The Janson Command (31 page)
He left the yacht in charge of its captain and walked into the town, watching the narrow streets and sidewalks in the reflections of luxury shop windows, trading imperceptible nods with the muscular proprietor of a dive shop, and stopping briefly at the speedboat dock of a company that offered parasail rides. As he left the waterfront, he paused to look at the hotel. Workmen boarding up the ground-floor windows were banging industriously with hammers and nails, but the cleaners removing the graffiti were trading conspiratorial grins and not scrubbing very hard.
Janson hailed a taxi. It took him up into the hills, through tiny villages, past quarries, olive groves, and empty houses. The French language on bilingual road signs had been painted over and he saw “Corsican National Liberation Front” scrawled on a house that had its roof blown off. SR could do worse than hide Iboga here; restive islanders were not the sort to inform the police about a man on the run.
Janson got out of the taxi at a village café in an ancient stone building and asked the driver to come back in an hour. A patio shaded by a canopy presented views in two directions, turquoise water, east, and rugged mountains to the west. He could see the harbor far, far below opening into the Tyrrhenian Sea, the hundred-mile stretch of water between Corsica and Italy, and up a narrow road switch-backing down from the mountains. Scents of lavender and myrtle wafted off the sun-baked brushy land. The café was nearly empty midafternoon, and Janson had the patio to himself. He ordered a
quatre fromage
pizza and a glass of Ajaccio rosé and was just finishing the soft, oiled crust and peppery wine when he heard the high-pitched rasp of a powerful machine driven to the max.
Down the mountain road flew a red Ducati 848 sportbike.
One guess, Janson thought grimly, who was driving at that breakneck pace, though he could not help admiring her skill. Boots, knees, and thighs married tightly to the machine, torso levering independently, Kincaid was reading the bends in the narrow road, braking ahead of the corners, throttling early to maximize the engine’s gyroscopic and load-transfer effects, and accelerating smoothly out of them. But formidable skills aside, Janson knew she was pushing the limits of physics and luck. One mistake would flip her fatally end over end into the brush, and he had to wonder whether the near-suicidal speed meant that Kincaid was still so freaked out by the Australia catastrophe that she was pushing herself too hard to make up for it.
The Ducati whipped out of the final turn, throttle blipping a series of high-rev downshifts, braked hard, and stopped in front of the café. Kincaid, clad boot to helmet in black deerskin and festooned with high-power Swarovski field glasses and a Canon digital camera with a foot-long lens, heaved the bike onto its centerstand and swaggered onto the patio. A dog-eared copy of the British Ornithologists’ Union’s
Birds of Corsica
tossed on the table adjoining Janson’s explained the surveillance gear.
She removed her helmet, spiked her fingers through her hair, and glanced at Janson—one single tourist appraising another. Janson played his role with an expression of sincere interest. She ordered a pizza and a glass of wine, mimicking the local u Corsu dialect well enough to elicit an appreciative smile from the café’s waitress.
When they were alone on the patio, Kincaid said, “Stop looking at me like that. I’m all right, just lettin’ off steam.”
“Glad to hear it, and deeply relieved that they’ve suspended Newton’s Law of Gravity—so what do you think of Corsica?”
“Corsica’s like down home. I thought I was back in Red Creek with all their feudin’ ’n’ fightin’. Of course, if you’re not agin’ ’em, folks are as nice as nice can be. Specially out in the mountains. Beautiful mountains. Wow. Then you come around a bend in the road and there’s this turquoise-blue ocean jumping up at you and white sand beaches as far as you can see. Might be fun to come back sometime, when we’re not working.”
“Hard to picture you sitting still on a beach.”
“I meant rock climbing.”
“Is Iboga here?”
“Looks that way. But he’s moving around a lot.” She opened her bird guide to a blank “Notes” page and hurriedly sketched a map of Corsica. The island, a hundred miles long and fifty wide, looked like a hand closed in a fist with the index finger pointing north. “They started him up here on Capo Corso. Freddy thinks they came in from Italy by boat. Then they seemed to move him down into these mountains down the middle. But I lost them. Now Freddy’s guys think he’s on this private peninsula near Vallicone. That’s here, up the coast from Porto-Vecchio. Freddy’s absolutely convinced that’s where he’s at.”
