The Jason Directive

  “Agnes Cameron, on the eighth floor,” the doorman told them, in what Janson recognized as an Albanian accent. His cheeks were lightly flecked with acne, and his visored hat sat high on his wavy brown hair. He went inside and consulted with the guard. “Repair guys from the phone company. Mrs. Cameron’s apartment.”

  They followed him into the elegant lobby, which was trimmed with egg-and-dart molding and tiled with black and white marble in a harlequinade pattern.

  “How can I help you?” The second doorman, a heavyset man also of Albanian origin, had been sitting on a round cushioned stool and talking to the guard. Now he sprang to his feet. He was evidently senior to the other doorman and wanted it to be clear that he would be making the decisions.

  For a few moments, he silently scrutinized the two, frowning. Then he lifted an antique Bakelite internal phone and pressed a few digits.

  Janson looked at Kincaid: Mrs. Cameron was supposed to be out of the country. She shrugged, in a tiny motion.

  “Repairmen from Verizon,” he said. “Verizon. To fix a phone line. Why? I don’t know why.”

  He put his hand over the mouth of the phone and turned to the two visitors. “Mrs. Cameron’s housekeeper says why don’t you come back when Mrs. Cameron’s in town. Be another week.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes theatrically.

  “We’re out of here,” Paul Janson said, tight-lipped. “A favor: when you see Mrs. Cameron, tell her it’ll be a few months before we’ll be able to schedule another appointment to fix the DSL.”

  “A few months?”

  “Four months is about what we’re looking at,” Janson replied with implacable professional calm. “Could be less, could be more. The backlog is incredible. We’re trying to get to everybody as fast as we can. But when an appointment is canceled, you go to the end of the line. The message we got was, she wanted to have the problem dealt with before she got back to town. My supervisor got three or four calls about her problem. Bumped her up as a special favor. Now you’re saying forget it. Fine with me, but just be sure to tell Mrs. Cameron that. If somebody’s getting blamed, it isn’t going to be me.”

  Weariness and wounded pride competed in the voice of the beleaguered phone repairman; this was someone who worked for an immense and immensely resented bureaucracy and was accustomed to being blamed personally for the failings of the system—accustomed to it, but not reconciled to it.

  If somebody’s getting blamed: the senior doorman flinched a little. The situation called for blame, did it? Such a situation was best avoided. Now, speaking into the phone, he said confidingly, “You know what? I think you’d better let these guys do their job.”

  Then he jerked his head in the direction of the elevator bank. “Down the hall and left,” he said. “Eighth floor. The housekeeper will let you in.”

  “You’re sure? Because I’ve had a very long day, wouldn’t mind knocking off early.”

  “Just go up to the eighth floor, she’ll let you right in,” the doorman repeated, and beneath the impassive manner was the faintest hint of pleading.

  Janson and Kincaid walked down the polished floor to the elevators. Though the ancient accordion gate was intact, the cab they entered was no longer manned. Nor was there a security camera inside: with two doormen and a security guard in the lobby, the co-op board undoubtedly had rejected the additional security measure as intrusive overkill, the sort of showy technology that one would expect in an apartment building put up by Mr. Trump. A couple should be able to exchange a chaste peck in the elevator without worrying about gawking spectators.

  They pressed the button to the eighth floor; would it light? It would not. There was a keyhole next to the button, and Janson had to massage it with two thin implements for twenty seconds before he was able to rotate it and activate the button. They waited impatiently as the small cab rose and then slowly shuddered to a halt. Given the munificence of the building’s tenants, the unrenovated nature of the elevators amounted to something of an affectation.

  Finally, the doors parted, directly onto the apartment’s foyer.

  Where was Márta Lang? Had she heard the elevator door opening and closing? Janson and Kincaid stepped quietly into the hallway, and listened for a moment.

  A clink of china, but distant.

