The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,48

Novak pitched his shoulders back as if bellowing his lungs. Even to speak seemed to require enormous effort.

"You've come for me," Novak echoed, and the words were thick and croaky, perhaps the first he had spoken for several days.

What had they done to him? Had his body been broken, or his spirit? The body, Janson knew from experience, would heal more quickly. Novak's breathing indicated that the man had pneumonia, a fluid congestion of the lungs that would have come from breathing the dungeon's dank, stagnant, spore-filled air. At the same time, the words he spoke next seemed largely incoherent.

"You work for him," Novak said. "Of course you do. He says there can only be one! He knows that when I am out of the way, he will be unstoppable." The words were intoned with an urgency that substituted for sense.

"We work for you," Janson said. "We've come to get you."

In the great man's darting eyes was a look of bewilderment "You can't stop him!"

"Who are you talking about?"

"Peter Novak!"

"You're Peter Novak."

"Yes! Of course!" He clasped his arms around his chest and held himself straight, like a diplomat at an official convocation.

Was his mind gone?

"We've come for you," Janson repeated as Katsaris matched a key from the ring to the grate to Peter Novak's cell. The grate swung open. Novak did not move at first. Janson inspected his pupils for signs that he had been drugged, and concluded that the only drug to which he had been subjected was the trauma of captivity. The man had been kept in darkness for three days, no doubt given water and food, but deprived of hope.

Janson recognized the syndrome, recognized the elements of post-traumatic psychosis. In a dusty town in Lebanon, he had not entirely escaped it himself. People expected hostages to sink to their knees in gratitude, or join their rescuers, arm in arm, as they did in the movies. The reality was seldom like that.

Katsaris gave Janson a frantic look, tapping on his Breitling. Every additional minute exposed them to additional risk.

"Can you walk?" Janson asked, his tone sharper than he had intended.

There was a beat before Novak responded. "Yes," he said. "I think so."

"We have to leave now."

"No," said Peter Novak.

"Please. We can't afford to wait." In all likelihood, Novak was suffering the normal confusion and disorientation of the newly released captive. But could there be something more? Had the Stockholm syndrome set in? Had Novak been betrayed by the famously expansive compass of his moral sympathies?

"No - there's someone else!" he whispered.

"What are you talking about?" Katsaris interrupted.

"Somebody else here." He coughed. "Another prisoner."

"Who?" Katsaris prodded.

"An American," he said. He gestured to the cell at the end of the passageway. "I won't leave without her."

"That's impossible!" Katsaris interjected.

"If you leave her behind, they'll kill her. They'll kill her at once!" The humanitarian's eyes were imploring, and then commanding. He cleared his throat, moistened his cracked lips, and took another breath. "I cannot have that on my conscience." His English was manicured, precise, with just a faint Hungarian inflection. Another labored breath. "It need not be on yours."

Bit by bit, Janson realized, the prisoner was regaining his composure, becoming himself again. His piercing dark eyes reminded Janson that Novak was no ordinary man. He was a natural aristocrat, accustomed to ordering the world to his liking. He had a gift for it, a gift he had used for ends of extraordinary benevolence.

Janson studied Novak's unwavering gaze. "And if we can't ..."

"Then you'll have to leave me behind." The words were halting, but unequivocal.

Janson stared at him in disbelief.

A twitch played out on Novak's face, and then he spoke again. "I doubt your rescue plans provide for an unwilling hostage."

It was clear that his mind was still blazingly fast. He had played the tactical card immediately, impressing on Janson that no further discussion would be possible.

Janson and Katsaris exchanged glances. "Theo," Janson said quietly. "Get her."

Katsaris nodded reluctantly. Then they both froze.

The noise.

A scrape of steel against stone.

A familiar noise: that of the steel grate they had opened to go down there.

Janson remembered the soldier's hopeful cry: Theyilai.

The expected visitor, bringing the soldiers their tea.

Janson and Theo strode from the dungeon to the blood-drenched adjoining chamber, where they could hear the jangling of someone's key chain, and then watched as a tray - laden with a teapot of hammered metal and several stacks of little clay cups - came into view.

He saw the hands supporting the tray - remarkably small hands.

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