The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,166

a deadly adversary after all. Had Janson missed? Was the man protected by body armor?

Then he heard Lakatos breathing hard, heaving as he slowly sank to the ground. Janson's bullets had struck him in the lower chest and punctured his lungs, which were slowly filling up with the resultant hemorrhage. The merchant of death was too wise not to know precisely what was happening to him: he was drowning in his own blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"Goddamn you, Paul Janson," said Jessie Kincaid. He was driving the rented car at just under the speed limit while she kept an eye on the map. They were making their way to Budapest, headed for the National Archives, but doing so via a circuitous route, keeping off the main roads. "You should have let me come. I should have been there."

Having finally elicited the details of what had happened last night, she was steamed and reproachful.

"You don't know what sort of trip wires there might be at a rendezvous like that," Janson said patiently, his eyes regularly scanning the rearview mirror for any signs of unwanted company. "Besides, the meeting was in an underground restaurant, out of range of any perimeter stakeout. Would you have parked your M40A1 on the bar, or checked it in the cloakroom?"

"Maybe I couldn't have helped inside. Outside's different. Plenty of trees around, plenty of perches. It's a game of odds, you know that better'n anyone. Point is, it would have been a sensible precaution. You didn't take it."

"It represented an unnecessary risk."

"Damn straight."

"To you, I mean. There was no reason to put you at risk unnecessarily,"

"So instead you exposed yourself to that risk. That don't seem exactly professional. What I'm saying is, use me. Treat me like a partner."

"A partner? Reality check. You're twenty-nine. You've been in the field for how many years, exactly? Don't take this the wrong way, but - "

"I'm not saying we're equals. All I'm saying is, teach me. I'll be the best student you ever had."

"You want to be my protegee?"

"I love it when you speak French."

"Let me tell you something. I've had a protege or two in my time. They've got something in common."

"Lemme guess. They're all men."

Janson shook his head grimly. "They're all dead." In the distance, nineteenth-century church spires were interspersed with Soviet-era tower blocks: symbols of aspiration that had outlived the aspirations themselves.

"So your idea is, keep me at arm's length and you'll keep me alive." She turned in her seat and faced him. "Well, I don't buy it."

"They're all dead, Jessie. That's my contribution to their career advancement. I'm talking about good people. Hell, extraordinary people. Gifted as you can get. Theo Katsaris - he had the potential to be better than me. Only, the better you are, the higher the stakes. I wasn't just reckless with my own life. I've been reckless with the lives of others."

" 'Every operation with potential benefits also has potential risks. The art of planning centers on the coordination of these two zones of uncertainty.' You wrote that in a field report once."

"I'm flattered by the way you boned up on me. But there are a few chapters you seemed to have skipped: Paul Janson's proteges have a nasty habit of getting killed."

The National Archives were housed in a block-long neo-Gothic building; its narrow windows of intricately leaded glass were set in cathedral-like arches, sharply limiting the amount of sunlight that reached the documents within. Jessie Kincaid had taken to heart Janson's idea of beginning at the beginning.

She had a list of missing information that might help them unravel the mystery of the Hungarian philanthropist. Peter Novak's father, Count Ferenczi-Novak, was said to have been obsessively fearful for his child's safety. Fielding had told Janson that the count had made enemies who, he was convinced, would seek to revenge themselves against his scion. Is that what had finally happened, half a century later? The Cambridge don's words had the keenness of a blade: The old nobleman may have been paranoid, but as the old saw has it, even paranoids have enemies. She wanted to retrace the count's movements back in those fateful years when the Hungarian government underwent such bloody tumult. Were there visa records that might indicate private trips that Novak's father had made, with or without his son? But the most important information they could get would be genealogical: Peter Novak was said to be concerned with protecting the surviving members of his family - a typical sentiment among those who had