The Prometheus Deception

by Robert Ludlum

  The woman was the first to speak. Sinking down on the edge of a boulder, visibly shivering, she placed her hands on her head, inserted her fingers into her hair, and tugged off a blond wig, revealing short auburn hair. She took out a sealed plastic pouch and removed from it a small, white plastic case, a holder for contact lenses. Swiftly, she touched her fingers against her eyes and removed the colored contact lenses, placing first the right, then the left, into the case. Her dazzling green eyes had become a deep brown. Bryson watched in fascination but said nothing. Then she took from the plastic pouch a compass, a waterproof map, and a tiny pinpoint flashlight. “We can’t stay here, of course. The coast guard will be combing every inch of shoreline. My God, what a nightmare!” She switched on the penlight, cupping a hand around it as she examined the map.

  “Why do I have the feeling you’ve been through nightmares like this before?”

  She looked up from the map, regarded him sharply. “Do I really owe you an explanation?”

  “You owe me nothing. But you risked your life to save me, and I’d like to understand. Also, I think I like you better as a brunette than as a blonde. Earlier you said you were ‘following arms transfers,’ presumably for Israel. Mossad?”

  “In a sense,” she said cryptically. “And you—CIA?”

  “In a sense.” He had always adhered to the principle of need-to-know and saw no need to divulge more.

  “Your target—your area of interest?” she persisted.

  He hesitated for a moment before he spoke. “Let’s just say that I’m up against an organization that’s vastly more far-reaching than anything you might have in your sights. But let me ask you this: Why? Why did you do it? Scrap the entire infiltration, then put your own life on the line?”

  “Believe me, it wasn’t my choice.”

  “Then whose choice was it?”

  “It was the circumstances. The way things worked out. I made the foolish mistake of warning you, failing to take into account the surveillance cameras Calacanis has everywhere.”

  “How do you know you were observed?”

  “Because after the madness began I was pulled away from my duties and told that a Mr. Boghosian wanted to see me. Boghosian is—was—Calacanis’s head thug. When he asks to see you, well, I knew what that meant. They had checked the surveillance tape. At that point I knew I had to escape.”

  “But that begs the question of why you warned me in the first place.”

  She shook her head. “I saw no reason to let them claim more victims. Especially since my ultimate purpose was to prevent the spilling of innocent blood by the terrorists and fanatics. And I didn’t think it would place my own operational security at stake. Obviously I miscalculated.” She resumed studying the map, all the while shielding the penlight with a cupped hand.

  Touched by the woman’s candor, Bryson said gently, “Do you have a name?”

  She looked up again, gave a half-smile. “I’m Layla. And I know you’re not Coleridge.”

  “Jonas Barrett,” he said. He let the question of what he was doing here hang in the air. Let her probe, he thought. Information will be exchanged when, if, the time was right. Lies, legends, cover names all came so easily to his tongue now, as they once had. Who am I really? he wondered mutely: the melodramatic question of the adolescent, strangely transposed to the maddened consciousness of an ex-field operative who’d found himself very lost. Waves crashed noisily around them. There was the mournful sounding of a foghorn from a lighthouse perched high above the sea. The famous lighthouse at Cabo Finisterre, Bryson knew. “It’s not clear you miscalculated,” he said, appreciatively, almost under his breath.

  She gave him a quick, sad smile as she switched off her penlight. “I need to charter a helicopter or private plane, something that will get me—us—out of here, and quickly.”

  “The most likely place to do that is Santiago de Compostela. About sixty kilometers east-southeast of here. It’s a major tourist destination—a pilgrimage town, a holy city. I believe there’s a small airport outside the city that has some direct international flights. We may be able to charter a plane or a helicopter there. Certainly worth a try.”

  She gave him a hard stare. “You know this area.”

  “Barely. I’ve studied the map.”

