Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Janson Option (Paul Janson) (5 page)

P
aul Janson kicked Kingsman Helms’s feet out from under him and knocked the executive to the pavement. A bullet passed through the space Helms had occupied and smacked through the window behind him. Kincaid pointed toward a cigarette boat thundering past, four hundred meters out on the river, and they both hit the deck. A slug twanged off the railing.

“Helms, don’t move!” Janson shouted. To Kincaid, he said, “Strollers behind us.”

Janson sprinted toward the south corner of the pier shed, keeping below the partial shelter of the railing. Kincaid raced for the north corner.

The “strollers”—the sniper’s finish team—rounded the corners with Glocks in hand and Bluetooth clips on their ears. They were wearing suits, masquerading as fit, young traders up at Chelsea Piers for a spinning class—except that traders didn’t leave their floor at nine in the morning, and traders’ tailors did not forget to remove the manufacturer’s label from the sleeves of new suits, a curious lapse by a professional kill team.

The Bluetooths meant that the sniper was directing them via cell phone.

Both took deliberate aim at Kingsman Helms, who was sprawled on the pavement equidistant between them. Neither saw an immediate threat in a small woman wearing yoga gear and an older man in a corduroy jacket. Kill the target, then the witnesses.

Kincaid slid a carbon-fiber blade from the bottom of her bag.

Janson was farther from his man. He went straight at him. The assassin noticed the rush and wheeled his weapon. Janson went airborne, low as a base runner sliding into second, boots-first into the stroller’s leading leg, and shattered his ankle.

Few men could have kept his grip on his weapon, but this one did, even as he crumbled to the pavement with a gasp of pain. Janson closed both hands on his wrist and smashed the hand holding the gun against the building. The stroller’s fingers splayed open. Janson caught the Glock, banged it twice against the man’s temple, and swept the walkway for his backup.

Thunder on the Hudson River behind him told him that the cigarette boat was racing to the rescue, closing fast on the pier. Janson braced the Glock on the railing, waited until the boat was within thirty meters, and fired repeatedly, aiming for the silhouette of the driver behind the windshield. The bullets starred the glass but didn’t penetrate. The sniper stood up, aiming his rifle. Janson fired again.

The boat jinked sharply left. Janson’s shot missed, but came close enough to make the sniper duck. The boat had to slew away before it struck the pier. The turn exposed the driver and the sniper. Janson fired again. The driver clutched his arm. The sniper grabbed the wheel and the boat turned tail toward the middle of the river.

A shout behind Janson whipped his head toward Kincaid. Blood was gushing from the second stroller’s face, and blood was streaming from his hand. He too had dropped his gun, but despite his pain and shock had thrown the much lighter Kincaid fifteen feet to the edge of the pier and halfway over the railing. Before she could untangle herself, he bolted around the corner. By the time Janson got there, he was racing down the walkway and headed for the nearest door to the parking garage.

Kincaid scooped up the gun and started after him.

The sniper on the river fired again, covering the stroller’s retreat.

“Down!” said Janson, and he and Kincaid hit the deck, again. Chasing the stroller would get civilians killed. They slithered toward the center of the pier, where Helms was flat on the paved deck watching in wide-eyed disbelief.

“Were they trying to shoot me?”

“Who were they?”

“How would I know?”

Paul Janson dialed 911.

“Pier Sixty,” he told the dispatcher. “Chelsea Piers. Sniper on a cigarette boat bearing south at fifty knots. One gunman in the parking garage, bleeding from the face. One gunman secured at the river end of the pier with a broken leg.”

Jessica Kincaid dropped her carbon-fiber blade into the river and dialed a former close-combat student who was a captain in the New York Police Department.

A roving NYPD Emergency Service Unit drawn by the gunfire responded in two minutes. A police launch arrived in five, and within ten minutes of the last shot fired a hundred cops had swarmed into the Chelsea Piers complex. Kincaid’s student, a raven-haired beauty in a dark-blue Counterterrorism Bureau polo shirt, arrived on a motorcycle.

