Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation, page 6
“Tourists from the West still love to stay in hanok,” the husband said, collapsing her thoughts. “They do not come to Seoul to stay in a high-rise they can see in New York City or London.”
Kincaid nodded. She understood his passion, and unlike Janson, she could certainly understand why the young lovers might have slipped away from their modern apartment nearby to experience an amorous night in a traditional Korean home. Maybe she was just more romantic than Paul—or maybe Paul had previously been inside a hanok and had been reminded of the six-by-four-foot cage he’d been kept in during the eighteen months he spent as a prisoner of the Taliban in Afghanistan. That would certainly be reason enough for him to dismiss the hanok as a desirable place to stay. Either way, Kincaid didn’t think Janson’s theory that the young couple had been on the run held much water.
* * *
FOLLOWING HER VISIT to the Sophia Guesthouse, Kincaid waited in line for a dish of spicy chili beef then headed south back to the US embassy. By then it was nearing five o’clock Korean time, and she was hoping to catch Jonathan exiting the embassy after calling it a day. Jonathan was probably in his mid- to late twenties, not a teenager but certainly closer to Lynell Yi in age than most people employed at the embassy. And the ambassador’s glance toward the doorway, when Kincaid asked if there was anyone in the office who knew Lynell Yi well, made her suspect that Jonathan might hold some of the answers to questions she had about Yi’s job, maybe even her relationship with Gregory Wyckoff.
Jonathan exited the embassy at a quarter after five and walked to the subway station at Chongyak. There he took the 1 line, and Kincaid hopped into the subway car trailing his. He got off just two stops later and boarded the 3. On the 3 train, he seemed to settle in for a lengthy ride. And lengthy it was; he didn’t step off the train again until they were south of the Han River in Gangnam-gu.
Kincaid continued to watch the restaurant. As she held her arms across her chest against the cold, she experienced that feeling again. That odd sensation that while she was watching Jonathan, she too was being watched. But by whom?
She searched the faces of the few people on the street braving the freezing weather. She eyed a group of teenagers huddled at the far corner of the park. She counted four males and two females, all probably under the age of eighteen. An unlikely bunch of spies, to say the least.
To her left, she spotted a vagrant hunched over on a park bench.
A vagrant? In these temperatures? How could he possibly survive the night?
The sun was dipping low behind the mountain; dark was falling fast. If she didn’t identify her stalker soon, it would be all but impossible. She reached into her pocket for her phone to call Janson but then thought better of it. She’d already informed him that she’d followed Jonathan to the restaurant. She could handle this on her own.
She turned away from the restaurant, retreating into the park. The group of teens paid her no attention. The vagrant didn’t stir. Two males were walking fast straight toward her, but as they approached she noted they were holding hands, exposing their fingers to the cold. In this weather, that was true love.
A minute later she moved past the couple, deeper into the park. She stole another look over her shoulder. Had any of the people she’d seen earlier followed her? None that she could tell. But she felt a pair of eyes on her nevertheless.
Kincaid quickened her pace as her pulse sped up and her head filled with images of men in fedoras and dark trench coats, with handguns hanging at their sides.
In the center of the park she spun around and spotted movement in a copse of trees. An animal? No. Unless a grizzly bear had escaped from the Seoul Zoo, this creature was too large to be anything but a human being.
She continued moving forward as though she’d seen nothing. But she heard a rustle and was suddenly sure that whoever was following her knew he’d been made. Which meant that he was probably a professional.
With no one else in sight and the cover of dusk protecting him, her attacker finally made his move and launched himself out of the shadows.
Kincaid didn’t hesitate, didn’t bother looking back, just took off in a sprint across the park in the direction of the river. Over the shrieking gusts of wind she heard her pursuer make contact with bushes and low tree branches as he cut a parallel course north toward the Han, attempting to overtake her.
But Kincaid was fast. Fastest of her class at Quantico, where her professional life began. In the time since she’d left Virginia to join the FBI’s National Security Division, she’d put on a few years but not a single extra pound. And her world hadn’t paused since she’d been stolen away by the State Department after catching the eyes of some spooks from Consular Operations.
It was times like this when brimming with confidence counted, and that was a trait she’d had in spades all the way back to her childhood in Red Creek, Kentucky. She’d taken that confidence with her when she boarded a Greyhound bus, leaving her daddy behind for the first time in her life. And over the years that confidence had been refined, first by the bureau, then by Cons Ops, and most recently by Paul Janson.
She charged through a row of bushes and found herself back on a street. She paused a moment to catch her breath, which was billowing in large white puffs before her eyes. Through the mist she eyed a taxi, and her arm shot up almost instinctively.
The orange taxi slowed and pulled to the curb and Kincaid opened the door and dove into the backseat, shouting, “Go, go, go.”
As the taxi peeled away Kincaid raised her head just in time to see a tall Korean man breaking through the bushes, stopping on a dime, then raising his arms with a gun in his hands. She watched him take aim and nervously waited for the sound of a gunshot, the shattering of window glass, the buzz of a bullet as it streaked by within inches of her face.
