Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation Read online

  “The Seoul Metropolitan Police,” Wyckoff continued, “have named Gregory their primary suspect in Lynell’s death, which, if you knew my son, you’d know is preposterous. But of course my wife and I are concerned. Gregory’s just a teenager. We don’t know whether he’s been kidnapped or is on the run because he’s frightened. Being falsely accused of murder in a foreign country must be terrifying. Even though South Korea is our ally, it’ll take time to get things sorted out through the proper channels.” The senator leaned forward, planting his elbows on the desk. “I’d like for you to travel to Seoul and find him. That’s our first priority. Second, and nearly as important, I’d like you to conduct an independent investigation into Lynell’s murder. Now may be our only opportunity. I’m a former trial lawyer, and I can tell you from experience that evidence disappears fast. Witnesses vanish. Memories become fuzzy. If we don’t clear Gregory’s name in the next ninety-six hours, we may never be able to do so.”

  Janson held up his hand. “Let me stop you right there, Senator. I sympathize with you, I do. I’m very sorry that your family is going through this. And I hope that your son turns up unharmed sooner rather than later. I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure he’s being wrongly accused, and I’m sincerely hopeful that you can prove it and bring him home to grieve for his girlfriend. But I’m afraid that I can’t help you with this. I’m not a private investigator.”

  “I’m not suggesting you are. But this is no ordinary investigation.”

  “Please, Senator, let me continue. I’m here as a courtesy to my client Jeremy Beck. But as I attempted to tell you over the phone, this simply isn’t something I can take on.” Janson reached into his jacket pocket and unfolded a piece of paper. “While I was in the air, I took the liberty of contacting a few old friends, and I have the names and telephone numbers of a handful of top-notch private investigators in Seoul. They know the city inside and out, and they can obtain information directly from the police without having to navigate through miles of red tape. According to my contacts, these men and women are the best investigators in all South Korea.”

  Wyckoff accepted the piece of paper and set it down on the desk without looking at it. He narrowed his eyes, confirming Janson’s initial impression that the senator wasn’t a man who was told no very often. And that he seldom accepted the word for an answer.

  “Mr. Janson, do you have children?”

  As Wyckoff said it there was a firm knock on the door. The senator pushed himself out of his chair and trudged toward the sound.

  Meanwhile, Janson frowned. He didn’t like to be asked personal questions. Not by clients and not by prospective clients. Certainly not after he’d already declined the job. And this was no innocuous question. It was a subject that burned Janson deep in his stomach. No, he did not have children. He did not have a family—only the memory of one. Only the stabbing recollection of a pregnant wife and the dashed dreams of their unborn child, their future obliterated by a terrorist’s bomb. They’d perished years ago yet it still felt like yesterday.

  From behind, Janson heard Hammond’s sonorous voice followed by a far softer one and the unmistakable sound of a woman’s sobs.

  “Mr. Janson,” the senator said, “I’d like you to meet my wife, Alicia. Gregory’s mother.”

  Janson stood and turned toward the couple as Hammond stepped out, closing the door gently behind him.

  Alicia Wyckoff stood before Janson visibly trembling, her eyes wet with mascara tears. She appeared to be a few years younger than her husband, but her handling of the present crisis threatened to catch her up to him in no time flat.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” she said, ignoring Janson’s hand and instead gripping him in an awkward hug. He felt the warmth of her tears through his shirt, her long nails burrowing into his upper back.

  If Janson were slightly more cynical, he’d have thought her entry had been meticulously timed in advance.

  Wyckoff brushed some papers aside and sat on the front edge of the desk. “I know your professional history,” he said to Janson. “As soon as Jeremy gave me your name I contacted State and obtained a complete dossier. While a good many parts of the document were redacted, what I was able to read was very impressive. You are uniquely qualified for this job, Mr. Janson.” He paused for effect. “Please, don’t turn us away.”

