Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (9 page)

Seoul Station
Donja-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

P
aul Janson stepped outside the French bistro Café des Arts and proceeded into the dense flow of pedestrian traffic inside one of Seoul's primary rail stations. For the fifth time in as many minutes he checked his phone, but Kincaid still hadn't called.

Where the hell are you, Jessie?

He was also waiting for a callback from the thirteen-year-old prodigy Kang Jung, aka Lord Wicked, with information on the online user Draco_Malfoy95, aka Gregory Wyckoff. But either the precocious teen was taking her sweet time, or Wyckoff was every bit as good at burying himself in the depths of cyberspace as Morton and Berman had suggested, if not better. Janson assumed the latter.

Particularly since his lengthy captivity in Kabul, Janson considered himself a man of extraordinary patience. But all of his virtues tended to fly out the window where Jessica Kincaid's safety was involved.

Jessie
. Every couple had its origin story—its cute little anecdote about how boy met girl, how girl played hard to get, how boy ultimately won girl's affections—and Janson and Kincaid's was as riveting as any.

They'd met in London. On a bright, clear afternoon in Regent's Park. Janson had been dodging a sniper's bullets when he finally realized his situation was becoming more precarious with every second he spent running. And he refused to die cowering behind a gazebo. He had to act, fast.

Turn the hunter into the hunted, the predator into the prey.

After surveying the park and locating then stealthily approaching the position of the sniper's nest, Janson silently hoisted himself up the trunk of the tree, reached for the metal rigging supporting the sniper's perch, and yanked hard, sending both the hunter and the hunted tumbling to the earth.

Following a significant struggle, Janson finally gained the superior position, only to hear the killer hiss, “
Get your stinking hands off me
.”

Only
your
sounded a hell of a lot more like
yer
.

When Janson finally looked into his would-be killer's face, he saw not the stone-hard visage of a former colleague as he'd expected, but the high cheekbones and piercing green eyes of a youthful American beauty.

Their relationship immediately following that first encounter was rocky to say the least. But as the truth became clearer, Kincaid turned from sworn enemy to friend. Then from friend to protégée, and from protégée to partner. Somewhere along that time line they became lovers and were lovers still, but for reasons they both understood too well, they would never be together in the most conventional sense of the word.

Waiting for his smartphone to buzz in his overcoat pocket as he strolled through the atrium of Seoul Station was no longer an option. He needed to take aggressive steps to locate Kincaid, and fast.

He reached into his pocket and closed his fingers around his phone just as it began to vibrate. He glanced at the screen, hoping to find Kincaid's number flashing before his eyes. But the call was coming from a Korean mobile number he didn't recognize. He lifted the phone to his ear, leaving no time to speculate.

Before Kincaid voiced her second word, he said, “Where the
hell
have you been?”

“I went dancing.”

She sounded as though she'd contracted a nasty case of laryngitis in the hours since Janson last saw her. His ire instantly morphed back into concern; he knew something was wrong, and that it wasn't something as simple as a dead battery in her phone.

“Are you all right?” he said. “Where are you? I'll come and get you.”

“Easy, cowboy. I'm fine. But it's become abundantly clear that someone doesn't want us nosing around in Lynell Yi's murder investigation.”

“What happened?”

As Kincaid took him through the evening's events, beginning with her escape through Dosan Park, Janson moved quickly through the station, his eyes scanning every storefront and corridor for a discordant face or furtive movement.

Once she'd finished debriefing him, Janson attempted to set up a rendezvous in order to regroup and restrategize, but Kincaid wouldn't hear of it.

“We have even more ground to cover than before,” she said, “because now we've got another question that needs to be answered. Whoever came after me has got to be Lynell Yi's killer. So while you're searching for Gregory Wyckoff, I have to go looking for the assassin. And after I find him and find out who he's working for, I'm going to dance on top of his corpse.”

“You're
not
going to look for him, Jessie. At least not
alone
. I'll—”

“I'm
not
alone,” she said. “I've made a friend.”

Momentarily taken aback, he said, “What do you mean you've made a friend? Who? The guy you swiped the gun from?”

“His name's Park Kwan, and he saved my life, Paul.”

