Текст книги "Robert Ludlum's The Janson Command"

Автор книги: Robert Ludlum

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TWO

221 West 46th Street

New York City

Paul Janson descended a steep flight of stairs to Sofia’s Club Cache in the basement of the Hotel Edison. The curly-haired brunette knockout who took his fifteen-dollar cover charge with the dazzling smile she reserved for new customers saw him as he intended to be seen: an out-of-town businessman hoping that Vince Giordano and his famous hot-jazz Nighthawks would liven up a lonely Monday evening. His navy suit, artfully cut to conceal his powerful frame, looked like a classic soft-shoulder Brooks Brothers sack suit, neither dapper nor expensive. His tailor had seen to that by eliminating bespoke sleeve buttons and bound buttonholes. The creases in Janson’s brow marked a man somewhere past his thirties, and he could have acquired the faint lines of scar tissue playing college sports.

Janson took his change, returned an unmemorable smile, and remarked, like half the people who came down the stairs, “The joint is jumpin’.”

Across the wide, deep low-ceilinged room the tuxedo-clad eleven-piece band of saxophones, clarinets, trumpets, trombone, banjo, piano, drums, and an aluminum double bass was storming through “Shake That Thing.” A hundred people ate and drank at the tables. A dozen couples danced to the music, many with great skill. The dancers older than thirty wore dresses and suits befitting the hot-jazz era. The younger favored T-shirts and cargo pants.

One of the younger, an attractive woman with strong, regular features, high cheekbones, full lips, and spiky brown “bed hair,” was dancing a high-speed 1920s one-step with the intensity and precision of a laser cutting machine. Janson concealed an appreciative smile. Jessica Kincaid demanded of herself, “Go fast till it hurts, then put on some speed and do it better.”

Kincaid shot Janson a glance that mingled fascination and envy. Paul Janson was master of the nondescript, and it drove her crazy. She worked hard at being a chameleon. With adjustments of clothing, hair, jewelry, and makeup she could make herself look twenty-five or thirty-five and pass for a Brooklyn video artist or a good ol’ girl juke-joint bartender or a buttoned-down banker. But she could never look nondescript, and when she tried Janson laughed that “nondescript” and “interesting” did not fit the same sentence.

Paul Janson was just there. Except when he was not there. Janson could hide in plain sight. If he chose to, Janson could fill a room, but he was more likely to enter without anyone noticing—as he had just now—and leave the same way. He even had a trick of shifting his shoulders to make his height look average. She glanced at him again. He returned it this time and drifted toward the stairs.

“Gotta go,” she told her dance instructor. Duty called.

The Town Car looked identical to a thousand black livery cabs in Midtown. But the kid behind the wheel had driven armored security vehicles for tanker convoys in Iraq and the interior lights did not go on when Kincaid opened the door.

“Where we going?” she asked the sturdy shape of Janson in the shadows.

“First stop: Houston, Texas. American Synergy Corporation’s HQ.”

Biggest oil company in the country. Snapped up the richest leases after BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster. “Then?”

“West Africa is my guess. If we take the job. Home if we don’t. We probably won’t.”

“Why go at all?”

“ASC’s president of global security is an old friend.”

Kincaid nodded in the dark. Janson had lots of them, and when old friends called he ran to them. He passed her a thick towel. “Don’t catch cold.” Soaking wet from dancing a heart-pounding two beats to a second, she was shivering in the AC.

“Y’all telling me I smell?” While a fluent student of several languages and possessing an invaluable gift for mimicking accents, Jessica Kincaid had not entirely erased from her own voice the Kentucky hill twang she had grown up with, particularly when she was alone with Janson.

“That’s why we have a shower on the plane.”

The car caught the green lights up Madison Avenue, crossed over to the Major Deegan, and swung onto the Hutchinson River Parkway. Late-night suburban traffic was light. Forty minutes after leaving the Edison, they pulled into Westchester Airport, bypassed the passenger terminal, and continued on to a fenced-off section with a chain-link gate. A voice on a security speakerphone asked who they were.

“Tail number eight-two-two-Romeo-Echo,” the driver answered, and drove through when the electric gate slid open. An attendant opened a second gate that led to the runways, a vast expanse of darkness dotted with blue, yellow, and green lights marking taxiways and runway edges and thresholds. The car parked beside a silver Embraer Legacy 650 jet with two enormous Rolls-Royce AE 3007 engines in the tail. The pilots were completing their checklists. Janson and Kincaid climbed aboard, retracted the self-contained deployable entry steps that permitted fast exits independent of airfield facilities, and locked the door.

