interested in, it wasn’t the landscape in front of him. Janson zoomed in on his
face and felt a pang. This man was not like the Americans he had encountered
earlier. The powerful neck straining at his collar, the dead eyes—this man was a
professional killer, a gun for hire. Janson’s scalp began to crawl.
Diagonally opposite, another man was reading the newspaper. He was dressed like
a businessman, bespectacled, in a light gray suit. Janson zoomed in: his lips
were moving. Nor was he reading out loud, for when his eyes darted off, he
continued speaking. He was communicating—the microphone could have been in his
tie or lapel—to a confederate, somebody with an earpiece.
Anyone else?
The redheaded woman in the green cotton dress? But no, ten young children were
following her. She was a schoolteacher, taking the children on a field trip. No
operative would expose herself to the chaos and unpredictability of a group of
young children.
A hundred feet above the fountain where Agger and he had arranged to meet at
four o’clock, Janson continued to scan the scene. His eyes roved over the gravel
paths and the wild, unkempt expanse of grass and scrub.
Conclusion: an inexpert American tag team had been replaced with local talent,
people who knew the terrain and could react quickly.
But what were their orders?
He continued to scan the figures on the sloping hill, alert to further
anomalies. The businessman was now apparently napping, his chin resting on his
chest, suggesting a postprandial siesta. Only the occasional movement of his
mouth—murmured communications, if only to keep boredom at bay—betrayed the
illusion.
The two figures he’d identified, the businessman with his newspaper and the
artist with his sketchbook, were clearly Greek nationals, not American; that
much was plain from their physiognomy, attire, even posture. And language, too:
Janson was a poor lip-reader, but he could tell it was Greek, not English, that
the man spoke.
But for God’s sake, why the dragnet? The simple existence of incriminating
evidence did not explain the willingness to accept its import. Janson had been
an agent of one of America’s most secretive intelligence branches for
twenty-five years: his profile was as thoroughly scrutinized as anyone’s. If he
were after a big score, he could have arranged one long ago in a hundred
different ways. Yet now, so it seemed, the worst had been assumed of him, no
alternative interpretation of the evidence entertained.
What had changed—something he’d done or was believed to have done? Was it
something he knew? One of those things made him a threat to the planners in
Washington, half a world away from this ancient hill in the center of Athens.
Who else was there? The sun’s slanting rays made it hard to see, but Janson
scrutinized every patch of ground that was visible to him, dividing it up like a
quadrate grid, to the point that his eyes began to ache.
At four o’clock, a worried-looking Agger came into view; he was carrying his
navy linen jacket flung over a shoulder, his blue striped shirt dappled with
sweat, no doubt a vexing development for the fastidious analyst, who seldom
ventured far from the air-conditioned ambit of office and residence.
Now, as Janson could see from his perch in the pines above, Agger sat down on
the long marble bench by the fountain, breathing heavily, looking around for his
old drinking companion.
Janson lowered himself to the ground
The man with the artist’s pad: Muscle? Surveillance only? The fact that he was
Greek concerned him. The observers on the street were, he had ascertained,
Americans, part of the standard military intelligence detail attached to U.S.
embassies. They weren’t amateurs, but they displayed no high level of
professional skill, either. They were, he had concluded, the best that could be
summoned on extreme short notice. Athens sector hadn’t had advance word that
he’d be in town; after all, he had made the decision himself, at the spur of the
moment, only twelve hours previously.
But these Greeks: Who were they? Not CIA employees. These were professionals, to
whom a job had been outsourced. The kind of men you kept at arm’s length—until
you needed them. Often that meant a sanction, an act that no official members of
a security detail could be entrusted with.
But Janson was getting ahead of himself, he knew: there was no cause for a
sanction order. Not yet, anyway.
Janson crawled on his belly along the untamed arbor, staying close to a long
retaining wall made of piled shale. The scrub of maquis impeded his progress.
Blades of crabgrass tickled his nose; tall weeds sprouted in clumps every few
feet, and Janson took care not to flag his presence by disturbing them. Two
minutes later, he raised his head quickly above the berm line, verifying that he
was within a few feet of the man with the sketchpad. That man was standing now,
the stick of charcoal having been carelessly dropped to the ground like a
cigarette butt.
The Greek’s back was to him, and he could see how powerfully built the young
“artist” was. The man’s gaze was resolutely on Agger, on the marble bench before
the fountain, and his muscles seemed strained for immediate response. Then
Janson saw him reach for something under his caftanlike shirt.
Janson lifted a large piece of shale from the rock terrace, taking care to
maintain absolute silence; any unexpected noise, such as the sound of two rocks
rubbing against each other, would cause the Greek to whirl around instantly.
Janson hoisted the rock above his head and flung it with all his strength,
aiming for the back of his neck. The man had begun to turn when the shale struck
him, and he staggered to the ground. Janson stepped over the low wall and seized
the man by his hair, clamping his forearm against his mouth. He flipped him over
the wall and onto his back.
He yanked a flat-sided gun—a powerful automatic pistol, a Walther P99—from the
man’s trouser band and saw that it had a perforated cylinder permanently
attached. A silenced weapon: meant to be used, not displayed—a weapon for
fulfilling threats, not simply making them. The man was a professional, with
professional equipment. Janson ran his fingers along the man’s embroidered
collar, feeling for the microphone, and made sure that the contactor switch had
not been activated. He flipped over the fabric, exposing a small blue-black
plastic disk with a copper wire running out from it.
“Tell your friend it’s an emergency!” he said, whispering in his ear. He knew
that the task would not have been outsourced to people who did not speak English
and might misunderstand orders. “Let him know that you have been betrayed! As
you have been!”
“Den omilo tin Aggliki,” the man said.
Janson pushed his knee against the man’s throat until he gagged. “Don’t speak
English? Then I guess there’s no reason for me not to kill you.”
The man’s eyes widened. “No! Please, I do what you say.”
“And remember. Katalaveno ellinika.” I understand Greek. A half-truth, anyway.
Pressing the hidden contactor toward the front of his collar, the Greek
activated his microphone and began to speak, the urgency made more intense as
Janson gouged his Walther into his temple.
Once the message was relayed, he slammed the Greek assassin to the shale wall.
The man’s cranium absorbed most of the impact; he would be unconscious for an
hour, probably two.
Through his binoculars, Janson saw the businessman in the light gray suit stand
abruptly and stride toward the arbor. Something about the way he carried the
folded newspaper made it clear that it was serving to conceal something else.
The bespectacled businessman looked warily around as he made his way into the
arbor, his hand still enveloped by the folded copy of Eleftherotypia, the Athens
daily.
Janson glanced at his wristwatch. Too much time was passing; Agger could easily
be overtaken by anxiety and decide to return to the office. That was standard
procedure anyway with a no-show: one was not to wait beyond a limited amount of
time.
Quickly, Janson positioned himself at the end of the arborway. As the man
emerged, Janson lunged, swinging the Walther P99 into his face, shattering teeth
and bone. Blood spewed from his mouth and spattered on his white shirt and
jacket; the paper dropped and the silenced weapon it concealed clattered to the
stone underfoot. Swiftly Janson turned over the man’s lapel, exposing a small
blue-black disk, identical to the one worn by the other Greek.
Janson returned the Walther to his waistband and rubbed a small spot of blood
from his hand. An inner bleakness was creeping upon him. In the past few days,
he had fallen back into everything he had once prayed he’d left behind him—the
violence, the gambits, the lethal subterfuge, a career’s worth of ingrained
habits. Still, this was no time to gaze into the abyss. He had to focus, to