Neal Kruger was tall and tanning-bed bronzed, with thick curly hair turning gray and the slightly quizzical expression of a handsome lifeguard or ski bum shocked to discover he had stumbled into middle age.
“Hello, Neal.”
The weapons dealer clasped Janson’s hand, pulled him inside, and hugged him hard. “Too long, my friend. How are you?”
“Very, very well,” said Paul Janson. “You look like you’re prospering.”
“The United Nations’ failure to impose world peace continues to stoke the human desire to accumulate arms. I am, indeed, prospering.”
“Since when do you open your own front door?”
“It is a luxury to feel so secure that I don’t need armed men to welcome old friends.”
“You’re taking a damned fool chance,” said Janson.
“A luxury by definition is an indulgence.”
“You’ll get yourself killed. Or snatched.”
“There are four concealed cameras over the alley.”
“I saw them. And the gas port. It would not be easy to take you, but not impossible.”
“Will I get a bill for security advice?”
Janson did not smile back. “You should be more careful. If not for you, for your wife and son.”
“She left me. She took the boy.”
“I’m sorry.” That explained the lapse. “Then the advice is on the house. There’s no protecting a man who doesn’t give a damn.”
Kruger led him inside. His office was a mess. He had laid out a tray of bread and cheese on his desk and opened a bottle of Cote de Rhone. Janson sipped sparingly, though he dove into the cheese, having not eaten since early morning. They traded information on old friends and then Janson got to the point. “Any luck with the jump jet?”
Kruger nodded. “Twelve old T.10 Harrier two-seaters from the nineties were updated to a T.12 capability to train pilots for the Brits’ GR.9 fleet. Marvelous aircraft. Fully combat capable. Even night fighting. Now they’re being replaced by the F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, which means that for a while there were a dozen vertical-slash-short takeoff and landing two-seaters for sale around the world. Nine of them are currently serving the Spanish and the Turks. The Nigerians managed to crash two of them, after which they put the third back on the market.”
“Who bought it?”
“A fellow I know who deals with mercenaries.”
“ Frenchmercenaries?”
Kruger shot Janson an admiring glance. “Why come to me for answers you already know?”
“Not this time,” said Janson. “It’s just that…”
“It’s just that what?”
Janson hesitated only a moment. His instinct to conceal was tempered by the knowledge that Neal Kruger lived on information. Any information Janson gave the arms dealer would cause him to return the favor, though at the risk that he would trade on it with others. Janson said, “I interviewed two of Iboga’s wives.”
“How many does he have?”
“They caught three of them. God knows how many others escaped into the bush. Illiterate peasant girls. Little older than children really. Anyway, they both said the same thing when I asked about how Iboga got away: ‘The French, the French.’ It was like a chant or a prayer. I doubt they know where France is, but they were parroting what Iboga kept saying near the end: ‘The French will save me. The French will save me.’ It was pretty clear he had arrangements with someone. Now you’re telling me that a Harrier jump jet ended up in the hands of a merchant who deals with the French.”
“It hardly sounds like the French government. They muck about in their former colonies like the Ivory Coast, or Senegal. But Isle de Foree was Portuguese.”
Janson agreed. “Have you heard of a freelance outfit called Sar?”
“Sar? No. What is it?”
“They might have been who sent the jump jet. Or they supplied operators on the ground for whoever did. And it appears they do assassinations.”
“That’s a crowded field.”
Janson swirled the wine in his glass, eyed the ruby color against the light. He was glad he had come personally instead of continuing with Kruger on the phone. The phone couldn’t show the disorderliness of a man’s office or provide such a window on his state of mind. Kruger would become increasingly less useful unless Janson could help him change the course of his life.
“Why did she leave?” He recalled a younger, athletic woman with a warm smile, a ripe body, and erotic eyes that rarely left Kruger’s face.
“She said I took her for granted.”
“Any chance of getting her back?”
Kruger shook his head. “In my experience, when you lose your glow in the eyes of a woman it does not rekindle.… She was right. Sort of. I didn’t mean to take her for granted. But I was working harder than ever. Traveling more. Hugely distracted.”
“By what?”
“Drones. Everyone wants them. Few have them.”
“Like Predators? Reapers?”
“The smaller stuff. The Israelis are making some amazing machines. The Chinese are trying. Russians, of course.”
“With Reaper capability?”
“Small rockets, perhaps. Not the big stuff.”
“Take out tanks?”
“No, no, no. But they’ll make short work of a terrorist in an SUV. Or a parliamentary rival in a Mercedes. Guidance is the big problem. If you don’t have your own cloud of satellites like the U.S., you’re juggling rented satellite space with all the discombobulation that can breed, not to mention deeply compromised security. A drone can be a big disappointment if an enemy hacker redirects it back at you.”
“Have you ever heard of a Reaper or a Predator in private hands?”
“A real one? No way.”
“It would have to be government, wouldn’t it?” Janson asked.
“ United Statesgovernment.”
* * *
JANSON CAUGHT THE tram at the Oerlikon station and was back at the Hauptbahnhof minutes later. He took an overnight train to Belgrade and had breakfast with a Serbian militia contractor, a former army officer who had built a business supplying brilliantly trained bodyguards capable of offensive operations.
But the Serb knew nothing. The trip to Belgrade was a waste of time. Other than Neal Kruger’s speculation about some sort of “French Connection.” Paul Janson was no closer to discovering the source of the jump jet, no closer to picking up the trail of the escaped Iboga.
He took a ramshackle taxi to the airport, not sure what next, thinking maybe Paris. On the way, scanning the New York Timeson his cell, he caught a lucky break—an unexpected opportunity to call in a valuable debt. Instead of flying to Paris, he boarded a Turkish Airlines flight to Baghdad.
EIGHTEEN
The haughty sheik arguing with Club Electric’s bouncers was demanding to keep his guns, Janson’s translator told him.
“Now what is he yelling?”
If he could not keep his guns, the sheik insisted that his bodyguards keep theirs.
Club Electric’s bouncers were unimpressed. All patrons of Baghdad’s premier nightclub checked their guns at the door. No exceptions.
It was hot, 114 degrees, hours after dark. Janson’s translator kept glancing up the street that paralleled the Tigris River, as if wondering which of the Hummers, Land Rovers, and Cadillac Escalades approaching the valet parkers was hauling a car bomb. Patrons lined up behind them looked as anxious to get inside the blast walls.
The sheik surrendered at last.
Janson exchanged the automatic he had purchased on the way in from the airport for a plastic claim check. Bouncers whispering into walkie-talkies ushered him through Kevlar-reinforced doors. He paused at the top of the stairs to let a group of Iraqis catch up with them and slipped inconspicuously among them. They descended switchback flights of green-lighted Lucite steps into a cavernous, windowless room pulsing with Arab music. Hundreds of prosperous men in shirtsleeves were drinking Pepsi-Cola, smoking water pipes, and watching soccer on flat-screen TVs.