The Prometheus Deception

by Robert Ludlum

  Bryson couldn’t hide his astonishment. “Goddamn you to hell!” he shouted.

  “Get real, Bryson. You think I haven’t maintained a cordon of surveillance on that nursing home ever since I learned about the Directorate? Poor old biddy’s so addled, our men could never get much out of her, so I could never be sure whether she knew the truth about her husband, or how much she knew. But there was a chance that she might be contacted by someone connected with her late husband.”

  “Bullshit!” Bryson shot back. “You don’t have the resources to keep a team of watchers on her twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until she dies!”

  “Christ,” Dunne said impatiently. “Obviously not. One of the administrators there earns a nice chunk of change on the side from Felicia’s ‘dear old cousin Harry,’ who’s fiercely protective. Anyone calls for Felicia, arranges to come by, even drops by, an administrator named Shirley gives me a call first thing. She knows I like to protect sweet addle-brained Felicia from gold diggers or people who might upset her. I take care of my cousin. Shirley always has my phone number wherever I am. So I always know who Felicia’s in touch with. No surprises. Point is, you work with what you’ve got; you cover what you can. Most of the others just seem to have disappeared without a fucking trace. Now we gotta stand here in this stinking shithole all day?”

  “I don’t like it much either, but it’s remote, secluded, and safe.”

  “Aw, Christ. You care to tell me why you went to see Jacques Arnaud?”

  “As I told you, his emissary, his agent on Calacanis’s ship, was clearly working with both the Directorate and with Anatoly Prishnikov in Russia. Arnaud had to be a key node.”

  “But for what? You wanted to reach out to Arnaud directly?”

  Bryson paused. Ted Waller’s words—Gennady Rosovsky’s—came back to him, as they did so often: Tell no one anything they don’t absolutely need to know. Even me. He hadn’t yet told Dunne about the cryptochip he had copied from Arnaud’s secure satellite phone, and he would not. Not yet.

  “I considered it,” he lied. “At least to observe those around him.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. A waste of time.” Always hold back a card.

  Dunne took out from his battered leather portfolio a red-bordered manila envelope, from which he drew a batch of eight-by-ten photographs. “We’ve gone through the names you gave us in the debriefing, ran them through every available database, including every top-secret code-word proprietary. Wasn’t easy, given how clever and thorough your friends at the Directorate seem to be—selecting and rotating aliases using computer algorithms, all that shit I don’t really understand. Directorate operatives get reassigned, uprooted, their biographies rewritten, networks detached and reassembled. It was mind-numbing work, but we do have a few candidates for you to look at.” He displayed the first black-and-white glossy.

  Bryson shook his head. “Nope.”

  Dunne frowned, took out another.

  “No recollection.”

  Dunne shook his head, showed him another.

  “Doesn’t register. You’ve got some dummies in here, don’t you?—known fakes, hoping to trip me up.”

  A smile seemed to play at the corners of Dunne’s lips. He coughed.

  “Always testing, huh?”

  Dunne didn’t reply. He pulled out another photograph.

  “Nope—hey, wait a minute.” Bryson was looking at a photograph of an agent he recognized. “This one I know. That Dutchman, cover name Prospero.”

  Dunne nodded as if Bryson had finally answered the question right. “Jan Vansina, a senior official at the International Red Cross headquarters in Geneva. Director of management for international emergency relief coordination. Brilliant cover for traveling easily around the world, especially to crisis spots, and it gives him access even to places where foreigners are normally barred—North Korea, Iraq, Libya, and so on. You had a good relationship with him.”

  “I saved his life in Yemen. Warned him off an ambush, even though the standard operating procedure required me to contain what I knew, whether it meant his execution or not.”

  “Not big on following orders either, I see.”

  “Not when I think they’re stupid. Prospero was quite impressive. We worked together once, jointly laying a snare for a NATO engineer and double agent. What’s Vansina doing here? It looks like indoor surveillance cameras.”

