The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,43

worth tens of billions. You do the math. Everybody knows that Novak is a man of his word. Suppose you're a Kagama rebel, and he's telling you that he could make you and your family rich beyond the dreams of avarice. You're going to start to think about it - it's human nature. Ideological fervor might immunize some men against that temptation, the way it has with the Caliph. But nobody in command is going to count on it. BSTS - better safe than sorry. So you guard him, but you isolate him, too. It's the only safe way."

Unexpectedly, Katsaris smiled. "OK, boss, just give me my marching orders," he said. Both of them had moved to a place beyond fear; an odd Masada-like serenity had settled in, at least for the moment.

Removing the grate required them both, and the effort needed was doubled by the imperative that it be removed noiselessly. By the time Janson left Katsaris there, his joints and muscles were protesting furiously. He was creaky. That was the truth of it. The Beretta, in its thigh holster, seemed to dig into his flesh. Perspiration beaded up on his water-resistant face paint; rivulets fell into his eyes and burned. His muscular recovery, Janson was learning the hard way, was not what it once was: his muscles remained knotted longer - they ached when the last thing he needed to deal with was bodily pain. Years ago, in the midst of combat, he would feel as if he himself were a weapon, an operational automaton. Now he felt all too human. Sweat was beginning to cause the nylon combat suit to bind around his knees, crotch, underarms, elbows.

A humbling thought crossed his mind: Maybe he could have stayed by the chute, and let Katsaris do this part. Now he clambered up the rubblework supporting wall toward the narrow rectangular gap that would lead to the inside edge of the veranda. The rectangular space, one of several along the roofline, served to prevent water from pooling on the first floor during the heavy downpours of monsoon season. As he wriggled through the eighteen-inch-wide drainage port, he found that he was having difficulty breathing: Exertion? Fear? Katsaris had told him he'd come up with a good plan. He was, they both knew, lying. This wasn't a good plan. It was merely the only one they had.

His muscles still spasming, Janson made his way down a service corridor adjoining the stateroom of the north wing. He flashed on the blueprints: down the corridor to the left, twenty feet. The door would be at the end of the hallway. Discreet. Wood-clad stone. The unremarkable-looking door that led to an unspeakable pit. Two chairs to either side were empty. The men, having been summoned by the commotion, would be still unconscious at the foot of the veranda. The same was true of the backup pair of guards, who would have had a clear view of the hallway. Seven down. Seventeen to go.

Janson's pulse quickened as he stood before the door. The lock was many decades old, and more of a formality than anything. If an intruder had got this far, a lock on a door was unlikely to stop him. It was, as a quick inspection confirmed, a wafer tumbler lock, probably of mid-century design. Such locks, Janson knew, used flat rectangles of metal, not pins, and the springs were placed inside the cylinder itself rather than in the lock shell. He produced a small tension wrench; in shape it resembled a dental pick, but was little larger than a matchstick. He placed the bent end of the wrench in the keyway, pushing on its far end, so as to maximize both the torque and his tactile sensitivity. Each would be important. One by one, he pulled each tumbler away from the shear line. After ten seconds, the tumblers had been picked. The lock was not yet ready to open, however. Now he inserted a second tool, a pick of carbide steel, thin yet inflexible, and began applying clockwise torque.

Holding his breath, he kept both instruments in the keyway as he heard the tongue withdraw and used the tension to pull the door toward him, just a few inches. The door swung easily on well-oiled hinges. Those hinges had to be well oiled: as it opened, he saw that the door was fully eighteen inches thick. The governor general may have placed a dungeon beneath his feet, but he wished to be spared