Robert Ludlum's (TM) the Janson Equation (6 page)

“What are you saying, Morton?”

“I can track your man online, but I can't find him for you in real life. That's going to be up to you.”

“Fine,” Janson said, “then let me ask you this: If you were in a foreign country accused of murder, regardless of your guilt or innocence, where would
you
hide out?”

“I guess I'd try to find my peeps.”

“Your peeps?”

“My people, ya know. Fellow hackers. From what I've seen of this guy online, you're not going to find him at some aboveground Internet café, casually logging on to his AOL account with his Capital One Visa. You're going to have to go underground. If I were him I'd use my network of fellow cyber-enthusiasts to hide my ass until the heat died down.”

“Now we're getting somewhere, Morton. Next question: If everyone online is anonymous, how do you know which city anyone lives in?”

“You don't, necessarily. But if you're in some kind of serious shit in a foreign country, you can ask for help in an online forum. If someone who reads your post is in the area, he can send you a direct message and offer to help without exposing too much about himself publicly.”

“There's no other way to find out which hackers live where?”

“Well, even if someone hides his IP address, you can usually figure out where he's from by what he talks about and when he's online, time zone–wise. You can also collect hints from his views on politics and shit, but that takes time. Also keep in mind that the best hackers are also skilled social engineers—and the best of the best are masters of deception.”

“So how do we go about finding one of these hackers in South Korea?”

“Well, you, my friend, are in luck.”

“Am I? Why's that?”

“Because I just happen to chat regularly with one of the baddest cyber-motherfuckers in all of Asia. And I just happen to know for a fact that he resides in Seoul.”

“Great. How do I find him?”

“I can't pinpoint him on a map, ya know. But I can give you his screen name and you can try to locate him yourself. Just don't let on how you got the lead. And be extremely careful. From what I've heard, this guy will chew you up and spit you out as soon as look at you. He's got the reputation of a natural-born killer.”

“What's the screen name, Morton?”

“L-zero-R-D-underscore-W-one-C-K-three-D.”

Janson fixed on the letters and numbers in his head:

L0rd_W1ck3d

“Lord Wicked?”

“Lord-motherfucking-Wicked, my friend.”

Dosan Park
Sinsa-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul

A
s the brutal cold burrowed deep into her bones, Jessica Kincaid couldn't shake the feeling that she was being followed. She lowered her head against the gusting wind and stole another glance over her left shoulder but saw no one.

You're being paranoid. You're the one doing the following.

Across the way, Ambassador Young's chief aide entered an upscale Korean restaurant named Jung Sikdang. Kincaid cursed under her breath. She couldn't very well walk into the restaurant; Jonathan would recognize her right away. And she sure as hell didn't want to wait around outside in the bitter cold for an hour while Jonathan enjoyed his evening meal.
Damn.
She'd been so sure he was heading straight to his apartment, where Kincaid could knock on the door and, hopefully, corner him alone. But no. An hour of surveillance, wasted.

After leaving the US embassy, Kincaid had headed north to the Sophia Guesthouse in Sogyeok-dong. It was her first time visiting a traditional hanok and she was instantly charmed. Fewer than a dozen rooms surrounded a spartan courtyard with a simple garden and young trees that stood completely bare in solidarity with the season.

Rather than poke around uninvited she went straight to the proprietors, a husband and wife of indistinguishable age. Both spoke fluent English. Although wary at first, they gradually opened up to Kincaid once she agreed to join them for afternoon tea.

Seated on low, comfortable cushions, Kincaid asked the couple whether they had ever seen Lynell Yi or Gregory Wyckoff before their recent visit. Neither of them had. Nor had they personally overheard the loud argument that was alleged to have taken place the night of the murder. The guests who
had
overheard the argument—a young Korean couple from Busan—had already checked out. Kincaid had seen their home addresses listed in the police file Janson had obtained on the plane, so she moved on.

After tea, Kincaid asked if she might have a look around, and the couple readily acquiesced. As they walked through the courtyard toward the room where Lynell Yi's body was found, the husband launched into a semicomposed rant about the disappearance of the hanok in South Korean culture. The one-story homes crafted entirely of wood, he said, were victims of the South's “obsession with modernization.” As he pointed out the craftsmanship of the clay-tiled roof, he noticed Kincaid's chattering teeth and explained that the rooms were well insulated with mud and straw, and heated by a system called
ondol
that lay beneath the floor.

The wife took a key from her pocket and opened the door to number 9, the room in which Wyckoff and Yi had stayed. It was located in the newer section of the hanok. Kincaid was surprised to find that the two-day-old crime scene was already immaculate. There was no yellow police tape, no blood or footprints or any other evidence to be seen. According to the husband, a team had rushed in and cleaned the place up and down the moment the police indicated they were finished. Kincaid made a mental note to check whether this was normal procedure in the Republic of Korea.

