into Ambassador Young's chief aide.”

“Jonathan?”

“Jonathan Day. He's Young's lackey. He had a thing for Lynell awhile back and she rejected him. He'd been giving her angry glares ever since.” Wyckoff looked Kincaid in the eyes. “She started to move past him, and he grabbed her by the arm, accused her of eavesdropping. He actually used the words ‘espionage' and ‘treason.' Lynell pulled away, but she was sure Jonathan was going to report what he'd seen to the ambassador.”

Kincaid prodded him to go on.

“Neither of us was very concerned for her job. ‘Let them sack me,' she said. But we
were
concerned about what might happen to her if they discovered
what
she overheard. She was afraid that they'd subject her to a polygraph.
That's
why she'd been so reluctant to tell me at first. Because they'd ask her if she'd told anyone else. And she didn't want to have to give them my name.”

Wyckoff shrugged, his stare floating toward the ceiling. He was clearly trying to keep the emotion out of his voice. “But she loved me,” he said. “She never kept anything from me. And Lynell had always said I was the smartest person she knew. Even though I knew that was bullshit, it meant a lot to me given her own education and family background.”

“Did she know you'd use the information?”

“She knew that I'd dig deeper,” Wyckoff said, once more with that far-off look in his eyes. “And I did.”

Kincaid canted her head.

“I'm kind of good with computers,” he said.

“From what I understand, that's the understatement of the millennium.”

For the first time since she met him, Wyckoff managed a tired smile.

“OK,” he admitted. “I'm a hacker. Or what you might call a
hacktivist
.”

“You moved on the information right away?”

“I didn't waste any time. I immediately got myself to a secure computer and entered the State Department's email system. Months earlier I had socially engineered a young female aide in order to gain access. I didn't want to risk breaking into the system using Lynell's account. But as it turned out, the backdoor I'd installed using malware months before was still open.”

“What did you do once you were in?”

“First thing I did was run a search for ‘Diophantus.' I made a mental list of every email user who had typed the word into a message. There weren't many names. But the names that
did
appear were all huge political players. Ambassador Young, of course. The director of National Security, Sanford Hildreth. The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Douglas Albright. A deputy director of the CIA's Clandestine Service named Ella Quon. A chief systems engineer named Eric Matsumura. And someone I'd never even heard of—neither had Lynell. His title was listed as undersecretary of state but I couldn't find his name anywhere else in the database or even on the web.”

Kincaid realized she'd been chewing on the pad of her thumb. She pulled it out of her mouth and said, “Let me guess. His name was Edward Clarke.”

Wyckoff nodded. “Yeah, who is he? How did you know?”

“He's the director of Consular Operations.”

“Cons Ops?” Wyckoff scoffed. “I thought Consular Operations was just a myth. You mean to tell me it really exists? The State Department runs its own black ops?”

Kincaid nodded.

Wyckoff's mouth dropped open; his tired eyes grew wide. “Are you…Are you serious?”

“Believe me,” Kincaid said. “Consular Operations is my former employer.”

Wyckoff shook his head sadly. “Every day I wake up, I realize I know less and less about my government.”