A few seconds elapsed before it clicked. Buckwheat groats—also known as kasha. Janson felt a stirring of excitement as thousands of column inches from newspaper and magazine profiles whirred through his head in a ribbon of light. Every day starts with a spartan breakfast of kasha … . A homely detail found in dozens of them, along with the near obligatory references to his “bespoke wardrobe,” “aristocratic bearing,” “commanding gaze” … Such were the stock phrases and “colorful” details of feature writing. Every day starts with a spartan breakfast of kasha … .
It was true, then. Somewhere on Smith Mountain lived a man the world knew as Peter Novak.
Chapter Thirty-three
In the heart of midtown Manhattan, the bag lady stooped over the Bryant Park steel-mesh trash can with the diligent look of a postal worker at a mailbox. Her clothes, as was usual with derelicts, were torn and filthy and unseasonably heavy—the clothing had to be thick enough to ward off the cold of a night spent in an alleyway, and the warming rays of the sun would not impel her to strip off a single layer, for her clothes and her sack filled with bottles and tin cans were all she had to her name. At her wrists and ankles, grime-gray thermal underwear showed beneath fraying, soiled denim. Her shoes were oversize sneakers, the rubber soles beginning to split, the laces broken and tied together again, in floppy schoolgirl knots. Pulled down low on her forehead was a nylon-mesh baseball cap, promoting not a sports team but a once-high-flying Silicon Alley “incubator” fund that went under the year before. She clutched the grungy satchel as if it contained treasure. Her grip expressed the primal urgency of possession: This is what I have in this world. It is mine. It is me. Time for such as her was meted out by nights she escaped unmolested, by the cans and bottles she collected and traded in for nickels, by the small serendipities she encountered—the intact sandwich, still soft and protected by plastic wrap, untouched by rodents. On her hands were cotton gloves, now gray and sooty, which might once have been a debutante’s, and as she rummaged through the plastic bottles and skeins of cellophane and apple cores and banana peels and crumpled advertising flyers, the gloves grew even dirtier.
Yet Jessica Kincaid’s eyes were not, in fact, on the refuse; they returned regularly to the small mirror that she had propped against the trash can and that allowed her to monitor those arriving at and departing from the Liberty Foundation offices across the street. After days of a fruitless watch, Janson’s confederate, Cornelius Eaves, had called last night excitedly: Márta Lang seemed finally to have made an appearance.
It was not a mistaken sighting, Jessie now knew. A woman matching Janson’s detailed description of Deputy Director Márta Lang had been among the arrivals that morning: a Lincoln Town Car with darkened windows had dropped her off at eight in the morning. In the ensuing hours, there was no sign of her, yet Jessica could not risk leaving her post. Attired as she was, Jessica herself attracted almost no attention, for the city had long since trained itself not to notice such unfortunates in its midst. At intervals, she shuttled between two other wire trash baskets that shared a sight line to the office building on Fortieth Street, but always returned to the one nearest it. About midday, a couple of grounds maintenance people in the bright red outfits of the Bryant Park Business Improvement District had tried to shoo her away, but only halfheartedly: their minimum wages inspired no great exertions on the park’s behalf. Later, a Senegalese street merchant with a folding stand and a portfolio of fake Rolexes tried to set up shop near her. Twice, she “accidentally” stumbled over his display, bringing it crashing to the ground. After the second time, he decided to relocate his business, though not before hurling a few choice epithets at her in his native tongue.
It was nearly six when the elegant, white-haired woman appeared again, striding through the revolving door of the lobby, her face a mask of unconcern. As the woman stepped into the backseat of the long Lincoln Town Car and purred off toward the intersection at Fifth Avenue, Jessica memorized the license plate. Quietly, she radioed Cornelius Eaves, whose vehicle—a yellow taxicab with its OFF DUTY lights on—had been idling in front of a hotel toward the other end of the block.
