The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,87

master's demeanor had altered - his tone was brittle, as it had never been, and wasn't there a slight tremor in his hands that had not been there before? Janson saw that something had upset his old teacher, and profoundly.

The don made his way to a rostrum where a fat volume of a dictionary reposed. Not just any dictionary, Janson knew - it was the first volume of a rare 1759 edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary, A-G stenciled in gold along its spine. Janson remembered it from the don's shelves back when his rooms were in Trinity's Neville Court.

"Just want to look up one thing," he said. But Janson heard the stress beneath the pleasantries. Not the stress of bereavement or loss, but of another emotion. Alarm. Suspicion.

There was something about his manner: the slight tremor, the brittle tone - and? Something else. What?

Angus Fielding was no longer making eye contact: that was it. Some people almost never did so, but Fielding was not one of them. When he

spoke to you, his eyes swept back to yours regularly, as if to guide the words home. Almost involuntarily, Janson felt one of his own hands reaching behind him.

He stared, mesmerized, as Fielding, with his back to him, opened the tome, and - it couldn't be.

The master of Trinity College spun around to face Janson, brandishing a small pistol in a shaking hand. Just behind Fielding, Janson saw the hollowed-out section carved into the dictionary's vellum pages, where the side arm had been secreted. The side arm that his old don was pointing at him.

"Why have you really come here?" Fielding asked.

At last his eyes met Janson's, and what Janson saw in them took his breath away: murderous rage.

"Novak was a good man," Fielding said in a tremulous voice. The scholar sounded far away. "Possibly a great one. I've just learned that you killed him."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The aging don lowered his gaze momentarily and gasped in spite of himself. For Janson, too, was holding a gun in his hand - the gun he had, in a fluid motion, grasped from his rear holster as his subconscious mind registered what his conscious mind had difficulty accepting.

Wordlessly, Janson thumbed the safety up of his snub-nosed weapon. For a few long seconds, the two men stood facing each other in silence.

Whoever Fielding's visitor had been, it was no graduate student in economic history. "Volume A to G," Janson said. "Appropriate enough. A for ammo, G for guns. Why don't you put that antique in your hand aside? It doesn't suit you."

The economist snorted. "So you can kill me, too?"

"Oh for Christ's sake, Angus!" Janson erupted. "Use that magnificent brain of yours. Can't you hear how crazy that sounds?"

"Bollocks. What I can see is that you were sent here to betray me - eliminate anyone who might know you too well, I've no doubt. 'A killing machine' - I'd heard that said of you, a Homeric epithet favored by some of your controllers. Oh yes, I kept in touch with my American counterparts. But I never credited the characterization until now. Your guile commands the admiration of this old Footlights trouper. You know, you really give excellent grief. Had me completely fooled. I'm not ashamed to say so."

"All I wanted to learn was - "

"The location of Peter's colleagues - in order to hunt them down, too!" the old professor said hotly. "The 'inner circle,' as you referred to it. And once you'd ferreted out this information, you could be sure that Peter's mission on this planet had been destroyed." He smiled, a chilly, terrible smile, showing his discolored, irregular teeth. "I suppose I should have appreciated your wit, asking whom I meant by 'they' and 'them.' But, of course, 'they' and 'them' are whom you work for."

"You just met with someone - tell me who?" Janson was flushed with fury and bewilderment. His eyes darted back to the college master's weapon, a .22 Webley pistol, the smallest and most easily concealed of those in use by British intelligence agents during the early sixties. "Who, goddammit?"

"Wouldn't you like to know. I suppose you want to add another name to your bloodstained punch list."

"Listen to yourself, Angus. This is madness! Why would I - "

"That's the nature of mop-up operations, isn't it? They're never quite finished. There's always another dangling thread to be tied up - or snipped off."

"Dammit, Angus. You know me."

"Do I?" The standoff continued as the tutor and his onetime pupil both kept their handguns