The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,7

never did. You chose the wrong intermediary, simple as that. Raffy Nunez took a lot of companies for a ride in the nineties. Most of your competitors are wise to him now. They were laughing their asses off when they saw your guy dining at the La Paz Cabana, tossing down tequilas with Raffy, because they knew exactly what was going to happen. But what the hey - at least you tried, right? So what if your operating margin is down thirty percent this year. It's only money, right? Isn't that what your shareholders are always saying?"

As Janson spoke, he noticed that Harnett's face had gone from flushed to deathly pale. "Oh, that's right - they haven't been saying that, have they?" Janson continued. "In fact, a bunch of major stockholders are looking for another company - Vivendi, Kendrick, maybe Bechtel - to orchestrate a hostile takeover. So look on the bright side. If they have their way, none of this will be your problem anymore." He pretended to ignore Harnett's sharp intake of breath. "But I'm sure I'm only telling you what you already know."

Harnett looked dazed, panicked; through the vast expanse of polarized glass, muted rays of sun picked out the beads of cold sweat on his forehead. "Fuck a duck," he murmured. Now he was looking at Janson the way a drowning man looks at a life raft. "Name your price," he said.

"Come again?"

"Name your goddamn price," Harnett said. "I need you." He grinned, aiming to disguise his desperation with a show of joviality. "Steve Burt told me you were the best, and you sure as shit are, that's obvious. You know I was just yanking your chain before. Now, listen, big guy, you are not leaving this room before you and I come to an agreement. We clear about this?" Perspiration had begun to darken his shirt in the areas beneath his arms and around his collar. "Because we are going to do a deal here."

"I don't think so," Janson said genially. "It's just that I've decided against taking the job. That's one luxury I have as a consultant working alone: I get to decide which clients I take. But really - best of luck with everything. Nothing like a good proxy fight to get the blood racing, right?"

Harnett let out a burst of fake-sounding laughter and clapped his hands together. "I like your style," he said. "Good negotiating tactics. OK, OK, you win. Tell me what you want."

Janson shook his head, smiling, as if Harnett had said something funny, and made his way to the door. Just before he left the office, he stopped and turned. "One tip, though - gratis," he said. "Your wife knows." It would have been indelicate to say the name of Harnett's Venezuelan mistress, so Janson simply added, obliquely but unmistakably: "About Caracas, I mean." Janson gave him a meaningful look: no judgment implied; he was, speaking as one professional to another, merely identifying a potential point of vulnerability.

Small red spots appeared on Harnett's cheeks, and he seemed stricken with nausea: it was the look of a man contemplating a ruinously expensive divorce on top of a proxy fight he was likely to lose. "I'm willing to talk stock options," he called after Janson.

But the consultant was already making his way down the hall toward the elevator bank. He had not minded seeing the blowhard squirm; by the time he reached the lobby, though, he was filled with a sense of sourness, of time wasted, of a larger futility.

A voice from so long ago - another life - echoed faintly in his head. And this is what gives meaning to your life? Phan Nguyen asked that, in a thousand different ways. It was his favorite question. Janson could see, even now, the small, intelligent eyes; the broad, weathered face; the slender, childlike arms. Everything about America seemed to engage his interrogator's curiosity, with equal parts fascination and revulsion. And this is what gives meaning to your life? Janson shook his head: Doom on you, Nguyen.

As Janson stepped into his limousine, which had been idling on Dearborn just outside the building's lobby, he decided to go straight to O'Hare; there was an earlier flight to Los Angeles he could catch. If only Nguyen's questions could be as easily left behind.

Two uniformed women were standing behind a counter as he entered the Platinum Club lounge of Pacifica Airlines. The uniforms and the counter were both the same blue-gray hue. The women's jackets