The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,173

a child. He thought of the emerald beads on the huge flat jungle leaves, the way they dripped away, leaving nothing behind. Later still, two boards were tied to his broken arm with twine, as a sort of makeshift cast.

From the inner recesses of his mind, the words of Emerson that Demarest so often quoted returned to him: Whilst he sits on the cushions of advantages he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.

And another day passed. And another. And another.

His innards cramped powerfully: the fly-ridden gruel had given him dysentery. He desperately sought to defecate, hoping he could rid himself of the agony that now convulsed his very guts, but his bowels would not move. They harbored their pain greedily. The enemy within, Janson thought mordantly.

It was either evening or morning when he heard a voice, once more, in English. His bonds were loosened, and he could now sit up straight once more - a postural shift that initially caused his nerve endings to scream in renewed agony.

"Is that better now? It soon will be, I pray."

A new interrogator, no one he had seen before. It was a small man with quick intelligent eyes. His English was fluid, the accent pronounced but with clipped, crisp articulation. An educated man.

"We know you are not imperialist aggressor," the voice went on. "You are a dupe of the imperialist aggressors." The interrogator came very close; Janson knew that his smell must be offensive to the man - it was foul even to himself - but he evinced no sign of it. The Vietnamese touched Janson's cheek, rough with stubble, and spoke softly. "But you disrespect us when you treat us like dupes. Can you understand this?" Yes, he was an educated man, and Janson was his special project. This development alarmed him: it suggested that they had figured out that he was, indeed, no ordinary soldier.

Janson ran his tongue over his teeth; they felt furry and somehow foreign, as if they had been replaced with a set of choppers carved of an old balsa raft. A noise of assent came from his mouth.

"Ask yourself how it was you were captured."

The man walked around him, pacing like a schoolmaster in front of a class. "You see, we are actually very similar, in a way. Both of us are intelligence officers. You have served your cause bravely. I hope the same might be said of me."

Janson nodded. The thought briefly flickered: In what demented scheme did the torture of a defenseless prisoner count as bravery? But he quickly stowed it away; it would not help him now; it would cloud his composure, betray an attitude of sedition. Clear like water, cool like ice.

"My name is Phan Nguyen, and I think that, really, we are privileged to know each other. Your name is ... "

"Private Kevin Jones," Janson said. In his moments of lucidity, he had created a whole life behind that name - an infantryman from Nebraska, a little trouble with the law after high school, a pregnant girlfriend at home, a brigade that had got lost and wandered away from where it was supposed to be. The character seemed almost real to him, though it was cobbled together from snippets of popular novels, movies, magazine stories, TV shows. Out of the thousand tales of America, he could craft something that would ring truer than any true American tale. "U.S. Infantry."

The small man flushed as he boxed Janson on his right ear, leaving it bruised and ringing. "Lieutenant Junior Grade Paul Janson," said Phan Nguyen. "Do not undo all the good work you have done."

How did they know his true name and rank?

"You told us all this," Phan Nguyen insisted. "You told us everything. Have you forgotten, in your delirium? I think so. I think so. This happens often."

Was it possible? Janson locked eyes with Nguyen, and both men saw their suspicions confirmed. Both saw that the other had lied. Janson had revealed nothing - or nothing until now. For Nguyen could tell from his reaction, not of fear or perplexity but of rage, that his identification was correct.

Janson had nothing to lose: "Now it is you who lie," he growled. He felt a sharp, stinging thwack of the bamboo stick across his upper body, but it was more for show than anything else; Janson had come to be able to judge these minuscule gradations.

"We are practically colleagues, you and I. Is that the word?