T
HE SNIPER ATTACK
cost Janson and Kincaid twelve precious hours as they cooperated with the cops who were piecing together what had happened. Nine o’clock at night found them still pretending patience in a conference room on the sixth floor of One Police Plaza, where Kingsman Helms sat flanked by lawyers from the venerable white-shoe firm Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock.

Janson thanked the gods for Kincaid’s former student. Without the counterterrorism officer’s clout, it would have been worse. She even got them permission to use their phones so that they could use much of the long day to continue gathering intelligence on the Somali pirates.

Catspaw Associates contractors had of course shifted into high gear. No contractor was required to drop another client in mid-course, but the pay was top and the work intriguing, and they tended to gather quickly.

A Somali-American college student had been hired on to translate. A kid recently paroled from jail had been recruited to explain the pirate culture of his distant homeland and compile a list of pirate cell-phone numbers. The best get was a Somali-American real estate mogul who found properties for emigrating Somali businessmen. He was setting Janson up with introductions to movers and shakers in Mogadishu.

Janson and Kincaid had to clear one more hurdle to get out of police headquarters and on their way to Somalia: Deputy Commissioner Eddie Thomas, a Brooklyn-born former gold-shield detective, who stood five-feet-six in a 54 Short sharkskin suit. Thomas had cock-of-the-walk looks that Kincaid’s former student found interesting, judging by her acquisitive expression. When he finally looked up from his underlings’ reports stacked on the table in front of him, his black eyes glittered like anthracite.

“Do I get this straight? The cigarette boat was abandoned in St. George on Staten Island, minus the sniper and crew. The gunman who witnesses saw bleeding profusely from a fall he apparently suffered while escaping has not shown up in any emergency rooms. The other gunman, who broke his leg somehow, is identified as Sabastiano Bardellino, an assassin who works for the Camorra, the Naples mafia, which explains why Mr. Bardellino has not uttered a word and he never will, even if he was sentenced to life in prison, which he won’t be because the only crime we can charge him with is waving a pistol in public, which is not the most unusual occurrence in our city, and he never fired it.”

Deputy Commissioner Thomas paused to stare at Kingsman Helms and the lawyers. He glanced at Janson and Kincaid, and his lips tightened. He looked down at the reports in front of him. “In regards to the sniper’s target, Mr. Helms denies any knowledge of who would want to assassinate him, and he pleads complete ignorance about the Camorra, knowledge of which would not fall within the purview of a Texas oil company executive, it has been pointed out repeatedly to me by Mr. Helms’s counselors. So mistaken identity seems as plausible as any other suggestion I’ve heard today. And Mr. uh, Janson, here, did not bring with him the Glock that he fired in panic, shall we say, at the cigarette boat, but merely snatched it from Mr. Bardellino to protect his companion, Ms…um, Kincaid, and subsequently dropped it in a similar panic into the river, where Marine Unit divers recovered it along with numerous other discarded firearms and knives, including this carbon-fiber blade of the sort that does not show up in metal detectors.”

Commissioner Thomas picked the blade up, held it to the light, and smiled thinly at Kincaid. “In other words, all asses are covered.”

“Thank you, Commissioner,” chorused the lawyers.

O
N
P
EARL
S
TREET
outside a back door, Kingsman Helms broke loose from his lawyers.

“Janson, can I assume that you are at least preparing to rescue Allegra in case ransom negotiations fall through?”

“We’re on our way.”

“Where?”

“First stop, Hamburg.”

“Germany? What’s in Germany?”

“The shipyard that built the
Tarantula
.”

Helms started to ask another question.

Janson cut him off. “What are you doing to ensure your safety?”

“It was mistaken identity. They thought I was somebody else.”

“I’d lay low if I were you. Your HQ in Houston is a fortress. You’ll be safe there.”

Helms said, “Actually, I’m leaving for Africa on a company Gulfstream. ASC gives me bodyguards when I travel. The best.”

“Will you be in Somalia?” asked Kincaid.

“My work takes me all over East Africa.”

