Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation, page 17
Sin Bae waited outside the apartment building for only a few minutes before a young man, exiting, held the door open for Sin Bae to come in from the cold. Inside, Sin Bae immediately took the stairwell up. When he reached the top floor, the eleventh, he peered through the narrow vertical window set in the dark-red steel door. It was just after 7 AM and many of the young professionals who inhabited the building were leaving for work. From the stairwell Sin Bae watched the hallway to see which flat on the south side of the building—the side facing the Grand Hyatt—would be vacated first.
Ten minutes later a young couple stepped out of their apartment and locked the door. Sin Bae waited until the elevator doors met then entered the hall. As he neared the couple’s door the bark of a small dog caused him to hesitate. He did not wish to kill the dog. But he also knew he would not be able to concentrate if he had to listen to the canine scratching and yapping from behind a closed bedroom door.
He listened carefully. After several seconds he determined that the barking was emanating from the apartment on the opposite side of the hall. He continued on, removing the lock pick from his pocket.
Sin Bae stepped into apartment 11-E and locked the door, then headed straight for the picture window facing the hotel. He pushed aside the lavish curtain. Removed a small pair of binoculars from inside his jacket and focused on the sidewalk in front of the lobby.
As he watched the sidewalk, he made his call to Ping in Shanghai.
A few minutes later, when he spotted the back of the man’s head, he thought he was imagining things. He looked again, focusing on the round bald spot at the top (what the Americans called “a silver dollar”), and watched as the man twisted his plump neck to inspect his surroundings. As implausible as it seemed, now there was no doubt. The middle-aged man was the same paunchy Korean whom Jessica Kincaid had danced with at the club the night before last. The man who had distracted Sin Bae from his mission, the man who’d allowed Kincaid to escape Sin Bae’s grasp in the coatroom of the T-Lound nightclub.
This was the man truly responsible for the involvement of the teenage girl who reminded Sin Bae so much of his sister, Su-ra. The girl Sin Bae was now under orders to kill.
He closed his eyes. Something akin to anger rose in Sin Bae’s chest as he set down the binoculars to contemplate his next steps.
* * *
THE RAP AT THE hotel room door startled Kincaid as she stepped out of the bathroom.
She promptly shook it off, realizing that it must be Park Kwan on the other side of the door. After peeking through the peephole, she undid the chain, unlocked the dead bolt, and opened the door. Park Kwan stepped past her with a smile on his face.
“I may have a lead on the boy,” he said.
“What kind of lead?” she said. “How strong? How reliable?”
He grinned confidently. “As reliable as facial recognition software.”
Kincaid’s eyes widened in horror. “You didn’t speak to anyone at your department, did you? I told you specifically—”
“No, no.” Park Kwan lifted his palm in a defensive gesture that left Kincaid feeling guilty for pouncing on him. “This has nothing to do with the South Korean government at all. This is a private enterprise.”
Kang Jung, who’d been sitting at the room’s lone desk, leafing through the hotel’s in-room dining menu, swiveled around to face them. “The International Finance Center Mall?” she exclaimed.
Park Kwan nodded in the girl’s direction. “Precisely.”
“But,” Kang Jung said, abruptly rising from her chair, “the kiosks at the mall only estimate an individual’s age and gender. The mall sees nearly two million shoppers every month, and most of them are probably around Gregory Wyckoff’s age. How could that possibly help us?”
Park Kwan’s grin broadened. “The software is somewhat more sophisticated than the mall’s owners and the system’s creators would have you believe.” He turned to Kincaid. “See, South Korea’s privacy laws prohibit companies from collecting personal information from customers without their consent. Legally, they cannot admit to recording and storing customers’ images. But as a practical matter…”
“Big Brother is watching,” Kang Jung said with a sour expression. “Those bastards. When I get to a computer I am immediately going to hack into their system and—”
“Wait, young lady,” Park Kwan said, raising his palm again. “Let’s not lose sight of what is important at this moment. We need to find the boy. More than privacy may be at stake here. Given what we already know, this entire city may be at risk.”
Kincaid said, “Tell us what you’ve discovered.”
Park Kwan cleared his throat and adopted a more serious, more professional tone. “Jung is right. The idea behind the mall’s facial recognition software is to estimate a customer’s age and gender in order to permit advertisers to tailor their interactive ads. But, as I mentioned, the software actually goes much further than that. It is a secret very few people know.”
“How did you get so lucky?”
He blushed ever so slightly. “I have a lady friend who works at the conglomerate that makes the software. She knew I was looking to retire from the police department, so she offered to recommend me for a job in their security division.” He sighed. “I passed the interview process, as well as the background check and drug tests. But—and looking back, I suppose this shouldn’t have surprised me—the company has prospective employees followed by in-house investigators to determine what their private lives are like before the final hire. Like any organization that hires employees who will handle sensitive material, this company wants to make certain that their candidates are not potential targets for blackmail. That they are not in the kind of debt that would motivate them to sell confidential information to competitors or the media.