Eaves did not know the larger purpose of his assignment; he did know enough not to ask whether it was an officially sanctioned job. Jessica Kincaid, for her part, had been stinting with explanation. Were she and Janson pursuing a private vendetta? Had they been assigned to an ultra-secret project requiring the ad hoc enlistment of irregular talent? Eaves, who had been retired from active duty for a few years and was eager to have something to occupy his time, did not know. The only authorization he required was Janson’s personal entreaty—and the look on the young woman’s face: it was the limpid confidence of somebody who was doing what had to be done.
Diving into the backseat of Eaves’s cab, Jessica yanked off her cap, wriggled out of her rags, and changed into ordinary street clothes: pressed chinos, a pastel-colored cotton sweater, penny loafers. She scrubbed the grime off her face with moist towelettes, fluffed her hair vigorously, and after a few minutes was at least vaguely presentable, which is to say, inconspicuous.
Ten minutes later, they had an address: 1060 Fifth Avenue was a handsome prewar apartment building, its limestone facade grown pearl gray from the city air. A discreet green awning stood before its entrance, which was not on the avenue, but around the corner, on Eighty-ninth Street. She glanced at her watch.
All at once, her scalp prickled with apprehension. Her watch! She had worn it when she was on her observation post in Bryant Park! She knew that the Foundation’s security guards would be alert to any anomalies, any discordant details. Hers was a slim Hamilton tank watch, which had once belonged to her mother. Would a bag lady wear such a watch? Anxiety burrowed deep within her as she pictured herself the way she had been, trying to figure out whether a guard equipped with binoculars might have dialed in on the glinting object on her wrist. She would have done so in their place. She had to assume that they would, too.
She flashed on the mental picture of her outstretched arms, foraging through the trash like a pauper archaeologist … . She saw the image of her gloved hand, and then, overlapping it, the frayed cuff of the long-sleeved thermal undershirt. Yes—the sleeve length of the undershirt was several sizes too big for her: her wristwatch would have been entirely concealed by it. The knot in her stomach loosened slightly. No harm, no foul, right? Yet she knew it was precisely the kind of careless mistake they could ill afford.
“Take me around the block, Corn,” she said. “Slowly.”
Driving the maroon Taurus up the winding mountain path known as Clangerton Road, Janson found the unmarked turnoff that the counterman had mentioned. He continued a short distance past it, pulling the car as far off the road as possible, plunging it into a natural cave of greenery, behind shrubs and a stand of saplings. He did not know what to expect, but caution dictated that his arrival be as stealthy as he could manage.
He walked into the woods, a spongy bed of mulched pine needles and twigs beneath his feet, and doubled back toward the small lane he had driven past. The air was filled with the resinous scent of an old-growth pine forest, a scent that recalled nothing so much as the disinfectants and air fresheners that so insistently aped it. Much of the woodland seemed wholly untouched by human habitation, a roadside forest primeval. It was through such a forest that European settlers had journeyed four centuries earlier, establishing themselves on the virgin territory, making their way by flintlock, musket, knife, and barter with an aboriginal people who greatly outnumbered them and were infinitely wiser in the ways of the land. Such were the obscure origins of what would become the mightiest power on the planet. Today, the terrain was some of the most beautiful in the country, and the less it bore the evidence of those who lived there, he reflected, the more beautiful it seemed.
And then he found the airstrip.
It was a sudden clearing in the forest, and disturbingly well maintained: the bramble and bushes had been clipped back recently, and a long oval
strip of grass was neatly trimmed. It was a void, empty except for an SUV with a tarpaulin over it. How the vehicle got there was a mystery, for there was no apparent means of access to the strip, save from the skies above.
The strip itself was admirably hidden by the dense growth of trees surrounding it. Still, those trees could serve Janson’s own purposes, protecting him as he set up a one-man observation post.
He nested himself in the middle of an old pine tree, largely concealing himself behind its trunk and the profusion of its needle-laden fronds. He steadied his binoculars against a small branch, and waited.
And waited.
Hours chugged past, his only visitors the occasional mosquito and less occasional centipede.