  “Turn us away?” Alicia Wyckoff interjected. “What are you talking about?” She turned to Janson. “Are you seriously considering refusing to help us?”

  Janson remained standing. “As I told your husband a few moments ago I’m simply not the person you need.”

  “But you are.” She spun toward her husband. “Haven’t you told him?”

  Wyckoff shook his head.

  “Told me what?”

  Janson couldn’t imagine a scenario that might possibly change his mind. He’d just left Asia behind. He needed some downtime. Jessica needed some downtime. In the past couple of years they’d taken on one mission after another, almost without pause. Following two successive missions off the coast of Africa, Janson and Kincaid had promised themselves a break. But when Jeremy Beck called about the incessant cyber-espionage campaign being perpetrated by the Chinese government, Janson became intrigued. This was what his post–Cons Ops life was all about: changing the world, one mission at a time.

  Wyckoff pushed off the desk and sighed deeply, as though he’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to divulge what he was about to. At least not until after Janson had accepted the case.

  “We don’t think Lynell’s murder was a crime of passion or a random killing,” Wyckoff said. “And we don’t think the Seoul Metropolitan Police came to suspect our son by themselves; we think they were deliberately led there.”

  Janson watched the senator’s eyes and said, “By who?”

  Wyckoff pursed his lips. He looked as though he were about to sign a deal for his soul. Or something of even greater importance to a successful US politician. “What I say next stays between us, Mr. Janson.”

  “Of course.”

  The senator placed his hands on his hips and exhaled. “We think Gregory was framed by your former employer.”

  Janson hesitated. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “The victim, Lynell Yi, my son’s girlfriend, is—was, I should say—a Korean-English translator. She’d been working on sensitive talks in the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Talks between the North and the South and other interested parties, namely the United States and China. We think she overheard something she shouldn’t have. We think she shared it with our son, and that they were both subsequently targeted by someone in the US government. Or to be more specific, someone in the US State Department.”

  “And you think this murder was carried out by Consular Operations?” Janson said.

  Wyckoff bowed his head. “The murder and the subsequent frame—all of it is just too neat. Our son is not stupid. If he were somehow involved in Lynell’s murder—an utter impossibility in and of itself—he would not have left behind a glaring trail of evidence pointing directly at him.”

  “In a crime of passion,” Janson said, “by definition, the killer isn’t thinking or acting rationally. His intellect would have little to do with what occurred during or immediately after the event.”

  “Granted,” Wyckoff said. “But according to the information released by the Seoul police, this killer would have had plenty of time to clean up after himself.”

  “Or time to get a running head start,” Janson countered.

  Wyckoff ignored him. “Lynell’s body wasn’t found until morning. She was discovered by a maid. There wasn’t even a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door. Whoever killed Lynell wanted her body to be found quickly. Wanted it to look like a crime of passion.”

  Janson said nothing. He knew Wyckoff’s alternative theory was based solely on a parent’s wishful thinking. But what else could a father do under the circumstances? What would Janson himself be doing if the accused were his teenage son?


  “Tell me, Paul,” Wyckoff said, dispensing with the formalities, “do you honestly believe that powers within the US government aren’t capable of something like this?”

  Janson could say no such thing. He knew what his government was capable of. He’d carried out operations not so different from the one Wyckoff was describing. And he would be spending the rest of his life atoning for them.

  “Before I became a US senator,” Wyckoff continued, “I was a Charlotte trial lawyer. I specialized in mass torts. Made my fortune suing pharmaceutical companies for manufacturing and selling dangerous drugs that had been preapproved by the FDA. I made tens of millions of dollars, and I would be willing to part with all of it if you would agree to take this case. Name your fee, Paul, and it’s yours.”

  For something as involved as this, Janson could easily ask for seven or eight million dollars. And it would all go to the Phoenix Foundation. A payday this size could help dozens of former covert government operators take their lives back.

  Janson had to admit he liked the idea of looking closely at his former employer.

