The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,257

even tighter. Then he kicked both his legs into the air and hurled himself to the floor, landing heavily on his back - yet cushioning his impact with the body of his assailant, who was slammed against the floor as he fell.

He felt an expulsion of breath against the back of his neck and knew that the Caliph had been dealt a serious body blow.

Winded and aching himself, Janson rolled over and began to rise to his feet. As he did so, the Caliph rose, with incredible endurance, and threw himself at him, his hands formed into claws.

If the distance between them was greater, Janson would have ducked or stepped aside. Neither was possible. He lacked the speed. He lacked the agility.

A bear.

So be it. He held out his arms, as if in an embrace - and, with a surge of strength, he squeezed the Caliph to his body, locking his arms around the other man's chest. Tight. Tighter. Tighter still.

Even as he squeezed, however, the assassin rained powerful blows on the back of his neck. Janson knew he could not hold out for much longer. In a sudden, convulsive effort, he dropped his armlock and lifted the Anuran into the air horizontally, where he thrashed like a powerful eel. In an equally abrupt movement, Janson fell down into a crouch, his left knee bent to the ground, his right knee angled upward. At the same time, he slammed the lithe-bodied assailant down against it.

The Caliph's back snapped with a horrifying sound, something between a crunch and a pop, and his mouth contorted into a scream that would not come.

Janson seized him by the shoulders and slammed him against the slate floor. He did so again. And again. The back of the Caliph's head no longer made the sound of hard bone against a hard floor, for the rear cranial bone had been smashed into fragments, exposing the soft tissues beneath.

The Caliph's eyes grew unfocused, glazed. The eyes were said to be the windows to the soul, yet this man had no soul. Certainly not anymore.

Janson jammed the Ruger into his own shoulder holster. Using a small pocket mirror, he adjusted his beard and kaffiyeh and made sure there were no visible bloodstains on his person. Then he walked out of the chapel and into the General Assembly Hall, where he stood near the back.

For years he had fantasized about killing the man who had killed his wife. Now he had done so.

And all he felt was sick.

The black-haired man stood at the podium, giving a speech about the challenges of a new century. Janson's eyes searched every hollow and contour. He looked like Peter Novak. He would be accepted as Novak. Yet he lacked the sense of command associated with the legendary humanitarian. His voice was thin, wavering; he seemed slightly nervous, out of his depth. Janson knew what the consensus would be afterward: Very fine speech, of course. Yet poor Mr. Novak was a bit under the weather, was he not?

"Half a century ago," the man at the podium was saying, "the very ground under our feet, the land of the entire United Nations complex, was donated to the U.N. by the Rockefellers. The history of private assistance for this most public of missions goes to the origins of the institution. If I can, in my own small way, provide such assistance, I would be profoundly gratified. People talk about 'giving back to the community': my own community has always been the community of nations. Help me to help you. Show me how I can be of greatest assistance. To do so would be my pleasure, my honor - indeed, nothing less than my duty. The world has been very good to me. My only hope is that I can return the favor."

The words were vintage Novak, by turns charming and hard-edged, humble and arrogant, and, in the end, nothing short of winning. Yet the delivery was atypically hesitant and tentative.

And only Janson knew why.

The master of escape had escaped again. How could he ever have imagined that he might trump his great mentor? Your arms are too short to box with God, Demarest had once told him, half joking. Still, there was an uncomfortable truth there. The protege was pitting himself against his mentor; the student was testing his wits against his teacher. Only vanity had prevented him from seeing that failure was foreordained.

As the man at the podium finished his remarks, the audience rose in a