Yet Janson was scarcely aware of the passage of time. He was in another place: the sniper’s fugue. His mind, part of it, drifted through the zone of semiconscious thought, even as another module of consciousness remained at a state of acute awareness.
He was convinced that there would be a flight today, not only because of what the grocery-store manager had reported, but because a command-and-control structure could not rely solely upon electronic transfers of information: packages, couriers, people, would all have to come in and out. Yet what if he was wrong and had been wasting the most valuable commodity of all—time?
He was not wrong. At first it was like the drone of an insect, but when it grew steadily louder, he knew that a plane was circling and slowing overhead for a landing. Every nerve, every muscle in his body strained for complete alertness.
The plane was a new Cessna, a 340 series twinengine craft, and its pilot, as Janson could tell by the fluid grace with which it touched down and came to a stop, was an extremely skilled professional, not a country doctor playing crop duster. The pilot, dressed in a white uniform, emerged from the cockpit and folded down the hinged, six-step aluminum stairs. The sun glared off the shiny fuselage, obscuring Janson’s vision. All he could make out was that a passenger was quickly ushered off the plane by a second assistant, this one in a blue uniform, and brought to the SUV. The assistant yanked the tarpaulin from the vehicle, revealing a Range Rover—armored, he surmised, from the way the body rode low on the chassis—and he held open the backseat for the passenger. Moments later, the 4 × 4 sped off.
Damn it! Janson strained intently through his scope to see who the passenger was, yet the glare of the sun and the car’s darkened interior defeated his every attempt. Frustration welled up in him like mercury in an overheated thermometer. Who was it? “Peter Novak”? One of his lieutenants? It was impossible to say.
And then the car disappeared.
Where?
It was as if it had vanished into thin air. Janson slid from his perch and peered through his scope from a number of different vantage points before he finally saw what had happened. The lane, only just wide enough to allow passage of the vehicle, was carved into the woods at an oblique angle. The surrounding stand of trees thus rendered it invisible from most points. It was a brilliant feat of landscape design meant to go unnoticed and unappreciated. Now the Cessna’s engines revved up, and the small plane turned around, taxied, and took flight.
As acrid fumes of fuel drifted through the woods, Janson set off toward the drive. It was about eight feet wide and was overhung by branches that were about six feet off the ground—just high enough to allow clearance for the armored Range Rover. The treesheltered drive was recently paved—a driver who knew the road could make good time—yet could not be seen even from overhead.
It would be an on-foot reconnaissance mission, then.
Janson’s task was to follow the drive without walking on the drive; once again, he stayed parallel to it, ten yards away, lest he activate any surveillance or alarm equipment attached to the drive itself. It was a long walk, and soon a strenuous one. He bounded up razorback ridges, pushed through densely wooded patches, and across steep, eroded slopes. After twenty minutes, his muscles started to protest the strain, but he never let his pace slacken. As he grabbed another branch for purchase, he was painfully reminded that his hands, once tougher than leather, had lost their calluses: too many years of tending to corporate clients. Pine sap stuck to his palm like glue; splinters of bark worked their way under his skin. As his exertions continued, heat blanketed his upper body and neck like a rash. He ignored it, keeping his attention focused on his next step. One foot in front of the other: that was the only way forward. At the same time, he tried to make his own movements as quiet as possible, preferring rocky outcroppings whenever possible to the crackle of the forest floor. The car was long gone, of course, and he already had a good notion of where the narrow drive would lead, but there was no substitute for direct observation. One foot in front of the other: soon his movements became automatic, and despite everything, his thoughts drifted.
One foot in front of the other.
The skeletal American bowed his head as he surrendered to his new captors. Word of the POW’s escape had obviously made it into the surrounding countryside, for the Montagnards and other villagers knew just who he was and where he was to be returned.
