The Prometheus Deception

by Robert Ludlum

  “Damn it!” Bryson shouted. “This makes no sense! How ignorant do you think I am? The goddamn GRU, the Russians—that’s all the past. Maybe you Cold War cowboys at Langley haven’t yet heard the news—the war’s over!”

  “Yes,” Dunne replied raspily, barely audible. “And for some baffling reason the Directorate is alive and well.”

  Bryson stared at him mutely, unable to get any words out. He felt his brain working, spinning in circles, circuits overheating, sparks flying.

  “I’ll level with you, Bryson. There was a time when I wanted to kill you, kill you with my bare hands. That was before we’d figured out the whole story, the way the Directorate worked. Nah, let’s be straight with each other, I’d be bullshitting you and me both if I said we have anything remotely approaching the whole story. We still hardly know more than isolated segments. For decades there had been rumors, no more substantial than dandelion wisps. Once the Cold War’s over, the whole operation falls into quiescence, as best as we can figure. It’s like the old parable of the blind men and the elephant. We can feel a trunk here, a tail there, but on the highest levels, we still don’t know what kind of beast we’re dealing with. What we do know—and we’ve had you under surveillance for the past few years—is that you were one deluded piece of shit. Which is why I’m talking to you real nice and not wrapping my hands around your throat.” Dunne laughed bitterly, and the laugh turned into a cough—a smoker’s hack. “See, here’s what we speculate. Seems like after the Cold War, the organization broke off from its original masters. Control shifted into other hands.”

  Warily, sullenly, Bryson ventured: “Whose?”

  Dunne shrugged. “Don’t know. Five years ago, the organization apparently went into a period of relative dormancy: you weren’t the only agent to be terminated—a whole lot of people were let go. Maybe the place was being shut down; it’s impossible to say with any certainty. But now we’ve got reason to think it’s being reactivated.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘reactivated’?”

  “Not sure. That’s why we decided to bring you in. We hear stuff. Your old masters appear to be accumulating arms, for some reason.”

  “For some reason,” Bryson repeated dully.

  “You could say they’re poised to foment global instability—anyway, that’s how our overeducated analysts might phrase it, in their Locust Valley lockjaw. But I ask myself, for what? What are they after? And I don’t know. Like I say, what scares me is the stuff I don’t know.”

  “Interesting,” said Bryson sardonically. “You hear ‘rumors,’ you ‘speculate,’ you give me a goddamned digital slide show like some corporate consultant, yet you don’t have the faintest clue what you’re really saying.”

  “That’s why we need you. The old Soviet system may be down, but the generals aren’t down for the count. Look at General Bushalov—he’s looking like a strong challenger on the political scene in Russia. Say something bad happened that he could blame on the United States—my prediction is, he’d be catapulted into power. Deliberative democracy? Plenty of Russkies would say, Good riddance to that. In Beijing there’s a powerful reactionary cabal within both the National People’s Congress and the Central Committee. Not to mention the Chinese Army, the PLA, the People’s Liberation Army, which is a force unto itself. No matter how you look at it, a lot of yuan are at stake, and a lot of power is, too. One school of thought has remnants of Shakhmatisti teaming up with a handful of their Beijing brethren. But I’m just blowing smoke out my ass. Because nobody really knows but the bad guys, and they ain’t saying.”

  “If you really believe all this, truly think that I was some kind of chump in the biggest con game of the last century, what the hell do you need me for?”

  The two men locked eyes for a long while. “You apprenticed with one of their masterminds, one of their founders, for Christ’s sake. Gennady Rosovsky—back in Russia his nickname was apparently Volshebnik, ‘the Sorcerer.’ Know what that makes you?” Dunne’s laugh turned into a hacking cough again. “The sorcerer’s apprentice.”

  “Damn you!” Bryson exploded again.

  “You know how Waller’s mind works. You were his best student. You do realize what I’m asking you to do, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Bryson replied sardonically. “You want me to get back inside.”

  Dunne nodded slowly. “You’re our best bet. I could appeal to your patriotism, to the better angels of your being. But goddamn if you don’t owe us one.”

  Bryson’s mind was reeling. He did not know what to think, what to say to the CIA man.

  “Don’t take offense,” Dunne told him, “but if we’re trying to scent them out, then at least we should send out the best bloodhound we can find. I mean, how can I put this?” He’d been toying with the unlit cigarette so long that tobacco crumbs were beginning to spill from it. “You’re the only one who knows what they smell like.”

  FOUR

  The strong midday sunlight bleached the buildings along this particular block of K Street, shimmered and glared against the plate-glass windows of the office buildings. Across the street, Nicholas Bryson intently watched 1324 K Street, a building at once deeply familiar and profoundly strange. Sweat rolled down his face, dampening his white dress shirt. He stood at the window of a deserted office space, tiny binoculars discreetly held to his face, curled in, and concealed by one hand. No doubt the commercial real-estate agent who had given him the keys to the vacant rental space thought it was strange that this international businessman wanted to spend a few minutes alone in what might be his office, in order to get a feel for it, the feng shui and all. The real-estate agent surely thought Bryson was another one of those touchy-feely New Age businessmen, but at least he’d left him alone for a while.