  “Our people caught him in Geneva, at Banque Geneve Privée. Authorizing the rapid-sequence transfer of a total of five-point-five billion dollars through separate and commingled accounts.”

  “Laundering, in other words.”

  “But not for himself. He was apparently acting as a conduit for an immensely well-funded organization.”

  “You didn’t get all this background from a hidden video camera.”

  “We have sources throughout the Swiss banking industry.”

  “Reliable?”

  “Not all, to be sure. But in this case, it was somebody pretty damned plugged in. An ex-Directorate operative who traded confirmable information in exchange for the elimination of a long prison sentence.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Extortion usually works.”

  Bryson nodded. “You think Vansina’s still active?”

  “This photograph was taken two days ago,” Dunne said quietly, taking a pager from his belt and pressing a button on it. “Sorry, I should have signaled Solomon, my driver, twenty minutes ago. Our agreement is that I’d send him a page when you showed up, if he wasn’t able to establish visual confirmation. Which he didn’t, since you made one of your Harry Houdini appearances.”

  “What’s the point of signaling your driver? To let him know you’re okay—that I didn’t do you harm, is that the point?” Bryson’s voice rose in annoyance. “You really don’t trust me, do you?”

  “Solomon just likes to keep close tabs on me.”

  “You can never be too cautious,” Bryson said.

  There was a sudden loud banging on the restroom door.

  “You lock it or something?”

  Bryson nodded.

  “So who’s the too-cautious one?” Dunne said derisively. “Christ, let me go assure my worrywart driver that everything’s jake.”

  Dunne went to the restroom door, tugged at the padlock, and shook his head. “I’m alive,” he called out hoarsely. “No guns to my head or anything.”

  A muffled voice from the other side of the door said, “You’re needed out here, sir, please.”

  “Cool your jets, Solomon. I said I’m fine.”

  “That’s not it, sir. It’s something else.”

  “What is it?”

  “A call just came in, immediately after you paged me. On the car phone, sir—the one that you said only’s supposed to ring if it’s National Security Maximum.”

  “Oh, Christ,” said Dunne. “Bryson, would you mind…?”

  Bryson approached the side of the concrete doorjamb, reaching for his weapon at the same time that he inserted a key in the padlock, springing it open. He flattened himself against the wall, out of sight, gun drawn.

  Dunne watched Bryson’s preparations with undisguised incredulity. The door came open, and Bryson was able to confirm that it was the same slender African-American man he’d seen behind the wheel of Dunne’s government-issue car. Solomon seemed abashed, ill at ease. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” he said, “but it really does sound important.” He was looking at his boss, his hands empty at his sides, no one else beside or behind him. The driver appeared not to have seen Bryson, who leaned against the wall, out of the intruder’s line of sight.

  Dunne nodded and, looking rankled, headed out toward the limousine, his driver following.

  Suddenly the driver spun back around toward the open door, lunging with extraordinary, unexpected agility diagonally into the restroom toward Bryson, a large Magnum pistol in his right hand.

  “What the hell—?” shouted Dunne, turning around with amazement.

 
The explosion thundered in the small interior, fragments of concrete flying everywhere, piercing Bryson’s flesh as he dodged to his right, just missing the bullet. Several more came in rapid succession, shattering the walls, the floor inches from his head. The suddenness of the attack had caught Bryson off guard, forcing him to focus his energies on leaping out of the way, momentarily keeping him from leveling his own gun. The chauffeur was wild, firing madly, his face contorted with an animal-like fury. Bryson sprung forward, his gun extended, just as another explosion came, louder than any that had come before. A gaping red hole appeared at the center of the driver’s chest, an explosion of blood, and the man tumbled forward, clearly dead.

  Harry Dunne stood fifteen feet away, with his blue-steel Smith & Wesson .45 aloft, still pointed at his own chauffeur, a wisp of smoke curling from the barrel. He looked dazed, his expression almost crestfallen. Finally, the CIA man broke the silence. “Jesus Christ,” he said, coughing so hard he almost doubled over. “Jesus Christ almighty.”

