The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,117

they told you?"

"It's the truth," she spat. Another writhing attempt to throw him off her passed through her body like a powerful shudder. "Shit," she said. "At least you don't have bad breath. I should be grateful for that, huh? So what's on the agenda? You gonna kill me, or is it just gonna be a lot of dry humping?"

"Don't flatter yourself," he said. "A sharp cookie like you - you believe everything they tell you?" He grunted. "No shame in it. I did once." Their foreheads were still pressed together, nose to nose, mouth to mouth: the strange and unsettling intimacy of lethal combatants.

Her eyes narrowed to slits. "You got another story? I'm listening. Can't do anything else." But she made another convulsive effort to shake him.

"Try this on. I was set up. I served in Consular Operations for over two decades. Look, you seem to know a lot about me. Ask yourself if what they've told you about me really fits the picture."

She said nothing for a moment. "Give me something real," she said. "If you didn't do what they say you did, give me something to show you're telling me the truth. I realize I'm not in any position to negotiate. I just want to know."

For the first time, she spoke without hostility or japery. Was it something in his own voice that gave her pause, that made her wonder if he was the villain she'd been told he was?

He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding next to hers: again, an odd, unwanted intimacy. He felt her relax beneath him.

"OK," she said. "Get offa me. I ain't gonna rear, ain't gonna run - I know you'd get to the rifle first. I'm just going to listen."

He made sure her body was completely slack and then - a crucial decision, a moment of trust in the midst of deadly combat - rolled off her in a quick movement. He had a destination in mind: the Beretta, now nestled under a nearby ash tree. He grabbed it and stowed it in his front waistband.

Looking wobbly and uncertain, the woman rose to her feet. Then she smiled coolly. "Is that a gun in your pocket, or - "

"It's a gun in my pocket," he said, cutting her off. "Let me tell you something. I was once like you. A weapon. Aimed and discharged by someone else. I thought I had an autonomous intelligence, made my own decisions. The truth was otherwise: I was a weapon in the hands of another."

"That's just a bunch of word music as far as I'm concerned," she said. "I'm into specifics, not generalities."

"Fine." He took a deep breath, dredging up an old memory. "A penetration identified in Stockholm ... "

He could picture the man now. Blunt, pudgy features, a soft-in-the-middle, sedentary soul. And scared, so scared. Dark smudges under his eyes spoke of sleeplessness and exhaustion. Through Janson's scope, those features formed a rictus of anxiety; the subject made quiet popping noises with his lips, an absurd, nervous tic. Why so scared, if this was a typical contact? He had seen such contacts, men going about their business, making a dead drop, the twentieth or thirtieth dead drop of the year, with a bored and vacant expression. This man's face was different - filled with self-loathing and fear. And when the Swede turned toward the other man, the putative Russian contact, his face read not greed or gratitude but repugnance.

"Stockholm," she said. "May of 1983. You witnessed the subject make contact with the KGB control, and took him out. For a nonspecialist, it was a pretty neat shot: from an apartment rooftop to a park bench two blocks away."

"Stop the tape," he said. Her knowledge of these things was unnerving. "You've described it as I did in my report. Yet how did I know he was a penetration agent? I'd been told he was. And the KGB agent? I recognized the face, but that, too, was a datum I'd been provided with by operations control. What if it were wrong?"

"You mean he wasn't KGB."

"In fact, he was. Sergei Kuzmin was his name. But the man who met with him was frightened, blackmailed into the meeting. He had no interest in providing the KGB with anything useful. He was going to try to persuade the man that he had nothing further to offer, that his diplomatic rank was too low to make him a valuable asset. He was going to tell him to buzz off, damn the