A chill ran down Janson’s spine. “Nelson, what are you telling me?”
“Just that there are a lot of worried people, and they’re way up the intelligence food chain.”
Did they think he was insane? If so, they couldn’t afford to let him wander free, not with everything the former Cons Op agent had in his head—the extensive knowledge of procedures, informants, networks that remained in operation. A security breach could destroy years of work and would simply not be countenanced. Janson knew the chain of official reasoning in a case like that.
Despite the bright hilltop sun, Janson suddenly felt cold.
Agger shifted uneasily. “I’m not an expert in that kind of thing. They said you’d seem to be plausible, cogent, in command. And no matter where your head’s at, sixteen million is going to be pretty hard to resist. Maybe I’m just speaking for myself there.”
“I have absolutely no explanation for the money,” Janson said. “Maybe the Liberty Foundation has an eccentric way of rendering payment. Compensation was referred to. Not negotiated, not specified. Look, that wasn’t a principal motivation on my part. It was a debt of honor. You know why.”
“Paul, my friend, I want to get all this straightened out, and I’ll do whatever I can—you know that. But you’ve got to help me out here, give me some facts. When did Novak’s people make their first approach to you?”
“Monday. Forty-eight hours after Novak’s abduction.”
“And when was the first eight million deposited?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“It was deposited before you say these people approached you. Before they knew you’d say yes. Before they knew an extraction might be necessary. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Did anybody ask them about it?”
“Paul, they don’t know who you are. They don’t know about the abduction. They don’t even know the boss is dead.”
“How did they react when you told them?”
“We didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Orders from the top. We’re in the information-collecting business, not the information-dissemination business. Everyone’s been given strict orders as to that. And speaking of collection, that’s why people are so determined that you come in. It’s the only way. If you don’t, assumptions are going to be made. And acted upon. OK? Do I have to say more?”
“Jesus,” Janson said.
“Paul, you need to trust me on this one. We can put all this shit behind you. But you’ve got to come in. You’ve got to.”
Janson looked at the analyst oddly. He couldn’t fail to notice the way he had grown less deferential and anxious in the course of the conversation. “I’ll think about it.”
“That means no,” Agger said blandly. “And that’s not good enough.” He reached over to his lapel, and fingered the buttonhole, in an overly casual gesture.
Summoning others.
Janson reached over and turned up Agger’s lapel. On the reverse side was the familiar blue-black disk. All at once, he felt numb.
The Greeks weren’t tails. They were his backup. Forcible abduction was the next course of action.
“Now I’ve got a timing question for you,” Janson said. “When did the order go out?”
“The retrieval directive? I don’t recall.”
“When?”Standing so as to hide his actions from any bystanders, he pulled out the Walther and aimed it at the analyst.
“Oh Jesus, oh Jesus!” Agger shouted. “Paul—what are you doing? I’m just here to help you. I only want to help.”
“When ?” Janson shoved the silenced Walther into Agger’s bony chest.
The words came out in a rush. “Ten hours ago. The cable was time-stamped 10:23 P.M. EST.” Agger looked around him, unable to disguise his growing sense of consternation.
“And what were the orders if I refused to report in? Did termination orders go out?” He pressed the revolver harder against Agger’s sternum.
“Stop!” Agger called out. “You’re hurting me.” He spoke loudly, as if panicked; but Agger, though scarcely a field agent, was no amateur, and however anxious, he was not given to hysterics. The shout was not meant for him; it was meant to notify others, others within earshot.
“Are you expecting company?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Agger lied in a level tone.
“Sorry. I should have mentioned earlier that your Greek friends were unavoidably detained.”
“You goddamn bastard!” The words burst from him. Agger was white-faced—not with fear but with outrage.
“They’ll send their regrets. As soon as they regain consciousness.”
Agger’s eyes narrowed. “Christ, it’s true what they say. You’re out of control!”