“In my case,” he continued solemnly, “they discovered that I drank, and they feared that my intoxication would lead me to divulge trade secrets.” He cocked his head to one side then the other. “Which I suppose I am doing now as we speak.” He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Well, the joke is on them because at the moment I am as sober as a stone.”
“But if you were not hired…” Kang Jung began.
Park Kwan turned to her with a sheepish expression. “My lady friend—she, too, partakes in the spirits, if you will.”
“All right,” Kincaid said, anxious now for Park Kwan to get to the crux, “when did the software pick up Gregory Wyckoff at the mall?”
“The morning he went missing.”
“Jeez Louise,” Kincaid burst out. “That doesn’t help us. He could be anywhere by now.”
“Please, Louise,” Park Kwan shot back, “wait until I am finished.” He exhaled audibly then sucked in his gut and puffed out his chest. “It is not the fact that his face was captured that is important. It is what he was captured doing that is vital.”
Kang Jung stepped forward, her voice quiet and contemplative. “He stole something, didn’t he?”
“Correct, young lady,” Park Kwan said. “He swiped a smartphone from the purse of a cashier at one of the mall’s accessory kiosks. She thought she simply misplaced the phone and has not yet contacted the carrier. So I am having the signal triangulated. We should have news of his whereabouts—or at least the direction in which he is traveling—shortly.”
“And a record of who he called,” Kang Jung said, almost to herself. “Maybe even which websites he visited.”
TWENTY-NINE
One soldier paced along the electrified fence; the other remained several hundred yards away with the jeep. A light snow had begun to fall. From behind the tree stump in the overgrown grass, Janson considered his Beretta but then thought better of it. He didn’t want to risk exposing his position to the second gunman.
The soldier clenched his AK-47, alert and ready, as he trudged along the fence in Janson’s direction.
Perched on his haunches like a tightly coiled spring, Janson took a deep breath and steeled himself. He intended to take the soldier down with a choke hold before they could be spotted by the gunman with the jeep. But just as Janson was about to launch himself, the soldier sensed his presence and spun toward him, aiming the assault rifle directly at Janson’s head.
Janson didn’t hesitate. Like a cornered king cobra, he sprang at the soldier anyway, clutching the barrel of the rifle and jerking it away from his face. The gun went off, three successive shots straight up into the blank sky, and Janson realized he had to act swiftly before the other soldier made his approach.
There wasn’t time to execute a choke hold. Instead, driving his shoulder into the gunman’s chest and grabbing the backs of his knees, Janson lifted the soldier up and flung his body backward, dumping him against the fence.
Instantly upon impact the soldier’s upper body began to convulse.
Over the hiss and sputter of thousands of electric volts, the soldier shrieked—but there was nothing Janson could do to ease his suffering.
Covering his face against the sparks and the stench of charring flesh, Janson dropped to his knees and snatched the fallen AK-47.
As the current cut off and the soldier’s corpse thumped against the hard ground, Janson swung the rifle in the direction of the jeep tearing toward him.
Janson restrained himself from firing.
He didn’t want to blow his blessing in disguise to kingdom come.
Instead of running, he dropped into a crouch. A thinning fog still hung conveniently in the air like a threadbare bedsheet drying in the breeze. And stationary targets, though easier to hit, were more difficult to see. Particularly in the mist.
The jeep roared toward him, though not at full speed. The driver was exercising caution; he clearly didn’t want to plow the military’s jeep into the electrified fence.
Janson didn’t want that either.
The jeep was traveling at roughly forty miles per hour. Not fast, but fast enough to make braking on the frozen earth a problem. A problem Janson meant to use to his advantage.
He popped up from his crouch so that the driver would see him through the fog and falling snow. Then Janson confused him.
From roughly a thousand yards away, Janson ran straight toward the oncoming jeep, the dead Korean’s AK-47 swinging from his right arm.
The driver instinctively slowed, then caught his mistake and accelerated.
Janson knew he was playing a dangerous game of chicken but saw no other choice. He waited until the jeep was almost on him, then feinted left but broke hard to his right.
The driver bit and there was no time to correct course. The jeep fell into a skid and continued sliding sideways for several seconds before finally coming to a dead stop a few hundred yards from the fence.
Janson, who’d been racing after the vehicle from the moment it passed him, halted just as the jeep did. In one fluid motion he planted his left foot and raised the AK-47. With the selector locked in the lower semiautomatic position, he aimed through the sight into the driver’s-side window and pulled the trigger.
Following one crisp and concise burst, the driver’s body slumped forward against the steering column.
Janson released his breath in a puff of smoke, then lowered the rifle and hustled toward the vehicle—all the while mouthing a silent entreaty that he hadn’t damaged the windshield too badly.
* * *
A LITTLE OVER AN HOUR later the body of the soldier was clear of the vehicle and the blood and bits of skull and brain were cleaned up as well as Janson was ever going to get them using the few tools he had at his disposal.
After a few minutes of rest, he changed into spare fatigues he’d found in the rear of the jeep and collected his weapons and go-bag. As far as Janson could tell, the soldiers hadn’t been able to alert reinforcements. Of course, given the potential punishment for allowing an infiltrator to escape, it was possible they’d simply chosen not to sound the alarm. At least not until they had Janson dead or in custody.