  His pulse raced, his temples throbbed. There was nothing comforting or welcoming about the modern office building that served as the headquarters of his employer, that for so long had been home base, a place of sanctuary and renewal, an island of continuity and calm reassurance in his ever-shifting, violent world. He watched from the dark, empty office suite for a good quarter of an hour, until a knock at the door came; the real-estate agent was back and curious to know the verdict.

  It was immediately apparent that 1324 K Street had changed, though the transformations were subtle. The plaques on the front of the building, announcing its occupants, had been replaced with others, though just as banal-sounding as the previous ones. Harry Dunne had told him the K Street headquarters had been abandoned, but Bryson refused to accept his assurance on face value. The Directorate was also great at hiding in plain sight. “Naked is the best disguise,” Waller used to say.

  So was it indeed gone? THE AMERICAN TEXTILE MANUFACTURERS BOARD and THE UNITED STATES GRAINS PRODUCERS BOARD sounded just as plausible as the other notional organizations whose plaques had been put there by some creative camouflage artists within the Directorate, but what necessitated the change? Too, there were other alterations at 1324 K Street. In a quarter-hour of discreet surveillance, Bryson had seen an unusually high number of people pass through its front doors. Far too many, certainly, to be Directorate employees or blind contractors. So something different was going on here.

  Maybe Dunne was right after all. But his early-warning system had been triggered. Accept nothing at face value; question everything you’re told. Another of Ted Waller’s lines. That went for Waller and Dunne and everyone else in the business for that matter.

  The matter of how to get into the building without alerting its occupants was one he had been wrestling with for hours. He approached the issue as yet another fieldwork conundrum to be solved; in his mind, he had worked out dozens of ingenious methods of entry. Yet all of them carried risks without commensurate odds of success. Then he recalled one of Waller’s—damn it, Gennady Rosovsky’s—truisms: When in doubt, go in the front door. The best and most effective stratagem would be to enter the building openly, brazenly.

  Yet duplicity was a necessar
y part of the game plan; it would always be so. He thanked the real-estate agent, told him he was interested, and asked him to prepare a leasing agreement. He handed over one of his false business cards, and then told the man he had to rush off to another appointment. He approached the building’s front entrance, his senses hyperalert to any sudden movements, any shifts in crowd patterns or coloration, that might signal a threat.

  So where was Ted Waller?

  Where was the truth? Where was sanity?

  The jarring traffic noises swelled all around him, the cacophony overwhelming. “It’s the only way you’ll ever know the truth.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “For starters, the truth about yourself.”

  But where was the truth? Where were the lies?

  “You believe you’re a fucking unsung hero.… You believe you’ve spent fifteen years in the service of your country, working for an ultraclandestine agency known as the Directorate.”

  Stop it! This was madness!

  Elena? You, too? Elena, the love of my life, now departed from my life as abruptly as you first appeared?

  “You believe you’ve spent a decade and a half in the service of your country.”

  The blood I spilled, the gut-wrenching fear, the innumerable occasions I almost lost my life, extinguished the lives of others?

  “We’re talking about the greatest espionage gambit in the entire twentieth century. The whole thing was an elaborate ruse, do you see?”

  “You’re saying my entire life has been some kind of … immense deception!”

  “If it makes you feel any better, you weren’t alone. There were dozens just like you. It’s just that you were their most spectacular success.”

  Insanity!

  “You’re the only one who knows what they smell like.”

  Someone crashed into him, and Bryson spun in a crouch, hands flat and stiff at his side, ready to attack. It was no professional, but instead a tall, athletic-looking executive carrying a gym bag and a squash racquet. The man fixed Bryson with a scowl contorted with fear. Bryson apologized; the executive glared and moved on, quickly, nervously.

  Face it, face the past, face the truth!

  Face Ted Waller, who was not Ted Waller! This much Bryson knew by now. He still had his own sources from the old KGB, the old GRU, men living in retirement or gone into new lines of work in a mercenary post–Cold War world. Inquiries were made, records checked, data confirmed. Telephone calls placed, false names used, meaningless-sounding but in fact highly significant phrases employed. Men were contacted, men whom Bryson had known in a past life, a life he was sure he had left behind. A diamond dealer in Antwerp; an attorney-businessman in Copenhagen; a highly paid international trade “consultant” and “fixer” in Moscow. Once key sources all, former Soviet GRU officers who had since emigrated, left behind the spy world as Bryson thought he had. All of whom maintained records in safe-deposit boxes, stored on encrypted magnetic tape, or simply archived in their formidable brains. All of whom were surprised, some unnerved, frightened even, to be contacted by a man who had attained legend status in their former trade, who had once paid them generously for their information, their assistance. Separately, identifications were provided, checkable and confirmable several times over.