  And if by some stretch of the imagination the US State Department was indeed involved in framing the son of a prominent US senator for murder, the government’s ultimate objective would likely have widespread repercussions for the entire region, if not the world.

  “I have one condition,” Janson finally said.

  “Name it.”

  “If I find your son and uncover the truth, you’ll have to promise to accept it, regardless of what that truth is. Even if it ultimately leads to your son’s conviction for murder.”

  Wyckoff glanced at his wife, who bowed her head. He turned back to Janson and said, “You have our word.”

  TWO

  Stop apologizing,” Kincaid said during the ascent. “You made the right decision.”

  Janson knew Jessie was right, yet something about the mission kept tugging at his thoughts. The more he contemplated the next several days, the less confident he felt that he and Kincaid would merely be searching for a nineteen-year-old kid in a city of ten million and conducting an independent investigation into his girlfriend’s death.

  Before Kincaid arrived at Hickam Field and they’d boarded the Embraer, Janson phoned Morton, his “computer security consultant” in northern New Jersey. Twenty minutes later Morton forwarded a complete and up-to-the-minute copy of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department’s electronic investigative file on Lynell Yi’s murder.

  According to the file, a sixty-three-year-old maid named Sung Won Yun had discovered the girl’s body in a room at the Sophia Guesthouse, central Seoul’s oldest and most traditional hanok. A preliminary visual inspection by the coroner indicated that the manner of death was homicide. The mechanism of death appeared to be asphyxiation, the cause of death manual strangulation, a form of violence often perpetrated by a man against a woman because of the required disparity in physical strength between the victim and the assailant.

  The coroner estimated the time of death to be between midnight and four o’clock on the morning the corpse was discovered. This was consistent with police interviews of two fellow guests who claimed to have heard voices—a young man’s and a young woman’s—raised in anger shortly after midnight that morning. Although neither of these earwitnesses could identify what exactly was being said, both agreed that the heated discussion had been held in English rather than Korean. Given these accounts, police theorized that Gregory Wyckoff killed his girlfriend, Lynell Yi, in the heat of passion. No specific motive was given.

  The owners of the hanok, who confirmed that Gregory Wyckoff and Lynell Yi had checked into their establishment the previous day, turned over to police color copies of the couple’s US passports, and the part-time clerk who had handled the check-in easily picked Gregory Wyckoff out of a photo array.

  Latent prints had been lifted at the scene and were pending examination and comparison. Partial fingerprints found on the victim’s neck were removed from the corpse using a process known as cyano-fuming, so that the powdering and lifting could be conducted later at the lab.

  No other suspects or persons of interests were named, and there was no mention in the entire file of the sensitive work being conducted by Lynell Yi at the time of her death.

  Once the Embraer reached its maximum cruising altitude, the executive jet leveled off and Jessica Kincaid stepped into the center of the cabin and stretched while Janson looked on, wishing they were sipping mai tais at Duke’s Barefoot Bar in Waikiki.

  “So, who do we know in Seoul?” she said.

  Janson reluctantly pushed from his mind the image of Jessie in her appealing red two-piece on the powdery sands of Waikiki Beach and opened his laptop. In addition to the many contacts he’d made during his career with Cons Ops, over the past few years Janson had developed a vast network of Phoenix “graduates,” former covert government operatives who had benefited from the foundation’s efforts. Some had been afforded completely new lives—new identities, new homes, lucrative careers in academia or public service, even in the private sector. Others had been afforded sufficient capital to fund their own ventures. Just about all had achieved a substantial amount of success.

  Now when Janson needed their help, he didn’t hesitate to call upon them to take advantage of their various positions and skills. Most were extremely grateful for the opportunity to repay their debt to Janson; others took some convincing.

  “What Phoenix grants, Phoenix retrieves to pass on to the next guy,” he’d tell them. “That’s the way it works. That’s the way it is.”