“Why?”
“It’s a damn fortress.”
J
essica Kincaid flipped the page in her bird guide and drew a map of the peninsula thrusting into the Tyrrhenian Sea.
“Fifty-foot cliffs all around, so we can’t come on a boat, nowhere to land. Might do it in a little inflatable into a tiny crack of a fishing cove—though we’d need a fisherman to guide us in—then climb the cliffs. But how do we get him down without a damned derrick? Can’t helicopter in—they got radar.”
“Radar?”
“Whoever is there is scared the locals think they’re resort developers. So if it is SR, it’s kinda ironic that they’re hiding Iboga on an island that is a powder keg where all outsiders are suspect. Rumor has it SR is developing the peninsula into a gigantic resort. They have pissed off Corsican separatists, Union Corse mafia, the poor fishermen they ousted, and the ecologists, who tend to get pretty violent in France. I hear they’ve declared war on the French government and the superrich. From what I’ve
seen
I don’t blame them—this is the kind of place money destroys.”
“What you’re saying is no one in the government is stopping whoever owns the peninsula from defending themselves.”
“They can hold off an army, but just in case, they also have their own helicopter with long-range tanks. So if they are SR and they do have Iboga, they could make it easy to France or Italy if they had to run for it.”
“What about the road?”
“Not without tanks.” She drew a line up the spine of the peninsula. “This is the only road. They got it enfiladed here and here, with stone guardhouses. I scoped out a Dushka in the one nearest the main road.”
“A Dushka? Looks like they’re taking the separatists pretty seriously.” The DShK (“Dushka”) was a .50-caliber heavy machine gun capable of wreaking fatal destruction on any military target in the air or on the ground, short of a tank.
“I’ll bet SR thinks the separatists pose a bigger threat than little old you and me. Anyway, the machine guns tipped it for Freddy.”
“It fits SR’s way of doing things,” Janson agreed. “Strong position, but ready to jump.”
Kincaid planted a finger on the southeast coast. “They can jump anywhere from here. Across the Strait of Bonifacio is Sardinia, where you chartered your boat. How long did it take you?”
“Twenty minutes to cross the strait. A couple of hours to here.”
“Sardinia belongs to Italy. SR seems plenty comfortable crossing borders. Maybe they’re going there next. Ten, fifteen ships a day pass through the strait. They could put Iboga on one of them. Or they could settle into that Vallicone peninsula, or come down here to Porto-Vecchio. Look at those boats down in the harbor.”
Hundreds of motor yachts and bluewater sailboats packed the harbor, moored cheek by jowl in the many marinas. Several ships stood by the outer piers. Seagoing ferries were arriving from Naples and Marseille.
“They could stash Iboga on one of those big-bucks yachts—take him anywhere in the Mediterranean. Which one is yours?”
“The little hundred-footer at the end of that long row of big ones.”
“Yeah, well, you can see this is the big-bucks hangout for rich Europeans.”
“Iboga’s rich.”
“I’m thinking maybe they’ve been headed here all along, just being cagey about it. There’s like gated estates in the hills and giant yachts in the harbor. There’s a bunch of privately owned islands off Bonifacio, including at least one everybody says belongs to the Mafia. If you’re going to ground in luxury, this is the spot.”
Over the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea came the rumble of heavy engines. Janson spotted the familiar high-wing silhouettes of a fleet of camouflage-green turboprop C-160 Transalls approaching the coast at two thousand feet.
“French Foreign Legion,” Kincaid explained. “Deuxième Régiment Étranger des Parachutistes has rapid-intervention units barracked up north at Calvi.”
An orange smoke flare began burning on the beach. Kincaid scoped it with her field glasses.
“It’s an exercise. There’s brass observing.”
As they watched, the airborne Legionnaires jumped, spreading behind the planes in tight formation. They plummeted nearly to the ground. Seconds after they opened their parachutes, they hit the sand.
“Very nice,” said Janson.
Kincaid passed him her field glasses. “Look how they bunch on the beach.”
The paratroopers were free of their chutes and aiming assault rifles at their objective—a truck on top of which stood a sergeant glaring at his hand. Janson couldn’t see it, but he knew it had to be a stop watch.
