Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (7 page)

T-Lound Nightclub
Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul

K
incaid looked over her shoulder, scanning the mass of pulsating youths. Madonna's “Ray of Light” emanated from all sides of the ultramodern club as she searched for the man who'd been following her since Dosan Park.

Once she'd jumped into the taxi and realized that the gunman wasn't going to be able to get off a shot, she felt around in the pockets of her overcoat for her phone. But it was gone. She must have dropped it while sprinting through the park, trying to evade her pursuer. She leaned forward and asked her driver whether she could borrow his cell phone. He responded in Korean by telling her that he didn't speak any English, then closed the sliding partition that separated the front seat from the back.

After ten minutes of driving around Gangnam, she had the taxi pull over. She didn't want to travel too far, because she still hoped to make it back to the restaurant in time to catch Jonathan leaving.

Clearly, she hadn't traveled far enough. Because as she searched the streets for a public phone to call Janson, she caught sight of the tall Korean man who had aimed the gun at her.

When his eyes fell on her she had no choice but to begin running again.

He chased her up and down busy city streets, past narrow alleys, through the blinding cold. She attempted several evasive maneuvers she'd learned while in Cons Ops and a number of advanced tactics she'd been taught by Janson. But she simply couldn't lose the man with the gun. He was fit. He was trained. He was professional. And he seemed pretty damn determined to catch her and kill her.

Kincaid eventually ducked into a subway station in order to surround herself with people and catch a breath. When she realized the man had followed her into the station, she jumped into a subway car. She hopped off at the first stop only to spy him coming after her like a horror-movie monster when she finally surfaced again.

Following failed attempts to hide in a department store and disguise herself, she finally lost her tail using a complex sequence of buses, subways, and taxis.

She went almost an hour without seeing him.

Relieved, she was about to enter a Korean Starbucks to look for a public phone when her would-be assassin's visage materialized in the reflective window.

Again she ran. Hard and fast and for what felt like forever. When she finally realized she was tiring and that it was just a matter of time until the killer caught up with her, she decided to try to turn the tide. As Janson was constantly telling her:

“Turn the hunter into the hunted, the predator into the prey.”

When she turned down what looked to be a quiet side road and spotted a massive glass-and-steel structure bleeding party­g
oer
s, she decided that was where she'd make her stand. She slipped the bouncer at the rope line a hundred dollars in American currency, checked her coat, and immediately lost herself in a horde of dancers.

As she searched over her shoulder, her body still pumping madly with adrenaline, she hoped like hell her pursuer had followed.

She wormed her way through the thick, sweaty crowds, watching for the killer while simultaneously trying to memorize the layout of the exotic four-level nightclub. Cher's “Life After Love” gave way to an unfamiliar Korean pop song before the deejay spun a remixed cut of “Lose Yourself.” As the song ended, a catchy techno beat came over the speakers and the mood of the entire nightclub transformed at once. Energy levels rose to the roof; the dancing became faster and far more intense. The Vengaboys' “We Like to Party” blasted from the speakers.

Less than a minute into the song, Kincaid finally spotted her armed stalker.

Only he won't have a gun anymore, she thought. When patrons entered the T-Lound nightclub, they had to pass through a metal detector. She might not be able to outrun him. But Jessica Kincaid prayed that, by ducking into the popular dance club, she'd at least managed to level the playing field.

S
IN
B
AE SLITHERED THROUGH
the crowd looking for the woman. He'd had to strip and stash his Daewoo DP-51 before he entered the club. The disassembled handgun lay buried in a shallow grave in a small patch of earth between two concrete buildings just across the street. If all went well in the club he'd retrieve it and move on to Itaewon to terminate Paul Janson before renewing his search for the senator's son.

Eliminating Janson's partner, Jessica Kincaid, had proven far trickier than he expected. She was fleet-footed and equipped with more stamina than any woman he had ever known. Not only had Consular Operations and Janson trained her well, but she possessed some physical attributes that made her an even more difficult target. Her eyes, for instance; she had the sight of a hawk.