  To the left, at the end of the darkened hallway, a curving staircase led to the floor below. To the right was another doorway; it appeared that it led to a bedroom, or perhaps several. The main floor seemed to be the one beneath them. Lang had to be there. They scanned the area for fish-eye lenses, for anything that might suggest surveillance equipment. There was none.

  “OK,” Janson murmured. “Now we go by the book.”

  “Whose book?”

  “Mine.”

  “Got it.”

  Another faint sound of china: a cup clinking against a saucer. Janson peered carefully down the staircase. There was nobody visible, and he was grateful that the stairs were of worn marble: no squeaky floorboard would serve as an inadvertent alarm system.

  Janson signaled Jessie: remain behind. Then he swiftly descended the stairs, keeping his back against the curving wall. In his hands was a small pistol.

  Ahead of him: an enormous room, with thick curtains drawn shut. To his left: another room, a sort of double parlor. The walls were of white painted wood, intricately paneled; paintings and engravings of no particular distinction hung at geometrically precise intervals. The furnishings had the look of a New York pied-à-terre designed, long-distance, for a Tokyo businessman: elegant and expensive, yet devoid of individuality.

  In a flash, Janson’s mind reduced his surroundings to an arrangement of portals and planes: one representing both exposure and opportunity, the other the prospect of safety and concealment.

  Wall to wall, surface to surface, Janson progressed through the double parlor. The floor was a polished parquet, much of which was covered with large Aubusson rugs in subdued colors. The rug did not, however, prevent the soft creak of a plank underfoot as he reached the entrance to the adjoining parlor. Suddenly, his nerves crackled as if receiving a jolt of electricity. For there, in front of him, was a housekeeper in a cotton uniform of pale blue.

  She turned toward him, holding an old-fashioned feather duster out in front of her, frozen, and her round face was contorted into a terrible grin—a rictus of fear?

  “Paul, watch yourself!” It was Jessie’s voice. He had not heard her descend, but she was a few feet behind him.

  Suddenly the housekeeper’s chest erupted in a spray of scarlet and she toppled forward onto the carpet, the sound muffled by the soft woven fabric.

  Janson whirled around and saw the silenced gun in Jessie’s hand, a wisp of cordite seeping from its perforated cylinder.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Janson breathed, gripped with horror. “Do you realize what you just did?”

  “Do you?” Jessica strode over to the body and, with a foot, nudged the feather duster that remained in the housekeeper’s outstretched hand.

  It was not a device used for cleaning house, save in the bloodiest of senses: artfully concealed beneath the fan of brown feathers was a high-powered SIG Sauer, still affixed to the dead woman’s hand by an elastic strap.

  Jessie had been right to shoot. The safety was off on the powerful automatic handgun, a bullet chambered. He had been a split second from death.

  Márta Lang was not alone. And she had not been unguarded.

  Was it possible she was still unaware of their presence? At the end of the second parlor was another doorway with an ordinary swing door, evidently opening onto the formal dining room.

  There was another sound of movement, coming from within.

  Janson lurched to the wall to the left of the door frame and spun around, holding his Beretta chest high, preparing to squeeze the trigger or deliver a blow, as was required. A burly man holding a gun burst through, apparently having been sent to investigate. Janson smashed the butt of his Beretta on the back of the man’s head. He went limp a
nd Jessie caught him as he went down, gentling him to the carpet silently.

  Janson stood still for a moment, composing himself and listening intently; the sudden violence had drained him, and he could not afford to be anything less than focused.

  Suddenly, there was a series of loud blasts, and the swinging door was perforated by several magnumforce bullets, spraying splinters of wood and paint. Were they fired by Márta Lang herself? Somehow he suspected that they were. Janson looked at Kincaid, verifying that she, like him, was out of the line of fire, safely to the side of the doorway.

  There was a beat of silence, and then the sound of quiet footfalls: Janson instantly knew what Márta Lang—or whoever it was—was doing, and what he had to do. She was going to peer through the bore holes her gun had drilled in the wooden door, assess the damage. She had established a line of fire: surely nobody would remain standing where bullets had just flown.

