The Prometheus Deception

by Robert Ludlum

  Bryson had arrived at Geneva-Cointrin Airport, checked in to Le Richemond, and then met Layla’s train, the Paris-Ventimiglia express, from Paris a few hours later at Gare Cornavin. There had been a warmth in their greeting, as if no time had elapsed since Bryson’s Paris departure. She was excited, which she displayed in her quiet, vibrant way; she had dug quite a bit and uncovered only a few tiny nuggets, but they were, in her opinion, nuggets of gold. Still, there was no time for a debriefing; he took her to the hotel, where they checked into separate rooms; she changed into a suit, fixed her hair, and they immediately proceeded to rue de la Corraterie for the meeting Bryson had arranged with a Swiss banker.

  They were not kept waiting long; this was Switzerland, where punctuality was holy writ. A matronly woman of middle age, with gray hair worn up in a bun, appeared in the waiting room at the exact time of their appointment.

  She addressed him by his CIA-supplied cover name. “You must be Mr. Mason,” she said haughtily. It was not the tone customarily used with favored clients; she knew he was from the U.S. government and therefore to be considered an annoyance. She then turned to Layla. “And you are—?”

  “This is Anat Chafetz,” Bryson said, using one of her Mossad-furnished aliases. “Mossad.”

  “Monsieur Bécot is expecting both of you? I had been told there would just be you, Mr. Mason.” The assistant was perturbed.

  “I assure you that Monsieur Bécot will want to see both of us,” Bryson said, matching her hauteur.

  She nodded brusquely. “Excuse me.”

  She returned a minute later. “Please come with me.”

  Jean-Luc Bécot was a compact, bespectacled man whose precise, economical movements revealed the precision of the man. He had short silver-gray hair, gold wire-rimmed glasses, and wore a tailored gray suit. He shook their hands politely but warily and asked them if they would like coffee.

  Another assistant, this one a young man in a blue blazer, came in a moment later bearing three tiny cups of espresso on a gleaming silver tray. He silently set down two cups on the coffee table next to where Layla and Bryson sat, and then placed the third on the glass-topped desk behind which Jean-Luc Bécot was stationed.

  Bécot’s office was decorated in the same opulent style as the rest of the bank’s offices, the same assemblage of delicate antiques and Persian carpets. One entire wall was a plate-glass window that looked over Geneva, the view breathtaking.

  “Now then,” Bécot said, “I am sure you both appreciate that I am a busy man, and so forgive me for asking you to come right to the point. You alluded to financial irregularities in the handling of one of our accounts. Let me assure you that Banque Geneve Privée permits no such irregularities. I am afraid you have come here in vain.”

  Bryson smiled tolerantly throughout the banker’s opening remarks, tenting his fingers. When Bécot came to a halt, Bryson said, “Monsieur Bécot, the very fact that you are meeting with me indicates that you or one of your associates placed a call to Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to check on my bona fides.” He paused, saw the unspoken acknowledgment in the banker’s face. Bryson had no doubt that his phone call a few hours earlier had raised all sorts of alarm. The CIA had sent one of its operatives to Geneva to question a Swiss banker in connection with an account—all of Banque Geneve Privée was surely up in arms by now; there would have been frantic calls made, hurried consultations. There was a time when any self-respecting Swiss banker would simply have refused to see an officer of American intelligence: the secrecy of bank accounts was paramount. But times had changed, and although money laundering still continued in Switzerland on a massive scale, the Swiss had succumbed to international political pressure; they were much more cooperative these days. Or at least they were eager to give the appearance of cooperation.

  Bryson resumed. “You know that I would not be here were it not a situation of some gravity—one that involves your bank directly, and that threatens to entangle your bank in a nasty legal mess, which I’m sure you wish to avoid.”

