The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,162

Why hadn't he picked them out earlier? Lakatos's bodyguards - of course. The arms dealer would never have met with a broker he did not personally know without taking such an elementary precaution.

And now, as an exchange of glances suggested, the bodyguards had a new mission. They were no longer simply protectors. They were executioners. Their unbuttoned heavy jackets hung loosely around their torsos; a casual observer would assume that the slight bulge near the right breast pocket was from a cigarette pack or a cell phone. Janson knew better. His blood ran cold.

Adam Kurzweil would not be permitted to leave the Palace Hotel grounds alive. Janson could envisage the scenario all too clearly. The meal would be hurriedly completed, and the two would stroll together out of the lobby, accompanied by the gunmen. At any convenient distance from the crowds, he would be dispatched with a silenced shot to the back of the head, his body disposed of either in the lake or in the trunk of a vehicle.

He had to do something. Now.

Reaching for his glass, he carefully elbowed his fork to the floor and, with an apologetic shrug, bent down to retrieve it. As he reached down, he lifted the cuff of his trousers, released the thumb-break of his ankle holster, and gained a firing grip on the small Clock M26 he had acquired earlier in Eger. Beneath the table, he could use the finger grooves to position his hand on the grip frame. The weapon was now in his lap. The odds had shifted slightly.

"Have you walked around the lake?" Sandor Lakatos asked. "So beautiful this time of year." Another display of his porcelain teeth.

"It's very beautiful," Janson agreed.

"I would like to take you on a walk, afterward."

"Isn't it rather dark for that?"

"Oh, I don't know," Lakatos said. "We'll be able to be alone. That's really the best way to get to know each other, I find." His eyes had an anthracite gleam.

"I'd like that," Janson said. "Do you mind if I excuse myself for a minute?"

"Be my guest." His gaze drifted toward the two suited guards in the bar area.

Janson tucked his Clock into his front trouser waistband before he stood up and wandered to the rest rooms, which were off a short hallway extending from the far corner of the main dining room. As he approached, he felt a sharp pang of adrenaline: before him was another dark-suited man, his posture identical to those at the bar. This man was clearly neither a diner nor an employee of the restaurant. He was another guard of Lakatos's, stationed there for such an eventuality. Janson walked into the marble-floored bathroom, and the man - broad-chested, tall, his face a mask of bored professionalism - followed him in. As Janson turned toward the sinks, he heard the man lock the door. That meant that they were alone. Yet an unsilenced gunshot would only summon the others in Lakatos's employ, who were also armed. Janson's pistol was not the advantage he had hoped. The imperative of visual concealment ruled out the possibility of aural concealment: the bulk of a silenced gun could not have been secreted undetectably in an ankle holster. Now Janson walked to the urinals; in the stainless steel of the knob, he could make out a distorted reflection of the burly guard. He could also make out the long cylindrical shape of the man's weapon. His weapon was silenced.

There would be no need to wait for Janson to leave the Palace Hotel; Janson could be dispatched where he was.

"What's he paying you?" Janson asked, without turning around to look at the man. "I'll double it."

The guard said nothing.

"You don't speak English? I bet you speak dollars?"

The guard's expression did not change, but he put away the gun. Janson's very defenselessness suggested a better approach: now the man removed a two-foot loop of cord with small plastic disks on either end serving as handles.

Janson had to concentrate to hear the whisper-quiet sound of the man's jacket stretching as he extended his arms, preparing to loop the garrote precisely around Janson's throat. He could only applaud his would-be executioner's professional judgment. The garrote would ensure not only a soundless death but a bloodless one. In a restaurant like this, particularly given the alcohol consumption patterns in Central Europe, it would take little creativity to escort him out. The guard might well drag him out more or less upright, propping him up with a powerful arm around his