Mercifully, the assassin never fired.
SEVEN
Cheongwha Apartments
Itaewon, Yongsan-gu, Seoul
Full dark yet still no word from Nam Sei-hoon.
Fortunately, since the time he left Nam at the War Memorial, Janson had scored the aid of another old friend, this one going back to his days in Consular Operations.
Until roughly ninety minutes ago, Janson had assumed Grigori Berman was dead. Over the past couple of years all attempts to reach the bearlike Russian had failed. Given his longtime associations with the Russian mafiya, it would have served as no surprise for Janson to learn that Grigori Berman had met a violent end.
But that evidently wasn’t the case.
“Dead?” Berman had said in his thick Russian accent. “No, no, Paulie! I am very much alive, comrade. I was just, let’s say, on an extended vacation.”
Janson didn’t bother asking where Berman had been and Berman in turn didn’t utter another word on the subject. Janson could think of myriad reasons why the big man might have needed to remain off the radar for a while.
“Hearing from you, Paulie, is like hearing from an old girlfriend. It warms my heart, yet I cannot help but wonder what it is you want from me.”
Janson didn’t need to remind Berman that the Russian was still in his debt. Back when Janson worked for Cons Ops, Grigori Berman, who’d been trained as a number cruncher in the former Soviet Union, had been in the business of laundering millions for his Russian mob associates by setting up shell corporations around the globe. When Consular Operations finally decided to drop the dragnet on the Russian syndicate Berman was working with, Paul Janson deliberately let the effusive accountant go. Despite the protests of his Cons Ops colleagues, Janson viewed the decision like a chess move. Grigori Berman may have been a manipulator, a liar, and a thief. But he was also talented, clever, and—unlike his co-conspirators—nonviolent. Placing him in a prison would have done neither Janson nor Cons Ops any good. Having a man like Berman in his debt, on the other hand, gave Janson the potential ammunition to outsmart and outmaneuver scores of other criminals who were violent—evil men who were irredeemable and who would inevitably do irreparable damage to society.
In hindsight, Janson’s chess move was one of the most brilliant of his career. A few years ago when Janson was framed for the contract murder of billionaire philanthropist Peter Novak, it was Grigori Berman who discovered that the $16 million placed in Janson’s offshore account as alleged payment for the hit actually originated from Novak’s own foundation. Shortly after that discovery, Berman took a sniper’s bullet in the chest—a bullet that had been meant for Paul Janson. Thankfully, the large Russian recovered. And not only was Berman not angry afterward, but he also risked everything to help Janson put the final nail in the coffin of the Mobius Program—by manipulating a crooked foreign banker and causing the then president of the United States of America, Charles W. Berquist Jr., to receive and accept an illegal $1.5 million personal contribution, which Janson then used as leverage.
Now that Janson thought about it, maybe Grigori Berman’s debt had been paid.
Well, Berman doesn’t need to know that.
“So, what can I do for you, Paulie?”
“I’m trying to track down a hacker in Seoul. Goes by the screen name Lord Wicked.” Janson spelled out the queer combination of letters and numbers.
“Ah, Lord Wicked,” Berman said.
“You’ve heard of him.”
“Everyone in the cybersecurity industry has heard of him. He’s a living legend.”
“Can you help me locate him?”
“Ordinarily, I would say nyet. A man of his prowess, he undoubtedly reroutes his servers to countries all over the world. But since you know which city he is in, I should be able to dox him within the hour.”
“Dox him?”
“Unearth his personal details,” Berman said. “His real name, his home address, his telephone number. Maybe even his mother’s maiden name.”
“Skip the mother’s maiden name,” Janson said. “Get me the rest as quickly as you can.”
* * *
FIFTY-SIX MINUTES LATER Grigori Berman called Janson back with the details.
“His name is Jung Kang,” Berman said. “Or Kang Jung, if you place the last name first as the Koreans do. He has two known addresses. One is in Itaewon, in the Yongsan district. The other address is in Gangnam—you know, like the song, Paulie? ‘Heeeyyy, sexy lady! Oppa Gangnam style…’”
“I’ve heard the song, Grigori. How about giving me the addresses?”
Twenty minutes later a young woman exited the main lobby of the Cheongwha Apartments, and Janson slipped in with a practiced pronunciation of the Korean term for “thank you” and a warm smile.
Since Janson was already in Itaewon when he spoke to Berman, it made sense for him to check out Kang Jung’s Yongsan address and leave the Gangnam address for Kincaid, who’d last reported to him that she’d followed the ambassador’s chief aide to an upscale restaurant across from Dosan Park. But when Janson called Kincaid to relay Kang Jung’s Gangnam address he received no answer. Once ten minutes passed without a callback, he began to feel slightly on edge. But he was sure it was nothing. Maybe the ambassador’s aide had dropped into the restaurant for a single drink then returned to the subway station for the remainder of his ride home. Kincaid would no doubt contact him when she popped back up on the surface.
