The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,258
standing ovation. What his address lacked in style of delivery, it made up for in rhetorical appeal. Besides, on such an occasion, who could begrudge the great man his proper due? Janson, stone-faced, walked out of the hall, and the noise of the resounding applause quieted only when the door closed behind him.
If Demarest wasn't at the United Nations, where was he?
The secretary-general had walked off the dais together with the clamorously applauded speaker, and now, as a twenty-minute recess began, both would repair to the carpeted chamber behind the hall.
Janson realized that his earpiece had been dislodged by his recent struggle; he repositioned it and, crackling, heard snippets of dialogue. He remembered the hidden microphone on Mathieu Zinsou's collar bar; it was transmitting.
"No, I thank you. But I would like to have that t锚te-a-t锚te you mentioned after all." The voice was fuzzy but audible.
"Certainly," Zinsou answered. His voice was nearer to the microphone and clearer.
"Why don't we go to your office, in the Secretariat?"
"You mean now?"
"I'm rather pressed for time, I'm afraid. It'll have to be now."
Zinsou paused. "Then follow me. The thirty-eighth floor." Janson wondered if the secretary-general had added the specification for his sake.
Something was up. But what?
Janson made a dash for the eastern ramp of the General Assembly Building, and then lumbered toward the looming Secretariat Building. His right knee twinged with every step he took, and the bruises on his body were starting to swell and smart - the Anuran's blows had been not only forceful but well aimed. Yet he had to put all of it out of his mind.
Inside the Secretariat lobby, he flashed the ID card that had been prepared for him, and a guard waved him through. He pressed the button for the thirty-eighth floor, and rode up. Mathieu Zinsou and Alan Demarest's agent, whoever he was, would be following him within minutes.
As he rode up to the top of the skyscraper, the transmission to his earpiece fuzzed out. The metal of the elevator shaft was blocking off the signal.
A minute later, the elevator stopped at the thirty-eighth floor. Janson remembered the floor plan: The elevator banks were in the midpoint of the long, rectangular floor. The offices of the undersecretaries and special deputies were lined against the west-facing wall; to the north were two large, windowless conference rooms; to the south, a narrow, windowless library. The secretary-general's teak-lined office was along the east wall. Because of the special meeting, the floor was almost entirely vacant; every staff member was doing duty attending to the visiting delegations.
Now Janson removed his headdress and his beard and waited around the corner from where the elevator banks opened. Sheltered by the recessed doorway leading to the library, he would be able to monitor both the hallway to the secretary-general's office and the elevator banks.
He knew he would not be waiting long.
The elevator chimed.
"And this will be our floor," said Mathieu Zinsou as the elevator doors opened. He made an after-you-my-dear-Alphonse gesture to the man who looked, for all the world, like Peter Novak.
Could Janson have been correct? Zinsou wondered. Or was the strain finally getting to the American operative, a man whom circumstances had given responsibilities far greater than any man should have to shoulder?
"You have to forgive us - almost everybody who normally staffs my office here is in the General Assembly Building. Or somewhere else altogether. The annual meeting of the General Assembly is like a bank holiday for some U.N. employees."
"Yes, I'm aware of this," his companion said tonelessly.
As Zinsou opened the door to his office, he startled as he saw the figure of a man seated behind his own desk, silhouetted by the ebbing light.
What the hell was happening?
He turned to his companion: "I don't know what to say. It seems we have an unexpected visitor."
The man at Zinsou's desk rose and stepped toward him, and Zinsou gaped in astonishment.
The helmet of thick black hair, only lightly flecked with gray, the high, almost Asiatic cheekbones. A face the world knew as Peter Novak's.
Zinsou turned to the man at his side.
The same face. Essentially indistinguishable.
Yet there were differences, Zinsou reflected, just not physical ones. Rather, they were differences of affect and mien. There was something hesitant and cautious about the man by his side: something implacable and imperious about the man before him. The marionette and the marionette master. Zinsou's whirling sense of vertigo was lessened only by the recognition that Paul Janson had guessed right.