Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation, page 20
“You mentioned a deal you had with Gregory Wyckoff.” Janson did his damnedest to keep the unequivocal disappointment out of his voice. He’d sneaked into North Korea in the hope of finding answers. Yet all he’d uncovered thus far were more questions. He would have been much more useful had he remained in Seoul, helping to locate the kid he’d been hired to find.
“Yes.” Yun Jin-ho lifted his gaze to meet Janson’s. “To be frank, I do not know how the boy knew to contact me. At first I assumed he was an American liaison working with the South. But then I discovered who he was. A sitting US senator’s son, who was only nineteen years old. I dismissed the possibility that he was an agent for the CIA or some other American intelligence agency. After a few online conversations, I observed how deft he was with a computer, and I thought that perhaps he was a freelance hacker. He later told me that he was a ‘hacktivist’ with an organization known as the Hivemind.”
Janson was thankful that Yun Jin-ho had managed to get his emotions under control. Though he strongly suspected the man could snap in either direction at any time.
He wanted to keep the spy talking until he could figure out his next move. “What else did the boy tell you?” he asked.
“Our conversations were very limited, you must understand. Although we are both fluent in English, we could not be sure who was listening in or watching our monitors, so we were essentially speaking two different languages, each of our own invention.”
Janson nodded but said nothing.
“And time, too, was a major limiting factor. He contacted me from Internet cafés, and he had to be very careful. My access to a clean computer with an Internet connection was nearly nonexistent. But I made do. Enough to arrange to meet with his representative here in Pyongyang in order to exchange vital information. That and to come to terms on our agreement. We spoke of nothing else.”
“What exactly were those terms?” Janson said. He sensed that Yun Jin-ho was trying to evade the question. Which didn’t bode well for Janson.
“I would provide him with top secret information that was apparently relevant to what his girlfriend had learned while acting as an interpreter in the Joint Security Area during the recent four-party talks.”
“And in return?”
“He evidently needed to warn me of something. He wanted me to bring something to the attention of the palace. But I made it clear that last was not necessarily part of the deal. I had no intentions of getting myself killed. So, in exchange for the information I provided, his representative—who is now you, I suppose—would do me a significant favor.”
Here it was. “And that favor is?”
Yun Jin-ho swallowed visibly and caught Janson in his intense glare. “You must agree to get Mi-sook out of the country within the next twenty-four hours.”
Janson instantly thought he’d misheard the spy, that his lack of sleep was now causing him to experience auditory hallucinations.
“You’re kidding, right? That’s impossible. I don’t even know how the hell I’m going to get out myself. For all I know I bought myself a one-way ticket to this Stalinist utopia when I entered the tunnel in the demilitarized zone.”
Yun’s expression didn’t change. “You will find a way, Mr. Janson, I am sure.”
Janson shook his head. “Even if I do, I couldn’t possibly risk bringing Mi-sook. Let’s set aside for a second the fact that she would slow me down. If—and since I’m certain of it, when—we got caught, your girlfriend would be executed. She’d be charged with conspiring to leave the country with an American. We’d both be lucky to be shot on sight.”
Yun Jin-ho sat stoically, his face frozen with resolve. Janson was actually beginning to miss the fireworks of an hour ago.
“This, I am afraid, is nonnegotiable, Mr. Janson.” Yun Jin-ho rose from his chair and stared down at him, maintaining a steady pitch as he continued. “Unless you agree, I will not provide you the information you need. And without that information, you will be putting at risk millions of lives.”
Janson saw an opening. “Just what kind of information did you promise the boy?”
Yun Jin-ho remained steadfast. “Do you or do you not accept my terms?”
Janson didn’t feel he had much of a choice. “I do.”
Slowly, carefully, in the same even tone, Yun Jin-ho said, “If you lie to me, Mr. Janson, if you attempt to leave North Korea without Mi-sook, I assure you that you yourself will not make it out of this country alive. And if that is the case, do not waste your energy hoping for a fast, easy death. Because I promise you, I will make certain you receive nothing of the sort. Even if it costs me my life.”