The room itself was cozy, about half the size of a one-car garage. But it was also elegant in an understated way. There were no beds or chairs, just traditional mats, a pair of locked trunks, and a small color television set you probably couldn't purchase in stores anymore. She'd seen the room in evidence photos, but the pictures didn't do the place justice.

Kincaid walked to the window, which was made of a thin translucent paper that allowed in natural light. She placed her hand on one of the speckled walls and thought that if she gave it a solid punch, her fist would land in the next room. So much for proving that fellow guests couldn't possibly have overheard an argument between the victim and the accused. But what truly puzzled her was that the police noted no signs of a struggle, except for a fallen lamp. Given the size of the room, that seemed all but impossible, especially considering the fact that Lynell Yi had apparently been the victim of manual strangulation.

“Tourists from the West still love to stay in hanok,” the husband said, collapsing her thoughts. “They do not come to Seoul to stay in a high-rise they can see in New York City or London.”

Kincaid nodded. She understood his passion, and unlike Janson, she could certainly understand why the young lovers might have slipped away from their modern apartment nearby to experience an amorous night in a traditional Korean home. Maybe she was just more romantic than Paul—or maybe Paul had previously been inside a hanok and had been reminded of the six-by-four-foot cage he'd been kept in during the eighteen months he spent as a prisoner of the Taliban in Afghanistan. That would certainly be reason enough for him to dismiss the hanok as a desirable place to stay. Either way, Kincaid didn't think Janson's theory that the young couple had been on the run held much water.

F
OLLOWING HER VISIT
to the Sophia Guesthouse, Kincaid waited in line for a dish of spicy chili beef then headed south back to the US embassy. By then it was nearing five o'clock Korean time, and she was hoping to catch Jonathan exiting the embassy after calling it a day. Jonathan was probably in his mid- to late twenties, not a teenager but certainly closer to Lynell Yi in age than most people employed at the embassy. And the ambassador's glance toward the doorway, when Kincaid asked if there was anyone in the office who knew Lynell Yi well, made her suspect that Jonathan might hold some of the answers to questions she had about Yi's job, maybe even her relationship with Gregory Wyckoff.

Jonathan exited the embassy at a quarter after five and walked to the subway station at Chongyak. There he took the 1 line, and Kincaid hopped into the subway car trailing his. He got off just two stops later and boarded the 3. On the 3 train, he seemed to settle in for a lengthy ride. And lengthy it was; he didn't step off the train again until they were south of the Han River in Gangnam-gu.

Kincaid continued to watch the restaurant. As she held her arms across her chest against the cold, she experienced that feeling again. That odd sensation that while she was watching Jonathan, she too was being watched. But by whom?

She searched the faces of the few people on the street braving the freezing weather. She eyed a group of teenagers huddled at the far corner of the park. She counted four males and two females, all probably under the age of eighteen. An unlikely bunch of spies, to say the least.

To her left, she spotted a vagrant hunched over on a park bench.

A vagrant? In these temperatures? How could he possibly survive the night?

The sun was dipping low behind the mountain; dark was falling fast. If she didn't identify her stalker soon, it would be all but impossible. She reached into her pocket for her phone to call Janson but then thought better of it. She'd already informed him that she'd followed Jonathan to the restaurant. She could handle this on her own.

She turned away from the restaurant, retreating into the park. The group of teens paid her no attention. The vagrant didn't stir. Two males were walking fast straight toward her, but as they approached she noted they were holding hands, exposing their fingers to the cold. In this weather, that was true love.

A minute later she moved past the couple, deeper into the park. She stole another look over her shoulder. Had any of the people she'd seen earlier followed her? None that she could tell. But she felt a pair of eyes on her nevertheless.

Kincaid quickened her pace as her pulse sped up and her head filled with images of men in fedoras and dark trench coats, with handguns hanging at their sides.

In the center of the park she spun around and spotted movement in a copse of trees. An animal? No. Unless a grizzly bear had escaped from the Seoul Zoo, this creature was too large to be anything but a human being.

She continued moving forward as though she'd seen nothing. But she heard a rustle and was suddenly sure that whoever was following her knew he'd been made. Which meant that he was probably a professional.

With no one else in sight and the cover of dusk protecting him, her attacker finally made his move and launched himself out of the shadows.

Kincaid didn't hesitate, didn't bother looking back, just took off in a sprint across the park in the direction of the river. Over the shrieking gusts of wind she heard her pursuer make contact with bushes and low tree branches as he cut a parallel course north toward the Han, attempting to overtake her.