Chapter Eleven
The harborfront tavern was seedy and dark, the planks of the floor warped from years of spilled beverages, the simple wooden chairs and stools nicked and dented from careless use and the occasional brawl. Janson moved slowly toward the long zinc bar, allowing his vision to adjust to the dimness. A sailor sat to the far left, drinking alone, sullenly. He wasn’t the only sailor in the place, but he would be the easiest to approach. And Janson could not wait any longer. He had to get out of Greece now.
A short while ago, he had again performed what had become a maddening ritual: he called Márta Lang’s personal number. Nothing.
They don’t even know the boss is dead, Agger had said.
Yet there was one person Janson could think of who would know what there was to be known and would speak to him freely. Of course, first precautions had to be taken—to protect both himself and the man he was going to visit.
Piraeus’s Great Harbor was a vast, circular inlet, cupping the ocean, so it seemed to Janson, like an open manacle—or one that was closing. Necessity had drawn him here all the same. He had no intention of signaling his movements to anyone with a professional interest in them.
For the past couple of hours, he had considered and rejected a dozen other ways of leaving the country. Watchers would surely be swarming in and around the Athens airport by now; quite likely agents would soon be mobilized at the major airports at Thessaloníki and elsewhere. In any case, traveling on his own passport was out of the question: given the involvement of the embassy, the chances were too great that a U.S. advisory had been issued to international points of embarkation and arrival. But when he made his way to the one local he knew who specialized in forging official documents—a man who owned a stationery shop near Omónia—he found surveillance agents in position: a visit would have compromised either his contact or him. Hence his recourse to those whose livelihoods taught them the formalities of international transit—and when the formalities might be overlooked.
Janson wore a suit, which make him an incongruous sight in the Perigaili Bar, but his tie hung unknotted around his collar, and he looked adrift, almost despondent. He stepped forward with a weaving gait. Decide on a part and then dress for it. He was a prosperous businessman in dire straits. If the air of desperation didn’t achieve the intended results, two minutes in the rest room and a square-shouldered shift in demeanor could erase that impression entirely.
He took the stool next to the sailor and gave him a sidewise glance. He was solidly built, with the kind of soft, fleshy build that spoke of a large appetite but often hid considerable muscular strength. Did he speak English?
“Goddamn Albanian whore,” Janson muttered under his breath, just loud enough to be heard. Imprecations directed at ethnic minorities—especially Gypsies and Albanians—were, he knew, a reliable conversation-starter in Greece, where the ancient notion of purity of bloodlines still ruled.
The sailor turned to him and grunted. His bloodshot eyes were wary, however. What was a man dressed like him doing in a such a dive?
“She took everything,” Janson went on. “She cleaned me out.” He signaled for a drink.
“A shqiptar whore stole your cash?” The sailor’s e
xpression was devoid of sympathy, but amused. It was a start.
“Cash is about the only thing I’ve got left. You want to hear this?” He saw the insignia on the sailor’s uniform : U.C.S. UNITED CONTAINER SERVICES. Janson called to the bartender. “Get my friend here a beer.”
“Why not some Metaxa?” the sailor said, testing his luck.
“That’s a plan—Metaxa!” he called out. “A double! For both of us.” Something about the sailor suggested a man who knew the docks and waterfronts of the Aegean, and the unsavory enterprises that took root there.
Two glasses of Metaxa arrived, the colorless variety, flavored with anise. Janson asked for a glass of water on the side. With a disapproving scowl, the bartender slid an amber-colored glass toward him, with a few inches of lukewarm tap water. A bar didn’t stay in business by filling its customers’ bellies with water, unless you counted the water with which it topped off its bottles of liquor.
Janson began to tell his companion a tale of wandering into an ouzeri while waiting for the Minoan Lines ferry at the Zea Marina. “I’d just gotten out of a five-hour meeting, you see. We’d wrapped up a deal that had been dragging on for months—that’s why they sent me here personally, you see. The local reps, you can’t trust them. You never know who they’re really working for.”