Although he was no longer advantaged with the element of surprise, Sin Bae decided he wouldn't need it. This was hardly his first job. It was, however, the first time he'd been given an order to assassinate a pair of former Cons Ops agents. He'd previously killed members of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, as well as clandestine officers from the United States' Central Intelligence Agency. But never an agent, former or otherwise, of Cons Ops.

Sin Bae was mildly curious as to how Paul Janson and Jessica Kincaid had come to draw the ire of Consular Operations. But he would never learn the reason and he could live with that. He had orders to carry out, instructions as urgent as they were clear. Once Janson and Kincaid were eliminated and the elusive Gregory Wyckoff was dead, he'd contact his handler Ping in Shanghai and await his next assignment.

He moved up the stairs to the second floor and spotted her almost instantly. Curiously, she had cozied up to a middle-aged Korean gentleman at the bar. A few moments later she guided the man toward the center of the dance floor.

Had she not seen Sin Bae enter the nightclub? Or did she think that because he had to pass through a metal detector she had nothing to fear? If that was the case, her overconfidence—and her severe underestimation of Sin Bae—would ultimately be her undoing.

Alternating colored lights made it difficult to see through the crowd to the dance floor. Disorienting, but not debilitating. He could still get the job done with no one the wiser. But he'd need to be smart about it. There were simply too many bodies on the dance floor. It would take time for him to get close to her, and he did not want to risk her spotting him as he made his approach.

So he stood back and watched. Waited. Was this beautiful young woman actually seducing a paunchy, balding stranger almost old enough to be her father? From the way she danced with him, it certainly seemed so. A waitress walked over to the couple carrying a tray of test tube shots and Jessica Kincaid quickly downed two of them. To calm her nerves, perhaps.

Good, he thought. That meant she indeed suspected that the threat had passed. Sin Bae might possess the element of surprise after all.

He considered his options. Perhaps he would kill her on the street as soon as she left the bar. Or perhaps he could do it right there in the club. If she no longer thought there was a threat, maybe she would head to the restrooms. With the right approach, Sin Bae could easily get to her in one of the ladies' room stalls.

He was amused by her behavior, though somewhat surprised that she'd succumbed to a false sense of security simply because the metal detector downstairs had removed the handgun from the equation. Little did she know that Sin Bae's true weapon of choice remained on his person.

As Sin Bae tugged on the arms of his suit jacket and shot out the cuffs, a drunk man—a European tourist, no less—suddenly knocked into him, spilling an amber liquid down the front of his jacket and shirt before dropping and shattering his glass on the floor. Sin Bae was tempted to take a shard of that glass and slit the man's throat from ear to ear. But then, that would jeopardize his objective. Instead, he allowed the man to move on with a hard glare that left no question as to whether the man should come anywhere near him again.

When his gaze returned to the dance floor, he surveyed the crowd for Kincaid. He spotted the older Korean man she had been dancing with, the one with the round bald spot on the top of his head, but he appeared to be alone. And every bit as perplexed as Sin Bae.

Impossible.
He'd taken his eyes off the subject for merely a few seconds.

Sin Bae cursed inwardly, then started searching the faces of each young woman in the crowd. This Kincaid was wily. He knew from the time he'd spent tracking her that she could lose a professional pursuer as easily as most can tie a shoelace. And she didn't give up. Clearly, Miss Jessica Kincaid wasn't ready to die.

Movement suddenly drew Sin Bae's eyes toward the stairs leading back down to the first floor. He couldn't be sure but he thought he'd spotted the back of her head. He should know it by now, he mused; he'd been chasing after it all night.

He started toward the stairs, stoic and confident.

He
would
find her.

And he
would
kill her.

He
would
finish her, tonight.

W
ho the
hell
was able to dox me?”

From the couch, Janson stared at the girl across the modest living room, trying to keep his jaw from dropping.

“
You?
” he said. “
You're
Lord Wicked?”

The girl folded her arms across her flat chest. “Answer. My. Question.”

“I can't tell you that. But rest assured, it took an entire team.”

