The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,76

bartender slid an amber-colored glass toward him, with a few inches of lukewarm tap water. A bar didn't stay in business by filling its customers' bellies with water, unless you counted the water with which it topped off its bottles of liquor.

Janson began to tell his companion a tale of wandering into an ouzeri while waiting for the Minoan Lines ferry at the Zea Marina. "I'd just gotten out of a five-hour meeting, you see. We'd wrapped up a deal that had been dragging on for months - that's why they sent me here personally, you see. The local reps, you can't trust them. You never know who they're really working for."

"And what does your company do, if you don't mind my asking?"

Janson's eyes darted around, settling on the glazed ceramic ashtray. "Ceramics," he said. "High-fired nonconductive ceramic struts for electrical appliances." He laughed. "You're sorry you asked, huh? Well, it's a filthy job, but somebody's got to do it."

"And the whore - " prompted the sailor, gulping the brandy like water.

"So I'm totally stressed - you know 'stressed'? - and this girl, she's all over me, and I'm thinking, what the hell. You know, I'm talking about release, right? And she leads me to some shithole, a few doors down, I don't even know where, and ... "

"And you wake up and she's robbed you blind."

"Exactly!" Janson signaled the bartender to bring another round of drinks. "I must have passed out or something, and she went through my pockets. Lucky for me she didn't find my cash belt. Guess that would have meant turning me over, and she was afraid I'd wake up. But she took my passport, my credit cards ..." Janson grabbed at his ring finger, holding it close to the sailor's face, drunkenly demonstrating the final indignity of having a wedding band removed. He breathed hard, a senior sales exec revisiting a nightmare.

"Why not tell the astynomia? The harbor police here in Piraeus know the whores."

Janson covered his face. "I can't. I can't risk it. I file a report, it could be my ass. Same reason I don't dare go to the embassy. My company is very conservative. I can't chance them finding out - we've got reps all over. I know I don't look it, but I've got a reputation to protect. And my wife - oh Jesus!" Suddenly his eyes brimmed with tears. "She can't know, ever!"

"So you're a big man," the sailor said, his gaze taking the stranger's measure.

"And a bigger idiot. What was I thinking?" He drained his glass of Metaxa, filling his cheeks with the sweetened liquor, then swiveled his stool around, agitated, and raised the amber water glass to his lips. Only a trained observer would have noticed that, though Janson's water glass had not been refilled, its level magically kept rising.

"The big head wasn't thinking," the seaman said sagely. "The little head was thinking."

"If I could just get to our regional headquarters in Izmir, I could take care of everything."

The seaman drew back with a jerk. "You are a Turk?"

"Turkish? God, no." Janson wrinkled his nose with disgust. "How could you think that? Are you?"

The seaman spat on the floor in response.

In Piraeus, at least, the old enmities still simmered. "Look, we're an international company. I'm a Canadian citizen, as it happens, but our clients are everywhere. I'm not going to the police, and I can't risk turning up at the embassy. The thing could destroy me - you Greeks, you're worldly, you understand about human nature, but the people I work with aren't like that. Thing is, if I could just get to Izmir, I could make this whole nightmare disappear. I'll do the breaststroke to get there if I have to." He slammed down the thick-bottomed glass on the banged-up zinc bar. Then he waved a fifty-thousand-drachma note at the bartender, signaling for another round.

The bartender looked at the note and shook his head. "Ehete mipos pio psila?" A smaller-denomination bill was required.

Janson peered at the note like a drunk with blurred vision. The note was the equivalent of over a hundred U.S. dollars. "Oh, sorry," he said, putting it away and handing the bartender four thousand-drachma notes.

As Janson intended, the error was not lost on his companion, whose interest in his plight suddenly became livelier.

"A long way to swim," the seaman said with a mirthless chuckle. "Perhaps there is another way."

Janson looked at him imploringly. "You think?"

"Special transport," the man said. "Not comfortable. Not cheap."

"You get