“And what does your company do, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Janson’s eyes darted around, settling on the glazed ceramic ashtray. “Ceramics,” he said. “High-fired non-conductive ceramic struts for electrical appliances.” He laughed. “You’re sorry you asked, huh? Well, it’s a filthy job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
“And the whore—” prompted the sailor, gulping the brandy like water.
“So I’m totally stressed—you know ‘stressed’?—and this girl, she’s all over me, and I’m thinking, what the hell. You know, I’m talking about release, right? And she leads me to some shithole, a few doors down, I don’t even know where, and …”
“And you wake up and she’s robbed you blind.”
“Exactly!” Janson signaled the bartender to bring another round of drinks. “I must have passed out or something, and she went through my pockets. Lucky for me she didn’t find my cash belt. Guess that would have meant turning me over, and she was afraid I’d wake up. But she took my passport, my credit cards … .” Janson grabbed at his ring finger, holding it close to the sailor’s face, drunkenly demonstrating the final indignity of having a wedding band removed. He breathed hard, a senior sales exec revisiting a nightmare.
“Why not tell the astynomia? The harbor police here in Piraeus know the whores.”
Janson covered his face. “I can’t. I can’t risk it. I file a report, it could be my ass. Same reason I don’t dare go to the embassy. My company is very conservative. I can’t chance them finding out—we’ve got reps all over. I know I don’t look it, but I’ve got a reputation to protect. And my wife—oh Jesus!” Suddenly his eyes brimmed with tears. “She can’t know, ever!”
“So you’re a big man,” the sailor said, his gaze taking the stranger’s measure.
“And a bigger idiot. What was I thinking?” He drained his glass of Metaxa, filling his cheeks with the sweetened liquor, then swiveled his stool around, agitated, and raised the amber water glass to his lips. Only a trained observer would have noticed that, though Janson’s water glass had not been refilled, its level magically kept rising.
“The big head wasn’t thinking,” the seaman said sagely. “The little head was thinking.”
“If I could just get to our regional headquarters in Izmir, I could take care of everything.”
The seaman drew back with a jerk. “You are a Turk?”
“Turkish? God, no.” Janson wrinkled his nose with disgust. “How could you think that? Are you?”
The seaman spat on the floor in response.
In Piraeus, at least, the old enmities still simmered. “Look, we’re an international company. I’m a Canadian citizen, as it happens, but our clients are everywhere. I’m not going to the police, and I can’t risk turning up at the embassy. The thing could destroy me—you Greeks, you’re worldly, you understand about human nature, but the people I work with aren’t like that. Thing is, if I could just get to Izmir, I could make this whole nightmare disappear. I’ll do the breaststroke to get there if I have to.” He slammed down the thickbottomed glass on the banged-up zinc bar. Then he waved a fifty-thousand-drachma note at the bartender, signaling for another round.
The bartender looked at the note and shook his head. “Ehete mipos pio psila?” A smaller-denomination bill was required.
Janson peered at the note like a drunk with blurred vision. The note was the equivalent of over a hundred U.S. dollars. “Oh, sorry,” he said, putting it away and handing the bartender four thousand-drachma notes.
As Janson intended, the error was not lost on his companion, whose interest in his plight suddenly became livelier.
“A long way to swim,” the seaman said with a mirthless chuckle. “Perhaps there is another way.”
Janson looked at him imploringly. “You think?”
“Special transport,” the man said. “Not comfortable. Not cheap.”
“You get me to Izmir, I’ll pay you twenty-five hundred dollars—U.S., not Canadian.”
The sailor looked at Janson appraisingly. “Others will have to cooperate.”
“That’s twenty-five hundred just for you, for arranging it. If there are other expenses, I’ll cover them, too.”
“You wait here,” the sailor said, a flush of greed sobering him slightly. “I make a phone call.”