  TWELVE

  The light in the Oval Office was eerie, silvery-gray, lending a somber cast to a gathering that did not need any more gloom. It was twilight, the end of a long, overcast day. President Malcolm Stephenson Davis sat in the small white sofa at the center of the seating area where he preferred to conduct his most serious meetings. In chairs on either side of him sat the directors of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA; immediately next to him, at his right hand, was the special assistant to the president for national security affairs, Richard Lanchester. It was rare for such a senior collection of administration officials to gather outside the official confines of the Cabinet Room, the Situation Room, or the National Security Council. But the very unusual venue of the occasion underscored its gravity.

  The reason for the meeting was abundantly clear. A little over nine hours earlier a powerful blast in the Dupont Circle station of the Washington Metro had killed twenty-three people and injured easily three times that; the fatality list grew longer as the day went on. The nation, though inured to tragedy, terrorist bombings, school shootings, was in a state of shock. This had happened in the very heart of the nation’s capital—a mile from the White House, as CNN’s commentators kept repeating.

  A bomb left in what appeared to be a laptop computer case had gone off during the height of the morning rush hour. The sophisticated nature of the bomb, the details of which were being kept from the public, seemed to indicate the involvement of terrorists. In this age of all-news-all-the-time cable channels and radio stations, and the lightning-fast communications of the Internet, the terrible story seemed to reverberate, get worse by the minute.

  Viewers seemed particularly fascinated by the most gruesome details—the pregnant woman and her three-year-old twin daughters, killed instantly; the elderly couple who had saved up for years to come to Washington from Iowa City; the group of nine-year-old elementary schoolchildren.

  “It’s more than a nightmare, it’s a disgrace,” the president said grimly. The other men shook their heads in silent assent. “I’m going to have to reassure the nation in an address either tonight, if we can coordinate it in time, or tomorrow. But I sure as hell don’t know what I’m going to say.”

  “Mr. President,” said FBI Director Chuck Faber, “I want to assure you that we have no fewer than seventy-five special agents on the case even as we speak, combing the city, coordinating the investigations as lead agency with the local police and ATF. Our materials analysis unit, the explosives unit—”

  “I have no doubt,” the president cut him off sharply, “that you folks are all over this like a cheap suit. I mean in no way to disparage the Bureau’s capabilities, but you do seem to be quite good at handling terrorist events after the fact. I’m just curious why you never seem to be able to prevent them.”

  The FBI director’s face flushed. Chuck Faber had won his reputation as the take-no-prisoners district attorney in Philadelphia, later becoming Pennsylvania’s attorney general. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to run Main Justice, wanted the attorney general’s job, considered himself far more qualified than the current incumbent. Faber was probably the most skilled bureaucratic games player in the room. He was famously confrontational, but he was also too politically savvy ever to confront the president.

  “Sir, respectfully, I think that’s not quite fair to the men and women of the Bureau.” The quiet, calm voice was that of Richard Lanchester, a tall, fit man with silver hair and aristocratic features whose understated suits were custom-tailored in London. Most White House correspondents, whose notion of high fashion tended to be the Euro-extremes of Giorgio Armani, mistakenly described Lanchester as an “unfashionable” or even “frumpy” dresser.

  Lanchester, however, rarely paid much attention to such personal descriptions in the newspapers or on television news. In fact, he preferred to steer clear of journalists altogether, since he strongly opposed leaking, which seemed to be a varsity sport in Washington. Somehow, though, he was admired by the Washington press corps anyway. Perhaps this was precisely because he refused to cultivate them, something most of them had never witnessed before. The label bestowed on him by Time magazine, “The Last Honest Man in Washington,” was so often repeated in columns and on the Sunday-morning talking-head shows that it had become something of a Homeric epithet.

  “It’s just that their prevention efforts tend to go unheralded,” Lanchester went on. “It’s usually impossible to ascertain what might have happened were it not for any particular intervention.”

  The FBI director gave a grudging nod.