  Timing would be everything, and Janson had very little to go by. Now! With all his strength, Janson reared up and threw himself, shoulder first, against the swinging door. It would be his weapon—a battering ram. The door moved too easily at first, and then, with a thud, it connected, sending the person on the other side of it sprawling.

  It was indeed Márta Lang he saw as the door swung all the way open. The door had slammed into her, knocking her against a Hepplewhite-style dining-room table. The heavy automatic weapon in her hands had been sent flying, too, clattering to the table just a few inches beyond her reach.

  With catlike agility, Lang scrambled to her feet, rounded the table, and reached for the black gleaming weapon.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Jessica said.

  Márta Lang glanced up to see Jessica in a perfect Weaver stance, holding her pistol with both hands. Her shooting stance said that she would not miss. Her face said that she would not hesitate.

  Breathing hard, Lang said nothing and did nothing for a long moment, as if torn by indecision. At last, she stood up straight, verifying the position of her weapon with a sidelong glance. “You’re no fun,” she said. The lower part of her face was reddened from where the door had slammed into her. “Don’t you want to even up the odds a little? Make the game interesting?”

  Janson advanced toward her, and at the moment when his body was interposed between Márta Lang and Kincaid, Lang’s hand darted out to grab back her weapon. Janson anticipated the move, and he immediately wrenched it from her hands. “A Suomi burp gun. Impressive. You have a license for this toy?”

  “You’ve broken into my house,” she said. “Caused grievous bodily injury to my staff. I’d call it selfdefense.”

  Márta Lang ran her fingers through her perfectly coifed white hair, and Janson tensed for a surprise, but her hands returned empty. There was something different about her; her speech was flatter, her affect more casual. What did he really know about this woman?

  “Don’t waste our time and we’ll try not to waste yours,” Janson said, pressing on. “You see, we already know the truth about Peter Novak. There’s no use in trying to hold out. He’s a dead man. It’s over, dammit!”

  “You poor muscle-bound idiot,” Márta Lang said. “You think you’ve got everything figured out. But you thought that before, didn’t you? Doesn’t that make you wonder?”

  “Give him up, Márta,” Janson said with gritted teeth. “It’s your only chance. They’ve pulled the plug on him. An executive directive from the President of the United States himself.”

  The white-haired woman’s contempt was magnificent. “Peter Novak is more powerful than he is. The U.S. president is only the leader of the free world.” She paused to let it sink in. “Getting the big picture, or are you waiting for it to come out on video?”

  “You’re deluded. He’s somehow brought you into his own madness. And if you can’t break free, you’re lost.”

  “Tough talk from a goddamn organization man. Look into my eyes, Janson—I want to see if you even believe what you’re saying. Probably you do, worse for you. Hey, like the fat lady sings, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. You think you’re some kind of hero, don’t you? I feel sorry for you, you know. There’s no freedom for people like you. Somebody is always manipulating you, and if it’s not me, it’ll just be someone else, someone a little less imaginative.” She turned to Jessica. “It’s true. Your boyfriend here is like a piano. He’s just a piece of furniture until someone plays him. And someone’s always playing him.” Something between a grin and a grimace flashed on her face. “Has it never struck you that he’s been three steps ahead of you all along? You’re so wonderfully predictable—I suppose that’s what you call character. He knows just what makes you tick, just what you’re capable of doing, and just what you’ll decide to do. For all your derring-do in the Stone Palace, he was playing with you like a kid with a goddamn action figure. We had remote surveillance rigged up there, naturally. Kept tabs on everything you did, every move. We knew every element of your plan and we’d prepared contingencies for every anticipated variant. Of course Higgins—oh, that was the fellow you sprang—was going to insist on saving the American girl. And of course you were going to give up your seat to the lady. What a perfect gentleman you are. Perfectly predictable. The craft was wired to blow by remote, needless to say. Peter Novak was practically waving a baton—he could have been conducting the whole goddamn operation. You see, Janson, he made you. You didn’t make him. He was calling the shots before, and he’s calling the shots now. And he always will.”

