Janson passed the name Hadrian Van Pelt to Freddy Ramirez in Madrid.
Freddy got back to him within the hour, deeply embarrassed.
“Sorry about this, but we screwed up. The Catalan police took a guy to the hospital they found passed out in Barcelona. We missed it. Barcelona’s a long, long way from Cartagena. His passport said ‘Hadrian Van Pelt.’ ”
“What did he pass out of?”
“Blood loss. It took ninety stitches to close up his arm.”
That’s my girl, thought Janson. “Where is he?”
“Snuck out of the hospital. Stole a Mercedes which they found in Madrid. My friend at Immigration tells me a dude his size with his arm in a sling flew to London under the name Vealon, Brud Vealon, and changed planes to Cape Town, South Africa.”
Where Jesse was now, Janson thought uneasily.
“Do we have anything on Van Pelt and Vealon?”
“Nothing on Vealon. There was a South African Olympic swimmer named Van Pelt. Common name down there, but from your description sounds like the same guy. He was disqualified from the Athens games for doping. Research can’t find a word about him since 2004.”
Janson texted Kincaid a heads-up that “the diver,” likely named either Hadrian Van Pelt or Brud Vealon, was headed her way. He telephoned Suzman in Cape Town to ask for his help in shadowing Hadrian Van Pelt. Suzman knew the name not only as a disgraced athlete but also as a mercenary soldier. “Fell off my radar years ago.”
“What did you think it meant when he fell off?”
Janson heard shrugged shoulders in Suzman’s answer. “I never paid it any mind. I assumed he got shot in the Congo or someplace.”
Exactly what someone like Van Pelt would want government security officers to assume, if he was moving up to something as big as Securité Referral.
* * *
IN THE BACKSEAT of Miles’s car that evening, Zwi Weintraub, who was snuffling on his oxygen, suddenly awakened. “You see the pattern?”
“What pattern?”
“Referral’s operators are all self-starters. Men who can run an operation are in the field. They do their own work. The workers are the leaders; the leaders are the workers.”
“You mean there’s no headman?”
“Any one of them is capable of being the headman.”
“All chiefs, no Indians?” asked Donner. “How do they keep from killing each other?”
“A good question,” said Weintraub, closing his eyes again. “Perhaps they’ve found a method to alter human nature.”
“A pact,” said Paul Janson. “They’ve sworn to band together against anyone who tries to take control.”
“A confederation of musketeers.” Miles Donner smiled. “All for one and one for all.”
* * *
JESSE TELEPHONED FROM Cape Town. “Got your text. ’Fraid I’ll miss the diver. I’m in a cab to the airport.” She was hoping to catch a plane to Johannesburg, where she would transfer to a long-haul Qantas flight to Sydney. “Where I think the doc is.”
“How’d he get all the way to Australia?”
“Jumped ship with the Varna Fantasy’s purser’s wife, dumped her in Cape Town, hooked up with a Qantas flight attendant named Mildred. Mildred got him comped onto a flight to Sydney. He’s either the horniest bastard on the planet or running scared. The purser’s wife thinks he’s running scared. Of course the poor thing has to tell herself something to explain the fix she’s in.”
“Good job.”
“I feel like a divorce lawyer’s gumshoe.”
An hour later Miles Donner awakened Janson from a catnap with a grim face. “They’re shutting us down.”
“Who?”
“Shin Bet.”
Israel’s security agency had been alerted to heavy overseas phone traffic emanating from Nordiya, Miles reported. “I was given advance warning by an old friend.”
“Just from some extra calls? There are thousands of expats living in this area, calling home to London and New York. Our calls couldn’t have made a blip Shin Bet would notice.”
“Of course not.”
“Then what happened?” Janson asked, sensing the answer even as he spoke.
Miles said, “I suspect that somewhere in Europe some friend of Securité Referral tipped Shin Bet about all the questions.”
“But why would Shin Bet—”
“They’re doing their job. They’ve been alerted to unusual traffic. They have to act. Internal security is their responsibility. Securité Referral knows that, of course.”
“Securité Referral is hitting back. Destroy the phones.”
“I already have,” said Miles. “The operation is terminated. Get out of Israel while you can. I’ve arranged for a chap to drive you to the airport. Hurry, my friend. The car is at the service entrance.”
“Lie down on the floor until we reach the highway,” the driver told him as Janson emerged from rows of black plastic garbage bags outside the facility’s kitchen.
“An ignominious retreat,” Janson said to Donner as they shook hands good-bye.
The old man winked. “Be known by your failures.”
* * *
JANSON WAS STANDING in line at Ben Gurion waiting to buy a ticket to Paris when Suzman called back from Cape Town. “Your boy’s come and gone. Never left the airport. Changed planes for Sydney. Which is, I believe, where your ‘interesting company’ just boarded a flight to.”
“Is there any way you could stop him?” Janson asked.
“Not without shooting down a commercial airliner. He connected in Johannesburg with the SAA flight to Perth.”
“You said Sydney.”
“He missed the direct Sydney connection. He’ll have to change in Perth to get across Australia.”
Janson could not raise Kincaid on the telephone. He left messages but got no replies. He texted her a warning that Van Pelt would probably arrive in Sydney several hours after her. And again, he did not hear back.
Cursing that he didn’t have the Embraer close at hand, he hunted frantically for the fastest flight to Australia. Sydney was nine thousand miles from Israel. He had to change planes in Bangkok. With the layover, the trip would take nearly twenty-four hours. Kincaid would land in Sydney with Van Pelt close behind, ten hours before Janson caught up.
He held fast to the mantra she is predator, not prey.
PART THREE Blind Side
35°18′29″ S, 149°07′28″ E
Canberra, Australia
TWENTY-ONE
Dr. Terry Flannigan reckoned he had less than a day before the people trying to kill him caught up in Canberra. They’d already tracked him from Dakar to South Africa and certainly by now the Qantas flight to Sydney. Back-tracing him to Mildred, they would discover that the flight attendant had gotten him a package trip to Australia’s capital including his hotel and this morning’s guided tour of Parliament House.
He had to do something fast, but he didn’t know what.
A sweet little blonde gave him a shy eye as they trooped off the bus. She looked fresh faced as a country schoolteacher. Flannigan guessed she had recently broken up with a lousy boyfriend and had signed onto this package tour by herself to recover; now she was lonely and feeling brave. But how could she help him stay alive? Even if she smuggled him home to some godforsaken Outback kangaroo ranch, how long would it take them to catch up?
He stuck close to the group as they were herded into the parliament. Inside he felt the most secure he had in two weeks, guarded by fit-looking Parliamentary Security Service officers with radios. Not supercommandos like The Wall and Annie Oakley, but backed up by Federal Police and the Australian Army.
When they were led into the Senate Chamber itself, he relaxed and began to enjoy himself. Then an excellent brunette Green Party senator noticed him noticing her from the public galley. She was single. He saw no wedding ring. Besides, married ladies in public life didn’t hook up with strange men in public places and Madame Senator was definitely sending hookup signals.