Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (10 page)

E
dward Clarke sat quiet and still in his dark office, studying Google Earth's detailed map of Seoul.

Where the hell is he going?

According to Max Kolovos, Janson's taxi had just circled the newly constructed Dongdaemun Design Plaza, which meant that despite Clarke's best efforts Janson had probably already made his tail and was sending Clarke's assets on a wild goose chase around Seoul.

A private line on Clarke's phone glowed red and he lifted the receiver. “Where are we with Kincaid's phone?” he said, no longer trying to mask his annoyance.

“We were able to recapture the signal,” Hong said.

Finally.
Clarke ran a rough hand through his brittle, thinning hair but somehow managed to hold his tongue. At least for the moment.

“But you're not going to like the result,” Hong added.

“What do you mean?”

“The signal is still coming from Dosan Park.”

“She returned to the
park
?”

“Negative, sir. I have two men there and there's no sign of her. We believe she may have dropped her phone earlier when your asset first gave chase. It appears to be the only explanation.”

“Un-
fucking
-believable,” Clarke said.

The ambassador's people had gone through the trouble—and, moreover, taken the risk—of placing a remote GPS device in Kincaid's cell phone while she was at the embassy, and they
still
couldn't track her across a single city.

“Are they at least looking for the phone?” Clarke said. “Maybe Janson sent something to her that might help us.”

“Um, negative, sir.”

“Well, why the hell
not
?”

“Sir, it is pitch black in Dosan Park. Do you really want my men scouring the grounds with flashlights?”

Sarcastic prick.

Clarke hung up the phone. He considered contacting Ping again but then thought better of it. He'd been receiving bad news from Shanghai all night. If Sin Bae had located Gregory Wyckoff, Clarke would have received a call.

Shit.
This night was going all to hell. Worst of all, with Clarke on the opposite side of the globe, there was damn near nothing he could do about any of it.

N
IKA
V
LASIC INTERCEPTED
the orange Hyundai as it turned south onto Dasanno. “Got him,” she said.

She watched the silver Kia Morning break out of the right lane and bust an illegal U-turn like a drunk who'd just spotted a DUI checkpoint up ahead.

Idiot, she thought. If Janson hadn't made his tail yet, surely that move would give them away. Janson wasn't stupid, after all. On the contrary, by all accounts he was rather brilliant.

She pressed the button on her Bluetooth. “I have Jan—”
Shit.
She quickly corrected herself. “I have Trotter. Any instructions?”

Nika thought it was ridiculous to be using a code name for Janson, but Clarke had insisted upon it, as usual. “
You never know who's listening
,” he'd said.

“Yeah,” Clarke said. “When the taxi stops, I want you to make contact.”

A surge of excitement pulsed through Nika's veins. Even under the thick black leather she could feel the gooseflesh forming from her wrists up to her shoulders.

She instinctively yanked her sleeve down to cover her tattoo bracelet. She wasn't ashamed of the tattoo, of course, though she often had to hide it when she was conducting surveillance. Anything that made you stick out was a crippling disadvantage in covert work. But she
was
admittedly embarrassed by the scar the bracelet was disguising. She thought it made her appear weak and stupid, like a defenseless child. She'd received the tattoo when she was sixteen years old, but she'd been tugging at her sleeve in order to cover her scar since she was twelve. Ever since she'd attempted to end her hard life.

“What shall I do once I make contact?” she said.

“For the time being, just keep him busy.”

“Acknowledged,” she said with a mischievous grin.

Little did Edward Clarke know, she'd been hoping he'd say that.

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
Clarke lifted the receiver to his ear.

“It wasn't him.” Nika sounded like a child who'd been sent to the principal's office; her voice betrayed the accent she'd shed long ago.

Clarke immediately simmered, felt his anger rising like lava, traveling north up his neck into his ears. In the dim light of his office, he could feel his lobes glowing red.

He drew a deep breath and controlled his voice. “How the hell did that happen?”

