The Janson Command (32 page)
“Ground Resource Access.”
“That’s oil talk.”
“Yes, but could it be a company name?”
“Who knows?”
“I’m asking you.”
“I’ll get back to you on that. Where are you?”
“London. But call Quintisha. I’m probably heading out of here.”
“Talk to you.”
* * *
DOUG CASE SAID
good-bye to Paul Janson and hung up smiling.
Cons Ops had trained them how to lie. Glibly. Effortlessly. There wasn’t a lie detector or voice analyzer invented they couldn’t fox. He had been one of the best. Janson, per usual,
the
best. So damned good that Doug Case was half-inclined to believe that Janson really was in London—even though he knew beyond any doubt that Paul Janson was in Porto-Vecchio on the island of Corsica.
J
essica Kincaid stalked into
Tax Free
’s salon wearing six-inch spike heels and white vintage Capri pants low on her hips. The iridescent clutch in her hand was barely big enough to hold a cell phone and a knife, and it was a mystery to Janson how a silk handkerchief had been reengineered as a halter top.
“How do I look?”
“Young enough to be carded by a responsible bartender— Wait a minute! No, you don’t. Where are your muffin tops?”
Kincaid cast a wintery eye at the bared swell of her hips. “I don’t have muffin tops.”
“But teenagers do. You don’t look chubby enough to pass for my teenage girlfriend.”
“Russian girls are the main competition for rich dudes in this town. We ain’t gonna see no muffin tops at that party.”
As they started to leave, Janson’s phone rang.
“One second. This guy’s returning my call.” He said hello, listened briefly, and covered the phone.
“What’s up?” asked Kincaid.
“Did you tell me that Van Pelt was wearing shorts when you tangled with him in Cartagena?”
“He was pretending he was a boat bum.”
“Did he have a tattoo on his leg?”
“No. Why?”
“Sydney Harbour Patrol found a shark-bit leg. But it had a tattoo, a big snake wrapped around his leg.”
“Jesus H … Going up the leg? Or down?”
“You know, I didn’t ask.”
“Either way, it’s not his.”
“Then it’s possible your boy’s still in business.”
* * *
THE RECEPTION WAS
held on a four-hundred-foot mega-yacht—
Main Chance
of Hong Kong—moored stern-to at the marina’s outermost pier. A ballroom opened onto a vast deck, on which most of the hundred guests had gathered, since the evening was warm and the sky clear and the band inside too loud. The intense evening sun illuminated the stone and stucco houses on the surrounding hills, a startlingly pretty sight marred by the blackened remains of the burned-out hotel.
As Janson had expected, he was not the only man at the party accompanied by a young girlfriend, publicist, or personal assistant. They accepted champagne from a passing waitress wearing even less than Kincaid, pretended to sip it, and went to work. Kincaid acted as roper, catching the attention of deeply tanned middle-aged men wearing gold, Janson stepping in to introduce themselves as, “Paul Janson, Janson Associates—my colleague Ms. Kincaid.” When the men spoke only French, Janson let Kincaid translate, although he usually understood most of what they were saying.
The fire-gutted building offered an easy opening and the words “security consultant” were greeted by remarks along the lines of, “You’ll be busy here, you can see,” and, “They’ve got this overly green attitude in Corsica about the coastline.”
Janson and Kincaid heard complaints from some about the scarcity of opportunity: “Corsicans hate selling property. They think without a house they’re not a Corsican.” Others reveled in the value such scarcity produced. Nonetheless, “housing prices,” they were told repeatedly, “are still cheaper than the Riviera.”
Jessica swooped into a scrum of rich old men draped in jewelry and engaged them in conversation. Janson cruised some more and was told several times that the market was starting to take off.
“Big villas run a million to two million euros on Corsica. Double that here in Porto-Vecchio.”
“Now’s the time to swing a big deal,” a transplanted Atlanta, Georgia, developer assured him.
Jessica snagged an elderly Frenchman. Suntanned and covered in age spots, he had yellow teeth, a pound of gold around his neck, and a four-carat emerald dangling from his left ear.
“Monsieur Lebris,” she told Janson, “is under the impression that you are my father.”
