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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

Janson felt another heaving surge of nausea: what Phan Nguyen said was true. It may have been wrapped in deceit, but the truth remained, stony and indigestible.

“You say you did not divulge the details of your identity to me. But that leaves you with a more troubling question. If not you, who? How is it that we were able to intercept your team and capture a senior officer of the legendary American counterintelligence division of the legendary Navy SEALs? How?”

How indeed? There was only one answer: Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest had funneled the information to the NVA or its VC allies. He was too careful a man for the leak to have been inadvertent at this point. It would have been extraordinarily easy. The information would have been “accidentally” revealed to one of the ARVN personnel whom Demarest knew to have close NVA links; it could have been “hidden” in a cache of papers “accidentally” left behind at a jungle outpost, too hastily decamped under enemy fire. The details could have been deliberately transmitted via a code and radio frequency known to the enemy. Demarest had wanted Janson out of the way; he had needed him out of the way. And so he had taken care of the matter as only he could. The whole mission had been a goddamn snare, a subterfuge from the master of subterfuge.

Demarest had done this to him!

And now the lieutenant commander was no doubt sitting at his desk, listening to Hildegard von Bingen, and Janson was trussed to a stool in a VC compound, foul pus oozing from open sores where the rope cut into his flesh, his body shattered, his mind reeling—reeling, most of all, at the realization that his ordeal had only begun.

“Well,” Phan Nguyen said. “You must concede that our intelligence is superior. We know so much about your operations that to hold back would be pointless, like depriving the ocean of a teardrop. Yes, I think so, I think so.” He walked out of the compound, conferring in a low voice with another officer, and then returned, taking his seat at his chair.

Janson’s eyes fell on the man’s feet, which didn’t touch the ground, and took in the large American laceups, the childlike calves.