She asked, “Does it strike you as a funny coincidence that your wife was pirated to Somalia while you’re working there?”

“Rotten luck, not coincidence. Allegra was finishing appraising a collection in the Seychelles and we planned to meet in Mombasa. The yacht was spur of the moment. Allegra was introduced to the owner in Victoria. He happened to be sailing to Mombasa and she decided to catch a ride.”

“Did you plan to meet him?”

“I assumed we would take him to dinner in Mombasa. You know, as a thank-you—Janson, I have to know exactly what your next move is.”

Janson said, “Your wife is camera shy. I want you to e-mail me any photographs you have in which she is not wearing sunglasses. I’ve got tons of schoolgirl photos, but nothing that shows her face since she was a teenager.”

“I
AM BAFFLED,
” he told Jessica Kincaid in the car racing to Westc
hester
Airport. Ten thirty at night, midweek, their driver was weaving through homebound theatre and restaurant traffic. “Italian hit men try to take out our client. Makes no sense.”

“The guy was definitely aiming at Helms,” Kincaid agreed.

“And when the strollers came around the corner, they were aiming for Helms. Why would Camorra hit men try to kill Kingsman Helms?”

Their driver passed the airport terminal, continued on to a chain-link fence, and stopped at a security speakerphone. “Eight Two Two Romeo Echo.”

“Do you buy Allegra on that particular yacht being coincidence?”

“Sounds like one. Funny thing, though,” mused Janson as the gate slid open, “speaking of coincidences.”

“Yeah?”

“Somalia was an Italian colony.”

“What, eighty years ago?”

“Mussolini’s Africa Orientale Italiana.”

Kincaid said, “Hooking Helms to Mussolini is mighty far-fetched.”

She was not surprised when Janson turned very serious. “When options run out, survivors have far-fetched standing by.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“
Jess
.” Paul Janson grabbed her hand and squeezed hard. “Operators who ignore far-fetched get killed. Operators who dismiss options get killed.”

“OK, Paul.”

“When in doubt, remember London.”

“I remember Amsterdam.” Her Lambda sniper team had been assigned to kill a rogue agent who had betrayed Consular Operations. The rogue had not been easy to kill. He had turned the London operation on its ear, and her into a first-class football clod.

And when she finally had him in her sights, in Amsterdam, the Machine had taught her a whole new definition of far-fetched: Paul Janson had convinced her that he was not a rogue agent; Cons Ops had betrayed
him
; and Jessica Kincaid had come within a nanosecond of letting the bosses trick her into killing the wrong man.

“I’m alive today,” said Janson, “because as young and dumb as you were back then, you opened your eyes to far-fetched.”

“Thanks for the history lesson, Old-Timer.”

“Let’s see if Mussolini’s waiting on the plane.”

C
atspaw’s fourteen-passenger Embraer 650 stood by itself in the dark at the edge of the runways, which were speckled with blue, yellow, and green taxi and runway lights. Janson had had most of the seats removed to upgrade the big silver jet with a full galley, study, a sleeping area, dressing room, and shower. With fuel capacity for a four-thousand-mile transoceanic range and broadband satellite data links, they could go anywhere in the world on short notice and arrive fed, rested, geared up, and informed.

“Ready when you are, boss,” Lynn Novicki, their senior pilot greeted them at the top of the retractable stairs, which entered the ship right behind the cockpit. “Have you guys eaten?”

“Police Department takeout. What’s that I smell? Cumin and cinnamon and ginger.”

“Camel burgers on flatbread. Sarah found a Minneapolis grocery to feed the Somalis something they’d like.” First Officer Sarah Peterson was in the right-hand cockpit seat, talking to the tower.

“We’ll take off in thirty minutes.”

Three tall, thin men with light-brown skin and prominent brows rose eagerly when Janson and Kincaid stepped into the forward cabin. The student and the parolee were young. Isse, the student, was dressed in a white shirt and jeans. Ahmed, the parolee, sported a black “Somali Coast Guard” T-shirt with a skull and crossed AK-47s. The real estate mogul was in his forties and wore a pricy blue suit and a bright-yellow tie.