The long-haul executive jet built to carry fourteen passengers had been made extremely comfortable for two. Embraer had reconfigured it to Janson’s specs, outfitting it to deliver two or three operators well rested and fed, suited up, and thoroughly informed for any kind of work anywhere in the world. The galley directly behind the cockpit had been upgraded, and the lavatory and the rearmost of the three seating areas had been converted to a dressing room and full bath. The forward seating areas had been turned into a study and dining room. The middle section had fold-down beds for transocean runs.

The plane had climbed to forty-one thousand feet and their pilot was radioing, “New York center, Embraer two-two-Romeo level at four-one-zero,” when Kincaid came out of the shower wrapped in a terry-cloth robe. Janson looked up from his green leather easy chair, where he was studying a dossier labeled: “ASC—American Synergy Corporation.” A laptop was open on the table beside him and he had a glass of water close at hand. An identical dossier and laptop were waiting beside Kincaid’s red chair along with water and a stack of lemon-lime Camelbak Elixir electrolyte tablets.

Janson peered over the wire-rimmed reading glasses that Kincaid called his innocent old guy specs and said, “If we could bottle the aroma of a woman in a shower we would be rich.”

“Folks I know would think we’re rich already.” She touched a fingerprint reader to unlock an overhead luggage bin, opened a hidden interior cabinet, and took down her Knight’s M110 semiautomatic sniper rifle. The weapon was spotless, but she fieldstripped it anyway, laying the parts on the fold-down galley table, cleaned and oiled each, checked for wear, and reassembled them. Janson likened her ritual to an already clean cat grooming itself into a hunting trance.

Kincaid would have preferred, before she locked the weapon up again, to open the accessories case and put her day and night scopes, bipod, and laser sight through the same close inspection. But the dossier was still sitting there beside her chair demanding to be read.

“Okay if I open one of your shirts?”

“Of course,” he answered without looking up.

From a built-in chest of drawers she took a freshly ironed pale blue Burberry dress shirt, carefully removed the laundry’s cardboard stiffener, and put the shirt back. She settled in her leather chair, covered her ears with noise-canceling headphones to help her concentrate, and opened the dossier on the American Synergy Corporation. She held the cardboard at the top of the first page and began sliding it down the page, covering each line of text as she read it. If she didn’t cover each line after she read it, she would go back and read over and over fearing she must have made a mistake.

“Not severely dyslexic,” she had explained when she first told Janson. “Just dyslexic. They didn’t call it that back in Red Creek. They all thought I was a little slow. Didn’t bother me much,” she added quickly. “I could outshoot the boys and fix any vehicle in my daddy’s gas station.”

She had taught herself the cardboard trick while struggling through college equivalency courses to join the FBI—her first step up the ladder to Cons Ops.

She read the ASC report cover to cover. Whenever she double-checked a detail on her laptop, she placed the cursor at the bottom of the screen and scrolled with the down arrow, concealing what she had already read. She knew she was getting too tired to continue when a letter bflopped upside down and became a p.

At that point she loaded in a promotional Blu-ray video titled American Synergy Corporation—New Energy for a New Tomorrow.

Paul had reclined his chair and fallen asleep. She pressed a button that laid her own chair flat and listened to Kingsman Helms, the president of ASC’s Petroleum Division, give a speech to shareholders. The handsome smooth talker reminded her of evangelical preachers down home.

“It isn’t a matter of telling our story better. We have to create a better story. Long-term growth means long-term survival. Oil is one type of energy we develop, along with wind, solar, biomass, nuclear, and coal. Our mission is to supply secure, safe, environmentally sound, cheapenergy—not just today, but twenty years down the road.

“A lot has gone wrong, lately.” Helms paused to look straight into the camera with an expression that said that everyone knew that he meant Wall Street screwups, government meddling, and oil spills by mismanaged competitors. “Americans are counting on us more than ever. ASC will not let them down, because at ASC we never forget that leadership is not about now, not about today. Leadership is about then, about the future, about tomorrow.”

