The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,201

adversary.

The only thing that was unfamiliar was the bureaucrat's garb: a man he had always seen in three-button suits of navy or charcoal worsted was wearing khakis, a madras shirt, and moccasins - his weekend attire.

"She'd set her easel up right there, where you're standing, get her watercolors out, and try to capture the light. That's what she always said she was doing: trying to capture the light." His eyes were dull, his customary bright and scheming avidity replaced by something somber and careworn. "She had polycythemia, you know. Or maybe you didn't. A bone marrow disease, made her body produce too many blood cells. Janice was my second wife, I guess you do know that. A new beginning and all. A few years after we were married, she'd start to feel itchy after she took a warm bath, and that turned out to be the first sign of it. Funny, isn't it? It progresses slowly, but eventually there came the headaches, the dizziness, and just this feeling of exhaustion, and she got the diagnosis. Toward the end, she spent most of her time here, on Phipps. I'd drive down, and there she'd be, sitting at the easel, trying to get her watercolors to make that sunset. She struggled with the colors. Too often, she said, they'd look like blood. As if there was something inside her, wildly signaling to be let out." Collins was standing only ten feet from Janson, but his voice was far away. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the slowly darkening bay. "She loved watching the birds, too. She didn't think she could paint them, but she loved watching them. You see that one near the Osage orange tree? Pearl gray, white undersides, black mask like a raccoon around the eyes?"

It was about the size of a robin, leaping from one perch to another.

"That's a loggerhead shrike," Collins said. "One of the local birds. She thought it was pretty. Lanius ludovicianus."

"Better known as the butcher bird," Janson said.

The bird trilled its two-note call.

"Figures, you know," Collins said. "It's unusual, isn't it, because it preys on other birds. But check it out. It doesn't have any talons. That's the beauty part. It takes advantage of its surroundings - impales its prey on a thorn or barbed wire before it rips it apart. It doesn't need much by way of claws. It knows that the world is filled with surrogate claws. Use what's there." The bird emitted a harsh, thrasher-like note and fluttered off.

Collins turned and looked at Janson. "Why don't you come inside?"

"Aren't you going to frisk me?" Janson asked, in a tone of indifference. He was surprised at how unruffled Collins seemed, and was determined to match his calm. "See what weapons I might have on me?"

Collins laughed, and his solemnity broke for a moment. "Janson, you are a weapon," he said. "What am I supposed to do, amputate all your limbs and put you in a vitrine?" He shook his head. "You forget how well I know you. Besides, I'm looking at somebody who has folded his arms beneath a jacket, and that bulge a foot below his shoulder is quite likely a handgun, aimed at me. I'm guessing you took it off of Ambrose. Young kid, reasonably well trained, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer."

Janson said nothing but kept his finger on the trigger. The M9 would shoot easily through the fabric of his jacket: Collins was a mere finger twitch from death and he knew it.

"Come along," Collins said. "We'll walk together. A peaceable dyad of vulnerability. A two-man demonstration of mutual assured destruction, and the deep comfort the balance of terror can bring."

Janson said nothing. Collins was not a field agent; he was no less lethal in his way, but through more mediated channels. Together, they traipsed over a boardwalk of silvery, weathered cedar and into Collins's house. It was a classic seaside cottage, probably of early twentieth-century construction: weathered shingles, small dormers on the second floor. Nothing that would attract much attention, not at a casual glance, anyway.

"You got a federal-facilities designation for your weekend house," Janson said. "Good going."

"It's a secure, Class A-four facility - completely to code. After the John Deutch debacle, nobody wants to be caught taking office work home, putting classified files on an unguarded bedroom PC. For me the solution was to turn this home into an office. An offsite location."

"Hence the National Guardsmen."

"A couple of kids patrol