Catspaw had vetted all three. Salah Hassan, a wealthy businessman with his feet in many seas, was the best source. The kids, no one was sure about: Ahmed’s jail time had been for selling khat—a Somali stimulant that was illegal in Minnesota—on a business scale larger than dealing to friends. Isse, whose parents were professionals, had lived a sheltered suburban life. Janson extended his hand. “Paul, Mr. Hassan. Thank you coming along on such short notice.”

“If we knew what cooks your pilots are, we’d have come sooner.”

“Awesome burger,” said Ahmed.

“My first ever,” said Isse.

Janson introduced Kincaid. “Jess, my colleague.”

Kincaid had streamed a video about Somali customs on her phone while stuck at police headquarters. She knew to offer the peace greeting,
Assalamu alaikum,
but not shake hands with the men.

Janson said, “We will fly you gentlemen to Mogadishu by commercial airline after debriefing you in New York, but I wanted a moment with you first. I’m assuming you’re comfortable flying into Mogadishu?”

“Things are better,” said Hassan. “I was there only last month. I would not dub the city ‘restored to former splendor,’ but it is possible to do business.”

“Isse and Ahmed, you were born in America. Isse, do you speak fluent Somali?”

Isse nodded.

“Fluent enough to translate?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you, Ahmed,” he said to the parolee. “You can translate Somali too?”

“No prob. My parents spoke it all the time.”

“I understand that you have a clansman who used to be a pirate.”

“Saakin. My cousin. My father’s cousin actually. He’s younger than my father, but older than me. Major pirate. One of the first. Made a ton of dough.”

“Any idea what induced Saakin to reform?”

Ahmed grinned. “He lost his taste for it when he got shot.” His grin faded. “Now he’s kind of hobbling around on a walker.”

“What can he do for us?”

“He has everybody’s cell-phone numbers.”

“Don’t they change them?”

“Every day. But he stays friends.”

Janson looked skeptical. Ahmed explained, “He brings them stuff they need.”

“Got it.” Cousin Saakin was acting as supply sergeant. “Ahmed, what do pirates want?”

“Money.”

“For what?”

“To buy khat, SUVs, and wives,” said Ahmed.

“What’s their religion?”

“SUVs and wives and getting high chewing khat leaves.”

Janson grinned back at him. “And the same goes for politics?”

“You got it.”

“No,” interrupted Isse. “Ahmed’s T-shirt is not a joke to everyone. A lot of them are trying to protect Somali fishing waters from foreign trawlers that wreck the seabed and kill all the fish.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Ahmed. “Until they start chewing khat. Then it’s talk, talk, talk. And wife, wife, wife.”

“It’s more complicated,” said the student. “They have a mission.”

“Heroes?” scoffed the parolee. “Laugh out loud. They’re criminals.”

“What were you in jail for?”

“I got caught learning entrepreneurship,” Ahmed answered with another open grin. “But at least I’m bringing home business skills that’ll help Somalia a lot more than ramming ‘missions’ down people’s throats.”

“Missions?”

They were raising their voices, which Janson did not take seriously, recalling that throughout Africa, Somalis were as famous as Nigerians for high-decibel debate.

“What does ‘missions’ mean?” Isse shouted.

“Al-Shabaab—pray like we say or we’ll kill you.”

“There is more to al-Shabaab. They are about respecting Islam.”

Ahmed laughed. “Islam should be more than bitching about being dissed.”

“Al-Shabaab demands respect.”

“Somalis don’t need that shit.”

Isse balled his fists. “Islam is not—”

Janson stepped between them, impermeable as a cinder-block wall. “Isse, do you have pirates in your family?”

The student said, “My father is a doctor, my mom’s a nurse. One of my grandfathers was a cleric, the other was a pharmacist.”

“I can see how you’d be short of pirates in your immediate family, but what about clansmen and cousins?”

“I know what you’re saying, sir. But it’s not like all Somalis are pirates.”