“I give you my word,” Janson said forcefully. “Now let’s move forward. Get me what I need, and I’ll collect Mi-sook and take her south with me.”
Yun Jin-ho’s thin lips finally turned up in a grin. His grin soon morphed into a humorless chuckle.
“I am afraid it is not so easy as that, Mr. Janson.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I am not in possession of this intelligence. I only gained access. I am afraid the task of stealing these secrets must fall to you.”
Janson’s fortunes in North Korea continued to plummet. “Steal them?” he said. “Steal them how? Steal them from where?”
“From the palace, of course.”
Janson clenched his jaw. “And how am I supposed to get near the palace?”
Yun Jin-ho leaned back in his chair and pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket. He removed one from the pack, placed it between his lips, and lit a match. He held the flame to his tobacco and watched it burn.
After a few puffs he gazed at Janson through the smoke. “That is something I can help you with, Mr. Janson. When darkness falls, I will personally escort you into the Forbidden City.”
THIRTY-SIX
Beijing Capital International Airport
Beijing, China
Sin Bae expertly navigated past the countless duty-free shops and restaurants in Asia’s busiest airport, Beijing Capital International, while reading Ping’s encrypted email on his phone. Because Sin Bae had needed to avoid crossing paths with Jessica Kincaid at Incheon International, his handler had flown from Shanghai to Beijing to pick up surveillance from the time the trio disembarked the plane until Sin Bae arrived on a later flight from Seoul.
Seeing his head lowered, crowds parted for Sin Bae as though he were an ambulance speeding down a busy freeway with sirens blaring. Little did these people know that his awareness was impeccable, at a level higher than any professional athlete who performed in this city’s Summer Olympics several years ago. If Sin Bae crashed into you, it was purposeful on his part, and he’d most likely just relieved you of your wallet or handbag, not for money but for methods of identification or access. Or perhaps he’d planted on your person a phone or a tracking device or something more sinister.
In any case, it was no accident.
Actually, as he breezed through the airport, Sin Bae was not Sin Bae at all, but Song Jin-sung, a South Korean national who worked in research and development at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals’ laboratories in Seoul. Song Jin-sung carried a South Korean passport heavily inked with entry stamps from nearly every nation in Asia and several in the European Union, including Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, and Madrid. Song Jin-sung or one of his alternative incarnations had indeed visited each of these cities. Had killed in each of these cities. When he made his exit from each city, he took nothing with him, left nothing behind but the bodies of his victims. And occasionally his calling card: a white-gold cuff link with an onyx gemstone in its center—and a bloodied garrote hidden in its core.
As Sin Bae perused Ping’s message, he thought of the teenage girl. He had hoped that Kang Jung would not accompany Kincaid and the man to Beijing.
But she had.
Why did the woman allow the girl to come to Beijing when she knew she was a target? Why make the child a target too? The girl is only thirteen. She should be at her school.
He touched his left temple, where a headache was beginning to form. By the age of fourteen, Sin Bae was no longer in school; he’d been placed on full work duty at Yodok. Because he was large and powerful and possessed incredible stamina, he was given the job of burying bodies on the mountain. In the winter the ground froze and it sometimes took him days to dig a single grave in the frozen earth.
So many bodies.
So many bodies there wasn’t room on the mountain to bury them all.
In the winter Sin Bae stripped the corpses of their clothes to give them to members of his family.
In the winter…
In the winter he could find no berries in the hills. No frogs, no salamanders, no earthworms. Corn and rice became short; he and his family edged closer to starvation.
But by then Sin Bae was determined to endure at all costs.
And so he became savage. He began to set secret rat traps all around the camp. Each time he caught one, he immediately cooked it up and devoured it in seclusion. As the food shortages became worse and his family found themselves with even less to eat, he ceased joining them for dinners of rice and corn. For months at a time he consumed only rats.