  In the end, all complied. Janson, of course, never mistook the former operatives for his own personal army. He used them only on CatsPaw missions such as this, where millions were at stake for the Phoenix Foundation.

  Janson paused on the first name he came across. He hadn’t needed his computer to know that Jina Jeon was at the top of his list. But he didn’t want it to appear to Jessie that he’d picked Jina’s name out of thin air, as though it were always resting at the tip of his tongue.

  Jina Jeon was both a contact from his time in Consular Operations and a Phoenix graduate. She’d also been Paul Janson’s lover long before Janson had ever met Jessica Kincaid.

  Janson scrolled down to the next name on his list.

  “Nam Sei-hoon,” he said. “He’s with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.”

  “And you trust him completely?” Kincaid said.

  “Nam Sei-hoon is one of my oldest and closest friends. I met him while I was with SEAL Team Four.”

  It never escaped Janson that leaving the University of Michigan to enlist in the navy was the decision that had placed him on the path to becoming a skilled killer. Shortly after enlistment Janson had shown a genuine gift for combat, and in the navy such talents rarely go unnoticed. At the time he joined his team at their headquarters in Little Creek, Virginia, Paul Janson had been the youngest person ever to receive SEAL training—a distinction that no longer held much meaning for him. Following his first tour in Afghanistan, Janson was awarded the Navy Cross, the Department of the Navy’s second-highest decoration for valor. Then came tour after tour after tour, with no breaks, until he was finally captured in an Afghan village just outside Kabul. He was held by the Taliban in a six-by-four-foot cage for eighteen months. He was starved. Tortured. Nearly killed after each of his first two escape attempts. His third attempt at escape was successful. By the time he was found, Janson weighed only eighty-three pounds; he was a shell of the man he’d been. He seldom spoke of the events that followed his recovery. When pressed, all he would allow was that he attended Cambridge University for graduate studies on a government fellowship, and was thereafter recruited to a black ops team under the control of the US State Department.

  “Any Phoenix grads in South Korea?” Kincaid asked.

  Janson nodded without looking up. “Jina Jeon. Though I’d like to avoid using her if we can.”

  Kincaid paused midstretch. “Why’s th
at?”

  Sure, one of the reasons Janson didn’t want to contact Jina Jeon was their past romantic relationship. But that wasn’t the primary reason. Like all Phoenix beneficiaries, Jina Jeon possessed a telephone fitted with an encryption chip that would give Janson a direct line to her, and she knew that the powers behind the Phoenix Foundation could call on her for help at any time. What Jina Jeon didn’t know—and what Janson didn’t want her to know—was that he was behind the foundation.

  There was another reason too. And that was the reason Janson finally offered to Kincaid.

  “She has difficulty playing by the rules,” he said.

  All Phoenix graduates were required to play by a set of rules when they provided their assistance. Specifically, three rules, known as the Janson Rules.

  No torture.

  No civilian casualties.

  No killing anyone who doesn’t try to kill us.

  For any former covert intelligence operative, following these rules was easier said than done. But Janson suspected that Jina Jeon, in particular, would have difficulty playing nice. Not because she wasn’t a good person, but because of what Consular Operations had made her.

  Which wasn’t very different from what Consular Operations had made Janson himself.

  “You were the Machine,” Cons Ops director Derek Collins had told Janson during one of his many exit interviews. “You were the guy with the slab of granite where your heart’s supposed to be.”

  It was true. Janson had been a machine, taking orders from his superiors without question, committing crimes in service of his country, killing again and again and again. Then one morning he’d woken in a cold sweat and began ruminating on the dozens of people he’d executed. Some victims, of course, had had it coming to them. Others hadn’t, and those were the killings that suddenly sickened him.

  “You tell me you’re sickened by the killing,” Collins had said to him. “I’m going to tell you what you’ll discover one day for yourself: that’s the only way you’ll ever feel alive.”