The windshield of the jeep had suffered a minor crack, which had begun to spiderweb. No doubt it would get worse in the hours to come, forcing Janson to change vehicles.
But for now he could see the field in front of him well enough. He started the engine and backed away from the fence before swinging the jeep around so that it was facing north.
There were just 110 miles between him and the capital. And only a million-man standing army with a $6 billion annual budget to try to stop him.
With his right foot, Janson pressed down hard on the accelerator and moved forward through the thinning mist.
THIRTY
Reunification Highway
Kaesong, DPRK
The vehicle in which Janson was now traveling held at a steady fifty miles per hour. Although the speed was slower than he would have liked, he had to admit he felt bizarrely comfortable. The temperature inside his compartment was well below zero, but at least he was protected against the ruthless Siberian winds. His unrelenting claustrophobia, on the other hand, kept him on edge, made his entire body feel as though it were being stuck repeatedly by countless pins and needles. The stench was unpleasant but tolerable. Especially considering the fact that he was packed head to toe among thousands of cheap frozen seafood lunches and dinners destined for the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
Knowing he’d never make it past the first checkpoint, Janson had abandoned the jeep as soon as the Reunification Highway came into view. With his go-bag strapped to his back, he moved parallel to the road through the dense forest to the east, hoping to spot a vehicle in which he could hide. Problem was, traffic heading north along the six-lane Reunification Highway was light; beyond light—the road was very nearly deserted. So when he spotted the small white truck with the fresh-fish logo, he didn’t hesitate to step onto the roadway to flag it down.
Seeing the KPA uniform, the driver, whose truck bore South Korean tags, pulled to the side of the road. By the time the driver noticed that the soldier wasn’t Korean, his engine was turned off and his door was standing open. Janson helped the driver down from the cab and tried to reassure him that he was safe. In fact, he was about to receive the deal of a lifetime.
Even now, as the truck rumbled on toward the Kaesong Industrial Complex, Janson’s greatest concern remained the driver. Simply standing outside his truck in the frigid winds, the man had been sweating. Janson noted too that the man’s voice grew shakier with every sentence he uttered. It had been difficult enough to understand the driver’s slaughtered English at the start of the conversation; by the end Janson was just nodding and flashing more Korean currency.
He’s going to fold the moment he pulls up to the checkpoint, Janson thought.
But no. Since Janson and Kincaid had arrived in Seoul just two days ago, Janson had encountered innumerable surprises, from the brilliant thirteen-year-old girl who fought off a well-trained Cons Ops agent at least twice her age to being betrayed by one of his oldest and dearest friends.
The traitor’s name hung in Janson’s head like a bloated body at the end of a noose.
Nam Sei-hoon.
When the truck finally slowed, Janson tried to envision the KPA checkpoint they were no doubt approaching. From the freezer in the rear of the vehicle he willed the driver to remain calm and cool. After all, the driver had nearly as much at stake as Janson himself. He’d accepted a bribe to smuggle an American into the Kaesong Industrial Complex. Even if the man lied and said he had been threatened, there was no guarantee that the North Koreans would believe him. They wouldn’t want to believe. Why arrest one when they could arrest two—an American and a South Korean? Surely the driver knew he’d be thrown into the same labor camp as Janson, at least until one or both could be executed.
The man had a wife and three school-aged children waiting for him back in South Korea. His family was the reason he’d risked his life and accepted the bribe in the first place. The poor guy had to commute more than a hundred miles every day into the bowels of North Korea, and for what? To earn 160 bucks a month, a fifth of the minimum wage in his home country of South Korea.
No, Janson felt confident that the driver would remain strong. He’d tell his lies and collect his money and return to the South, never to set foot in the North again.
Given the man’s motivation, Janson felt certain of it.
Still, as the truck rolled to a sudden standstill, Janson gripped the Beretta tightly in his right hand, his finger hovering over the trigger.
Just in case.
* * *
SIN BAE STEPPED into the Grand Hyatt Seoul wearing a thick overcoat and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Both items borrowed from the apartment he’d just vacated. He suffered no illusion that the coat and hat would provide a disguise, but he didn’t want his face and form to be captured by the ubiquitous surveillance cameras monitored by the hotel. And of course, he didn’t want to enable staff and other hotel guests to provide an accurate description of him to police once the job was done.
Moving quickly through the luxuriant, modern lobby, he surveyed the scene. The first trick would be finding out in which room the man, woman, and child were hiding. There were 601 rooms and suites in total according to his handler Ping, who had accessed the Hyatt’s computer system from Shanghai. Unfortunately, Kincaid’s name was not in the Hyatt’s database. Evidently, the resourceful American woman had checked in using a false identity, undoubtedly one of many she kept at the ready.
Sin Bae now needed to access the closed-circuit television system. He might not learn exactly which room the trio had taken, but at a minimum he hoped to discover the floor on which they were placed. Since he had no intention of attempting to force his way inside Kincaid’s room, that was the only information he truly needed. She and the man she was with were no doubt armed. Therefore, his strategy involved luring all three out of the room in order to strike.