Janson took the elevator to the eleventh floor. He was pessimistic about this being the right place. Itaewon was known as a Western town, a district popular among tourists and expats and US military personnel stationed in Korea. Because of its demographics and plethora of counterfeit goods, Itaewon had been likened to a Chinatown, only for North Americans and Western Europeans. Which made it an unlikely residence for a wealthy man with a clearly Korean name like Kang Jung.
The indistinctiveness of the apartment building made him further suspect that Kang Jung’s true address was the one in Gangnam. According to Morton and Berman, “Lord Wicked” was a kingpin who made millions of dollars selling “dumps”—stolen credit card and corresponding personal information—to hardened criminals from Vancouver to Estonia. Odds were he was living large. Or at least larger.
Janson stepped into the dim hallway, took a left, and rounded the corner. Outside apartment 1109, he paused and listened at the door, careful to stay clear of the peephole. He’d heed Morton’s warning and be cautious, sure. But he wasn’t there to take Kang Jung into custody; he was there to cut a deal for information. Kang Jung would have little reason to kill him.
Then again…
When he heard nothing but a television tuned to an old sitcom with a laugh track, Janson finally rapped on the door.
He stood off to the side and waited for the peephole to darken, but it never did. He listened for the sound of heavy footfalls but continued to hear nothing but the television. He was about to give the door another knock when it opened a crack and the tiny features of a little girl poked out.
“Hashiljul ashinayo?” Janson said. Do you speak English?
“Chogum hajul arayo,” the girl replied. I speak a little.
“Is your father home?”
“He may be.”
“He may be? Would you mind checking for me?”
“I’m not allowed to use the phone. I’m grounded.”
“The phone?”
“My father lives in Gangnam,” she said. “I live here with my mother.”
“I see,” he said, deflating at the validation of his assumption that he was at the wrong address. “Is your mother home?”
“No, she’s out.”
“You’re here all by yourself?” Janson said. “How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“OK, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
Janson turned toward the elevator bank.
“Wait,” the girl called. “What do you want with my father?”
Janson scrutinized her. “You seem to speak more than a little English.”
“I’m fluent,” she said. “Now, what do you want with my father?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s just business.”
“What kind of business?”
“You’re a curious young lady, aren’t you?”
“Answer the question,” she said.
“I want to pay your father for some information.”
“What kind of information?”
“Adult information.”
Janson turned to leave again.
“Computer information?” the girl called out to him.
Janson spun back to face her. “Maybe. What do you know about it?”
“My father doesn’t work with computers.”
“He doesn’t? What does he do?”
“He’s a chef.”
“Is that so? What type of food?”
“Neo-Korean,” she said. Then: “You look like you don’t believe me.”
“Let’s just say I have information that contradicts what you’re telling me.”
“You don’t even know my father’s name, I’d bet.”
Janson thought about it and decided to play along. “Your father is Kang Jung.”
The corner of the girl’s mouth lifted in a smirk. “You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re looking for the wrong person.”
“Is your father’s surname Kang?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, who’s the right person? Who’s Kang Jung? Your mother?”
The girl shook her head and then opened the door wider. “Why don’t you come in?”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
She rolled her eyes and motioned inside. “It would be if you’re looking for Lord Wicked,” she said.
EIGHT
T-Lound Nightclub
Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Kincaid looked over her shoulder, scanning the mass of pulsating youths. Madonna’s “Ray of Light” emanated from all sides of the ultramodern club as she searched for the man who’d been following her since Dosan Park.
Once she’d jumped into the taxi and realized that the gunman wasn’t going to be able to get off a shot, she felt around in the pockets of her overcoat for her phone. But it was gone. She must have dropped it while sprinting through the park, trying to evade her pursuer. She leaned forward and asked her driver whether she could borrow his cell phone. He responded in Korean by telling her that he didn’t speak any English, then closed the sliding partition that separated the front seat from the back.
After ten minutes of driving around Gangnam, she had the taxi pull over. She didn’t want to travel too far, because she still hoped to make it back to the restaurant in time to catch Jonathan leaving.
Clearly, she hadn’t traveled far enough. Because as she searched the streets for a public phone to call Janson, she caught sight of the tall Korean man who had aimed the gun at her.
When his eyes fell on her she had no choice but to begin running again.
He chased her up and down busy city streets, past narrow alleys, through the blinding cold. She attempted several evasive maneuvers she’d learned while in Cons Ops and a number of advanced tactics she’d been taught by Janson. But she simply couldn’t lose the man with the gun. He was fit. He was trained. He was professional. And he seemed pretty damn determined to catch her and kill her.
Kincaid eventually ducked into a subway station in order to surround herself with people and catch a breath. When she realized the man had followed her into the station, she jumped into a subway car. She hopped off at the first stop only to spy him coming after her like a horror-movie monster when she finally surfaced again.
Following failed attempts to hide in a department store and disguise herself, she finally lost her tail using a complex sequence of buses, subways, and taxis.
