pressed, the entrance alarm would be deactivated. Janson withdrew the small
compressed-air atomizer from his knapsack and directed a jet of finely powdered
charcoal at the pad. If everything went well, it would alight on fingerprints,
and by the pattern he would be able to tell which digits the alarm code used;
depending on how light or heavy the oils were, he could make a good guess as to
their relative frequency.
A dead end. No pattern was revealed at all. As he had feared, the alarm pad
employed a scrambled video display: the numerals were displayed in a random
order, never in the same sequence twice.
He cleared his head. So close and yet so … No, he was not down for the count.
Deactivating the alarm would have been enormously helpful, but he had not
exhausted his backup plans. The door was alarmed. Accept it. If the alarm system
did not detect that it had been opened, however, it would not go off. With the
help of a penlight, Janson scanned the dark-stained door until he saw the tiny
screws on the topmost section: evidence of the contact switch. Within the door
frame, the contacts of a ferrous-metal switch were kept together—the circuit was
kept closed—by a magnet recessed in the top of the door. As long as the door was
shut, the magnet would keep a plunger within the door frame depressed,
completing the electric circuit within the switch unit. Janson withdrew a
powerful magnet from his knapsack and, using a fast-drying cyanoacrylate
adhesive, fastened it to the lower part of the door frame.
Then he went to work on the door lock. More bad news: there was no keyhole. The
door was opened by means of a magnetic card. Could the door simply be forced?
No: he had to assume a heavy steel grid inside the wooden door and a multiple
door-frame-bolt locking system. You had to ask a door like that to open. Unless
you meant to take down part of the building, you couldn’t force it to.
It was an eventuality he had prepared for; but again, with his rough-and-ready
tools, the chances of success were far less than with the kind of instruments he
was accustomed to having at his disposal. Certainly, his magnetic picklock was
not an impressive-looking piece of equipment, having been jury-rigged with
electrical tape and epoxy. He had removed the core of the solenoid and replaced
it with a steel rod. At the other end of the rod, he had attached a thin
rectangle of steel, which he had cut from a tin of butter cookies using
heavy-duty scissors. The electronic part—a random noise generator—was a simple
circuit of transistors he had extracted from a Radio Shack cell phone. Once he
connected a pair of AA batteries to the apparatus, a quickly oscillating
magnetic field was created: it was designed to pulse at the sensors until they
were activated.
Janson inserted the metal rectangle in the slot and waited. Slow seconds ticked
by.
Nothing.
Swallowing a gorge of frustration, he checked the battery contacts and
reinserted the metal card. More long seconds ticked by—and suddenly he heard the
click of the lock’s own solenoid being activated. The door’s bolts and latches
were swiftly retracted.
He let out his breath slowly, and opened the door.
As long as the house was occupied, any internal photoelectric alarms would be
deactivated. If he’d guessed wrong, it wouldn’t take long to find out. Janson
quietly closed the door behind him and, in the gloom, proceeded down a long
hall.
After a few hundred feet, he saw a crack of light. It was seeping beneath a
paneled door to his left.
On examination, it appeared to be a simple swing door, unlocked and unalarmed.
What kind of lair was this? Was it an office? A conference room?
Fear slithered through his bowels. Every animal instinct he had was signaling
frantically.
Something was wrong.
Yet he could not turn back now, whatever the risks. He removed his pistol from a
bellyband holster beneath his tunic and, holding it before him, strode into the
room.
To eyes that had adjusted to the gloom, the space was dazzlingly bright,
illuminated by floor lamps and desk lamps and a chandelier overhead—and Janson
squinted involuntarily as an even deeper sense of dread came over him.
His eyes swept the room. He was in the middle of a magnificent drawing room, a
textural array of damask and leather and richly burnished antique woods. And in
the middle of it, eight men and women were seated, facing him.
Janson felt the blood drain from his face.
They had been waiting for him.
“What the heck took you so long, Mr. Janson?” The question was asked with a
practiced show of affability. “Collins here told me you’d make it here by eight
o’clock. It’s practically half past.”
Janson blinked hard at his questioner, but the evidence of his eyes remained
unchanged.
He was staring at the President of the United States.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The President of the United States. The director of Consular Operations. And the
others?
Janson felt flash frozen by the shock. As he stood rooted to the spot, his mind
struggled fiercely with itself.
It couldn’t be. And yet it was.
Men in suits and ties had been waiting for him in the luxurious mansion, and
Janson recognized most of them. There was the secretary of state, a hale man
looking less hale than usual. The U.S. Treasury Department’s undersecretary for
international affairs, a plump, Princeton-trained economist. The sallow-faced
chairman of the National Intelligence Council. The deputy director of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, a burly man with a perpetual five o’clock shadow.
There were also a few colorless but nervous-looking technicians: he knew the
type immediately.
“Have a seat, Paul.” Yes, it was Derek Collins, his slate eyes cool behind his
chunky black plastic glasses. “Make yourself at home.” He gestured around him
wryly. “If you can call this a home.”
The room was both spacious and ornate, paneled and plastered in the
seventeenth-century English style; burnished mahogany walls gleamed beneath a
fine crystal chandelier. The floor marquetry was in an intricate pattern of
lighter and darker woods, oak and ebony.
“Apologies for the programmed misdirection, Paul,” Collins went on.
Programmed misdirection?
“The courier was on your payroll,” Janson said, toneless.
Collins nodded. “We’d had the same thought as you about getting access to the
incoming documents. As soon as he reported your contact, we knew we had a golden
opportunity. Look, you weren’t exactly going to respond to an engraved
invitation. It was the only way I could bring you in.”
“Bring me in?” Indignation choked off the words in his throat.
Glances were exchanged between Collins and the president. “And it was the best
way to show these other good people that you still have what it takes,” Collins
said. “Demonstrate that your abilities live up to your reputation. Hot damn,
that was one impressive infiltration. And before you get all hurt and sulky, you
better understand that the people in this room are pretty much the only ones
left who know the truth about Mobius. For better or worse, you’re now a member
of this select group. Which means we’ve got an Uncle Sam Wants You situation
here.”
“Goddamn you, Collins!” He reholstered his pistol and put his hands on his hips.
Fury coursed through him.
The president cleared his throat. “Mr. Janson, we really are depending on you.”
“With all respect, sir,” he said, “I’ve had enough of the lies.”
“Watch it, Paul,” Collins interjected.
“Mr. Janson?” The president was looking into his eyes with his famous high-beam
gaze, the kind that could be equally mournful or amused. “Lies are pretty much
the first language for most folks in Washington. You’ll get no argument from me.
There are lies and, yes, there will continue to be lies, because the good of the
country requires it. But I want you to understand something. You’re inside a
top-secret ultrasecure federal facility. No tape, no log, no nothing. What does
that mean? It means we’re at a place where we can all open our kimonos, and
that’s exactly what we’re going to do. This meeting has no official status
whatsoever. It never happened. I’m not here, you’re not here. That’s the
sheltering lie, the lie that’s going to make all the truth-telling possible.
Because here and now, it’s all about telling the truth—to you and to ourselves.
Nobody’s going to shine you on. But it’s dead urgent that you get briefed on the
situation with the Mobius Program.”
“The Mobius Program,” Janson said. “I’ve already been briefed. The world’s
greatest philanthropist and humanitarian, this one-man roving ambassador, the
‘peacemaker’—he’s a goddamn fiction, brought to you by your friends in
Washington. This latter-day saint is a wholesale creation of … what? A task
force of planners.”
“Saint?” the National Intelligence Council chairman interrupted. “There’s no
religious valence here. We were always careful to avoid anything like that.”