“Let me put it this way,” Janson said patiently. “Who are you connected to in Mogadishu who could help us ransom this lady who was kidnapped by pirates?”

Isse looked alarmed. “I thought you needed a translator. I mean, I just don’t know any pirates.”

Kincaid stepped closer. “Do you know anyone in the government?”

“Sure. Ministry of Health people. They stay with my parents when they come here.”

“What about clerics? Any of your grandfather’s colleagues?”

“I never met him. He was killed before I was born—But I really want to help you.”

Janson said, “I appreciate that. Jess, why don’t you give Isse and Ahmed a tour of the cockpit? Jess is a pilot too,” he explained to Isse and Ahmed.

Ahmed bounded eagerly after her. Isse followed, looking anxious.

Janson exchanged grown-man smiles with the real estate agent.

“Mr. Hassan, do I understand correctly that you have maintained your business contacts in Mogadishu?”

Salah Hassan’s smile grew enormous. “There’s a saying in real estate: the broker knows everything in town before it happens. Since my clients are from Somalia, I’m up to date in
two
towns: Minneapolis and Mogadishu. Knowing who is up and who is down, who chooses to emigrate, who has to run for it, that’s how I know to have my agents scout a home or a factory or a shop before they arrive.”

“In Mogadishu? Who’s up? Who’s down?”

“Home Boy Gutaale. He’s nicknamed Home Boy for ‘He who came home.’ Gutaale prospered abroad, here in America, with a heating-oil business. But instead of just hanging out in a dollar country, Gutaale went back home and put himself on the line—long before things started calming down. Gutaale is much admired by the wealthy expatriate Somalis who control Somali business from abroad. It’s in their economic interest that Gutaale imposes stability.”

“How would Home Boy do that?”

“You could call him a warlord. Very, very good at it. He is a mythic figure, secular, not religious, allied by blood and marriage to many clans. Ordinary people love him too. He’s got the common touch. Wears a bushy red beard people see a mile away. And also, he’s pushing the old dream of Greater Somalia, which they all love him for.”

“The empire?” asked Janson.

“Believe it. Five hundred years ago the king of Soomaaliweyn ruled the Horn of Africa from Mombasa all the way to the Red Sea. Home Boy reminds the world’s most infamous failed state of our prouder history. People have begun to call him the George Washington of Soomaaliweyn.”

“Won’t Kenya and Ethiopia object?” Janson asked drily, thinking that there was nothing like a war with the neighbors to pull a nation together.

Hassan replied with a dismissive shrug, “Did your George Washington give a hoot for British objections?”

“Have you ever met Gutaale?”

“He spoke at one of our fund-raisers. Haven’t seen him since he went back and that was years ago.”

“But I understood you’re back and forth from Mog. Never bumped into him there?”

Hassan smiled. He straightened his necktie. He cast an appreciative eye over the Embraer’s luxurious interior. Then he shook his head. “Our stations changed, shall we say? Realtors tend not to bump into warlords.”

“Unless they’re looking for a safe retreat abroad.”

“Gutaale is not looking for safety.”

“Who else is up?”

“The radical wingnut Mullah Abdullah al-Amriki—‘The American.’ Muslim cleric. You can see him rapping in al-Shabaab videos on YouTube. He wears a long beard and rants against Western oppression. Abdullah, of course, means ‘slave of God.’ But he’s also called ‘Thumper.’”

“Thumper?”

“He has a habit of pounding his chest when he raps.
Thump
.
Thump
.
Thump
. Here’s the crazy thing: his parents emigrated to Maine when he was a teenager and he spent a couple of miserable years in an American high school. For some reason microwave ovens really annoy him. His raps are always bitching that Somalia doesn’t have any microwaves. Like I say, the Thumper is a wingnut.”

“But you say he’s up?”

“Believe it. He is a hell of a fund-raiser for al-Shabaab, and he commands their foreign fighters.
Inshallah,
a CIA Predator takes him out or the pirates shoot him.”

“Why would pirates shoot him?”