  A sudden, powerful beam of light lit up the beach just yards away, propelling them both to the ground, their instincts honed by field experience. Bryson threw himself behind a large boulder and froze; the woman who called herself Layla flattened herself beneath a ledge. Bryson felt the sand on his face, cold and wet; he could hear her steady breathing a few feet away. Bryson had not worked with many female operatives in the course of his career, and it was his belief, rarely vocalized, that the few women who actually made it over the obstacles placed there by the spymasters, almost all of whom were men, had to be exceptional. About this mysterious Layla he knew virtually nothing except that she was one of the exceptional ones, highly skilled and calm under pressure.

  He could see the searchlight sweep down the beach, its beam pausing for a moment at just about the point where he had concealed the boat in the hidden cove, providing additional cover with rocks gathered from the sand. Perhaps experienced eyes could discern the disruption he had caused in the natural pattern of the rocks, seaweed, and other jetsam and flotsam. From behind the boulder that shielded him from the searchers, Bryson was able to peer around. The search craft was moving parallel to the coastline, a pair of high-powered beams moving back and forth along the jagged cliffs. No doubt powerful magnifying binoculars were being employed by the searchers as well. At such a distance, night-vision scopes were useless, but he did not want to take a chance by getting up prematurely, simply because the searchlights had moved on. Often the extinguishing of the search beams was merely the prelude to the real search: only when the lights went out did the creatures scuttle forth from under their rocks. So he remained in place for five minutes after the beach had gone dark again; he was impressed that he did not have to urge Layla to do the same.

  When they finally emerged from their hiding places, shaking the cramps from their limbs, they began scrambling up the rock-strewn hillside, dense with scraggly pines, until they came to a narrow gravel road on the ridge of the cliff. Along the road was a succession of high, massive granite walls enclosing tiny plots of land and dominated by ancient stone houses covered with moss. Each had the same granary built high on pillars, the same conical hayrack, the same trellis overgrown with green grapes, the same collection of gnarled trees heavy with fruit. This was a territory, Bryson realized, whose denizens lived and worked the land as they had always done, for generations upon generations. It was a place where the intruder was not welcome. A man on the run would be regarded with the utmost suspicion, strangers sighted and reported.

  There was a sudden scuff of feet on the gravel not more than a hundred feet behind them. He spun around, a pistol in his right hand, but saw nothing in the darkness and fog. Visibility was extremely limited, and the road bent around so that whoever was approaching could not be seen. He noticed that Layla, too, was aiming a weapon, a pistol with a long perforated silencer screwed onto the barrel. Her two-handed marksman’s stance was perfect, almost stylized. The two of them froze in place, listening.

  Then there was a shout from the sandbar below. There were at least two of them; there had to be more. But where had they come from? What were their precise intentions?

  Another sudden noise: a gruff voice nearby, speaking a language Bryson did not immediately understand, then another scuff of feet on gravel. The language, he quickly realized, was Galego, the ancient language of Galicia that combined elements of Portuguese and Castilian Spanish. He could make out only isolated phrases.

  “Veña! Axiña! Que carallo fas aí? Que é o que che leva tanto tempo? Móvete!”

  With a quick glance at each other, they each silently advanced along a stone wall toward the source of the noise. Low voices, thuds, a metallic clatter. When they rounded a b
end in the wall, Bryson could see two silhouetted figures loading crates into an ancient panel truck. One was in the cargo bay of the truck, the other lifting crates from a stack and handing them to him. Bryson glanced at his watch: a little after three o’clock in the morning. What were these men doing here? They had to be fishermen, that was it. Peasant fishermen gathering the local crop, percebes, barnacles scooped from the waterline, or perhaps harvesting mussels from the mejillonieras, the rafts floating in the water just offshore.

  Whoever they were, the men were locals hard at work and no direct threat. He put away his weapon and pantomimed to Layla to do the same. Pointed guns would be a mistake; confrontation would be unnecessary.

  Upon closer examination, Bryson could see that one of the men looked middle-aged, the other not long out of his teenage years. Both looked rough, peasant laborers; they also looked like father and son. The younger was the one inside the truck’s cargo bay; the older one was handing him cartons to stack.

