The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,161

the American was still there, a drunken sneer on his face.

"So you don't have anything to say to me?" the American snarled. "Shit."

The woman who had been at his table - almost certainly his wife - came over to him and pulled on his arm. She was slightly overweight, and dressed in an inappropriately summery frock. "Donny," she said. "You're bothering that nice man. He's probably on vacation, same as us."

"Nice man? That shitheel's the one got me fired." His face was red, his expression frankly choleric. "Yeah, that's right. The CEO brought you in to be his hatchet man, didn't he, Paul? This fucker, Paul Janson, arrives at Amcon as a security consultant. Next thing he's handing in this report about pre-employment screening and employee theft, and my boss is handing me my ass, because how come I let all this happen on my watch? I gave that company twenty years. Did anybody tell you that? I did a good job. I did a good job." He scrunched up his crimson face, his countenance radiating both self-pity and hatred.

The woman gave Janson an unfriendly look; if she was embarrassed for her husband, her narrow eyes made it clear that she had also heard plenty about the outside security consultant who cost her poor Donny his job.

"When you sober up and wish to apologize," Janson said, coldly, "please do not concern yourself. I accept your apologies in advance. Such confusions happen."

What else could he say? How would the victim of mistaken identity react? With bafflement, amusement, and then ire.

Of course, it was not a case of mistaken identity, and Janson remembered exactly who Donald Weldon was. A senior manager in charge of security at a Delaware-based engineering firm, he was a complacent lifer who filled his staffing positions with cousins, nephews, and friends, treating the security division as a source of sinecures. As long as no major disaster occurred, who would call his competence and probity into question? Meanwhile, employee theft and the systematic filing of false workmen's compensation claims had become an invisible drag on the operating budget, while a company vice president was doubling his executive compensation by reporting confidential information to a competitor firm. It was Janson's experience that errant executives, rather than blaming themselves and their own dereliction for their dismissal, invariably blamed whoever brought their misconduct to light. In truth, Donald Weldon should have been grateful that he was only fired; Janson's report made it clear that some of the false-compensation claims were made with his complicity, and he provided sufficient evidence for criminal prosecution, one that could easily have resulted in jail time. Janson's recommendation, however, was that Vice President Weldon be relieved of his duties but not prosecuted, to spare the company further embarrassment and prevent potentially damaging revelations at the pretrial and discovery phases. You owe me your freedom, you corrupt son of a bitch, Janson thought.

Now the American wagged a finger very near Janson's nose. "You goddamn candy-ass bastard - you'll get yours some day." As the woman led him back to their seats, several tabletops away, his unsteady gait betrayed the alcohol that fueled his fury.

Janson turned brightly to his companion, but a sense of dread filled him. Lakatos had grown cold; he was not a fool, and the drunken American's display could not automatically be discounted. The Hungarian's eyes were hard, like small black marbles.

"You're not drinking your wine," Lakatos said, gesturing with his fork. He smiled an icy executioner's smile.

Janson knew how such people thought: probabilities were weighed, but caution dictated that negative inferences were assumed true. Janson also knew that his protestations could have provided little reassurance. He had been burned, exposed, shown to be someone other than the person as whom he had presented himself. Men like Sandor Lakatos feared nothing more than the possibility of deception: Adam Kurzweil now represented not opportunity, but danger. And, however obscure its motivations, such danger was to be eliminated.

Lakatos's hand now disappeared into the inner breast pocket of his bulky woolen jacket. Surely he was not handling a weapon - that would be too crude a gesture for someone in his position. The hand lingered oddly, manipulating a device. He was, it appeared, thumbing some sort of automatic pager or, more likely, a text-messaging device.

And then the merchant looked across the room, toward the maitre d's station. Janson followed his gaze: two dark-suited men, who had been inconspicuously loitering around the long zinc bar, suddenly stood a little straighter.