CatsPaw researchers had attached to the DVD a voiced-over addendum: “Of wind, solar, biomass, nuclear, and coal, the global corporation has steered clear of biomass, which a secret company memo rated ‘a huge joke perpetrated on the Congress by farm states,’ invested just enough to appear green in multiple solar-tech startups and wind turbine manufacturers, and has recently amassed huge holdings in Appalachian coal companies.” Kincaid’s hackles rose; that meant strip mining and blasting the tops off mountains. The researchers had highlighted ASC’s biggest challenge: direct competition for access to new “ground resources” from the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. “In plain language, as big and powerful a global as it is, ASC is being squeezed overseas by China. To remain on top ‘twenty years down the road’ ASC will have to conduct business ever more ruthlessly.”

* * *

THE EMBRAER LANDED at Houston’s Hobby Airport at three in the morning. Janson’s pilots taxied to the Million Air private aviation terminal and woke their bosses for breakfast at six, cooked by the senior man. “My biggest fear, Mike,” said Janson, knotting a club tie with a small repeating pattern, “is one of these days you’ll quit flying and open a restaurant.”

“Car in two minutes,” said Kincaid, exiting the dressing room in a seersucker skirt and jacket. Her bed hair was now a sleek junior-executive bob that exposed her ears and high brow. Her manner was brisk.

The Million Air car delivered them to the Hilton Americas-Houston hotel. They walked through the marble rotunda, crossed the lobby, and joined crowds of businesspeople hurrying from breakfast to the adjoining Brown Convention Center. But when they emerged from the connector corridor Janson and Kincaid skirted the registration desks and went outside for a taxi.

They found American Synergy Corporation headquartered in a round thirty-story building set back from the Sam Houston Tollway like an enormous bronze silo. Surveillance cameras enfiladed the driveway, the front entrance, and the lobby. The lobby guards operating the metal detectors wore sidearms. Those manning the reception desk carried theirs concealed.

“Paul Janson and Jessica Kincaid to see Douglas Case.”

Printed visitor badges were waiting for them.

They rode a private elevator to the executive offices on the twenty-ninth floor. The foyer overlooked low-lying smog, which a hot sun was turning orange. The near-silent hum of a belt-driven electric power chair was punctuated by a glad shout of, “Paul!”

Janson intercepted the custom-built six-wheel vehicle and thrust out his hand. “Hello, Doug. How are you doing?”

“Great. Great. Terrific.”

They clasped hands and searched each other’s faces for a long moment. Two well-dressed white guys nearing middle age, thought Jessica Kincaid. Doug Case looked as rugged as Paul, clean shaven, with an expensive version of a military buzz cut, a four-thousand-dollar suit, a crisp white shirt, and a shimmering yellow necktie.

“Thanks for coming so fast.”

“Our pleasure. This is my associate Jessica Kincaid.”

Doug Case’s hand had the flexible power of laminated Kevlar. He inspected her with a piercing gaze, then called over his shoulder to Janson, “What does she know?”

“About us?” Janson asked with a significant glance at the empty but still-public space. “Special Forces. You got shot and I didn’t.”

“What about you, Jessica? Where’ve you been?”

“Where she’s been is not your business,” Janson answered for her, in a tone both friendly and final.

Case said, “Did you know, Jessica, that my former, your present, ‘associate’ was once know by his fellow covert field officers as ‘The Machine’?”

“That is a lame probe,” Kincaid retorted. Taking a cue from Janson, she said it with a smile.

“The Machine was the best of the best. You’ve heard that?”

Janson said, “Drop it, Doug. Off-limits.”

“Anyhow,” Doug said, “we’ve all moved on, haven’t we. These days my derring-do exploits are more along the lines of compromised SCADA systems.”

He looked challengingly at Kincaid, who kept her smile in place. “Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition is increasingly vulnerable to cybersecurity incidents as corporations switch from secure private networks to Internet-based networks to save costs.”

“But,” Janson said, “SCADA is not why you asked us down here, Doug.”

“Right about that. Come to my office.”

They followed Doug Case’s wheelchair down a wide hall lined with closed doors.

“How was your flight?” he asked over his shoulder.

“On time.”

In Doug Case’s front office an elegantly dressed middle-aged woman he introduced as Kate presided over a pair of assistants with polished Junior League smiles. His private office faced south. “You can see the Gulf of Mexico on a clear day.”

“But at this moment,” Janson said, “you would prefer to see the Gulf of Guinea.”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“What shape is ASC in?”