  The elder one spoke to the younger: “Veña, móvete, non podemos perde-lo tempo!”

  Bryson knew enough Portuguese from countless operations in Lisbon, and a few in São Paulo, to understand what the men were saying. “Come on, move it!” said the elder. “We’re on a tight schedule. No time to waste!”

  He gave Layla a quick glance and then shouted in Portuguese, “Por favor, nos poderían axudar? Metímo-lo coche na cuneta, e a miña muller e máis eu temos que chegar a Vigo canto antes.” Can you please help us? Our car ran off the side of the road, and my wife and I are trying to get to Vigo as soon as possible.

  Both men looked up suspiciously. Now Bryson could see what they were loading, and it was not crates of barnacles or mussels. It was sealed cartons of foreign cigarettes, mostly English and American. These were not fishermen. They were smugglers, bringing in contraband tobacco to sell at grossly inflated prices.

  The older man set down a carton on the gravel road. “Foreigners? Where do you come from?”

  “We drove down from Bilbao. We’re on holiday, seeing the sights, but the damned rental car turned out to be a piece of crap. The transmission gave out and we went into a ditch. If you could give us a lift, we’d make it worth your while.”

  “I’m sure we can help,” said the older man, signaling to the younger, who then jumped out of the back of the truck and began approaching them from at an angle, moving noticeably closer to Layla. “Jorge?”

  Suddenly the younger one had a revolver out, an ancient Astra Cadix .38 Special, which he leveled at Layla. Taking a few steps closer to her, he screamed, “Vaciade os petos! Agora mesmo! Empty your pockets. All of them! Quick, everything, and don’t try anything fancy! Now!”

  Now the older one had a revolver out, too, this one pointed at Bryson. “You, too, my friend. Drop your wallet, and kick it toward me,” he barked. “That expensive-looking watch, too. Move it! Or your lovely wife gets it, and then you!”

  The young man lurched forward, grabbing Layla by the shoulder with his left hand, jerking her toward him, his revolver at her temple. He did not seem to notice that Layla’s facial expression had not changed, that she did not cry out or seem moved in any way. Had he noticed the calmness of her demeanor, he would have had cause for alarm.

  She caught Bryson’s eye; he nodded all but imperceptibly.

  With a sudden jerking motion, she produced two handguns at once, one in either hand. In her left was a .45, a Heckler & Koch USP compact; in her right was a massive, extremely powerful .50 caliber Israeli Desert Eagle. At the same time, Bryson whipped out a Beretta 92 and leveled it at the older smuggler.

  “Back!” Layla suddenly shouted in Portuguese at the teenager, who stumbled backward in sudden fright. “Drop the gun right now or I’ll blow your head off!” The teenager regained his footing momentarily, hesitated as if considering how to respond, and she immediately squeezed the trigger on the enormous Desert Eagle. The explosion was astonishingly loud, all the more terrifying because it went off so near the young man’s ear. He dropped his ancient Astra Cadix, flung his hands into the air, and said, “Non! Non dispare!” The revolver clattered to the ground but did not go off.

  Bryson smiled, advancing toward the older man. “Put the gun down, meu amigo, or my wife will kill your son or nephew or whoever he is, and as you’ve just seen, she’s a woman who’s not able to control her impulses very well.”

  “Por Cristo bendito, esa muller está tola!” the middle-aged smuggler spat out as he knelt down and gently dropped his gun to the gravel. Christ almighty, she’s a crazy woman! He put his hands in the air, too. “Se pensan que nos van toma-lo pelo, están listos! Temos amigos esperando por nós ó final da estrada.” If you’re planning to rip us off, you’re an idiot. We have friends waiting for us down the road—

  “Yeah, yeah,” Bryson said impatiently. “We have no interest in your cigarettes. We just want your truck.”

  “O meu camión? Por Deus, eu necesito este camión!” Good Christ, I need this truck!

  “Well, you just ran into a patch of bad luck,” Bryson said.

