The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,170

text was in Hungarian, there wasn't much of it: it was basically a picture book.

Janson picked it up and shrugged. "Looks like it's for die-hard fans," he said. "A Peter Novak coffee-table book. So what'd you find out at the Archives?"

"A dead end," she said.

He looked at her closely, saw her face mottled with apprehension. "Spill," he said.

Haltingly, she told him what had happened. It had become obvious that the clerk was on the payroll of whoever was trying to stop them, that he'd sounded the alarm and then set her up.

He listened with growing dismay, bordering on fury. "You shouldn't have done it alone," Janson said, trying to maintain his equipoise. "A meeting like that - you had to have known the risks. You can't go freelancing like that, Jessie. It's damn reckless ... " He broke off, trying to control his breathing.

Jessie tugged on an ear. "Am I hearing an echo?"

Janson sighed. "Point taken."

"So," she said after a while, "what's Mesa Grande?"

"Mesa Grande," he repeated, and his mind became crowded with images that time had never faded.

Mesa Grande: the high-security military prison installation in the eastern foothills of California's Inland Empire region. The white crags of the San Bernardino Mountains visible in the near horizon, dwarfing the small, low-slung beige-brick buildings. The dark blue outfit the prisoner had been made to wear, with the white cloth circle attached by Velcro to the center of his chest. The special chair, with a pan beneath it to catch blood, and head restraints that were attached loosely to the prisoner's neck. The pile of sandbags behind, to absorb the volley and prevent ricochets. Demarest had faced a wall, twenty feet away - a wall with firing ports for each of the six members of the squad. Six men with rifles. The wall was what he had protested most about. Demarest had insisted on execution by firing squad, and his preference had been accommodated. Yet he also wanted to be able to see his executioners face-to-face: and this time he had been refused.

Now Janson took another deep breath. "Mesa Grande is where a bad man met a bad end."

A bad end, and a defiant one. For on Demarest's face there had indeed been defiance - no, more than that: a wrathful indignation - until the volley was loosed, and the white cloth circle turned bright red with his blood.

Janson had asked to witness the execution, for reasons that remained murky even to him, and the request had reluctantly been granted. To this day, Janson could not decide whether he had made the right decision. It no longer mattered: Mesa Grande, too, was part of who he was. Part of who he had become.

To him, it had represented a moment of requital. A moment of justice to repay injustice. To others, so it appeared, that moment meant something altogether different.

Mesa Grande.

Had the monster's devoted followers gotten together, somehow decided to avenge his death all these years later? The idea seemed preposterous. That did not, alas, mean it could be dismissed. Demarest's Devils: perhaps these veterans were among the mercenaries that Novak's enemies had recruited. How better to counter one disciple of Demarest's techniques than with another?

Madness!

He knew that Jessie wanted to hear more from him, but he could not bring himself to speak. All he said was "We need to make an early start tomorrow. Get some sleep." And when she placed a hand on his arm, he pulled away.

Turning in, he felt roiled by shadowy ghosts he could never put to rest, however hard he tried.

In life, Demarest had taken too much of his past; in death, would he now take his future?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was three decades ago, and it was now. It was in a jungle far away, and it was here.

Always, the sounds: the mortar fire more distant and muffled than ever before, for the trail had led them many miles away from the official combat zones. Immediate proximity made the sounds of mosquitoes and other small stinging insects louder than the immense blasts of the heavy artillery. Cheap ironies were as thick on the ground as punji sticks, the sharpened bamboo stakes that the VC placed in small, concealed holes, awaiting the unwary footfall.

Janson checked his compass once again, verified that the trail had been leading in the correct direction. The triple-canopy jungle left the ground in permanent twilight, even when the sun was shining. The six men in his team moved in three pairs, each spaced a good