Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (27 page)

Janson shrugged and hung his head. “So what, right? It's no secret that I already live with a whole hell of a lot worse.”

S
everal minutes later Janson emerged from the bedroom. “We have to move. Quickly.”

Kincaid said, “Where to?”

He took a deep breath. “The demilitarized zone.” Turning to Jina Jeon, he said, “But first we have a stop to make.”

Jina Jeon looked at him, a question mark on her face.

“Chuncheon,” he said.

After finishing with Vik Pawar and Max Kolovos, they “borrowed” two vehicles from Seoul residents, crossed the Dongho Bridge, and took the Seoul-Yangyang Expressway north toward Chuncheon.

Janson drove with Kincaid seated next to him. Jina Jeon traveled with Sin Bae.

The drive would take roughly forty minutes.

As Janson maneuvered to pass a slow-moving vehicle, he turned to Kincaid. He'd wanted to talk to her ever since they'd reconnected at the Gangnam safe house. But he hadn't had the chance to be alone with her until now.

“It's not what you think,” Janson said.

Kincaid turned to him. “What do you mean?”

“With Vik. It's not what you think.”

“You did what you had to do,” she said.

Janson glanced at her. “There are no exceptions to the rules,” he said. “Not for you, not for me, not for anybody.”

“You don't have to justify it to me, Paul.”

“Jessie, listen to me. I did
not
torture Vik Pawar.”

Kincaid said nothing.

“I used the
threat
of torture,” he added softly. “But I wouldn't have gone through with it if he didn't talk.”

The taillights of the vehicles in front of him became red blurs as water welled before his eyes.

“Even that was farther than I'd wanted to go,” he said. “But it worked. Vik knew me back in the day. He didn't think for a second that I wouldn't go through with it. Even after he cooperated, when I was dosing him with carfentanil citrate, he was convinced I was poisoning him. Even then he begged for his life.”

“Is that what's bothering you?”

“More than I would've ever thought.”

Why it was troubling him though, Janson couldn't quite put his finger on. He
knew
what he'd been when he worked for Consular Operations. He
knew
his reputation as the Machine. Tonight he'd simply used it to his advantage.

“What bothers me, I think, is that Vik had heard the rumors about me, about Phoenix. But he didn't believe them. Vik didn't believe I could have changed all that much.”

“But you have,” Kincaid said. “Completely, totally.”

Janson kept his eyes on the road. He envisioned the two North Korean soldiers he'd encountered in the demilitarized zone. The one who had fried on the electrified fence. The one he'd shot through the head. His greatest concern at the time was how badly he'd damaged the windshield on the jeep.

He heard Heath Manningham's voice in his head.

“Walked away, did you? Tell me. How many have you done since you ‘walked away'?”

“Sometimes I wonder just how much,” he said.

I
T WAS
3
AM
when they finally reached Chuncheon. Janson pulled the car into the gravel lot in front of Cal Auster's place, with Jina Jeon directly behind him.

Janson got out of the car. “Stay here,” he told Kincaid. “This should only take a few minutes.”

As he started up the drive, Jina Jeon fell in beside him. “What's the plan?” she said.

“Well, the equipment we bought from Cal was defective, so I'm going to ask him nicely to replace it.”

“How was it defective?”

“Cons Ops took it all after they blew up your house. Or were you holding out on me when you told me that?”

“No, they took every last thing you'd stashed in the barn. In hindsight, I'm very sorry I made you keep your equipment out there.”

“As far as I'm concerned, Cal insured me against theft.”

“And if he disagrees? If he refuses to replace anything?”

Janson lifted a shoulder. “I'm confident he'll eventually come around.”

Janson pressed the doorbell several times; the chime was good and loud.

“By the way,” he said to Jina as they waited, “what were you and Cal discussing in private when I went topside? You two have a thing together?”

“God, no. He asked me if I'd reconsider.”

“Reconsider
him
?”

“Reconsider
working
for him.”

When the door opened, Cal Auster stood in its frame, with his arms out. He wore an open terry bathrobe over flowery-patterned boxer shorts. Salt-and-pepper chest hairs poked out over a badly stained white tank top.

“What the fuck is this?” he barked. “Do you have any fucking idea what time it is?”

“Time to open the store,” Janson said, pushing past him.

“
Hey
,” Cal Auster shouted. He reached into the side pocket of his bathrobe and came out with a subcompact 9mm, what some referred to as a pocket pistol.