  “Kneel!” Layla ordered the teenager, who did so at once. The boy was red-faced and shivering like a frightened child, wincing each time she waved her Desert Eagle.

  “Polo menos nos deixarán descarga-lo camión? Vostedes non necesitan a mercancía!” pleaded the old man. At least will you let us unload the truck? You don’t need the merchandise!

  “Go ahead,” Layla said.

  “No!” Bryson interrupted. “There’s always another weapon concealed inside, in case of hijacking. I want both of you to turn around and start walking back down the road. And don’t stop until you can’t hear the truck anymore. Any attempts to run after us, to fire a weapon, to place a phone call, and we’ll turn right around and come at you with weapons you’ve never even seen before. Believe me—you don’t want to test us.”

  He ran toward the truck’s cab, indicating with a jerk of his head that Layla should get in on the other side. With the Beretta trained on the two Galegos, he ordered, “Move it!”

  The two smugglers, young and old, rose unsteadily, their hands still raised, and began walking away down the gravel road.

  “No, wait,” she said suddenly. “I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “What?”

  She jammed the smaller-caliber pistol into a pocket of her flak jacket and pulled out another gun, this one strange-looking, which Bryson recognized at once. He nodded and smiled.

  “Non!” the young smuggler screamed, turning back.

  The older one, presumably the father, shouted, “Non dispare! Estamos facendo o que nos dicen! Virxen Santa, non imos falar, por que íamos?” Don’t shoot! We’re doing what you say! Mother of God, we’re not going to talk, why should we?

  The two men each broke into a run, but before they got more than a few yards, there were two loud pops as Layla fired a shot at each one. With each shot, a powerful carbon dioxide charge propelled a syringe of a potent tranquilizer into each man’s body. This short-range projector was designed for overpowering wild animals without killing them; the tranquilizer would last, in a human being, perhaps thirty minutes. The two men toppled to the ground, their bodies writhing briefly before they passed into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  The old truck rattled and clattered as its arthritic engine strained against the steep grade of the winding mountain road. The sun was coming up the jagged cliffs, painting the horizon with pastel brushstrokes and casting a strange pale glow on the slate roofs of the fishing villages they passed.

  He thought about the beautiful, remarkable woman sleeping in the front seat next to him, her head leaning against the vibrating window.

  There was something tough and flinty about her, yet at the same time vulnerable, even melancholy. It was in fact an appealing combination, but his instincts warned him away for a multitude of reasons. She was too much like himself, a survivor whose tough exterior shielded a supremely complicated interior that at times seemed at war wi
th itself.

  And there was Elena, always Elena—a spectral presence, a mystery in her own way. The woman he never really knew. The promise of searching her out had become for him a beckoning siren, elusive and treacherous.

  Layla meant at most a strategic partnership, an alliance of simple convenience. She and Bryson were using each other, assisting each other; there was something almost clinical, tactical about their relationship. It was nothing more than that. She was a mere means to an end.

  Exhaustion was now overcoming him, and he pulled the truck over into a copse and dozed for what he thought was twenty minutes or so; he awoke with a jolt several hours later. Layla was still sleeping soundly. He cursed silently to himself; it was not good to lose this much time. On the other hand, bone-tiredness usually caused miscalculations and misjudgments, so maybe the sacrifice had been worth the cost.

  Pulling back onto the highway, he noticed the road was becoming crowded with people walking in the direction of Santiago de Compostela. What had been an isolated few pedestrians had become a line of them, even a throng of them. Most were walking, though a few were on old bicycles, even a few on horseback. Their faces were sunburned; many of them walked with crook-necked sticks, wore simple, rough clothing, and had backpacks with scallop shells tied to them. The scallop shell, Bryson recalled, was the symbol of the pilgrim along the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim’s road of some one hundred kilometers from the pass at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees to the ancient shrine of Saint James in Santiago. It usually took a month to make the journey on foot. Here and there along the roadside were pushcarts, gypsy vendors selling souvenirs—postcards, plastic birds with flapping wings, scallop shells, brightly colored cloths.