Janson returned Lebris’s curt nod and told Kincaid, “Monsieur Lebris is
hoping
I am your father.”
“Monsieur Lebris invests in land around Vallicone.”
“Wonderful,” said Janson. “Please use your excellent French to tell him that I said that several of our clients have expressed interest in that area. Too bad the peninsula is not for sale.”
Kincaid translated.
Lebris shook his head emphatically and replied in a torrent of French too rapid for Janson to understand.
“What did he say?”
“The peninsula is not necessarily not for sale. It is currently under a short-term lease and the owners, an ‘ancient’ family in Paris, just might sell for the right price.”
“Rented?”
“Rented fits SR’s pattern,” Kincaid observed quietly to Janson. “Keep moving. They’re gypsies. No fixed base. Just like us.”
Lebris spit a sudden oath and pointed angrily at the shore. A gang of agile separatists was draping a huge sail from the roof of the burned-out hotel. Dripping letters of red paint spelled:
RESISTENZA!
CORSE POUR CORSICANS
ÉTRANGÈRE ALLER LOIN
FLNC
The party fell silent, but for the beat of the band inside the ballroom. Lebris cursed, “
Terroriste!
,” rushed to the railing, and shook his fist.
“ ‘Foreigners, get lost!’ ” Jessica translated. “FLNC is the Corsican National Liberation Front.”
“I like their style. These people could be a big help.”
“For a diversion?”
“If we can find a way to do it without getting them shot.”
“They seem capable of looking out for themselves.” Three masked men were rappelling rapidly down the side of the building like professional mountaineers. Swiftly responding squads of gendarmerie and agents of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire found the narrow streets blocked by a trio of abandoned trucks. In the confusion a jet-black cigarette boat roared up to the jetty. The separatists leaped aboard and the high-speed craft raced toward the darkening east, leaving patrol boats in its wake.
Kincaid said, “A big fire would do the job. The Legion colonel told me that the brush is so flammable that his trainees are only allowed to dry-fire their rifles.”
“A French cop told me arson is Corsica’s national pastime. Any thoughts about wangling an introduction to FLNC? I doubt your friend the colonel is on friendly terms with any arsonists.”
Kincaid looked around the deck. The guests had turned their backs on the burned-out hotel and the party had resumed as if nothing had happened. “Doubt these folks know any.”
Janson glanced at the gangway up which guests were still arriving and got a surprise. “Speaking of the devil.”
“Where?”
Janson directed her attention across the deck. “The pale Frenchman.”
“The one who looks rich or the one who looks like a cop?”
“Ex-cop,” said Janson. “I met him in London. Dominique Ondine.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know. He was head of security here until he got transferred for pissing off the president of France.”
Ondine glided through the party with the self-assurance of a man carrying a warrant and a gun.
“What does he want?” asked Kincaid. “Money?”
“Let’s hope so.”
They exchanged nods across the crowd as Ondine drew near. He looked Jessica up and down, glanced at the other scantily clad young women, and said to Janson, “I see you’ve adopted the local custom.”
“My associate Ms. Kincaid,” said Janson.
Ondine bowed over Kincaid’s hand. “Mademoiselle.”
Janson said, “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
“I imagine you didn’t.”
“Are you looking for work?” he asked, explaining to Kincaid, “Monsieur Ondine is a private security consultant.”
“Like you,” said Ondine.
“Forensic accounting?” asked Kincaid.
The Frenchman smiled. He had not been drinking cognac, not today, thought Janson. “Nothing so intellectual,” said Ondine. “More the sort of security that involves weapons.”
“Not our thing,” said Janson.
“Mr. Janson, I’ve reconsidered your question about Securité Referral.”
“Why?” asked Janson, watching him carefully, while Kincaid scoped the party for Ondine’s backup.
“Why? If there is such an animal as an honest policeman, it is I.”
Paul Janson told Dominique Ondine, “I want to know why a man who calls himself ‘an honest policeman’—and is a
retired
honest policeman at that—followed me all the way to Corsica at his own expense.”
Dominique Ondine indicated the burned-out hotel with the red-lettered protest sail flapping from the roof. “The fire was last week. Only the latest incident. Empty villas have been shot up, their owners’ Mercedes bombed while they’re away, their boats sunk.”
