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Back The Janson Directive
Chapters (54)
  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Prologue
  4. PART ONE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. PART TWO
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. PART THREE
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. PART FOUR
  39. Chapter Thirty-two
  40. Chapter Thirty-three
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Epilogue
  52. ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM
  53. Critical Praise for Robert Ludlum
  54. Copyright Page

“It’s always the same story,” the National Security Advisor said. “We thought we were getting laid, when we were really getting screwed.” Her brown eyes roamed across the faces in the room. “Maybe we’re missing something—let’s review your man’s records again,” she said to the undersecretary. “Just the high points.”

“Paul Elie Janson,” Collins said, his eyes veiled behind his black plastic glasses. “Grew up in Norfolk, Connecticut, educated at the Kent School. His mother was born Anna Klima—an émigré from what was then Czechoslovakia. She’d been a literary translator in the old country, became too closely associated with dissident writers, paid a visit to a cousin in New Haven, and never returned. Wrote poems in Czech and English, published a couple of them in The New Yorker. Alec Janson was an insurance executive, a senior vice president at the Dalkey Group before he died. In 1969, hot-to-trot Paul leaves U-Michigan just before graduating and joins the navy. Turns out he’s got this gift for tactics and combat, gets himself transferred to the SEALs, the youngest person ever to have received SEAL training. Assigned to a counterintelligence division. We’re talking about a learning curve like a rocket.”

“Wait a minute,” the DIA man said. “A hothouse flower like that—what’s he doing joining up with the Dirty Dozen? Profile mismatch.”

“His whole life is a ‘profile mismatch,’” Derek Collins replied, with a trace of asperity. “You really want to get the shrink reports? Maybe he’s rebelling against his dad—the two weren’t close. Maybe he’d heard too many stories about a Czech uncle who was a hero of the resistance, a partisan who picked off Nazis through the ravines and forests of Sumava. Dad wasn’t exactly a wuss, either. During the Second World War, old Alec was in the marines himself, a Semper Fi leatherneck before he became a business executive. Let’s just say Paul’s got the bloodlines, preppy or no. Besides, you know what they say—the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Or was that a ‘profile mismatch,’ too, Doug?”

The DIA analyst colored slightly. “I’m just trying to get a handle on somebody who seems to have walked out of a full-force, all-hands CIA stakeout like the Invisible Man.”

“We had very little warning—the whole operation was spur-of-the-moment, our boys had minutes to prepare and mobilize,” said Clayton Ackerley, the man from the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. He had wispy red hair, watery blue eyes, and a fading tan. “Under the circumstances, I’m sure they did the best they could.”

“There’s always time for recriminations,” said Charlotte Ainsley with a severe, over-the-glasses pedagogic look. “Just not now. Go ahead, Derek. I’m still not getting the picture.”