“ ‘Hard Training—Easy War,’ ” said Kincaid. “Legion motto.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I had a glass of wine with their colonel.”
“Really? …” He looked at her. “Did the colonel express an opinion about the Vallicone peninsula?”
“I did not think Iboga was a subject to raise with a French officer.”
“Roger that,” said Janson. He checked his watch and stared at the maps Kincaid had drawn.
She said, “I’ve got Freddy and his boys holding the fort at Vallicone—awaiting the word from you.”
“I’ve got helicopters on call and fast boats on a freighter standing by in the Bonifacio Strait. What I don’t have is proof Iboga is on that peninsula.”
Kincaid tapped her map. “To me, these machine guns say Iboga’s there. So do the radar and the helicopters. We have to hit them fast, before they move him.”
“If we raid the peninsula and he’s not there, we end up in a shooting war with some outfit that feels strongly enough about its security to mount machine guns, radar, and helicopters.”
“We can’t just sit around while they whisk him out from under our noses.”
“I want to know more before I commit to a raid that could turn into an ugly mistake.”
“We have to do something.”
“We’ll start by getting you out of that leather. Go down to Porto-Vecchio and buy some clothes.”
“It’s a Eurotrash town. The shops only sell slutwear.”
“Slutwear will be most appropriate.”
“Come again?” Kincaid asked with a dangerous glint in her eye.
Janson opened his wallet and showed her an engraved invitation.
“The Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry and Employment and Agence Développement Economique de la Corse request the pleasure of Janson Associates’ company at a champagne reception for investors in a hotel and condo consortium.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Friend in Paris. There’ll be deep-pockets developers and a bunch of French business elite. Someone ought to have the lowdown on a valuable piece of real estate like Vallicone peninsula. We’ll do our act and nail down some intelligence we can count on.”
“Which act?”
“Rich old corporate security consultant hired to protect Agence Développement Economique de la Corse from criminals who launder money through legitimate projects—accompanied by trophy girlfriend masquerading as personal assistant.”
“Which part do you play?”
“Meet me at the yacht. It’s called
Tax Free
.”
Kincaid nodded, still impatient, but liking the new challenge. “Where’s the plane?” she asked.
Janson looked at his watch again.“Ed and Mike should be taking off from Zurich just about now,” he assured her. “They’ll be landing at Figari Airport in two hours.” He knew she wasn’t asking about the Embraer. She meant where was her favorite rifle?
* * *
JANSON COMMANDEERED
Tax Free
’s flying bridge to make phone calls. High above the water, the outside steering station on the roof of the motor yacht’s wheelhouse offered a view of the crowded marina, Porto-Vecchio’s harbor, and the sun-washed houses of the town, and privacy from the crew scrubbing decks, polishing chrome, varnishing brightwork, and vacuuming carpets.
Quintisha Upchurch reported that everything he had requisitioned was in place. “Including the decoy, though I must say the Russians were really prickly about it. It would have been easier to get one of your arms dealers to sell us a real one.”
Janson confirmed names, numbers, and details, and she closed by saying, “Mr. Case called. He said to tell you he had been ‘underground’ and that you would know what he meant.”
“Thank you, Quintisha, talk to you soon.”
Janson returned Case’s call eagerly. “Underground” would be Doug’s jokey code for “mole.”
“What’s up?” he asked when Case answered.
Case said, “I’m not sure what this means, but Kingsman Helms has been badmouthing the hell out of Acting President Poe. I get the impression he’s raising sentiment in the company against him.”
“To what purpose?” asked Janson.
“You’re asking me to guess?”
“You’re in ASC’s Houston HQ,” said Janson. “I am not.”
“My best guess? Helms is laying the groundwork to turn ASC against Poe.”
“To what end?”
“Backing a replacement.”
“Interesting,” said Janson. “That will bear some thinking. How are things otherwise?”
“Personally, I’m itching to get out of here.”
“Hang in there,” said Janson. “Let all this play out. Any luck with the Reaper connection?”
“No. And I’m not expecting any. It would be a personal connection—strictly one-to-one—retired officer in private work paying a ton of dough or promising a brilliant future to a serving officer.”
“That is obvious,” said Janson. “Keep poking. What do you know about GRA?”
“Rings a bell. Sort of. Can’t place it. What does it stand for?”