But Kincaid was fast. Fastest of her class at Quantico, where her professional life began. In the time since she'd left Virginia to join the FBI's National Security Division, she'd put on a few years but not a single extra pound. And her world hadn't paused since she'd been stolen away by the State Department after catching the eyes of some spooks from Consular Operations.

It was times like this when brimming with confidence counted, and that was a trait she'd had in spades all the way back to her childhood in Red Creek, Kentucky. She'd taken that confidence with her when she boarded a Greyhound bus, leaving her daddy behind for the first time in her life. And over the years that confidence had been refined, first by the bureau, then by Cons Ops, and most recently by Paul Janson.

She charged through a row of bushes and found herself back on a street. She paused a moment to catch her breath, which was billowing in large white puffs before her eyes. Through the mist she eyed a taxi, and her arm shot up almost instinctively.

The orange taxi slowed and pulled to the curb and Kincaid opened the door and dove into the backseat, shouting, “Go, go,
go
.”

As the taxi peeled away Kincaid raised her head just in time to see a tall Korean man breaking through the bushes, stopping on a dime, then raising his arms with a gun in his hands. She watched him take aim and nervously waited for the sound of a gunshot, the shattering of window glass, the buzz of a bullet as it streaked by within inches of her face.

Mercifully, the assassin never fired.

Cheongwha Apartments
Itaewon, Yongsan-gu, Seoul

F
ull dark yet still no word from Nam Sei-hoon.

Fortunately, since the time he left Nam at the War Memorial, Janson had scored the aid of another old friend, this one going back to his days in Consular Operations.

Until roughly ninety minutes ago, Janson had assumed Grigori Berman was dead. Over the past couple of years all attempts to reach the bearlike Russian had failed. Given his longtime associations with the Russian
mafiya
, it would have served as no surprise for Janson to learn that Grigori Berman had met a violent end.

But that evidently wasn't the case.

“Dead?” Berman had said in his thick Russian accent. “No, no, Paulie! I am very much alive, comrade. I was just, let's say, on an extended vacation.”

Janson didn't bother asking where Berman had been and Berman in turn didn't utter another word on the subject. Janson could think of myriad reasons why the big man might have needed to remain off the radar for a while.

“Hearing from you, Paulie, is like hearing from an old girlfriend. It warms my heart, yet I cannot help but wonder what it is you want from me.”

Janson didn't need to remind Berman that the Russian was still in his debt. Back when Janson worked for Cons Ops, Grigori Berman, who'd been trained as a number cruncher in the former Soviet Union, had been in the business of laundering millions for his Russian mob associates by setting up shell corporations around the globe. When Consular Operations finally decided to drop the dragnet on the Russian syndicate Berman was working with, Paul Janson deliberately let the effusive accountant go. Despite the protests of his Cons Ops colleagues, Janson viewed the decision like a chess move. Grigori Berman may have been a manipulator, a liar, and a thief. But he was also talented, clever, and—unlike his co-conspirators—nonviolent. Placing him in a prison would have done neither Janson nor Cons Ops any good. Having a man like Berman in his debt, on the other hand, gave Janson the potential ammunition to outsmart and outmaneuver scores of other criminals who
were
violent—evil men who were irredeemable and who would inevitably do irreparable damage to society.

In hindsight, Janson's chess move was one of the most brilliant of his career. A few years ago when Janson was framed for the contract murder of billionaire philanthropist Peter Novak, it was Grigori Berman who discovered that the $16 million placed in Janson's offshore account as alleged payment for the hit actually originated from Novak's own foundation. Shortly after that discovery, Berman took a sniper's bullet in the chest—a bullet that had been meant for Paul Janson. Thankfully, the large Russian recovered. And not only was Berman not angry afterward, but he also risked everything to help Janson put the final nail in the coffin of the Mobius Program—by manipulating a crooked foreign banker and causing the then
president of the United States of America
, Charles W. Berquist Jr., to receive and accept an illegal $1.5 million personal contribution, which Janson then used as leverage.

Now that Janson thought about it, maybe Grigori Berman's debt
had
been paid.

Well, Berman doesn't need to know that.

“So, what can I do for you, Paulie?”

“I'm trying to track down a hacker in Seoul. Goes by the screen name Lord Wicked.” Janson spelled out the queer combination of letters and numbers.

“Ah,
Lord Wicked
,” Berman said.

“You've heard of him.”

“Everyone in the cybersecurity industry has heard of him. He's a living legend.”

“Can you help me locate him?”

“Ordinarily, I would say
nyet
. A man of his prowess, he undoubtedly reroutes his servers to countries all over the world. But since you know which city he is in, I should be able to dox him within the hour.”

“Dox him?”

“Unearth his personal details,” Berman said. “His real name, his home address, his telephone number. Maybe even his mother's maiden name.”