“You just got finished telling me he was fall-down
drunk
.”

“He's sitting at a table fifty feet away drinking coffee right now. He's sobering up.”

Janson sighed. “Where
are
you, Jessie?”

“We're at a café in Gangnam. I'm calling you from Park Kwan's cell phone, so be sure to store the number. And don't worry; he's a cop.”

Cops worried Janson every bit as much as everyone else, if not more.

“Is he involved in the metropolitan police investigation?” he said.

“No, all he knows about Yi's murder is what he's heard on the news and what I've told him.”

As Janson approached one of Seoul Station's omnipresent mobile phone charging terminals, someone caught his eye. Actually, some
thing
caught his eye: a vintage pair of Matsuda eyeglasses. The Japanese designer frames were rare; he'd last seen them on a college student during a weekend jaunt with Kincaid to Newport, Rhode Island. He recalled commenting on them, complimenting the kid then telling Kincaid that he knew a man who would wear nothing else. In fact, he'd told her, that man would fly all the way to Tokyo in search of a new pair every time he needed to update his prescription lenses. From afar the glasses resembled John Lennon's iconic eyewear, but up close you could tell these frames were actually handcrafted pewter. Matsuda had stopped making them in the late nineties, and they were becoming more and more difficult to find.

But it wasn't just the glasses that grabbed Janson's attention; it was how the polished pewter shimmered against the backdrop of the owner's mocha face, how the glasses brought out the man's eyes, which were the color of dark chocolate.

Janson continued past the mobile phone charging station as though he hadn't recognized Vik Pawar. The Mumbai assassin, Janson knew, had been stationed in Pakistan in the spring of 2011, and was actually on standby to take out the man believed to be Osama bin Laden, when and if the president gave the order. Of course, certain voices in the White House argued that such a measure would be a revolting waste of political capital. Those voices ultimately prevailed, and SEAL Team Six raided the Abbottabad compound in a high-risk, high-reward mission dubbed Operation Neptune instead. But Pawar was
that
good—so good he'd been trusted by the commander in chief to take down the world's most wanted man following a grueling ten-year search.

Last Janson heard, Vik Pawar had been working inside Sri Lanka.

Like a light switch, a thought suddenly clicked in Janson's mind. “The garrote that man had around your throat,” he said urgently into the phone, “do you know whether it was attached to a white-gold cuff link?”

“Sorry,” Kincaid said, “but while I was being strangled I didn't think to check. Tell you what, Paul, when I find the son of a bitch, I'll be sure to ask.”

Janson ignored her flip remark. “While you worked for Cons Ops did you ever hear of a covert operative named Sin Bae?”

“No,” she said. “Who's Sin Bae?”

Janson's voice fell to barely a whisper as he tried to piece together the puzzle in his head. “If my gut feeling's right, he's the man who just tried to kill you.”

O
NCE HE FINALLY GOT
Kincaid to promise to remain in the café with the cop until he called her back, Janson punched in the private number for Nam Sei-hoon.

“I was just about to call you,” Nam said as soon as he surfaced on the line.

“What were you able to learn?”

Nam lowered the volume on a television in the background. “That the metropolitan police are no fans of the National Intelligence Service, for one.”

“Interagency animosity, huh? Your country's becoming more like the States every day.”

Janson slowed as he passed a mirrored wall. If Pawar was tailing him, he was apparently giving Janson some room. Or it could be that Pawar was merely instructed to watch him. But then if Janson was right about the identity of Kincaid's would-be killer, Pawar might well have passed surveillance on to another agent, someone whom Janson didn't recognize from his previous life in Cons Ops. In which case, he was in danger. Because a Cons Ops agent was just as likely to terminate a subject in public as he was in private. Janson knew some operatives who actually got off on the practice: a drop down a steep flight of concrete stairs made to look like an accident; a poisonous pinprick or blow dart that caused an instant myocardial infarction. Under certain circumstances, the more public the setting the better. Often a good crowd could even negate the natural disadvantage of closed-circuit television cameras.

With enough people around, a spacious atrium like the one at Seoul Station could feel as tight as a coffin, as it did now.