“I don't know. Jan—” She cursed under her breath. “
Trotter
stepped into that taxi at Seoul Station and I never once lost sight of him. So you'll have to ask Max.”

“So who the hell got
out
of the taxi and where?”

“The taxi pulled into a lot near the plaza and dropped the man near a bar. I thought the situation was perfect. I parked and followed the man inside. He actually held the door for me.”

“Who
was
it?”

“I've no idea. It was a Korean man. Younger than Trotter but about his size.”

With his free hand Clarke rubbed at the knot forming in the back of his neck. If neither Nika nor Max had fucked up, then Janson had fooled them. And if he fooled them, he didn't do it on his own. At least two men had helped him, the driver and the imposter. And if Janson sneaked out of the taxi while it was out of sight, he probably wasn't traveling on foot. Which meant there would be a second vehicle with a second driver, a third individual overall.

Who the hell is helping him?

Clarke hung up the phone. His primary objective now was to learn the identity of Janson's accomplices. Then shut them down.

P
aul Janson ducked into the inky darkness of the dormitory basement with his hands in the air, as instructed. He'd stuffed his phone into his pocket and pressed a Bluetooth device into his ear.

In his ear the synthesized voice said, “Lose the overcoat.”

Janson sighed. “Are you kidding me? It's colder in here than it is outside.”

“Remove the overcoat,” the synthesized voice said. “I will not ask you again.”

Janson slipped out of the coat and held it out at his side. He couldn't see a thing, so he wasn't sure where to set it down.

“Drop it on the floor,” the voice commanded.

“It's cashmere,” Janson said through gritted teeth.

Janson briefly regretted allowing Kang Jung to set up the meeting. The precocious thirteen-year-old had called while he was en route to the university. His initial plan had been to take Cy by surprise. Thanks to Nam, Janson knew the hacker's real name, knew precisely where he lived on campus. But when Kang Jung called with little information on Gregory Wyckoff, aka Draco_Malfoy95, he impulsively asked her if she could introduce him to the head of Hivemind. Janson hoped that by allowing Cy to maintain his anonymity (at least in his own mind), the hacker would be more forthcoming with information.

Following several calls to Janson and presumably multiple IRC chats with Cy, Kang Jung finally told Janson that Cy would meet him for a price. Janson haggled. In the end, they agreed on $1,200.

Now Cy, unaware that Janson already
knew
his identity, was making him jump through these ridiculous hoops. But Janson didn't want to say anything, didn't want to scare the kid away. After all, as infamous as he might be online, the hacker was just a college student in real life.

Janson released his overcoat and it dropped to the floor. Two small hooded men, presumably fellow students, approached him from behind, performed a perfunctory pat-down and snatched his overcoat, then quickly retreated into the shadows.

The synthesized voice in Janson's ear said: “There is a metal chair twelve steps straight ahead. Walk to it and sit down.”

Janson lowered his arms and moved forward, his footfalls echoing off concrete walls he couldn't see. After ten steps, he reached out in front of him and felt the metal back of a folding chair. He maneuvered around the chair and sat down.

“Can I have my overcoat back now?”

One of the small men emerged from the corner of the room and flung Janson's coat over his head like a blanket over a birdcage at naptime. When Janson removed the coat from his head, a large figure was sitting approximately ten feet away from him. The individual held a flashlight in his lap, the beam lighting his face, which was hidden behind a mask. A Guy Fawkes mask—the visage that had become ubiquitous since the emergence of online groups like Anonymous and international movements like Occupy Wall Street.

You've got to be kidding me, Janson thought.

Still, he had to admit that, combined with the voice synthesizer, the effect was creepy. The leader of Hivemind clearly had a flair for the dramatic.

“You have my money?” the mechanical voice said.

Janson reached into his pocket and slowly withdrew twelve one-hundred-dollar bills in US currency.

“You've come to me for information,” Cy said as he counted the bills.