“Terrific shape. Our safety standards are the highest. We’re don’t screw up in the field and we’re tops at controlling costs so we pull more profit out of a barrel of oil than anybody. Plus, American Synergy kept its head when everyone else was going nuts for alternatives and sinking dry wells.”

“But you didn’t sink that many wet ones, either, and if there is anywhere in the world right now where ASC can boost its dwindling oil reserves it’s West Africa. Cullen hit it big off the Ivory Coast and you’re probably hoping for the same, before the Chinese snap it up. So your problem is in the Gulf of Guinea.”

“You’ve done your homework, Paul. Per usual. But not for this assignment. It has nothing to do with oil reserves.”

“What is your problem?”

“You may have heard that we lost an offshore service vessel last week.”

“I saw a report that an OSV sank with all hands in the Gulf of Guinea. I was not aware it belonged to American Synergy. It was registered to a Dutch firm.”

“We’ve since learned that the boat was attacked by Free Foree Movement insurgents.”

“Why?”

“They murdered the crew.”

“Why?”

“Who the hell knows? The problem is, the murdering lunatics snatched one of our people. We’ve got to rescue him. That’s where you come in.”

“That will be a tall order if the Free Forees took your man to their base on Pico Clarence,” said Janson.

“Pico Clarence is exactly where they have him, high on that mountain, deep in the interior.”

“Getting back to my questions, why?…  FFM insurgents murdering your boat crew doesn’t make sense. FFM is winning its war. ‘President for Life’ Iboga is roundly hated.”

“Eating the testicles and brains of your political rivals tends to piss people off,” Case agreed. “Even in Africa.”

“Iboga is losing,” said Janson. “He’s about to be toppled.”

President for Life Iboga had wrecked the economy of Isle de Foree, which had broken away from Equatorial Guinea, backed by the Nigerian military. Iboga, opposition leader in Isle de Foree’s parliament and former fighter in the Angolan wars, seized power in a coup. Renaming himself Iboga after the rain-forest hallucinogen, the dictator had handed the coffee and cocoa plantations to his corrupt friends and let the island nation’s small, antiquated oil infrastructure go to hell.

“As I understand it, the rebels are buying munitions from Angolan and South African gunrunners. They’ve already cleared the sky around Pico Clarence of Iboga’s helicopters. And they just broke their leader out of Black Sand Prison, which is another reason why killing your people doesn’t make sense. Ferdinand Poe is a beacon of democratic hope. Why would Ferdinand Poe’s fighters endanger his righteous rebellion by slaughtering innocents? He can’t afford to outrage nations he needs to recognize his new government as legitimate.”

“Good question,” admitted Case. “But I repeat, who knows? Fog of war? A signals screwup? Revenge? It’s been a long, bitter fight with plenty of brutality on both sides.”

“Have they demanded ransom?” asked Jessica Kincaid.

“No. Our guy is a doctor. Looks like they wanted a doctor for Ferdinand Poe. You can imagine what the Black Sand jailors did to him.”

“But if the boat sank,” said Kincaid, “and the crew was murdered and the rebels didn’t ask for ransom, how did you learn that FFM took one of your people?”

“Guess,” said Douglas Case.

“Guess?” she said, shooting Janson a who-is-this-jerk? look.

Janson, already aware that Jessica and Doug had formed an instant dislike for each other, answered soothingly, “Since ASC holds positions in several Gulf of Guinea Joint Development zones, I would imagine that Doug takes time off from his SCADA exploits to maintain contact with African arms dealers to keep abreast of events in the insurgent camp. Correct, Doug?”

Douglas Case winked. “Score another for The Machine.” He turned to Kincaid and said, “The guys supplying FFM’s artillery reasoned that I’d be interested in what was happening on Pico Clarence.”

“Why don’t you hire the gunrunners to rescue the doctor?”

Case laughed and winked again at Janson. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

“What?” snapped Kincaid.

“They’re gunrunners. They sneak stuff in; they don’t sneak it out. Besides, they won’t do anything to disrupt the next sale. If FFM is winning like Paul thinks, the gunrunners are going to tread very lightly, hoping to move up the food chain from runners to dealers by selling more expensive weapons to their victorious friends in the new government.”

A cell phone buzzed. Case snatched it from a molded dock among the buttons and controls that studded his chair’s armrest. “I said no calls.… Right, thank you.” He hung up and said, “You’re about to meet Kingsman Helms, president of ASC’s Petroleum Division.”