Janson felt his pulse race now as it had not long ago in Shanghai. Being taken out in public had long been one of his greatest fears. There were so few ways to defend against such an attack. And seldom was there room to run. Like now. Janson didn't see these throngs of people as witnesses who could thwart an attempt on his life but as the iron bars of a cage impeding his escape.

“I was finally able to gain access to the boy's computers,” Nam Sei-hoon said in Janson's ear. “As you suggested might be the case, the hard drives have been wiped.”

Janson cursed.

“Not so fast, Paul. Remember, I am not a man without resources. I've had one of my trusted allies in the cyber-intelligence unit take a look at these hard drives, and he was able to restore some of the information that had been erased.”

“Anything useful?”

“Not to a novice like myself. But my ally in the cyber-intel unit was able to identify one of the individuals whom Gregory Wyckoff communicated with online via an IRC.”

“An IRC?”

“An Internet Relay Chat. I'm told they're used for real-time text conversations. Communication is by invitation only, and the IRC the Wyckoff kid used offers a generous amount of anonymity. But it just so happens that one of the individuals the kid chatted with is being watched vigorously by my friend in the cyber-intel unit.”

“Why might that be?”

“This individual is the leader—or alleged leader—of a left-​le
aning
political hacktivist community here in South Korea.”

“Like the Anonymous organization in the West?”

“Very much like them. Here, they're known as the Hivemind. The collective has been a thorn in the side of our present political leadership. Over the past two years, they defaced the president's official website and disseminated private emails stolen from government servers. Now they are believed to be working on an elaborate plan to rig our next elections.”

“Who is this leader the kid chatted with?” Janson said anxiously. “What's his name and where can I find him?”

“Paul, this is a delicate matter. If you approach this individual for information, you must be careful not to alert him to our ongoing investigation. You cannot reveal how you obtained his identity or location. You must go in with a solid cover story that will stand up to close scrutiny.”

“Discretion's my specialty,” Janson assured him. “After I leave him, he'll know even
less
than he did before I got there.” He glanced at his watch. “But listen, Gregory Wyckoff is running out of time here. What's this hacker's name?”

“He goes by the username Cy. Cy spelled as it is in the word
cyber
.”

Nam gave Janson the hacker's real name and address.

“Got it. Thanks, old friend.”

“Let me know if you need anything else, Paul.”

Janson surreptitiously glanced over his shoulder, scanning again for Pawar or another familiar face.

“As a matter of fact,” Janson said into the phone, “I have one more favor to ask of you.”

A
t the taxi stand outside the station, Janson slipped into the rear of the orange Hyundai and informed the driver of his destination. As the taxi pulled out of the station's parking lot, Janson's eyes remained glued to the rearview. He identified three distinct pairs of headlights. One of the vehicles trailing them was a taxi similar to the one Janson was in; another was a shuttle bus. The last and most suspicious appeared to be a dark Samsung SM5. The driver appeared to be young and female; the passenger seat was empty.

Janson's taxi traveled north past City Hall then made a right onto Jongno 1GA and gained speed until it passed Tower Records. In the rearview Janson could still make out a pair of headlights belonging to a dark SM5. But since he'd momentarily lost sight of the vehicle, he couldn't be sure it was the same one that had followed his taxi out of the parking lot.

Nighttime traffic on 1GA slowed the taxi to a speed below ten miles per hour. In the rearview the dark SM5 remained three or four cars back, even when a lane conveniently opened up on the left. Janson could no longer tell whether the driver was male or female, but he continued to observe only one head.

Janson's eyes ping-ponged between the speedometer and rearview as his taxi passed a number of familiar fast-food restaurants then slowed to a speed below five miles per hour as it turned right onto a minor road called Sup'Yodaragil. As the driver made the turn, Janson gripped the door handle and waited until he could no longer see the SM5's headlights in the rearview, then he opened the rear passenger door, tucked his left shoulder, and tumbled out of the moving vehicle. He rolled beneath a parked Kia Sorento and watched as the dark SM5 made the right turn after the taxi.

From his vantage point under the Kia, Janson recognized the driver as the young female who'd followed his taxi out of the station. He waited sixty seconds then popped back out from under the Kia and walked briskly back toward the main road, crossing a McDonald's parking lot.