At the age of fifteen, he became an adult and was warned by his father: “Be careful, my son. Now that you are a man the guards are permitted to shoot you.”
Newly appointed guards moved into Yodok with their families. They were separated from the prisoners but still resentful of having been stationed in such a hellish place.
Sin Bae often wondered what the guards thought of him. When he was a child, they’d kicked him around for the slightest infractions. As he grew bigger and stronger, they assigned him the most backbreaking work yet seemed to develop a certain respect for him. Respect, or perhaps it was fear. Fear not of his physical stature but of what they saw forming behind Sin Bae’s eyes.
Those eyes were now glued to his phone.
According to Ping’s email, the subjects had taken a taxi from the airport directly to Tiananmen Square. Sin Bae agreed wholeheartedly with his handler’s assessment; the square seemed to both men a peculiar place for Kincaid and her allies to start their search for Gregory Wyckoff.
Perhaps they possessed even more information than Sin Bae suspected. Perhaps they had a precise location on the boy. If so, Sin Bae’s stay in Beijing would be brief. In a few hours he might well be right back here at the airport, boarding a return flight to Seoul.
* * *
ONCE KINCAID FINALLY PASSED through the security checkpoint and entered the world’s largest square, the text message intercepted from Gregory Wyckoff’s stolen phone by Park Kwan’s people an hour earlier finally made sense; this was a reasonable spot for a clandestine rendezvous, especially if one of the parties was concerned for his safety.
Despite the freezing temperatures, the crowds in Tiananmen Square were as dense as the smog suspended just overhead. Droves of tourists surrounded China’s grand monuments, shooting photos with expensive high-tech cameras with all the intensity of the paparazzi at a red-carpet event.
Gazing up through the thick haze at the hundreds of red lanterns decorating the square in anticipation of Beijing’s Spring Festival, Kincaid realized that exhaustion was beginning to set in. Attempting to perform the universal cure for drowsiness, she vigorously shook her head from side to side. But it was futile. What she really craved was another shot of adrenaline, like the one she’d received when Janson’s old friend called her at the Grand Hyatt in Seoul. She needed to remember that she and Park Kwan and their thirteen-year-old charge were in danger, and that their mission was literally one of life or death.
“Let’s start looking for Wyckoff,” she said.
According to the incoming text message, Wyckoff wasn’t supposed to meet with his unidentified acquaintance for another hour and ten minutes. But Wyckoff’s dossier revealed that this would only be his second visit to Beijing in the past decade, so she imagined he’d choose to arrive early rather than risk missing his rendezvous. She suggested that she and Park Kwan split up to cover more ground in less time.
“What about me?” Kang Jung interjected.
“You can either come with me or go with Park Kwan,” Kincaid said. “Your choice.”
Kang Jung shook her head. “What I mean is, three of us can cover far more ground than two.”
“I realize that,” Kincaid said in a tone she immediately wished she could take back. “But you’re not going off on your own. You’re too young.”
Mercifully, rather than argue, the girl made a face, turned to Park Kwan, and asserted, “I am coming with you.”
Kincaid pointed to the tall granite monument in the middle of the square and told them that was where they should rendezvous in just under an hour if they had met with no success. She wished them both good luck then motioned toward the endless line of people waiting to enter Mao’s Mausoleum.
“I’ll begin with the chairman,” she said.
* * *
AFTER PASSING THROUGH CUSTOMS, Sin Bae exited the airport and went directly to the matte-black Audi A7 that was waiting for him in short-term parking. He was pleased to find the windows darkly tinted as he’d requested.
He opened the driver’s-side door and slipped into the soft charcoal leather seat. He started the V-8 engine, closed his eyes, and listened to it purr as his mind wandered back to his time at Yodok.
By the age of sixteen, Sin Bae was far from a model prisoner. He caused trouble throughout the camp. He fought. He stole. He had sex with women, which was strictly forbidden at Yodok.
And he was punished.
