Free Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Janson Option (Paul Janson) by Paul Garrison

Gulfstream. ASC gives me bodyguards when I travel. The best.”
    “Will you be in Somalia?” asked Kincaid.
    “My work takes me all over East Africa.”
    She asked, “Does it strike you as a funny coincidence that your wife was pirated to Somalia while you’re working there?”
    “Rotten luck, not coincidence. Allegra was finishing appraising a collection in the Seychelles and we planned to meet in Mombasa. The yacht was spur of the moment. Allegra was introduced to the owner in Victoria. He happened to be sailing to Mombasa and she decided to catch a ride.”
    “Did you plan to meet him?”
    “I assumed we would take him to dinner in Mombasa. You know, as a thank-you—Janson, I have to know exactly what your next move is.”
    Janson said, “Your wife is camera shy. I want you to e-mail me any photographs you have in which she is not wearing sunglasses. I’ve got tons of schoolgirl photos, but nothing that shows her face since she was a teenager.”
    *  *  *
    “I AM BAFFLED, ” he told Jessica Kincaid in the car racing to Westc hester Airport. Ten thirty at night, midweek, their driver was weaving through homebound theatre and restaurant traffic. “Italian hit men try to take out our client. Makes no sense.”
    “The guy was definitely aiming at Helms,” Kincaid agreed.
    “And when the strollers came around the corner, they were aiming for Helms. Why would Camorra hit men try to kill Kingsman Helms?”
    Their driver passed the airport terminal, continued on to a chain-link fence, and stopped at a security speakerphone. “Eight Two Two Romeo Echo.”
    “Do you buy Allegra on that particular yacht being coincidence?”
    “Sounds like one. Funny thing, though,” mused Janson as the gate slid open, “speaking of coincidences.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Somalia was an Italian colony.”
    “What, eighty years ago?”
    “Mussolini’s Africa Orientale Italiana.”
    Kincaid said, “Hooking Helms to Mussolini is mighty far-fetched.”
    She was not surprised when Janson turned very serious. “When options run out, survivors have far-fetched standing by.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
    “ Jess .” Paul Janson grabbed her hand and squeezed hard. “Operators who ignore far-fetched get killed. Operators who dismiss options get killed.”
    “OK, Paul.”
    “When in doubt, remember London.”
    “I remember Amsterdam.” Her Lambda sniper team had been assigned to kill a rogue agent who had betrayed Consular Operations. The rogue had not been easy to kill. He had turned the London operation on its ear, and her into a first-class football clod.
    And when she finally had him in her sights, in Amsterdam, the Machine had taught her a whole new definition of far-fetched: Paul Janson had convinced her that he was not a rogue agent; Cons Ops had betrayed him ; and Jessica Kincaid had come within a nanosecond of letting the bosses trick her into killing the wrong man.
    “I’m alive today,” said Janson, “because as young and dumb as you were back then, you opened your eyes to far-fetched.”
    “Thanks for the history lesson, Old-Timer.”
    “Let’s see if Mussolini’s waiting on the plane.”

SEVEN
    C atspaw’s fourteen-passenger Embraer 650 stood by itself in the dark at the edge of the runways, which were speckled with blue, yellow, and green taxi and runway lights. Janson had had most of the seats removed to upgrade the big silver jet with a full galley, study, a sleeping area, dressing room, and shower. With fuel capacity for a four-thousand-mile transoceanic range and broadband satellite data links, they could go anywhere in the world on short notice and arrive fed, rested, geared up, and informed.
    “Ready when you are, boss,” Lynn Novicki, their senior pilot greeted them at the top of the retractable stairs, which entered the ship right behind the cockpit. “Have you guys eaten?”
    “Police Department takeout. What’s that I smell? Cumin and cinnamon and ginger.”
    “Camel burgers on flatbread.