The girl picked up a remote control and muted the flat-screen television on the wall above her head.

“I'm sorry to hear that you can't reveal your sources,” she said. “Because this is a quid pro quo. You came to me for information? Well, I'm not going to tell you a damn thing unless you tell me who doxed me.”

Janson rose from the couch. “Look, I don't care what you do for a…living. I just need help, and you may be the only person in all of Seoul who can provide it.”

“Then tell me
who
doxed me.”

“That issue is closed, young lady.” He caught himself pointing a stern finger in her direction and quickly withdrew it. “Look, this isn't a game. I won't leave here until you tell me what I need to know.”

“What are you going to do?” she said. “Torture a thirteen-year-old girl?”

Janson maintained his calm. “I don't torture
anyone
.”

“No?” she said, her demeanor suddenly lightening. “Not even if you're paid well? Because I will give you
good
money if you bring me the heads of everyone who was involved in doxing me.”

Christ
. The girl looked completely serious. Janson wondered why she'd given up her identity to him without much persuasion if she was so hell-bent on keeping it secret.

He turned to the door. “This was a bad idea after all. I'm going to go pay your father a visit in Gangnam.”

“
No
,” she shouted. “Don't go see my dad. Just tell me what you want to know. And hurry, because my mother will be home within the hour.”

So that was it. Her father was her Achilles' heel. That was why she'd given in when he'd been standing in the hallway.

“All right,” he said. “I'm trying to locate a hacker who is somewhere in Seoul. I already have people watching his credit cards and his cell phone, but he's not using either. So the only way I might find him in time is if I know more about him, and the guy I'm looking for supposedly lived most of his life online.”

“Find him
in time
?” she said. “What does that mean?”

Janson had wanted to avoid mentioning the police, but the clock was ticking. And if he was to give this girl—this “Lord Wicked”—the best chance of helping him locate Gregory Wyckoff, he'd need to be entirely honest with her.

“Have you heard about the murder at the Sophia Guesthouse? It happened less than seventy-two hours ago.”

“Of course,” she said. “It's been all over the news. I've followed every update online.”

Janson frowned. “You don't get out much, do you, kid?”

The girl shook her head. “There's nothing out there for me,” she said softly.

Her words briefly froze him. He considered asking her about her business, where she was stashing her cash. Was she sure she was safe? But he had more pressing matters at the moment.

“The suspect's name is Gregory Wyckoff,” he said, “and he's nineteen years old. He's the son of a sitting US senator, and he's on the run. He may be innocent, and the senator's hired me to find him and try to get to the bottom of what happened the other night.”

The girl nodded. “You want me to reverse dox him? That will take time.”

“I've already had someone reverse dox him.”

“The same guy who doxed
me
?”

Janson ignored the question. “His online identity is Draco-underscore-Malfoy-ninety-five.”

He hoped for a flash of recognition, but her expression didn't change.

“OK, I'll help you,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“But you'll have to leave me with a way to contact you, because this will take a little while and if you're still here when my mother gets home, she'll call the police and have you arrested.”

“I understand.”

As Janson wrote down his number, he thought again about Jessie, who still hadn't returned his call. Because time was of the essence (and because he doubted their involvement), he'd decided to go at State and Cons Ops head-on. By sending Kincaid straight to the US embassy, he was essentially shaking the tree to see whether anything fell out. He'd assumed that if Cons Ops
was
involved, they'd telegraph their moves and he'd see them coming from a mile away. Now he worried he may have made a lethal mistake—a mistake for which he knew he could never forgive himself.

“Here,” he said, handing the girl his number. “How long do you anticipate this taking?”

“I'll have something for you within half an hour.”

Janson turned to exit the apartment.

“I've only let my guard down
once
in the past twelve months,” she said to his back. “To some guy I've been chatting with. He told me he lived in the UK, but I traced him back to the States.”

Janson looked back at her. “And?”

“Tell me something. This douchebag who doxed me, does he happen to live in New Jersey and drive a beat-up old Honda?”