“Skip the mother's maiden name,” Janson said. “Get me the rest as quickly as you can.”

F
IFTY-SIX MINUTES LATER
Grigori Berman called Janson back with the details.

“His name is Jung Kang,” Berman said. “Or Kang Jung, if you place the last name first as the Koreans do. He has two known addresses. One is in Itaewon, in the Yongsan district. The other address is in Gangnam—you know, like the song, Paulie? ‘
Heeeyyy, sexy lady! Oppa Gangnam style…
'”

“I've heard the song, Grigori. How about giving me the addresses?”

Twenty minutes later a young woman exited the main lobby of the Cheongwha Apartments, and Janson slipped in with a practiced pronunciation of the Korean term for “thank you” and a warm smile.

Since Janson was already in Itaewon when he spoke to Berman, it made sense for him to check out Kang Jung's Yongsan address and leave the Gangnam address for Kincaid, who'd last reported to him that she'd followed the ambassador's chief aide to an upscale restaurant across from Dosan Park. But when Janson called Kincaid to relay Kang Jung's Gangnam address he received no answer. Once ten minutes passed without a callback, he began to feel slightly on edge. But he was sure it was nothing. Maybe the ambassador's aide had dropped into the restaurant for a single drink then returned to the subway station for the remainder of his ride home. Kincaid would no doubt contact him when she popped back up on the surface.

Janson took the elevator to the eleventh floor. He was pessimistic about this being the right place. Itaewon was known as a Western town, a district popular among tourists and expats and US military personnel stationed in Korea. Because of its demographics and plethora of counterfeit goods, Itaewon had been likened to a Chinatown, only for North Americans and Western Europeans. Which made it an
unlikely
residence for a wealthy man with a clearly Korean name like Kang Jung.

The indistinctiveness of the apartment building made him further suspect that Kang Jung's true address was the one in Gangnam. According to Morton and Berman, “Lord Wicked” was a kingpin who made millions of dollars selling “dumps”—stolen credit card and corresponding personal information—to hardened criminals from Vancouver to Estonia. Odds were he was living large. Or at least larg
er
.

Janson stepped into the dim hallway, took a left, and rounded the corner. Outside apartment 1109, he paused and listened at the door, careful to stay clear of the peephole. He'd heed Morton's warning and be cautious, sure. But he wasn't there to take Kang Jung into custody; he was there to cut a deal for information. Kang Jung would have little reason to kill him.

Then again…

When he heard nothing but a television tuned to an old sitcom with a laugh track, Janson finally rapped on the door.

He stood off to the side and waited for the peephole to darken, but it never did. He listened for the sound of heavy footfalls but continued to hear nothing but the television. He was about to give the door another knock when it opened a crack and the tiny features of a little girl poked out.

“
Hashiljul ashinayo?
” Janson said.
Do you speak English?

“
Chogum hajul arayo
,” the girl replied.
I speak a little.

“Is your father home?”

“He may be.”

“He
may
be? Would you mind checking for me?”

“I'm not allowed to use the phone. I'm grounded.”

“The phone?”

“My father lives in Gangnam,” she said. “I live here with my mother.”

“I see,” he said, deflating at the validation of his assumption that he was at the wrong address. “Is your mother home?”

“No, she's out.”

“You're here all by yourself?” Janson said. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“OK, I'm sorry to have bothered you.”

Janson turned toward the elevator bank.

“Wait,” the girl called. “What do you want with my father?”

Janson scrutinized her. “You seem to speak more than a
little
English.”

“I'm fluent,” she said. “Now, what do you want with my father?”

“It doesn't have anything to do with you. It's just business.”

“What kind of business?”

“You're a curious young lady, aren't you?”

“Answer the question,” she said.

“I want to pay your father for some information.”

“What kind of information?”

“Adult information.”

Janson turned to leave again.

“Computer information?” the girl called out to him.

Janson spun back to face her. “Maybe. What do you know about it?”

“My father doesn't work with computers.”

“He doesn't? What does he do?”

“He's a chef.”

“Is that so? What type of food?”

“Neo-Korean,” she said. Then: “You look like you don't believe me.”

“Let's just say I have information that contradicts what you're telling me.”

“You don't even know my father's name, I'd bet.”

Janson thought about it and decided to play along. “Your father is Kang Jung.”

The corner of the girl's mouth lifted in a smirk. “You're wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. You're looking for the wrong person.”

“Is your father's surname Kang?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, who's the right person? Who's Kang Jung? Your mother?”

The girl shook her head and then opened the door wider. “Why don't you come in?”

“That wouldn't be a good idea.”

She rolled her eyes and motioned inside. “It would be if you're looking for Lord Wicked,” she said.