it was easy to produce the low-grade anxiety that his role called for. He let
the breeze cool him, dry his sweat. There wasn’t any reason to doubt that he was
who his passport said he was; from time to time, he took out a small,
plastic-encased photograph of the late Rabbi Schneerson, considered by many
Hasids to be the messiah, or mosiach, and regarded it lovingly. Such details
mattered when one was in character.
He turned around slowly, hearing the footfalls of someone approaching him. His
stomach dropped as he took in the man’s round-brimmed hat and severe black garb.
It was a Hasid—a real one. A fellow Hasid, he told himself urgently. You are who
you pretend to be—it was an honored koan of spycraft. Another, though, was not
to be an idiot about it.
The other man, shorter than Janson, and perhaps in his early forties, smiled at
him. “Voos hurst zich?” he said, bowing his head a little. His hair was reddish,
his eyes a watery blue beneath plastic National Health spectacles. A small
leather portfolio was tucked beneath an arm.
Janson bobbed his head, clutching his briefcase, and gave him a cautiously
friendly smile, a smile constrained by the imperfect plasticity of the facial
adhesive he had employed. How to respond? There were people who had a gift for
acquiring new languages, sometimes with uncanny fluency; Alan Demarest was one.
Janson, though he had decent German and French from his days as a student, and a
certain amount of Czech, gleaned from his Czech-speaking mother, was not among
them. Now, he racked his brain, trying to dredge up some scrap of Yiddish. It
was an eventuality he should have foreseen. Rather than venture a simpering
“sha-lom,” he would be safest discouraging any conversation. He had a fleeting
fantasy of hurling the inconvenient interloper over the side. After a moment, he
gestured toward his throat, and shook his head. “Laryngitis,” he whispered, in
some approximation of an East End accent.
“Ir fill zich besser?” the man said with a kindly look. He was a lonely soul,
undeterred in his attempt to bond with someone he took to be spiritual kin.
Janson coughed explosively. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Very contagious.”
The other man took a few steps back, alarmed. He bowed again, clasping his hands
together. “Sholem aleichem. Peace and blessings be upon you,” he said, and
shakily raised a hand in farewell, retreating politely but swiftly.
Once more, Janson surrendered himself to the cooling head wind. We know more
than we know, Demarest used to admonish. Janson believed that it was true in
this case—that he could make progress if only he could properly assemble the
data points he already had.
He knew that a covert branch of the U.S. government sought his death. That a
staggering sum had, through elaborate electronic manipulations, been deposited
in his account. That the result was to create a perception that he had been paid
to kill Novak.
Could he put that money to use in some way? A voice inside him cautioned him not
to—not yet. Not while its true origins remained mysterious. It could prove
crucial as evidence. And—the possibility gnawed at him—it could, in some
high-tech fashion, be booby-trapped so that any attempt at withdrawal would
notify his enemies of his location. Which simply returned him to the question of
who these enemies might be.
Whose side are you on, Maria Lang? Before boarding, he had once again tried to
contact her, without success. Was she part of a murderous intrigue? Or had she
been kidnapped, even killed—a victim of the intrigue that had cost Peter Novak
his life? Janson had called upon an old friend of his who lived in Manhattan—a
veteran of the intelligence services, now retired—to keep a lookout for her at
the New York offices of the Liberty Foundation, where Lang ostensibly was based.
So far, there had been no sign of her having returned to the Fortieth Street
building. She had to be somewhere else—but where?
Then, too, Janson found it as curious as Fielding had that the news of Novak’s
death continued to go unreported. As far as the general public knew, none of
it—not the kidnapping, not the killing—had even happened. Was something afoot,
some plan involving insiders at the Liberty Foundation, that made it inopportune
to divulge the momentous tragedy? Yet how long did they really think they could
conceal such a thing? Janson knew of rumors that Deng Xiaoping’s death had been
covered up for more than eight days, while the matter of succession was
resolved: the regime decided it could not risk even a brief period of public
uncertainty. Was something similar at stake with the Liberty Foundation? Novak’s
enormous wealth, or most of it, was already bound up with the Liberty
Foundation. Therefore it was not clear that his passing should directly affect
its finances. At the same time, Grigori Berman told him that the wire transfer
had originated from Amsterdam, specifically from a Liberty Foundation account of
Peter Novak’s. Who within the Foundation might have been able to arrange that?
