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Jan Martense

Jan Martense is the tall, gaunt East German manager of the Spud Hut Georgia Regional Distribution Center and the head of a secret gold-mining operation staffed by bred ape-men, the main antagonist of The Things in Appalachia.
Type NPC (antagonist)
Aliases Jan; Yan; Jan Martens
Affiliation Spud Hut; Jan's Conspiracy
Status Alive; captured and held at Black Site Omaha (as of Walkers 01)
First appearance Appalachia 03 (mentioned); first seen in Appalachia 08
Played by Andre

Description

Jan is very tall (Andre puts him at about six foot four or five), thin and sweaty, in a suit that does not quite fit, with stubble, close-set eyes and slightly greasy short hair. The table compared him to Nosferatu, "trash Dracula", Siegfried and Roy, and the villains of Die Hard. He speaks formally ("Yes, yes, okay") and likes the word "chicanery" (Appalachia 08). In captivity he is cheerful and candid, calls Kurt "Mr. Kurtis", and is unrepentant ("That's business", "exigencies of war") (Walkers 01).

Background

Jan tells Kurt that he grew up in East Germany and "gets" the spook arrangement between the CIA and FBI. A Spud Hut employee in Appalachia 08 had guessed he was "Polish or Irish or something" (Appalachia 08).

By his own account in Walkers 01, about five years before the case Jan was driving drunk in the Georgia countryside when he hit and killed a man in a black suit who carried NSA identification (see Dead NSA Man in Black). He put the body in the passenger seat of the man's car and drove it into a lake. In the man's van he found an ape woman strapped to a gurney and being fed drugs. He kept her, hoping to make money, and called her Shelly. Because she aged quickly, he first tried every kind of ape semen, posing as a representative of a Saudi buyer, and when none worked he used his own, by artificial insemination. Only the male offspring lived; a lab told him the chromosome numbers did not line up. The ape-men proved very strong and able to recognize gold, so he put them to work mining it, planning to melt it down, sell it to a dealer and launder the proceeds through acquaintances. He kept the ape-men secret so as not to need contractors, and hired an animal handler only because he could not manage them himself.

History

The Things in Appalachia

Jan is first mentioned when a Spud Hut phone worker offers to get "Jan" for Andrew (Appalachia 03).

In Appalachia 08 the team meets him after his receptionist Charlene leads them through the plant. He calls the driver's death a "tragic accident" and an "employee loss", promises to check every outgoing truck against its manifest, and asks whether the agents were the FBI men spying on a presidential candidate. Kurt introduces himself as CIA, assisting the FBI. Jan declares that he will not tolerate "any chicanery at my facility", keys the "Special Projects" door, and takes them to the lowest floor ("Down here we do the toppings"). He sends them to wait in a break room (code 441) while he makes a call, and heads back to the elevator. The room holds the ape-men. Kurt's Read a Bad Situation roll had marked Jan as "squirrelly", but the team could not tell whether that meant guilt or ordinary corporate nerves. See Special Projects Level and The Break Room (code 441).

The cold open of Appalachia 09 follows Jan hurrying down a hallway, brushing off his secretary Marlene ("Not now, Marlene") and the waiting reporters, unlocking a service lift with a key on his belt, and wheeling a large animal crate to a red pickup truck. The animal handler Clive later tells the team that Jan's first condition of employment was "don't ask questions about the ape-men", that the operation had run about a year and a half, and that Jan "kept getting more" ape-men. The conspiracy comprised five people: Jan, Clive, a mercenary who smelted the gold, and two bodyguards, with a target of at least $100 million. In the gold room the team finds about half the gold gone. Clive says the fake Bigfoot sightings were Jan's idea to discredit the real ones. When Kurt describes the dead man in a Bigfoot costume found in the forest, Clive confirms that he was the mercenary; Kurt assumes that Jan killed him, which nobody confirms (see The Bigfoot Hoax and Troy Cleaver).

Unrecorded session

The finale, Appalachia 10, was never recorded. Its events are known only from Kurt's references to it in Walkers 01.

The finale, as recapped

In the unrecorded finale, Jan meant the team to die, with ketamine and shotguns. Kurt shot Jan, and Jan shot Andrew in the face. A falling ape then crushed Jan, breaking his skull. Jan fled the Spud Hut facility shortly before it exploded (Walkers 01).

Captivity

In Walkers 01 Kurt interviews Jan at Black Site Omaha, five stories below the ocean surface. Jan wears a loose gray jumpsuit and still carries stitches and the bruising from his broken skull. They trade jabs ("Kurtis, you shot me." / "You shot my leader in the face. Seemed only fair.") and agree to a quid pro quo. Kurt teaches him to make improvised playing cards from napkins and coasters, since cards are banned. Jan concedes the team "was intended to die", says hiring the animal handler halved his take and doubled the risk of a leak, and names the Spud Hut accountant Clyde Harvard as the one other insider. He says he buys his ketamine from a high schooler. He does not know why the Spud Hut facility exploded, and Kurt keeps the portal secret from him (see The Crack in the Air). Kurt assumes Jan "took care of" the mercenary in the woods; Jan does not deny it.

Elsewhere in the episode, Jan is the man the public blames for the Georgia hotel-room surveillance of Governor Clinton, whose Polaroids were taken with a Russian camera (see Clinton Surveillance Scandal). On Late Night with David Letterman, the Biz jokes "Maybe he's a Republican" and "Jan is Polish... they were part of the USSR".

Memorable quotes

Quote

"I will not tolerate any chicanery at my facility." Andre (as Jan Martense) (Appalachia 08)

Quote

"Down here we do the toppings. Have you seen our menu?" Andre (as Jan Martense) (Appalachia 08)

Quote

"Yes, yes, ape woman. I called her Shelly. So, I was drunk." Andre (as Jan Martense) (Walkers 01)

Trivia

  • His name is spelled and pronounced variously. In Appalachia 08 Dante protests that Andre has made "a Polish character that's named J-A-N and is pronounced Jan", Kurt asks for "Jan Martin", and in Appalachia 09 Dante accuses Andre of switching the name from Jan to Yan and back again. In Walkers 01, Kurt addresses him as "Mr. Martense" after Andre prompts "Kevin".
  • Jan is the campaign's Corrupt Corporate Executive, with an "Affably Evil" streak in captivity.

Appearances