“Abdullah al-Amriki declared piracy
haram—
religiously forbidden. Ordinary citizens thank him for that. They hate swaggering gangsters taking over their villages, roaring around their streets in SUVs. Needless to say, the pirates are not amused.”

“Which pirate would hit him?”

“Whoever stops chewing khat long enough to concentrate. I expected ‘King’ Bashir would gun him down. Bashir had set up a sort of pirate ‘stock exchange’ in Puntland. By kicking in seed money to get a cut of the ransom, you could invest in hijacking without getting your feet wet. Bashir also organized a pirate coalition in response to the foreign navy pressure.”

“Bashir sounds like a comer.”

“He was. But I just heard a rumor that Bashir is out of business. And I can assure you in Somalia, most rumors are true.”

“Who will replace him?” asked Janson. “Mad Max?”

Hassan raised an eyebrow. “You should be in real estate, Paul.”

“What’s the word on Max?”

“Maxammed belongs to the same subclan as President Mohamed Adam.”

“That ought to give him a long leg up.”

Hassan shook his head. “President Adam is known as ‘Raage,’ which means ‘he who delayed at birth.’ In other words, he is very cautious.”

Janson said, “I don’t suppose President Adam can protect Mad Max hundreds of miles up the coast in Puntland?”

“Even if he could, Adam can’t risk any appearance of extending government protection to a pirate. He’s just been appointed by the new parliament, which puts him on very thin ice. President Adam will be way too busy trying to convince Somalia that he can become a visionary national leader.”

“Why is Max called Mad Max?” asked Janson, expecting something more precise from Hassan than Special Agent Laughlin’s “When in doubt, shoot.”

Salah Hassan delivered a roundabout answer in wistful tones. “Among the joys of my country—almost equal to her most beautiful women, and right up there with proud herdsman, amazingly resilient farmers, tenacious businessmen, lovely beaches yearning for rich tourists, and her once-glorious cities—is her custom of giving people nicknames. Everyone gets a nickname and most are dead-on accurate.”

“What precisely do people mean when they call him Mad Max?”

“Mad Max is volatile as jet fuel and vicious as a scorpion. But, having said that, I would also say that considering his connections and the atmosphere of leadership he observed growing up in his family, Mad Max’s ambitions are more ambitious than ‘khat and SUVs.’ Is it he who hijacked the yacht?”

“Could be,” said Janson, and changed the subject. “Who else is up?”

“The Italian.”

More nicknames. “What does ‘Italian’ mean? Another outsider?”

Hassan shrugged. “A new player surfaced in Mogadishu recently. I’ve heard of no one who has seen his face or knows his true name. Talk is he’s raising a private army—maybe one of the private security companies in Dubai is working for him. He has money—vast resources.”

“Where does he get his money?” Janson asked. “Who’s backing him?”

“I don’t know. But there are rumors he will take over Mogadishu or all of the south or maybe even the whole country.”

“If no one has seen him or heard his name, how do they know he’s there?”

“People have disappeared. Key people. Supporters of President Adam. Supporters of the AMISOM, the African Union’s army. People who might help stabilize the country. People who might ask for help from the Ethiopians or the Kenyans or the UN. Even al-Shabaab allies.” Hassan grinned. “The Italian appears to be an equal-opportunity assassin.”

“Don’t you find it hard to believe that no one in Mogadishu has even seen this new player?”

“Are you aware, Paul, that Mogadishu is a very large city?”

“I recall a beautiful city the first time I saw it.”

Hassan looked surprised. “You must have been very young when you were there.”

“Very young,” Janson admitted. “I was passing through.” Shedding identities on his way to South Africa. Or, as his controllers had put it: sanding your edges. “I remember palm trees and white stucco and beautiful women and elegant streets. You could imagine people strolling in the evenings, like the
passeggiata
in Italy.” The truth was, bombings and firefights had begun pocking holes in the stucco, and the rebel factions attacking the dictator’s regime had cleared the streets. But it had been possible to imagine what was being lost.