Janson drummed his fingers on the bar as he waited; if his drunkenness was feigned, his display of agitation required little acting. After a few long minutes, the seaman returned.
“I speak to a captain I know. He says if you come aboard with drugs, he will throw you into the Aegean without a life jacket.”
“Absolutely not!” Janson said, aghast. “No drugs!”
“So the Albanian whore took those, too?” the man returned wryly.
“What?” Janson’s tone rose in indignation, a humorless businessman whose dignity had been insulted. “What are you saying?”
“I joke with you,” the seaman said, mindful of his fee. “But I promised the captain I’d give you the warning.” He paused. “It’s a containerized cargo ship. U.C.S.-licensed, like mine. And it leaves at four in the morning. Gets in at berth number six port of Izmir, four hours later, OK? What happens at Izmir is on you—you don’t tell anyone how you got there.” He made a neck-slicing gesture. “Very important. Also very important: you pay him a thousand dollars at Pier Twenty-three. I’ll be there to make introductions.”
Janson nodded and started to peel off large-denomination drachmas, keeping his hands under the counter. “The other half when I meet you in the morning.”
The seaman’s eyes danced. “Fair enough. But later, if the captain asks what you paid me, leave a zero off. OK, my friend?”
“You’re a goddamn lifesaver,” Janson said.
The sailor wrapped his fingers around the roll of bills, appreciating their heft and thickness, and smiled. “Anything else I can do for you?”
Janson shook his head distractedly, gripping his ring finger. “I’ll tell her I was mugged.”
“You tell your wife an Albanian mugged you,” the seaman counseled. “Who wouldn’t believe that?”
Later, at the Izmir airport, Janson couldn’t help but reflect on the curious pattern of such ruses. People gave you their trust when you proclaimed just how untrustworthy you were. Someone victimized by his own greed or lust was a readier object of sympathy than someone who came on his bad luck honestly. Standing shamefaced before a British tour guide, he trotted out a version of the story he’d told the seaman.
“You shouldn’t have been cavorting with those dirty girls,” the tour guide—pigeon-breasted, with shaggy, white-blond hair—was telling him. His grin was less sporting than sadist
ic. “Naughty, naughty, naughty.” The man wore a plastic badge with his name on it. Above it, printed in garish colors, was the name and slogan of the cut-rate tour company that employed him: Holiday Express Ltd.—a package of fun!
“I was drunk off my arse!” Janson protested, slipping into a lower-middle-class Home Counties accent. “Bloody Turks. This girl promised me a ‘private show’—for all I knew she was talking about belly dancing!”
“I’ll just bet,” the man replied with a leering smirk. “Such an innocent you are.” After several days of having to jolly along his paid-up wards, he was relishing the opportunity to stick it to a customer.
“But to leave me here! It was a packaged holiday, all right—but that wasn’t supposed to be part of the package! Strand me here like they couldn’t give a toss?”
“Happens. Happens. One of the lads goes on a binge or gets lost. You can’t expect the whole group to miss the flight home because of one person. That’s not reasonable, now, is it?”
“Sodding hell, I’ve been a complete bleedin’ idiot,” Janson said, remorse creeping into his voice. “Lettin’ the little head do the thinking, not the big one, if you see.”
“‘Who among us?’ like the Good Book says,” the man replied, his tone softening. “Now tell me the name again?”
“Cavanaugh. Richard Cavanaugh.” Lifting the name from a Holiday Express manifest had taken him a full twenty minutes at a cybercafé on Kibris Sehitleri Street.
“Right. Dicky Cavanaugh takes a dirty holiday to Turkey and learns a lesson in clean living.” Needling the hapless customer—one whose misadventures left him in no position to file a complaint—seemed to amuse him no end.
Janson glowered.
The platinum-haired man called the Izmir affiliate of Thomas Cook Travel on his Vodafone and explained the customer’s predicament, leaving out the interesting parts. He repeated the name twice. He remained on the line for ten minutes, doing progressively less talking and more listening.