Though he didn't raise his arm, another orange Hyundai entered the lot and rolled to a stop directly in front of him. Janson quickly opened the rear passenger-side door and jumped inside.

Inside the taxi, Janson said nothing. The driver already knew his destination.

N
IKA
V
LASIC ANNOUNCED
the taxi's position as she completed the right onto Sup'Yodaragil. She waited a moment in silence. When she heard no response, she touched the Bluetooth device in her right ear to make certain she hadn't lost it when she swung her head around to make sure she could pull off the freeway without getting T-boned by a carful of drunk teenagers peeling out of the McDonald's drive-through.

Finally, Clarke spoke, his voice brimming with incredulousness. “He's heading
south
again?”

“Affirmative,” Nika said. “And it's a back road. I'm going to need someone to pick him up before the next turn.”

She checked herself in the mirror, proud that she could finally speak American English with barely a whisper of her Croatian accent.

“Max will have him at the next intersection,” Clarke said in a huff. “You're about to pass Paik Hospital. Make the next left onto Mareunnaegil.”

“Copy,” she said, instinctively tugging on the leather sleeve of her jacket to hide the bracelet tattooed around her right wrist.

“Nika, you know these roads. Any idea where the fuck he's headed?”

“Negative. There's a major artery a little farther south, but he could've taken it straight from the rail station.”

“Shit. You still have a visual?”

She narrowed her eyes and focused on the rear window of the taxi. “Affirmative. Subject is in the rear, behind the passenger seat.”

A rare flutter caught in her stomach. During her Cons Ops training Nika had often heard anecdotes involving the operative known as the Machine. Now she was a few car-lengths behind him, and depending on how the rest of the evening went, she might have the opportunity to meet him, maybe to seduce him. She might even be given the directive to kill him, which would instantly transform Nika Vlasic into a legend in her own right.

She grinned at the thought. Who in her village would have guessed that Nika Vlasic, the jade-eyed, raven-haired girl with a faceful of freckles—the product of a rape in the name of Serbian ethnic cleansing—would have risen from the ashes of the Croats' war for independence and been handed an opportunity to live the American dream?

In her rearview mirror, she watched Max Kolovos pull up behind her in a silver Kia Morning. She brought the SM5 to a stop at the following intersection and made the left turn past Paik Hospital. She checked to make certain the Bluetooth in her ear was off, then switched on the radio to await further instructions.

J
ANSON'S SECOND TAXI
slowed as it approached the campus of Sungkyunkwan University. SKKU, a private research university in the northern section of central Seoul, was widely considered one of the world's top institutions for higher learning. So it didn't surprise Janson when he was told that the university's main campus was where he'd find the hacker known worldwide as Cy.

“Thank you,” Janson said into his phone.

“You are very welcome,” replied Nam Sei-hoon. “My agent tells me that the taxi is still being followed but by a different vehicle. A silver late-model Kia Morning.”

“Great. I've only seen a couple hundred of those since I arrived in Seoul.”

“It's a very popular vehicle,” Nam conceded. “I will advise you when—and at this point
if
—they discover they are following an imposter.”

Janson smiled. Rolling out of the backseat of a moving car during a slow right turn was an old-school ruse he hadn't used in years, and he might never have the opportunity again. “Please pass along my thanks to your man. I know folding yourself like a pretzel and hiding on the floor in the rear of a Hyundai is no picnic. But he was the consummate professional. Even I barely knew he was there.”

Nam chuckled. “I would have done the deed myself, Paul. But my head would not have been visible in the backseat once I popped up to take your place. Your pursuers would have thought you magically vanished. Maybe not so startling given your reputation.”

“Well, at least you would have been more comfortable.”

“You're quite certain you have no tail on you now?”

“Free as a bird,” Janson said, checking the rearview. “Thanks again.”

The taxi pulled to a stop at the curb. Janson thanked Nam's driver and stepped out of the vehicle into the cruel cold. He turned up the collar of his overcoat and pressed his chin to his chest, wondering if he shouldn't have had the driver take him right up to the building where he and Cy had agreed to meet. But then the fewer people who knew Janson's precise location, the better. People could be bought. Could be tortured or otherwise manipulated. Even the most loyal of agents could be turned.