“That's right.” Janson didn't want to spend any more time in this basement than he absolutely had to, so he came right to the point. “I'm looking for a young man who goes by the username Draco-underscore-Malfoy-nine-five. Lord Wicked advised me that you might be familiar with that name?”

Cy folded the bills and stuffed them into a shirt pocket. “I am.”

“Can you tell me where to find him?”

“Why are you looking for him?”

Janson didn't hesitate. “I was hired by his father. The kid needs some help. He's in trouble with the law and we have reason to believe he's also in grave danger.”

Janson stared at the grinning mask, waiting for a response.

“Draco is a member of the Hivemind,” Cy finally said through the synthesizer. “The Hivemind takes care of its own.”

Janson masked his frustration and nodded. “That's why I've come to you. I need to find Draco before the police do. Before
anyone
else does.”

“I do not know where he is,” Cy said. “I last chatted with him roughly ninety-six hours ago.”

“Four days ago?” Janson said. “Do you recall the conversation? Did Draco say anything that might explain why people are after him?”

Cy said nothing. Janson wished he could observe the expression behind the mask.

“What's the purpose of the Hivemind?” Janson prodded. “What does the Hivemind do?”

Although both Nam Sei-hoon and Kang Jung had furnished him with this information, Janson hoped his questions would serve to lay a foundation and get Cy talking. Like a good trial lawyer, Janson prided himself on his ability to elicit knowledge that a witness wasn't eager to relay.

Sure enough, the hacker straightened in his chair and puffed out his considerable chest. Boldly, he declared: “We speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. We steal secrets from the powerful and disseminate them to the powerless. We make the opaque transparent. We bring light to darkness. Because we believe that people should not fear their leaders. Leaders should fear their people.”

“Is that why Draco is in danger?” Janson said. “Did he steal secrets? Did he discover something he wasn't supposed to?”

“Four days ago,” Cy said, “Draco contacted me through an IRC. It was a private channel, but Draco said that he could not take any chances with the information he'd unearthed. He asked to meet with me in person. He said it was urgent.”

“And?”

“And he remained cryptic. All he said was that he turned up something big. In his words, something ‘earth-shattering.'”

A glimmer of hope started to swell in Janson's chest. “Did you meet with him?”

“Despite my misgivings, we made an arrangement to meet the next day,” Cy said, “in a square, not far from here. Unfortunately, Draco never showed up.”

The hope in Janson's chest instantly began to deflate. “He had to say
something
,” Janson pressed. “Something that will help me find him. Something that will give me a clue about what he discovered or at least who it involved.”

Cy sat perfectly still, the beam of light held steady on his mask. “We have never seen each other,” he said finally. “So when I agreed to meet with him, I asked how I would know him. He said he would be wearing a light-blue baseball cap with the logo of the Tar Heels from the University of North Carolina.”

“Anything else?”

“He told me to approach him slowly and sit down next to him on the bench. Then I was to provide him a code word.”

“What code word?”

“The code word was Diophantus.”

W
here are you?” Janson asked.

“We're still in Gangnam. We're going to return to Dosan Park to look for my phone.”

“Don't bother, Jessie. If your phone wasn't compromised at the embassy, it is now.”

“At the embassy? So you're sure it's—”

“It's them, Jess. You were right.”

Janson could almost hear her smile over the phone. It didn't matter that both their lives were on the line, not to mention the fate of Gregory Wyckoff and undoubtedly others. Jessica Kincaid was right, and though she might not rub it in with words, she'd allow a few moments of unbroken silence to do it for her. Janson couldn't help but smile himself; it was one of the many things he loved about her.

“What did you find out?” she finally said.

“Hold on.” Janson tried the door to a badly beaten black Daewoo, and it opened. He quickly ducked inside and slammed the door. He scanned the dorm parking lot but it was quiet. In this weather, students who weren't studying were drinking their asses off indoors, like civilized people.