  “Permission to blow the bitch away, sir?” Jessica asked, raising her left hand like an eager cadet.

  “Ask again later,” Janson said. “You get only so many chances in this world, Márta Lang. Is that your name, by the way?”

  “What’s in a name?” she said, blasé. “By the time he gets done with you, you’ll think it’s your name. Now here’s a question for you: do you think that if the hunt goes on long enough, the fox starts to imagine it’s chasing the hounds?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “It’s Peter Novak’s world. You’re just living in it.” She flashed a strangely ethereal smile. When Janson had met her in Chicago, she seemed the very picture of a highly educated foreigner. Her accent was now decidedly American; she could have come from Darien.

  “There is no Peter Novak,” Jessie said.

  “Remember, dear, what they say about the Devil—that his greatest trick was persuading people he didn’t exist. Believe what you like.”

  A memory pricked at Janson. He looked at Márta Lang intently, alert to any flicker of weakness. “Alan Demarest—where is he?”

  “Here. There. Everywhere. You should call him Peter Novak, though. It’s rude not to.”

  “Where, goddammit!”

  “Not telling,” she said lightly.

  “What does he have over you?” Janson exploded.

  “Sad to say, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “He owns you somehow.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she replied witheringly. “Peter Novak owns the future.”

  Janson stared. “If you know where he is, then, God help me, I will extract the information from you. Believe this: after a few hours on a Versed-scopolamine drip, you won’t know the difference between your thoughts and your speech. Whatever comes into your head will come out of your mouth. If it’s in your head, we’ll extract it. We’ll extract a lot of garbage, too. I’d rather you came clean without chemical assistance. But one way or another, you will tell us what we want to know.”

  “You’re so full of it,” she said, and turned to Jessica. “Hey, back me up here. Can’t I get a little feminine solidarity on this one? Haven’t you heard—sisterhood is powerful.” Then she leaned forward, putting her face only inches from his. “Paul, I’m really sorry about your friends getting blown sky-high off Anura.” She fluttered her fingers and, in a voice that was pure vinegar, added, “I know you were all broken up about your Greek butt-boy.” She lo
osed a short giggle. “What can I say? Shit happens.”

  Janson felt a vein in his forehead throb painfully; he knew his face was mottled with rage. He imagined smashing her face, imagined fracturing her facial bones, a spear hand driving the bones of her nose into her brain. Just as swiftly, he felt the fog of fury recede. He recognized that the point of her needling was to get him to lose control. “I’m not presenting you with three choices,” he said. “Only two. And if you don’t decide, I’ll decide for you.”

  “Is this going to take long?” she said.

  Janson grew aware of choral music in the background. Hildegard von Bingen. The hairs on Janson’s neck stood erect. “‘The Canticles of Ecstasy,’” he said. “The long shadow of Alan Demarest.”

  “Huh? I turned him on to that,” she said, shrugging. “Back when we were growing up.”

  Janson stared at her, seeing her as if for the first time. Suddenly, a series of small nagging details snapped into place. The movement of her head, her sudden, bewildering shifts of affect and tone, her age, even certain lines and locutions.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’re—”

  “His twin sister. Told you sisterhood was powerful.” She started to massage the loose skin beneath her left collarbone. “The fabulous Demarest twins. Double trouble. Terrorized fucking Fairfield growing up. The Mobius morons never even knew that Alan brought me into the picture.” As she spoke, her circular movements became deeper, more insistent, seemingly responding to an itch deep beneath the skin. “So if you think I’m going to ‘give him up,’ as you so artfully put it, you’d better think again.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Janson said.

  “What is she doing?” Jessica asked in a low voice.

  “We always have a choice.” Lang’s movements grew smaller, more focused; with her fingers she started to dig at something to the side of her clavicle. “Ah,” she said. “That’s it. That’s it. Oh, that feels so much better … .”