  “There are news reports that we—that is, the U.S. government—could have prevented this tragedy,” intoned the president. “Is there any truth to this?”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. Finally, the director of the National Security Agency, Air Force Lieutenant General John Corelli, replied. “Sir, the problem is that the target fell between the cracks. As you know, our charter forbids us from operating domestically, as does the CIA’s, and this was a U.S.-based operation.”

  “And we’re hamstrung by the legalities, sir,” put in FBI Director Faber. “That is, we need probable cause to obtain a court-ordered wiretap, but unless we know to request such authorization, why in the world would we ask for it?”

  “And as for the myth that the NSA is continuously sweeping for telephone calls, faxes, signals…?”

  “Myth is the word, sir,” said NSA Director Corelli. “Even with the enormous capacity we’ve got at the Fort Meade campus, we can’t possibly sweep every phone conversation in the world. Plus, we’re not permitted to listen to conversations within the U.S.”

  “Hallelujah for that,” said Dick Lanchester softly.

  The FBI director turned to face Lanchester with an expression of purest contempt. “Really? And I suppose you applaud our inability to monitor encrypted conversations, whether over the phone or fax or over the Internet.”

  “You may not be aware of a little thing called the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, Chuck,” replied Lanchester dryly. “The right of the people to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures—”

  “And what about the right of the people to catch a subway train without being killed?” put in CIA Director James Exum. “I somehow doubt the framers contemplated digital telephony.”

  “The fact remains,” said Lanchester, “that Americans don’t want to sacrifice their privacy.”

  “Dick,” the president said quietly, firmly. “The time for that discussion is over and done. The argument is moot. The treaty should pass the Senate any day now, creating an international surveillance agency that will protect us from such mayhem. And damn it, not a moment too soon, either.”

  Lanchester shook his head in sorrow. “This international agency is effectively going to expand the power of government a thousandfold,” he said.

  “No,” the NSA director put in curtly. “It’s going to level the playing field, that’s all. For God’s sake, the NSA isn’t al
lowed to listen in on the conversations of Americans without a court order, and our British counterpart, the GCHQ, is similarly hamstrung by the legal restriction forbidding it to tap domestic calls in Britain. You seem to forget, Richard, that if the Allies didn’t have the ability to read enemy messages during the Second World War, the Germans might well have won.”

  “We’re not in a war.”

  “Oh, but we are,” said the CIA director. “We’re in the middle of a global war against terrorists, and the bad guys are winning. And if you’re suggesting that we all just pack it in—”

  A low tone sounded from the telephone on the small table next to where the president was sitting. The men in the room knew that the president’s intercom went off only in the case of an urgent situation, as per Davis’s explicit instructions. President Davis picked up the handset. “Yes?”

  His face went ashen. He put the phone down, then looked around at the others. “That was the Situation Room,” he said gravely. “An American jetliner just went down three miles from Kennedy Airport.”

  “What?” gasped several of the men at once.

  “Blown out of the sky,” President Davis murmured, eyes closed. “A minute or so after takeoff. A flight to Rome. One hundred and seventy-one passengers and crew members—all of them dead.” He placed his hands over his eyes, massaging them with his fingers. When he removed his fingers, his eyes shone with tears, but the expression in them was fierce, even ferocious. His voice shook. “Jesus Christ, I will not go down in history as the Commander in Chief who sat by idly while terrorists seized control of our world. Goddamn it, we have got to do something!”

  THIRTEEN

  The glass office tower on rue de la Corraterie, just south of Place Bel-Air in the heart of Geneva’s commercial and banking district, was the deep blue of the ocean, and it glistened in the afternoon sun. On the twenty-seventh floor were the offices of the Banque Geneve Privée, where Bryson and Layla waited in the small but luxuriously appointed waiting room. With its mahogany wainscoting, Oriental rugs, and delicate antiques, the bank was an island of nineteenth-century elegance perched twenty-seven floors above the ground within one of Geneva’s most modernistic skyscrapers. The subliminal message it seemed to project was one of old-world civility in harmony with high technology. Its setting could not have been more apt.