He reached under the steering wheel, manipulated the wires, and started the engine. He backed out of the space and turned left out of the lot.

“Listen, Jessie,” he said. “There's been a slight change in plans.”

He told her what he knew. It wasn't much, but it was enough to allow him to determine their next move. The attack by Sin Bae and the presence of Vik Pawar had finally convinced Janson that Senator Wyckoff had been right from the start—Consular Operations
was
involved in the murder of Lynell Yi and the subsequent frame of Gregory Wyckoff. Now he and Kincaid needed to find out why.

“Once I left Cy at the university,” Janson said into his Bluetooth, “I checked the nearby square where Cy and Gregory W
ycko
ff were supposed to meet. I searched the grounds, under the benches, even emptied the trash receptacles. And nothing.”

“Then?” Kincaid said.

“As I was leaving the square I pulled out my BlackBerry and Googled the name Diophantus.”

Cy had conceded that the name Diophantus meant nothing to him. He'd intended to look it up on the Internet once he left his IRC chat with Wyckoff but then he'd become sidetracked with another incoming instant message.

“Is that something you'd usually do?” Janson had asked. “Google a word or a name you weren't familiar with?”

“Sure,” he'd said. “In our online forums, Draco constantly threw out esoteric terms I'd have to look up. He is a smart guy. Probably the smartest link in the Hivemind.”

“At the square,” Janson told Kincaid, “I scanned the Wikipedia page for Diophantus.”

“Who was he?” she said.

“He was a mathematician in ancient Greece. Third century. People call him the father of algebra. His work evidently led to tremendous advances in mathematics and the study of Diophantine equations.”

“Which means?”

Janson picked up on the impatience in Kincaid's voice.

“As far as I could tell, Jessie, it meant absolutely nothing. Diophantus looked to me like a seventeen-hundred-year-old dead end.”

Janson turned onto a main road and continued. “If Gregory Wyck­off attempted to send Cy a message with the code word, Cy didn't get it. But then, Cy hadn't known the reference. So I thought maybe someone else might. I called Nam Sei-hoon. I figured if Nam didn't understand the reference, maybe his agent from the cyber-intelligence unit would.”

“What did Nam say?”

“Nothing. My call went straight to voice mail. Nam was probably at home and sound asleep with his wife by the time I called. I left a brief message and returned to the university to find a vehicle.”

The dorm parking lot had seemed like the ideal place to start. Earlier, Janson had noticed a number of old beaters that wouldn't present a challenge for him to break into and hot-wire.

As he searched the lot, he pressed his Bluetooth into his ear to call Kincaid. The wind was blowing viciously and he didn't think Jessie would be able to hear him if he used the handset.

As he scrolled through his contacts for Park Kwan's mobile number his eyes caught instead on Kang Jung's. The thirteen-year-old would no doubt be out cold, but he could leave her a message to call him back. It was another Hail Mary, but Janson figured that given enough shots in the dark he might eventually hit a target.

To his surprise, Kang Jung not only answered her phone but sounded alert.

“Sorry to call so late,” Janson said. “Did I wake you?”

“Nope. I'm still studying.”

“At this hour?”

“It's why man invented Adderall.”

Janson felt a pang of pity as he had earlier at her apartment. For the moment he pushed it aside and said, “Does the name Diophantus mean anything to you?”

“Uh, the father of algebra and Diophantine geometry? Sure. I mean, I don't have posters of him on my walls or anything, but…”

The corner of Janson's mouth turned up in a half smile. “Who
do
you have posters of? Justin Bieber?”

“Please.”

“Sorry.”

Janson could hear her fingers gliding over a keyboard.

“So, what do you need to know about him?” she said.

“Gregory Wyckoff mentioned the name in an IRC chat,” Janson said. “I was just wondering if it meant anything among cyber-​
enthusiasts
like yourself.”

“Hmm. Interesting,” she said following a few moments of silence.