“We saw the video,” said Kincaid.

Case grimaced. “Corporate arrogance embodied,” he said, and mimicked Helms’s speech, “ ‘It isn’t a matter of telling our story better. We have to create a better story.’ How about this for a story: Big oil and coal have squelched production of American natural gas for twenty years. For some reason the shareholders think the sun rises and sets on the son of a bitch.”

“You seem conflicted about your employer.” Janson smiled.

“Helms is top snake in Buddha’s nest of vipers.”

“Who,” Jessica Kincaid asked, “is Buddha?”

“That’s what we call the Old Man.”

“By ‘the Old Man’ you mean American Synergy’s CEO, Bruce Danforth?”

“Correct. Kingsman Helms is one of four men and two women who would eviscerate their own mothers if that’s what it took to replace Buddha as American Synergy’s CEO.”

“Are you another of those men?” asked Kincaid.

Case returned a cold smile. “Security is not on that career track.”

“Security,” Kincaid shot back, “just phoned you a heads-up that Helms is coming. You’re keeping tabs on the competition.”

“Security chiefs—and security consultants—are servants, Jessica. Which is something you’ll come to understand if you stay in our business. We protect; we don’t command.”

The door flew open. The tall, blond thirty-eight-year-old Kingsman Helms barged in without knocking. “Doug, I understand you’ve called in the Marines.”

Helms’s piercing blue eyes lingered on Kincaid. “Hello, Marines.” Then he bore down on Paul Janson. “Kingsman Helms,” he said, thrusting his hand out. “Who are you?”

Kincaid hid a smile as she watched Janson step into the space Helms was heading for, blocking his rush, forcing him to pull up short. “Paul Janson. CatsPaw Associates.”

“Which cat’s paw would that be? Keats’s ‘quick cat’s paws’ that kill the fat straggler? Or the cat’s paw the pope’s monkey used to pull his nuts out of the fire? Or our modern pry?”

“We’re a full-service outfit.”

Helms grinned appreciatively. “Nice.”

“This is my partner Jessica Kincaid.”

“Nice to meet you, Jessica.” Helms smiled, then turned on Janson in a tone all business. “So who are you two with, Janson?”

“CatsPaw Associates is independent.”

“Independent is small.”

“The clients we accept trust us to be nimble.”

“I question,” Helms replied coolly, “whether a small outfit can field the resources to do the job.”

Douglas Case surprised Janson by interrupting, curtly: “Back off, Kingsman. This is my call.”

Helms ignored him. “I cannot imagine the reasoning behind paying two individuals—one middle-aged, the other a woman, no offense to either of you—to execute the sort of military operation required to rescue our employee.”

Douglas Case spun his wheelchair in a half circle to face Kingsman Helms. Then Case stabbed a button in the armrest that raised his seat hydraulically while the base extended wheeled outriggers to balance the higher center of gravity. Eye to eye with the executive, Case spoke in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Imagine this: Our doctor is trapped in a war zone in the middle of a remote island by a bloodthirsty rebel army surrounded by a vicious dictator’s army. The kind of ‘resources’ you’re spouting civilian fantasies about would blow it into a three-way war and get the doctor killed in the process.”

“I am merely—”

Case cut him off, again. “Isle de Foree is two hundred and fifty fucking miles offshore and none of the jumping-off points on the African coast are all that amenable to corporate bullshit. Corporate won’t save our guy. Quick and light will. He’s in a hell of a jam, and I don’t know anyone better qualified to get him out of it than Paul Janson. I’ll stake my job on it.”

“That’s quite an endorsement,” said Helms. “It sounds like you got the job, Paul. What’s this costing us?”

“Nothing until we produce your man. We cover our expenses. Doug gets the family rate. Five million dollars.”

“That is a lot of money.”

“Indeed it is,” said Janson.

“All right! Here are your marching orders: Save the doctor at any cost; spare nothing. ASC stands by its people. We are a family.”

“We haven’t accepted the job,” said Janson.

“What? What’s stopping you?”

“We need to know more about the circumstances. What was the doctor doing out there?”

“Doing? He was doing his job.”

“What is his name?” asked Kincaid.

Helms glanced at Doug Case, who then said, “Flannigan. Dr. Terrence Flannigan.”

