The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,126

returned to the screaming man beneath him. "Do you think you'll be a hero to your people by resisting me? Not a chance. If you're heroic, I can ensure that nobody ever learns of it. Your bravery will be wasted. You see, I am a very bad man. You think Americans are soft. You think you can wait us out.

You think you can watch while we ensnare ourselves with our silly bureaucratic regulations, like a giant tripped up by his own shoelaces. But you think all these things because you've never come across Alan Demarest. Of all Satan's forms of trickery and deceit, the very greatest was persuading man he did not exist. Look into my eyes, my fisherman friend, I because I exist. A fisherman like you. A fisherman of men's souls."

Alan Demarest was mad. No: it was worse than that. He was all too sane, too in control of his actions and their controllable consequences. At the same time, he was wholly devoid of the most elemental sense of conscience. He was a monster. A brilliant, charismatic monster.

"Look into my eyes," Demarest intoned, and leaned closer to the man's face, which was already stretched in agony, an agony beyond words. "Who's your ARVN contact? Which South Vietnamese do you deal with?"

"I farm!" the man whimpered, barely able to catch his breath. His eyes were red, his cheeks wet. "No Viet Cong!"

Demarest pulled down the man's pajama trousers, exposing his genitals. "Prevarication will be punished," he said in a bored tone. "Time for the juniper cables."

Janson heaved a few times, leaning forward, and a hot flow of vomit surged up the back of his throat and splattered on the ground before him.

"Nothing to be ashamed of, my son. It's like surgery," Demarest said, soothingly. "The first time you see it done, it's a little rocky. But you'll get the hang of it in no time. It's as Emerson tells us, when a great man 'is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.' "

He turned to Bewick. "I'm just going to juice up the motor, make sure there's plenty of jump in the jumpers. We'll give him every chance to talk. And if he doesn't, he'll die the most painful death we can contrive."

Demarest looked at Janson's stricken face.

"But don't worry," he continued. "His companion will be kept alive. You see, it's important to leave somebody to spread the news among the VC: this is what you get when you fuck with nguoi My."

And, horrifyingly, he winked at Janson, as if to invite him into the debauchery. How many other soldiers, burned out and callused by too much time in the combat zone, had responded positively to that invitation, finding a club of genuine zealots, losing their souls. An old refrain echoed in the dim recesses of his mind. Where you going? Crazy - want to come along?

Want to come along?

Prinsengracht, perhaps the most gracious of the old canal streets of old Amsterdam, was built in the early seventeenth century. The streetfront facades had, at first glance, all the regularity of accordion-folded paper dolls. When one looked more closely, one saw all the ways each tall, narrow brick house had been painstakingly differentiated from its neighbors. The gables atop each house had been carefully designed: step gables, zigzagging to a flat top, alternated with the swooping curves of neck gables and spout gables. Because the staircases within were narrow and steep, most of the houses had projecting ledges that allowed furniture to be brought to higher floors by means of hoists. Many houses boasted fake attics and intricate entablatures. Festoons hung from simple brick. Behind the houses, he knew, discreet hofjes, or inner courtyards, were hidden away. To the extent that the burghers of Amsterdam's golden age prided themselves on their simplicity, it was an ostentatious simplicity.

Janson strode down the street, attired in a light zippered jacket and sturdy brogues, like so many of his fellow pedestrians. He kept his hands in his pockets, and his eyes regularly scanned his surroundings. Was he being followed? So far, there was no sign of it. Yet he knew from experience that if his presence was detected, a team could be assembled and deployed with impressive rapidity. Always have a backup plan: Demarest had said that, and however appalling its source, the injunction had served him well. File it next to Management Secrets from Genghis Khan, Janson reflected bitterly.

A few blocks from the so-called golden curve, he encountered a cluster