“You told me that in London. Corsica’s a powder keg. Separatists, Union Corse mafia, poor fishermen, and environmentalists. Not Securité Referral.”
“To be sure,” Ondine agreed. “Arson and vendetta are endemic in Corsica. Corsicans routinely take matters into their own hands.”
“You told me that in London, too. You also told me that you had never heard of SR. May I ask you again? Is Securité Referral a Corsican organization?”
“Non.”
“Then what is the connection? You’re baffling me, Monsieur Ondine.”
“Securité Referral thrives under such lawlessness.”
Janson and Kincaid exchanged smiles visible only to them. SR thrived among the lawless? So did CatsPaw.
“Continue, monsieur,” Janson said brusquely. “What do you want from me?”
“Work. The consulting business is slow.”
“Can you give me information that will help me fight Securité Referral?”
“Do accountants fight?” Ondine smiled.
“Don’t get cute,” said Kincaid.
Ondine looked at her sharply. Kincaid stared back.
The Frenchman dropped his gaze. “I cannot give you such information.”
“Can’t or won’t?” asked Janson.
“I cannot. I do not know it. But if I could, I would not. I am not inclined to suicide.”
“At least we agree that you know of them.”
“A little. Securité Referral is international, but it was conceived by French intelligence officers—servants of their country turned criminal—who learned their trade spying in Russia. Now it is everyone—Russians, Serbs, Croats, Africans, Chinese. That is all I can tell you.”
“There is something else you can do for me.”
“Name it.”
Janson nodded at the burned-out hotel. “Do you see the sign they hung from the roof?”
“Of course.”
“By midnight tonight, I want a secure meeting with the operators who hung that sign.”
“You’re not serious. The separatists are my enemies. As a policeman I hunted them.”
“You better believe he’s serious,” said Kincaid. “If you work for us, when you see a job that needs doing you do it. This meeting job needs doing. You’re the man. Set up the meeting.”
Ondine swallowed hard. “What may I offer them to come?”
“Money.”
“How much?”
“One million euros.”
Ondine gasped. “One million euros to come to a meeting?”
“No. One million if they do the job.”
“What job?”
“The job they’ll learn about at the meeting.”
“What is my cut?”
“Ten percent finder’s fee. After they do the job.”
“I will do my best.”
“Midnight,” said Janson.
“And when we leave this party,” said Kincaid, “tell those two cops moonlighting as waiters not to follow us.”
T
he only problem with heroin was getting it. With a consistent supply it was a very fine drug. Snort it and nothing ever hurt, particularly when a man’s brain spun every day of his life like a turbine, always at full speed, consuming his mind and soul and spirit faster than Abrams battle tanks burned kerosene. Heroin put the brakes on for a moment, long enough to recharge and come out swinging. It helped not to have an addictive nature and it was vital to understand that only losers shot up with needles. Many in the veterans hospital spiraled down from lesser drugs into heroin. He had ascended.
It was night. Almost.
Doug Case had been talking nonstop on his sat phone since the sun was high in the sky. Seated in his wheelchair, staring out his office window at the sea of electric lights that the vast, powerful city of Houston spread from horizon to horizon, he felt neither pain nor anxiety but increasingly in charge of what had started out as a bad situation.
His phone rang. He answered, saying, “Did you get the plane?”
“C-160 Transall twin-engine turboprop.”
“What color?”
“Well, there’s a little problem with that. It’s camo, like you asked, but blue.”
“I told you camo green.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Camo green! I don’t care how you do it. Paint it or get another one. Camo green. Standing by tomorrow.”
Case stabbed END. He weighed the relaxing prospect of doing a line or two against the possibility of nodding off at a crucial moment. He decided not to. Drugs were not addictive. Losers were.
He endured ten full minutes of quiet and was sick of the lack of action when his phone finally rang again. He guessed who it was before he checked the screen and was right. The Voice. Clockwork, every five days. He doubted that the caller recognized his own pattern.
“Hello, Strange Voice,” Case answered. “How are you tonight? If it is night where you are.”