With his back to Cal, Janson swung his left leg around in a wide arc, the heel of his combat boot connecting with Cal Auster's knuckles. The pocket pistol flew in the direction of the front door and Jina Jeon swiped it from the air. She tossed it underhand to Janson.

“
Fuck
,” Cal Auster cried, baring his yellowed teeth. “You broke my fucking
fingers
.”

“You should have thought of that before you pulled a gun on me, Cal.”

“What do you
want
, anyway? What are you here for, Paul?”

“The equipment I purchased from you, it was stolen from me.”

“How is that
my
problem?”

“It's not your problem,” Janson said calmly. “
I'm
your problem.”

Janson raised the gun. “You gonna help me, Cal?”

Cal Auster cackled. He looked from Janson to Jina and back again. “What are you going to do,
kill
me? You're not going to kill me, Paul. Maybe ten years ago. But now? Now I've got your number. You're a fucking
Boy Scout
. Hell, you're a goddamn
Brownie
.”

“I don't have much time,” Janson said. “Which means you have even less. Take me to your stash, or I promise you, I'll make you regret ever being born.”

Cal Auster grinned. “Make me regret being born, huh? And how exactly are you going to do that, Paul? Don't you remember your own rules?” He raised his left hand, which had its fingers still intact, and began counting off. “No killing civilians. No torture. No killing anyone who doesn't first take a shot at you.”

Auster took a step forward. “According to your own code, Janson, Uncle Cal is fucking bulletproof.”

“Tell me, Uncle Cal. Have you sold Chinese-manufactured AK-47s to the North Koreans recently?”

“What the hell business is that of yours?”

“Come on, Cal. You know I have a soft spot for weapons dealers. Don't make me do this.”

“
Fuuuck
you, Paul,” Auster said, lowering two of his three fingers.

Janson drew a breath, narrowed his right eye, and aimed at the last finger standing.

He squeezed the trigger.

Cal Auster screamed, louder and longer than the soldier who'd fried on the electrified fence in the DMZ. Blood spurted uncontrollably from Auster's hand.

Janson's eyes fell on the middle finger sitting on the floor.

“Jina,” Janson said, “you want to help him with all that blood?”

As she ran into the kitchen for towels, Auster cried, “What the fuck did you go and do that for?”

“
Your
weapons fired on me in the DMZ.
Your
AK-47s tried to kill me, Cal. Therefore, the Janson Rules don't apply.” Janson took a step toward him, placed a hand on Auster's stooped shoulder. “Now, when Jina comes back, she's going to help stanch the bleeding. Then you and I are going straight to your stash. Or else.”

Tears streamed down both sides of Auster's face. “Or else
what
? You gonna shoot another finger?”

“No,” Janson said evenly. “Next time I'm going to aim substantially lower, at something slightly skinnier and a whole lot shorter.”

O
n the drive north toward the DMZ, Jina Jeon's cell phone rang from the backseat. Janson looked in the rearview. All four of them were traveling in Cal Auster's black Cadillac Escalade.

After a few moments, Jina Jeon held her hand over the phone and said, “It's Mi-sook.”

“Tell her to get back to the hotel,” Janson said. “She can't abandon her baby. She can't abandon Jin-ho's child.”

Jina Jeon repeated Janson's words verbatim. She listened a moment then said, “Me? No. No, I can't take care of your baby, I'm sorry. No. No, my mother can't either. She's seventy-four years old. What about
your
parents?”

Janson continued driving. After a few minutes, Jina Jeon put down the phone.

“What did Mi-sook say?”

“She insists she's not abandoning her baby. She said she just needs to take care of something before she returns.”

“You mentioned
her
parents?”

“Yeah, I wasn't thinking. Of course she's not going to return her baby to North Korea. And her parents aren't coming here. Her father's a general in Kim Jong-un's army.”

Janson accelerated. There was little time. Back at the Gangnam safe house, Vik Pawar had finally divulged the details of the Diophantus operation.

“Inside the demilitarized zone,” Vik had said breathlessly as Janson stepped over to the door to allow in Jina Jeon and Sin Bae.

Janson held the knob tightly in his fingers but didn't turn it. “Inside the demilitarized zone,
what
?”

“Inside the DMZ, several Cons Ops agents are embedded with the ROK soldiers protecting the border.”

“What are they going to do?” Janson said, fearing he already knew the answer.

“They're going to make a brazen incursion over the border. They're going to engage the North.”