  Bécot gave an ugly, prim little smile. “Your threats will not work here, Mr.—Mr. Mason. And as for why you brought with you a Mossad officer, if this is your clumsy attempt to increase the pressure—”

  “Monsieur Bécot, let us speak plainly,” said Bryson, adopting the tone of an international law-enforcement agent who held all the cards. “Under the 1987 Convention of Diligence, neither you nor your bank can claim ignorance of an account holder or of any account holder’s use of your bank to launder money for criminal purposes. The legal ramifications are quite serious, as you well know. Representatives of the intelligence agencies of two world powers have come before you to seek your assistance in a major international money-laundering investigation; you can either help us, as you are required to do by law, or you can turn us away, in which case we will be forced to report this suspected criminal activity to Lausanne.”

  The banker stared at Bryson impassively for a moment, his coffee untouched. “What, precisely, is the nature of your investigation, Mr. Mason?”

  Bryson sensed the man’s vacillation; it was time to thrust. “We are examining the activities in Banque Geneve Privée account number 246322, held by one Jan Vansina.”

  Bécot hesitated for an instant. The name, if not the number, had registered immediately. “We never divulge the names of our clients—”

  Bryson glanced at Layla, who took her cue. “Substantial monies have been wire-transferred into this account from a fictitious Anstalt in Liechtenstein, as you’re well aware. From here the funds have been wired to an array of accounts: several different shell companies in the Isle of Man, and Jersey, in the Channel Islands; to the Caymans, Aguilla, the Netherlands Antilles. From there the funds have been split and routed to the Bahamas and San Marino—”

  “There is nothing illegal about wire transfers!” snapped Bécot.

  “Unless they are done to launder illicit monies,” she said with equal vehemence. Bryson had filled her in with the few details Harry Dunne had provided on Vansina’s bank account; the rest was sheer embellishment. Bryson was impressed. “In this case, these laundered funds have been used to fund the purchase of arms used in the activities of known terrorists around the world.”

  “This sounds suspiciously like a fishing expedition,” said the Swiss.

  “A fishing expedition?” repeated Layla. “More like an international criminal investigation undertaken by Washington and Tel Aviv simultaneously, which should be evidence enough of how seriously this is being taken at the highest levels. But I can see we are wasting Monsieur Bécot’s time.” She rose, and Bryson did the same. “Obviously we are not dealing on a high enough level here,” she said to Bryson. “Monsieur Bécot either does not have the decision-making capability or is deliberately concealing his own criminal role. I am sure that the bank’s director, Monsieur Etienne Broussard, will have a more enlightened view—”

  “What is it that you want?” interrupted the banker, desperation now evident in his face, his voice.

  Bryson, still standing, said, “Quite simply, we want you to telephone the account holder, Mr. Vansina, immediately, and request that he come into the bank at once.”

  “But Monsieur Vansina is never to be directly approached, that is the stipulation of his account! He contacts us, that is the way it is done. Besides, I have no contact number for him!”

  “False. There are always contact numbers,” said Bryson. “If you are doing business as you should, you have photocopies of his passport and other identification papers, addresses and telephone numbers of his home and place of work—”

  “I cannot do that!” cried Bécot.

  “Come, Mr. Mason, we are wasting time here. I’m sure Monsieur Bécot’s superior will understand the gravity of the situation,” said Layla. “Once the request is made through diplomatic liaison and the courts in Washington, Tel Aviv, and Lausanne, the Banque Geneve Privée will be publicly named as an accomplice in the funding of int
ernational terrorism and money laundering, and—”

  “No! Sit down!” the banker said, all pretense at bankerly gravitas abandoned. “I will call Vansina.”

  * * *

  Concealed in the small, stuffy, closet-size room, lined with video screens, where the bank’s surveillance cameras were monitored, Bryson perspired heavily. The plan he had devised called for him to remain in hiding while Layla met with Vansina in Bécot’s office, still in the guise of a Mossad officer investigating money laundering. She would interrogate Vansina, elicit whatever useful information she could, and then Bryson would appear suddenly, drawing upon the tactical value of surprise.