Novak was a powerful man, and his enemies would be powerful as well. He had to
accept that Novak’s enemies were his enemies, too. And, the most infernal part
of the infernal equation, they could be anyone. They could be anywhere.
Fielding, before he turned, had spoken incisively about Novak’s opponents. The
“oligarchs” of corrupt plutocratic regimes, especially those of Eastern Europe,
could have found common interest with a cabal of planners within the United
States who had regarded Novak’s growing influence with dismay and envy. Ask
yourself why America is so hated: Andres’s words. The answers were complex,
encompassing the rancor and resentment of those who felt displaced by its
dominance. Yet America was no toothless innocent: its efforts to protect its
global preeminence could be ruthless indeed. Members of its foreign-policy
establishment might well feel threatened by the actions of a truly benevolent
figure, simply because those actions were beyond its control. Fielding: Everyone
knew that he’d spurned America’s advances, that he’d angered its foreign-affairs
establishment by steering his own course. His only polestar was his own
conscience. Who could predict the rage of Washington’s planners—shortsighted
unilateralists blinded by a zeal for control they mistook for patriotism? This
was not America’s best face, not the better angels of its nature. But it was
sheer naivete to pretend that the establishment was incapable of such actions.
Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest, he sometimes reflected, believed himself to
be a true American. Janson had long considered that a noxious figment of
self-delusion. Yet what if the Demarests of the world were right? What if they
did represent not America, no, but a strain of America, an America that
foreigners in troubled lands were more likely to encounter than most? Janson
closed his eyes but could not banish the piercing, vivid memories that
transfixed and haunted him even now.
“No, don’t bring them in,” the lieutenant commander had told Janson. Faintly,
even in the weather-befouled headphones, he could hear choral music. “I’ll come
out there.”
“Sir,” Janson replied. “There’s no need. They’re securely bound, as you
requested. The prisoners are unharmed but immobilized.”
“Which I’m sure took some doing. I’m not surprised you rose to the challenge,
Janson.”
“Transport would not present any difficulties,” Janson said. “Sir.”
“Tell you what,” Demarest said. “Take them to Candle Bog.”
Candle Bog was what the Americans had named a clearing in the jungle four clicks
north of the main army encampment. There had been a skirmish there a month
earlier, when American sentinels came upon a couple of hooches and three men
they identified as VC couriers. One American was shot in the engagement; all
three Viet Cong were eventually killed. An injured member of the American party
had corrupted the Vietnamese name of the area, Quan Ho Bok, to Candle Bog, and
the appellation stuck.
Transporting the prisoners to Candle Bog took two hours. Demarest was waiting
for them when they arrived. He was in a jeep, with his executive officer, Tom
Bewick, behind the wheel.
Janson saw that the prisoners were thirsty; because their arms were bound to
their sides, he held his canteen to their lips, dividing its contents between
the two. Despite their terror and uncertainty, the prisoners slurped the water
down gratefully. He let them rest on the ground between the two hooches.
“Good work, Janson,” Demarest said.
“Humane treatment of prisoners of war, just like the Geneva Convention says,”
Janson replied. “If only the enemy followed our lead. Sir.”
Demarest chuckled. “You’re funny, schoolboy.” He turned to his XO. “Tom,” he
said. “Could you … do the honors?”
Bewick’s tawny face looked as if it were carved of wood, with crude gashes for
eyes and mouth. His nose was small, narrow, and almost sharp in appearance. The
overall effect was reinforced by the streaky tan that somehow suggested wood
grain. His movements were swift and efficient, but jerky rather than fluid. It