Christ
, Janson thought. He knew there had been hundreds of incursions over the past sixty years—just about every one of them committed by the North. In the 1960s a series of skirmishes resulted in the deaths of 750 soldiers, including 43 Americans. In addition, North Korean commandos disguised as ROK soldiers had crossed the border numerous times in attempts to raid the Blue House; none had succeeded, and very few had even survived. And that was just scratching the surface.

“When?” Janson demanded. “When is this supposed to go down?”

When Vik Pawar said nothing, Janson walked back to Vik's chair and grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt.

“
When
, Vik?
When?
”

“Just after dawn.”

Now as Janson sped north, he couldn't tell if the sky was lightening or whether it was his imagination, and he didn't dare ask anyone else in the car for fear of the answer.

While none of the previous incursions had escalated into full-scale war, this operation had war as its very objective. It was a perfect storm. As part of its new zero-tolerance policy, the South Korean president had vowed to launch ballistic missiles at Pyong­yang if the North fired so much as one shot over the border. Now rogue US agents planned to provoke North Korean soldiers into doing just that.

What Nam Sei-hoon, Edward Clarke, and the other imbeciles involved in Diophantus didn't know was that the North was prepared to respond to force with force—a level of force no nation on earth could have anticipated from the hermit kingdom.

“What will happen if we're too late?” Kincaid said as they neared the DMZ.

Janson drew a breath. “Once the North retaliates, hostilities will escalate, and the South will take advantage of the United States' security guarantees, drawing the world's only superpower into a second Korean War.

“Once the US is involved,” Janson went on, “China will issue a statement condemning the action. Then they'll act in a way consistent with Chinese interests, which include not having the US or her ally sitting right on the Chinese border. China will enter the conflict, and hostilities will immediately spiral into a proxy war between the first and third most powerful militaries in the world.”

It was a war the United States would ultimately win.

But at what cost?

Having studied the plans he stole from the palace, Janson knew at least part of the answer to that question. Early in the conflict, the North would attempt to take Seoul. Failing that, they'd burn the city of over ten million to the ground.

Once the war became unwinnable for the North, the regime would turn their weapons on Pyongyang and their own people.

Millions would die. If the North successfully launched its nuclear weapons,
tens
of millions.

Because no one in the West except Paul Janson knew that the new Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, had secretly adopted the ultimate scorched-earth policy.

J
anson slashed through the dense mist hanging over the demilitarized zone, one of Cal Auster's M15s slung over his shoulder. He listened for shots but heard only Kincaid's footfalls as she thudded against the dampened earth just behind him.

In the distance Sin Bae and Jina Jeon were swallowed by the fog. Janson wished for a moment that they hadn't separated. But it was the right call. Dawn was fast ascending on the horizon, and they needed to find the embedded agents before the first shots were fired.

In less than ten minutes, however, Janson realized it was an impossible mission. There were too many soldiers, spread out in too many directions. There was too much ground to cover in too little time. The darkness and fog were working against them. It was difficult enough to see a few feet in front of them, let alone spot an individual soldier who looked as though he was on the verge of firing. Even if they did spot him, could they stop him in time? Only with a perfect shot in far-from-perfect conditions.

The team regrouped, all four of them breathing hard.

“It's no good,” Janson said. “We'll never find them in time.”

“What do we do?” Kincaid said.

Janson thought about it with his hands on his hips. “We've got to warn the North. If we can't stop the incursion, the only way to prevent a full-scale war may be to keep it from escalating.”

“How the hell do we do that?”

“Pyongyang. Look, the palace doesn't want a regime change. They may be prepared to invade on the slightest provocation, but if they knew about Diophantus being a product of a rogue US intelligence agency, they'd know it was a fight they ultimately couldn't win. Sure, they might burn Seoul and eventually Pyongyang to the ground, but they'd die in the fire. They don't want that; they want reunification with Kim Jong-un as the Supreme Leader of all Korea. The North's invasion plans are predicated on theirs being a surprise attack. If they know the South is ready for them, they'll hold back. At least I hope so. As I see it, it's the only chance we have.”

“How are we going to warn the palace?”

“Jina,” Janson said, “call Mi-sook back. Ask her what her father's full name is and where he might be located at sunrise.”

“What are you thinking?” Kincaid said as Jina Jeon dialed Mi-sook.

“I crossed into the North before,” Janson said. “I can cross into the North again.”

Jina Jeon spoke a few words in Korean, then lowered the phone. “Her father's name is General Han Yong Chol. This morning he should be somewhere near the Joint Security Area.”