“What is?”

“I'm on his Wikipedia page.”

“Yeah, that's where I went. Unfortunately, it wasn't very helpful.”

She sighed. “No offense, but that's probably because you don't know what to look for.”

“Are you implying that you do?”

“I do.”

“And you found something?”

“I did.”

“Care to share it?” Janson tried to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

“Did you happen to notice that the page was recently updated?”

“So?”

“So. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but generally speaking there aren't many updates for guys who died seventeen centuries ago in Alexandrian Greece. Miley Cyrus, sure. Justin Bieber, absolutely. But as far as I can see, Diophantus isn't scheduling any new world tours or running around with Lil Za egging houses in Calabasas.”

“Point taken.” With Kang Jung still on the line, Janson returned to his browser and typed in the term “Diophantus.” He clicked on the link to the mathematician's Wikipedia page. “Can you tell who updated the page?”

“Of course. I'm going into the page's history now.”

He waited a moment. “Was it Gregory Wyckoff?”

“No, the username is just a series of letters and numbers that don't seem to mean anything. But that doesn't mean it wasn't Gregory who made the changes. It may be the changes themselves that are important.”

“But anybody could view this page, right? So he couldn't have—”

“That's the
brilliance
of it,” she said. “You can hide a message in plain sight.”

Janson began scanning the text: the mathematician's biography and bibliography, his professional history and influence. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, nothing seemed out of place.

“Looks like another dead end,” he muttered.

“Not so fast. I think I found it. Let me just cut and paste this and…”

“And what?”

“I got it!”

“Got what?”

“Look at the introduction,” she said. “Fourth sentence from the top.”

Janson silently read the sentence:

Diophantus coined the term 
χψχονταχτψυνφινηοδπρκ
to refer to an approximate equality.

“That's the sentence that's been changed,” she said. “Specifically, the term itself.”

“The one in ancient Greek?”

“That's the thing though. It's
not
ancient Greek.”

“Then what is it?”

“On first sight,” she said, “it's gibberish, just a string of symbols. But when I cut and paste the term into a Word document and change the font, it becomes something else entirely. Something completely unrelated to Diophantus and mathematics.”

“What's the message?” Janson said anxiously.

“I just texted it to you.”

Janson exited his browser and opened his text message. It read:
cycontactyunjinhodprk

In his ear, Kang Jung said, “It reads, ‘Cy, contact Yun Jin-ho, DPRK.' DPRK is the—”

“The Democratic People's Republic of Korea.”

“Right,” she said. “The official name for our lovely neighbor to the north.”

I
N
J
ANSON'S MIND,
the consequences of Wyckoff's capture by police were now even greater. If they found the kid before Janson and Kincaid did, Wyckoff was as good as dead. Likewise, if Cons Ops found him. But Janson couldn't risk devoting the entire mission to looking for Gregory Wyckoff, because clearly there were larger stakes at play. Cy's admission that he'd received an urgent message from Wyckoff four days ago telling Cy that he'd discovered something—in Wyckoff's words, something “
earth-shattering
”—meant not only that the senator's son might indeed be innocent, but that he might hold information about powerful world players and events, which if they were allowed to unfold could reverberate across the region, if not the globe.

“You need to search for the kid,” Janson said. “If you're certain you can trust him, use Park Kwan. But he can't inform anyone in his department. We don't know who else is in on this, and we can't afford to trust anyone.”

“All right,” Kincaid said. “What about you?”

“I'm going to follow the only lead Gregory Wyckoff left. I'm going to try to find out what it is the kid discovered. Because if Cons Ops gets their hands on him before we do, the kid is dead. And we can't allow his secret, whatever it is, to die with him. Because given everything we know—about him and about his passions—there may well be countless lives at stake.”

“So where are you going now?”

“I'm going to visit an old friend.”

“In Seoul?”

“Not in Seoul,” Janson said. “I'm heading north, into the demilitarized zone.”