At one point during his ninth year at Yodok, it seemed as though every other week Sin Bae was being tossed into the sweatbox for punishment of some transgression or another. Punishment for stealing, for fighting, for fucking, punishment for speaking back to a guard. Punishment for not wearing his ragged uniform properly.
In the sweatbox Sin Bae faced total darkness. He was further deprived of food, even his precious rats. He was given so little to eat that he had to snatch whatever he could get his hands on. Centipedes became his breakfast, cockroaches his lunch.
In such close confinement someone of his size was completely unable to move. He crouched on his knees with his hands on his thighs, his heels digging deep into the flesh of his lower back, causing constant, excruciating pain. If he said a word or made a gesture, the punishment was extended.
When finally let loose, no man had ever previously exited the sweatbox on his own two feet. Yet Sin Bae made it a point to do so every time.
Meanwhile, each turn in the sweatbox added five years to his already indefinite sentence.
To this day, every time he closed his eyes, Sin Bae feared he’d somehow wake in the sweatbox. For it was in the sweatbox that Sin Bae had witnessed the most abhorrent event of his life.
Sin Bae opened his eyes. He threw the transmission into reverse and backed out of the space.
The drive to Tiananmen Square would take him approximately thirty minutes.
When he arrived at the square, he wouldn’t have to concern himself with parking. One of Ping’s other assets would be awaiting his arrival along Bei Chang Jie. Sin Bae would simply exit the car with the engine still running and head to the easternmost entrance of the square, where a guard had been paid well to pass Sin Bae through the security checkpoint without having to answer any inane questions or undergo an intrusive search of his person.
Sin Bae paid the airport lot the nominal fee then peeled the Audi A7 out of short-term parking.
Once on the freeway, Sin Bae regarded his reflection in the rearview mirror with a rare sense of satisfaction. Since he had boarded the two-hour Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul, Ping had also learned the identity of the man now traveling with Kincaid. His name was Park Kwan and he was employed by the Seoul Metropolitan Police, which explained his carrying a gun into the T-Lound nightclub, something not even Sin Bae had attempted.
Thinking of the man and his interference in the coatroom caused Sin Bae to again consider the girl, Kang Jung. For Sin Bae, her death would constitute a particularly cruel irony. For had he not hesitated, had he not suffered that moment of unwanted introspection at the Sophia Guesthouse in central Seoul, the teenage girl who reminded him so much of his sister would not have become involved, and thus would not have become one of his victims.
Yet it was none other than his sister’s face that he had glimpsed in the mirror as he strangled the young female translator, Lynell Yi.
Although the interpreter looked nothing like Su-ra (who would forever in his mind remain twelve years old), it was indeed Su-ra who appeared to him that evening.
It was Su-ra’s image that had diverted Sin Bae’s attention for those several crucial seconds.
Though he had been able to finish the interpreter, Sin Bae’s vacillating had afforded Lynell Yi’s boyfriend time to escape.
Now the boy—the US senator’s son, Gregory Wyckoff—had apparently fled here to Beijing. And Jessica Kincaid and the South Korean cop (and the young Korean girl named Kang Jung) would finally lead Sin Bae straight to him.
It was a bittersweet feeling, a peculiar blend of relief and regret.
For once they led him to the boy, he would have no choice but to terminate the female teen along with the others.
He flashed on Park Kwan in the coatroom and seethed. Because of the cop’s interference, Sin Bae’s kill count for this mission was about to increase by four, instead of three.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Even in parts of the capital city, the darkness was absolute. Janson had seen numerous satellite photos of the Korean peninsula at night; he’d known that the North remained as black as the seas when viewed from hundreds of miles above. Yet the perfect nothingness of Pyongyang after the sun had fallen still somehow managed to shock him. No streetlamps. No headlights. Not a single window aglow in the towering apartment buildings on either side of the road. It was as though he’d stepped even further back in time. Not just into the early twentieth century but into the Stone Age.