He had fought his way through the thick jungle for two full days, straining the very fiber of his existence, and for what? So near and yet so far. For now it would begin all over again, but worse: to the compound’s commander, the escape of a prisoner meant a loss of face. The officer would pummel him with bare hands until he had spent his fury. Whether Janson survived the encounter at all depended entirely on how energetic the commander happened to be feeling. Janson began to succumb to a vortex of despair, pulling him down like a powerful riverine current.
No! Not after all he had endured. Not while Demarest still lived. He would not cede him that victory.
Two VCs were marching Janson at gunpoint along a muddy path, one in front of him, one behind him, taking no chances. Villagers had gawked at him, perhaps wondering how someone so wasted, so gaunt, could still move. He wondered that himself. But he could not know the limits of his strength until he reached beyond those limits.
Perhaps he would not have rebelled if the VC behind him hadn’t reached over and cuffed him around the neck, exasperated by his slow pace. It seemed the final indignity, and Janson snapped—he let himself snap, and let his trained instincts take over. Your mind does not have a mind of its own, Demarest had told them in their training days, and he meant to emphasize the ways in which they had to exert control over their own consciousness. Yet after sufficient training, learned reflexes took on the ingrained nature of basic instinct, joining the ropy fiber of one’s being.
Janson turned around, his feet gliding along the path as if on ice, and cocked his hip to the right without turning his right shoulder, which would have alerted the guard to what was about to happen: an explosive lunge punch with the fingers of his hand tensed and straight, his thumb tucked down and close to his palm. The spear hand plunged into the guard’s throat, smashing the cartilage of his trachea and whipping his head back. Then Janson glanced over his shoulder at the other guard, and gained strength from the man’s expression of fear and dismay. Janson directed a powerful rear snapkick toward the man’s groin, hammering his heel up and back; the blow’s strength came from its speed, and the guard’s attempt to rush toward him made it twice as effective. Now, as the front guard doubled over, Janson followed with an arcing round kick, whipping into the side of his exposed head. As his foot connected to the man’s skull, jolting vibration traveled up his leg, and he wondered briefly whether he had fractured one of his own bones. In truth, he was past caring. Now he grabbed the AK-47 that had been held by the VC behind him, and used it as a cudgel, beating the stillsprawled soldier until he lay limp.
“Xin loi,” he grunted. Sorry about that.
He scrambled off, into the jungle and toward the next swell of land. He would struggle on until he reached the shore. This time he was not alone: he had a submachine gun, its buttstock slick with another man’s blood. He would persevere, one foot in front of the other, and
whoever tried to stop him, he would kill. For his enemies there would be no mercy, only death.
And he would not be sorry about that.
One foot in front of the other.
Another hour passed before Janson climbed up the last rocky ledge and saw the Smith Mountain estate. Yes, it was what he had expected to find, yet the sight of it took his breath away.
It was a sudden plateau—encompassing perhaps a thousand acres of rolled Kentucky bluegrass, as emerald as golf-course turf. He got out his binoculars again. The land dipped a little from the ledge where Janson found himself, and extended in a series of ridges that lapped against the sheer stone face of the mountain’s summit.
He saw what Maurice Hempel had seen, recognized what had made it irresistible to someone who was as reclusive as he was rich.
Tucked away, nearly inaccessible by ordinary means, was a brilliantly shimmering mansion, more compact than the Biltmore estate and yet, he could see, just as artfully designed. It was, however, the perimeter defenses that inspired Janson’s awe. As if the natural impediments surrounding the site were not sufficient, a high-tech obstacle course made the house resistant to any form of intrusion.
Straight ahead of him was a nine-foot chain-link fence, and no ordinary one. The simple existence of the object would discourage the casual hikers. Yet Janson could also see the cunning array of pressure detectors built into the fence: it would repel even a highly skilled burglar. Tensioned wire threaded its way through the chain links, connecting to a series of boxes. Here were two systems in one: a taut wire intrusion-detection system reinforced with vibration detectors. His heart plummeted; fences equipped with vibration detectors alone could often be penetrated with a pair of nippers and a little patience. The taut-wire system made that approach impossible.