Janson nodded as he contemplated what that meant. No tunnels; the tunnel would eat too much time off the clock. That was a relief. If Janson never set foot in another tunnel the rest of his life, he'd be content.

The Joint Security Area was convenient given their current position. But it was highly dangerous territory. He'd likely be shot at from both sides of the border. He'd need some sort of a diversion.

He looked from Jina Jeon to Sin Bae to Kincaid. He made a decision.

“Jina, you're with me.”

Kincaid shot him a look.

“Sin Bae, I need you and Kincaid to provide cover.”

“Why am I remaining behind?” Kincaid protested.

“Because, unless you speak fluent Korean, General Han is going to be carrying two dead Americans back to the palace instead of a warning.”

T
HROUGH HIS FIELD GLASSES
Janson watched the Joint Security Area with growing unease. Crossing the demarcation line there looked to be an impossibility. Even with Kincaid and Sin Bae providing suppressive fire, North Korean reinforcements would be on him and Jina in seconds.

He lowered the field glasses and sighed. “We can't fight our way through. And a simple diversion won't work.”

“So what do we do?”

“That leaves us only one option, Jina.”

“And that is?”

“Surrender.”

A
PPROACHING THE
Joint Security Area, Janson looked to the east where a sliver of sun was now visible over the low mountain range. He couldn't help but think, This is where it all started. At the “Truce Village” where the four-party talks went the way of all others. Maybe critics were right, that diplomacy here was impossible. Sixty years ago two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—had divided a nation along a line that held no significance to the people on either side of it. One side prospered, the other failed famously. To Janson, reunification
did
appear to be the only way to save the twenty-five million people who, through no fault of their own, were born and brainwashed on the wrong side of the line.

But, no. Even if reunification was the only solution, it shouldn't be the result of secret actions taken by rogue factions of US and ROK intelligence agencies. That was where Edward Clarke and Nam Sei-hoon were wrong. If the past decade and a half had taught Janson anything, it was that you can't trick a public into going to war and expect a positive result. Transparency was necessary. Truthful dialogue and civilized debate were key. Those were the principles critical to democracy. Those were the principles that Americans died for in every war they fought from the creation of the republic through Afghanistan.

Transparency was what Lynell Yi had died for.

What Gregory Wyckoff continued fighting for.

What Janson would give his life for, if need be.

He raised his hands high in the air and Jina Jeon did the same. Within seconds of doing so they were spotted by a soldier from the Republic of Korea. The soldier lowered his binoculars and turned to a superior officer, who immediately lifted a walkie-talkie to his mouth.

Three more soldiers materialized from around the corner of the blue building.

“Remember,” Janson said quietly, “our objective is to get as close to the demarcation line as possible. Close enough so that we can run to the other side without getting tackled. Or shot.”

“What if the South Koreans arrest us before we can get close enough?”

“We're not going to give them the opportunity. On my mark, we split. You go left, I go right. Just be sure to keep your hands visible and hopefully we won't get ourselves gunned down on this side of the line.”

“And the other side?”

“You can communicate with the North Korean soldiers. Just tell them that you're a defector and you want to surrender yourself.”

“And you?”

“A fair question,” Janson said. “I'm just going to play it by ear.”

Janson was pleased to see that the ROK soldiers were not approaching. As long as they remained in the Joint Security Area at their posts, getting to the demarcation line shouldn't present a problem for either of them.

Glancing over at Jina, Janson noticed that her raised hands were trembling. He felt a similar sensation in his stomach, but it hadn't yet manifested itself to watchful eyes.

The ROK soldiers remained frozen in place, though the two on the outer flanks had raised their weapons.

“Just a precautionary measure on their part,” Janson tried to assure her.

But the truth was, he didn't know their orders.

A soldier stepped forward with his right hand held out in front of him and shouted in Korean.

“He's telling us to stop,” Jina said.

“Yeah, I gathered that.”

“We're too far away.”

“Wait for my mark.”

The soldier with the raised palm called out to them again. When they didn't respond he too raised his assault rifle. In the distance Janson could see the three North Korean soldiers standing at attention, watching their counterparts' interaction with the trespassers.

To Jina, he said, “Tell them that we—”

Janson never finished the sentence. Because the soldier who'd just raised his weapon fell down dead, a wide entry wound visible just below his left eye.

Janson looked around; he had no idea where the shot had come from.

He and Jina lowered their hands.

“Run,” he told her.

They ran.

A few moments later all hell broke loose.