  Gennady Rosovsky and Edmund Waller were one and the same. There was no doubt about it.

  Ted Waller—Bryson’s best man, boss, confidant, employer—was indeed a GRU sleeper agent. Once again the CIA man, Harry Dunne, was correct. Madness!

  * * *

  Arriving in the outer lobby, he noticed that the intercom panel where he had once entered a coded, constantly changing series of numbers had been removed; in its place was a glass-encased directory of law firms and lobbying organizations located within. Below each firm name was a list of its chief officers and their office numbers. He was surprised to find that the front door opened with no annunciation apparatus, no locks or barriers of any sort. Anyone could come in and out.

  Beyond the glass doors, which now appeared to be of regular window glass, not bulletproof, the inner lobby looked little changed—a standard reception area with one security guard/receptionist seated behind a tall half-moon of curved marble counter. A young black man in a blue blazer and red tie looked up at him with little interest.

  “I’ve got an appointment with—” He hesitated but a split-second as he called to mind a name from the directory in the outer lobby—“John Oakes of the American Textiles Manufacturers Board. I’m Bill Thatcher from Congressman Vaughan’s office.” Bryson affected a slight Texas twang; Congressman Rudy Vaughan was a powerful ranking member from Texas whose opinion, and committee chairmanships, no doubt meant quite a bit to the textile board.

  The usual preliminaries were gone through. The director of the lobbying board was telephoned by security; his executive assistant had no record of any scheduled visit by Congressman Vaughan’s chief legislative aide but was more than happy to accommodate such an important figure. A sprightly young woman with frosted blond hair came down and escorted Bryson into the elevator, apologizing all the while for the mix-up.

  They got off on the third floor and were met right at the elevator by a blond man whose hair looked a little “refreshed,” wearing an expensive suit, looking a little too polished. Mr. Oakes all but ran up to Bryson, arms outstretched. “We’re grateful for Congressman Vaughan’s support!” the lobbyist exclaimed, shaking Bryson’s hand with both of his. In a confiding voice he added, “I know Congressman Vaughan understands the importance of keeping America strong, free of cheap, underpriced imports. I mean, Mauritanian fabrics—that is not what this country is about! I know the Congressman understands that.”

  “Congressman Vaughan is interested to learn more about the international labor standards bill that you’re supporting,” Bryson said, looking around as the two of them strode down the hallway that was once so familiar. Yet there were none of the old personnel, no Chris Edgecomb nor any of the others whom Bryson knew only by face. None of the communications workstations or modules, the global satellite monitors. Nothing was the same, including the office furniture. Even the floor plan had been altered, as if the entire floor had been gutted. The old small-arms storeroom was gone, replaced by a conference room with smoked-glass walls and expensive-looking mahogany table and chairs.

  The too-well-dressed lobbyist led Bryson into his corner office and invited him to sit. “We understand the Congressman is up for reelection next year,” the man said, “and we consider it vital to support those members of Congress who understand the importance of keeping America’s economy strong.”

  Bryson nodded absently, looking around. This was the office that had once belonged to Ted Waller. If there had been even an inkling of doubt, that was now vanished. This was no notional organization, no cover.

  The Directorate had vanished. There was no trace of Ted Waller, the only man who could confirm—or deny—the truth of CIA man Harry Dunne’s account of the truth behind the Directorate.

  Who’s lying? Who’s telling the truth?

  How could he reach his old employers when they had vanished off the face of the earth as if they’d never existed?

  Bryson had hit a wall.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Bryson had returned to the parking garage, returned to his rented vehicle, and run through all the checks that had once been second nature to him. The tiny pressure-sensitive filament he had pressed into place along the door handle on the driver’s side was still in place, as was the filament on the passenger-side door handle; anyone who had attempted to pick the lock or otherwise gain entry to the car would have dislodged the indicators without knowing it. He knelt quickly and did a brief visual survey of the underside of the automobile, confirming that no devices had been placed there. He had not been aware of any attempts to follow him to K Street or into the parking garage, but he could no longer satisfy himself with such countersurveillance efforts. As he started the car he felt the old famil
iar knot in his stomach, the ganglion of tension that hadn’t been there for several years. The moment of truth passed uneventfully; there was no ignition-triggered detonation.

  He drove down through several levels to the garage exit, where he inserted his magnetic-striped ticket into the card reader that controlled the liftgate arm. The ticket popped back out, rejected. Damn it, he muttered to himself. It was almost amusing—almost, but not quite—that for all his precautions, he would be delayed by a simple mechanical glitch. He inserted the card again; still, it failed to activate the arm. The bored-looking parking attendant came out of his booth, came up to Bryson’s open window, and said, “Let me give it a try, sir.” The attendant inserted the ticket into the machine, but still it was rejected. He glanced at the blue paper ticket, nodded with sudden understanding, and approached the car window.