Janson asked, “What was Dr. Flannigan doing on an offshore service vessel? Six-man boats don’t carry company doctors. Or was the OSV ferrying him somewhere?”

Again Helms looked to Doug Case as if the job description of a company doctor was not his concern. Case said, “We’re presuming they were ferrying him out to a rig to care for somebody who got hurt.”

“Why didn’t they helicopter the victim to shore? That’s how it is usually done.”

“Look into it, Doug,” Helms told Case. “Find out where Dr. Flannigan was going.” He showed his teeth in a grin. “Better yet, Paul, if you manage to rescue him quickly you can ask him yourself. Pleasure meeting you. And you, too, Jessica. I must go. I really do hope you take the job,” he said, and left.

“What do you say, Paul?” asked Doug Case. He was deferential all of a sudden, even pleading. Hecertainly wanted Janson to take it. Janson did not put much weight on that. People preferred working with people they knew.

“We will look into the feasibility of the operation,” he said. “You’ll have our answer in twelve hours.”

Jessica got to the door first and held it for him. But Doug Case called, “Paul, could you wait a moment? I’d like to speak with you alone.”

Janson stepped back into Case’s office and closed the door. “What’s up?”

“I really appreciate what you’re doing.”

“I will do what is feasible.”

“Once again, I owe you.”

“I told you before: If you owe anything, pay the next guy.”

“Thank you. I will do that. Now, listen, whether or not Helms is our next CEO has no bearing on this kidnap situation. Buddha is not retiring tomorrow. So don’t worry about Kingsman Helms.”

“I’m not.”

“What I told him is true. I can’t think of anyone else who could pull this off without accidentally embroiling the company in a fucking civil war. All we want is our man back. And I don’t have to tell you that it would solidify my position here.”

“If I feel I can pull it off, I will take the job.”

“Is Jessica Kincaid the sniper you told me about? The one who was the best you’d ever seen?”

“None of your business.”

“I’m only asking because I’m hoping for both our sakes that if you’re working with a woman she’s someone you’ve worked with long enough to really count on.”

“I count on her,” Janson answered patiently. “She excels at everything she turns her hand to.”

“A Machine-ette?” Case grinned.

Janson reflected momentarily. As he had told Case already, Kincaid’s operator training, mastery of the “deadly arts,” and service record were nobody’s business. But Janson saw no reason to hide his admiration. “She is a perfectionist and hungry to learn—dance, saber, telemark skiing, swimming, boxing. She takes elocution lessons from an acting coach to learn how to mimic body language, she throws herself into foreign languages most people never heard of, and she’s close to getting certified to fly jets.”

“Are we a smidgeon smitten by our protégée?”

“Awed,” said Janson. “Is there anything else? I need to get going.”

He headed for the door and had his hand on the knob when Case said, “I’ve worked with women. They’re smart. A hell of a lot smarter than we are.”

“Based on all the evidence, I agree.”

“But I never worked with a woman in the field. At least not under fire, never when the lead was flying. What’s it like?”

Janson hesitated. Doug’s question—even if he was asking in general what it was like to work with a woman—caught him off-stride. That surprised him. He was a man who reviewed his life in small ways on a constant basis. But the survival habit of compartmentalizing his thoughts and emotions and desires ran deep. Was it possible that until this moment he had never fully considered, or allowed himself to consider, how central Jessica Kincaid had become to his life as protégée, business partner, and friend?

“Do you have a dictionary in that computer?”

Case rolled across the office, lowered his chair to desk height, opened a computer window, and poised his powerful hands over the keyboard.

Janson smiled, suddenly clear in his mind. “What is it like? Look up ‘Comrade-in-arms.’”

Doug Case typed in the old-fashioned warrior phrase, scrolled down the entry, then read aloud: “ ‘An associate in friendship, occupation, fortunes’?”

“That nails it.”

“But,” Case said, “the downside I see to working with a woman is that in the clutch, when the lead is flying, it’s only natural that you’d be distracted, worried about her getting hurt. Particularly if she’s your protégée. Devoted followers have a habit of getting killed in our line of work. I’ve lost them; so have you.”

“Jessica is predator, not prey.”

* * *

DOUG CASE TOUCHED his telephone the instant the door closed behind Paul Janson.

Bill Pounds, one of his ex-Ranger ASC field agents, was watching the lobby. “Yes, sir?”

“They’re on their way. Report where they go. Don’t let them make you.”

“No one makes the invisible man.”