  Layla remained in the dark about the Directorate and Bryson’s relationship to it. As far as she was concerned, Bryson was simply uncovering a trail in the illicit arms trade. She knew a fragment of the whole; she did not yet need to know more. The time would come when Bryson would fill her in, but it was not yet.

  Bryson had intended to secrete himself anywhere in the vicinity of Bécot’s office—a neighboring office, a broom closet, whatever. He had not counted on the serendipity of discovering this surveillance station. From here he was able to observe the comings and goings in and out of the office building’s lobby; several other feeds came from hidden cameras inside each elevator; two more covered the twenty-seventh-floor lobby area adjacent to the elevator bank and the bank’s waiting room. Too, there were views of the main corridors on the twenty-seventh floor. There was no camera within Bécot’s office, or any other office for that matter, but at least he would be able to view Vansina’s arrival as well as the Dutchman’s movements in the elevator. Vansina was a top-notch field operative and took nothing for granted. He would assume, for instance, that there were closed-circuit cameras concealed in the elevators, as there were in many modern office buildings. But he would likely also assume, as would Bryson, that such cameras were being watched by incurious, underpaid security staff looking only for obvious signs of violent crime. Vansina might use the semiprivate occasion to adjust a gun holster or a monitoring device taped to his chest. Then again, he might do nothing suspicious at all.

  The call to Vansina had been placed in Bryson and Layla’s presence, and then Layla had remained by the banker’s side to ensure that he did not make any follow-up calls to Vansina, warning him off, or anything of the sort.

  Bryson knew that Jan Vansina would respond quickly, and indeed, within twenty minutes the Directorate operative arrived in the main lobby. Vansina was a slight, hunch-shouldered man with a full but close-trimmed gray beard and tinted wire-rimmed spectacles. Between his unassuming physical presence and his benign cover as director of emergency medical assistance for the International Red Cross, he was not a man anyone would suspect of being the extremely clever killer that he was. Vansina’s greatest attribute, in fact, was that he was constantly underestimated. A casual observer might in fact think Vansina kindly, even harmless. Bryson, however, knew well that Vansina was a powerful, ruthless man of great skill and wily intelligence. He knew better than to underestimate him.

  Vansina shared an elevator with a young woman, who got off on the twenty-fifth floor, at which point he was alone for a few seconds. Yet Bryson found him impossible to read, neither apprehensive nor particularly tense. If the man’s suspicions were at all aroused by this emergency summons from his private banker, his expression did not indicate it.

  Bryson watched him emerge from the elevator and check in with the receptionist; Vansina was ushered in at once. Bryson saw him accompanied down the corridor by Bécot’s matronly assistant, then into Bécot’s office, at which point the surveillance ended.

  No matter: Bryson knew the script that Layla was following, since he had designed it himself. He waited for the signal from Layla indicating that it was time for him to make his appearance. She would place a call to his cell phone, let it ring twice, then terminate the call.

  Her interrogation of Vansina would last anywhere from five to ten minutes, depending on the degree of truculence Vansina presented. He looked at his watch, his eyes on the sweep–second hand, and waited.

  Five minutes passed slowly, feeling like an eternity. There were two backup emergency signals, neither of which she had employed. The first would be to dial his cell phone, letting it ring. After the second ring, he would know the situation was urgent. In the alternative, she would open Bécot’s office door, which he would be able to observe on the surveillance monitor.

  Yet no emergency signals came.

  As focused as he was on the matter at hand, he could not keep his mind from dwelling on the agent he knew as Prospero. What was it that Dunne had said? Vansina had been acting as a conduit, presumably for the Directorate, laundering over five billion dollars. Laundered funds were an everyday necessity for intelligence agencies, but almost always they were relatively small sums, untraceable payments to agents and contacts. Five billion dollars, however, was an order of magnitude beyond payments to assets. Such a quantity of money had to be funding something large. If Dunne’s information was accurate—and it seemed less and less likely that the CIA man was deliberately misleading him, not when he had killed his own bodyguard to protect him—the Directorate was channeling money to, and in fact orchestrating, terrorist organizations. But which ones, why, and to what end? Perhaps the cryptochip that he had copied from Jacques Arnaud’s secure phone would yield the answer, but whom could he trust with that crucial piece of evidence?

