The Janson Option by Paul Garrison Page B

business. And I can assure you in Somalia, most rumors are true.”
    â€œWho will replace him?” asked Janson. “Mad Max?”
    Hassan raised an eyebrow. “You should be in real estate, Paul.”
    â€œWhat’s the word on Max?”
    â€œMaxammed belongs to the same subclan as President Mohamed Adam.”
    â€œThat ought to give him a long leg up.”
    Hassan shook his head. “President Adam is known as ‘Raage,’ which means ‘he who delayed at birth.’ In other words, he is very cautious.”
    Janson said, “I don’t suppose President Adam can protect Mad Max hundreds of miles up the coast in Puntland?”
    â€œEven if he could, Adam can’t risk any appearance of extending government protection to a pirate. He’s just been appointed by the new parliament, which puts him on very thin ice. President Adam will be way too busy trying to convince Somalia that he can become a visionary national leader.”
    â€œWhy is Max called Mad Max?” asked Janson, expecting something more precise from Hassan than Special Agent Laughlin’s “When in doubt, shoot.”
    Salah Hassan delivered a roundabout answer in wistful tones. “Among the joys of my country—almost equal to her most beautiful women, and right up there with proud herdsman, amazingly resilient farmers, tenacious businessmen, lovely beaches yearning for rich tourists, and her once-glorious cities—is her custom of giving people nicknames. Everyone gets a nickname and most are dead-on accurate.”
    â€œWhat precisely do people mean when they call him Mad Max?”
    â€œMad Max is volatile as jet fuel and vicious as a scorpion. But, having said that, I would also say that considering his connections and the atmosphere of leadership he observed growing up in his family, Mad Max’s ambitions are more ambitious than ‘khat and SUVs.’ Is it he who hijacked the yacht?”
    â€œCould be,” said Janson, and changed the subject. “Who else is up?”
    â€œThe Italian.”
    More nicknames. “What does ‘Italian’ mean? Another outsider?”
    Hassan shrugged. “A new player surfaced in Mogadishu recently. I’ve heard of no one who has seen his face or knows his true name. Talk is he’s raising a private army—maybe one of the private security companies in Dubai is working for him. He has money—vast resources.”
    â€œWhere does he get his money?” Janson asked. “Who’s backing him?”
    â€œI don’t know. But there are rumors he will take over Mogadishu or all of the south or maybe even the whole country.”
    â€œIf no one has seen him or heard his name, how do they know he’s there?”
    â€œPeople have disappeared. Key people. Supporters of President Adam. Supporters of the AMISOM, the African Union’s army. People who might help stabilize the country. People who might ask for help from the Ethiopians or the Kenyans or the UN. Even al-Shabaab allies.” Hassan grinned. “The Italian appears to be an equal-opportunity assassin.”
    â€œDon’t you find it hard to believe that no one in Mogadishu has even seen this new player?”
    â€œAre you aware, Paul, that Mogadishu is a very large city?”
    â€œI recall a beautiful city the first time I saw it.”
    Hassan looked surprised. “You must have been very young when you were there.”
    â€œVery young,” Janson admitted. “I was passing through.” Shedding identities on his way to South Africa. Or, as his controllers had put it: sanding your edges. “I remember palm trees and white stucco and beautiful women and elegant streets. You could imagine people strolling in the evenings, like the passeggiata in Italy.” The truth was, bombings and firefights had begun pocking holes in the stucco, and the rebel factions attacking the dictator’s regime had cleared the