  And if Jan Vansina was directly involved in the cycling of diverted funds, Bryson doubted the Dutchman was acting as a blind conduit. Vansina was far too skilled, and too senior, to act in such an innocent capacity. Vansina would know. For all Bryson knew, Vansina was one of the Directorate’s principals by now.

  Suddenly the door to the closet swung open, flooding the small room with light, and for an instant Bryson was blinded, unable to see who was there.

  Within a few seconds Bryson could make out the shape, then the face. Jan Vansina, grim-faced, eyes blazing. In his right hand a gun was pointed directly at Bryson; in his left hand he gripped a briefcase.

  “Coleridge,” Vansina said. “A flash from the past.”

  “Prospero,” said Bryson, startled. Unprepared for the intrusion, he reached for the pistol holstered inside his suit jacket, then froze when he heard the click of the safety being released.

  “Don’t move,” barked Vansina. “Hands at your side! I will not hesitate to use this. You know me, so you know I speak the truth.”

  Bryson stared, slowly lowered his hand. Vansina would indeed have no compunction about killing him in cold blood; why he had not done so already was a mystery.

  “Thank you, Bryson,” the Dutchman went on. “You wish to talk with me; we will talk.”

  “Where’s the woman?”

  “She is safe. Bound and locked in a storage closet. She is a strong and clever woman, but she must have expected this to be a, how do you say, cakewalk. I must say, her Mossad paper appears quite genuine. Your backstoppers are excellent.”

  “It is genuine, because she is Mossad.”

  “Even more intriguing, Bryson. I see you have established new alliances. New alliances for changing times. This is for you.” He tossed the briefcase at Bryson, who made the split-second decision to catch it, not dodge it.

  “Good catch,” said Vansina jovially. “Now, please hold it out in front of you with both hands.”

  Bryson scowled. The Dutch operative was as quick-witted as ever.

  “Come, let us talk,” said Vansina. “Walk straight ahead, keeping the briefcase in front of you at all times. Any sudden moves, and I will shoot. Drop it, and I will shoot. You know me, my friend.”

  Bryson obeyed, silently berating himself. He had fallen into Vansina’s trap by underestimating the wily old operative. How had he turned the tables on Layla? There had been no sound of gunfire, but perhaps he had used a silencer. Had he killed Layla? The thought tore at him, filled him with anguish. She had been serving as his accomplice
; although Bryson had tried to dissuade her from working with him further, and she had insisted, he still felt responsible for whatever happened to her. Or had Vansina spoken the truth and bound and locked Layla up? He marched forward, urged along by the waving of Vansina’s gun, crossing the narrow hall into an empty conference room. Although the lights in the room were off, there was still plenty of afternoon sun flooding in through the plate-glass window. The view of the city of Geneva from this high up was even more spectacular than that from Bécot’s office window: the famous plume of the Jet d’eau and the Parc Mon Repos clearly visible from here, though not a sound from the city was audible.

  Holding the briefcase, he was unable to retrieve his gun. Yet if he dropped the briefcase to go for his weapon, even that brief second would be time enough for Vansina to fire into the back of his head.

  “Sit,” commanded the Dutchman.

  Bryson sat at the head of the table, placing the briefcase down on the table in front of him, still clutching it in both hands.

  “Now place your left hand flat on top of the table, followed by your right. In that order, please. No sudden motions—you know the drill.”

  Bryson did so, his hands flat on the table on either side of the briefcase. Vansina sat at the other end of the table, his back to the plate-glass window, his weapon still aimed at Bryson.

  “Move a hand to rub your nose, I shoot,” said Vansina. “Move a hand to take a cigarette from your breast pocket, I shoot. Those are the ground rules, Mr. Bryson, and I know you understand them well. Now then, tell me this, please: Does Elena know?”