The Prometheus Deception

by Robert Ludlum

  Bryson was watching CNN, but was frustrated that there was no news, just some fashion segment. He turned toward her. “Ted Waller didn’t die in that fire, you know. I saw the forensic reports, everything out of the Seattle Medical Examiner’s office, and all the bodies were identified. Waller wasn’t among them.”

  “I know that. We’ve known that for a year. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I see Waller’s hand in this. Wherever he went, wherever he disappeared to, he has to be involved in this. I’m certain of it.”

  “Trust your instincts, I always say,” came the voice from the television.

  Elena screamed, pointed at the television. Bryson whirled around. His heart was thudding rapidly. Ted Waller’s face filled the screen.

  “What is this?” Elena gasped. “Is this a show…?”

  “Call it reality TV,” said Waller.

  “We were assured we’d be left alone!” Bryson thundered. “However you managed this satellite-feed interruption, it’s a violation!” Bryson started pressing buttons on the remote, changing channels frantically. Waller’s face was on each one, staring out at them phlegmatically.

  “I still regret that we weren’t able to say good-bye properly,” Waller said from the TV screen. “I really do hope there’s no bad blood.”

  Speechless, Bryson scanned the small living room frantically. Microscopic surveillance devices could be planted absolutely anywhere and everywhere, undetectable …

  “I’ll be in touch when the time is right, Nicky. Now may be premature.” Waller looked off into the distance as if about to add something, and a hint of a smile came to his lips. “Well, I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Not if I see you first, Ted,” Bryson said acidly, and now he settled back in his chair. “We have a great deal of evidence in safekeeping, evidence we won’t hesitate to release.”

  On the screen, Waller’s gaze turned wary.

  “Remember, Ted—it’s what you don’t see that always gets you.”

  Abruptly, Waller’s image disappeared, replaced by a game show.

  * * *

  A move had been made. And countered. Bryson felt fury, outrage at the violation—and yet, after so many years in the service of the great game, oddly stirred as well. If Elena caught a glimpse of this, she kept it to herself. She still went for her early-morning rides, and they still spent much of the day outdoors, either on the shimmering white beach or on their wooden deck, surrounded by bougainvillea and shaded by young palm trees that undulated gently in the breeze.

  Bryson had made a complete break from his past life, while he and Elena prepared to nurture the new life that was on its way. In the sun, his scars faded, and there were days when—the air fragrant with frangipani and lime and salt water—the dull ache from his old wounds grew imperceptible, like memories just out of reach. At moments, he almost thought he had left the world behind.

  Almost.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  THE TRISTAN BETRAYAL

  by Robert Ludlum

  Available from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  Moscow, August 1991

  The sleek black limousine, with its polycarbonate-laminate bullet-resistant windows and its run-flat tires, its high-tech ceramic armor and dual-hardness carbon-steel armor plate, was jarringly out of place as it pulled into the Bittsevsky forest in the southwest area of the city. This was ancient terrain, forest primeval, densely overgrown with birch and aspen groves interspersed with pine trees, elms, and maples; it spoke of nomadic Stone Age tribes that roamed the glacier-scarred terrain, hunting mammoths with hand-carved javelins, amid nature red in tooth and claw. Whereas the armored Lincoln Continental spoke of another kind of civilization entirely with another sort of violence, an era of snipers and terrorists wielding submachine guns and fragmentation grenades.

  Moscow was a city under siege. It was the capital of a superpower on the brink of collapse. A cabal of Communist hard-liners was preparing to take back Russia from the forces of reform. Tens of thousands of troops filled the city, ready to fire at its citizens. Columns of tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled down Kutuzovsky Prospekt and the Minskoye Chausse. Tanks surrounded Moscow City Hall, TV broadcasting facilities, newspaper offices, the parliament building. The radio was broadcasting nothing but the decrees of the cabal, which called itself the State Committee for the State of Emergency. After years of progress toward democracy, the Soviet Union was on the verge of being returned to the dark forces of totalitarianism.

  Inside the limousine sat an elderly man, silver-haired, with handsome, aristocratic features. He was Ambassador Stephen Metcalfe, an icon of the American Establishment, an adviser to five Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt, an extremely wealthy man who had devoted his life to serving his government. Ambassador Metcalfe, though now retired, the title purely honorific, had been urgently summoned to Moscow by an old friend who was highly placed in the inner circles of Soviet power. He and his old friend had not met face-to-face for decades: their relationship was a deeply buried secret, known to no one in Moscow or Washington. That his Russian friend—code-named “Kurwenal”—insisted on a rendezvous in this deserted location was worrying, but these were worrying times.

  Lost in thought, visibly nervous, the old man got out of his limousine only once he glimpsed the figure of his friend, the three-star general, limping heavily on a prosthetic leg. The American’s seasoned eyes scanned the forest as he began to walk, and then his blood ran cold.

  He detected a watcher in the trees. A second, a third! Surveillance. He and the Russian code-named Kurwenal had just been spotted!

  This would be a disaster for them both!

  Metcalfe wanted to call out to his old friend, to warn him, but then he noticed the glint of a scoped rifle in the late-afternoon sun. It was an ambush!

  Terrified, the elderly ambassador spun around and loped as quickly as his arthritic limbs would take him back toward his armored limousine. He had no bodyguard; he never traveled with one. He had only his driver, an unarmed American marine supplied by the embassy.

  Suddenly men were running toward him from all around. Black-uniformed men in black paramilitary berets, bearing machine guns. They surrounded him and he began to struggle, but he was no longer a young man, as he had to keep reminding himself. Was this a kidnapping? Was he being taken hostage? He shouted hoarsely to his driver.

  The black-clad men escorted Metcalfe to another armored limousine, a Russian ZIL. Frightened, he climbed into the passenger compartment. There, already seated, was the three-star general.

  “What the hell is this?” Metcalfe croaked, his panic subsiding.

  “My deepest apologies,” replied the Russian. “These are hazardous, unstable times, and I could not take the chance of anything happening to you, even here in the woods. These are my men, under my command, and they’re trained in counterterrorist measures. You are far too important an individual to expose to any dangers.”

  Metcalfe shook the Russian’s hand. The general was eighty years old, his hair white, though his profile remained hawklike. He nodded at the driver, and the car began to move.

  “I thank you for coming to Moscow—I realize my urgent summons must have struck you as cryptic.”

  “I knew it had to be about the coup,” Metcalfe said.

  “Matters are developing more rapidly than anticipated,” the Russian said in a low voice. “They have secured the blessing of the man known as the Dirizhor—the Conductor. It may already be too late to stop the seizure of power.”

  “My friends in the White House are watching with great concern. But they feel paralyzed—the consensus in the National Security Council seems to be that to intervene might be to risk nuclear war.”

  “An apt fear. These men are desperate to overthrow the Gorbachev regime. They will resort to anything. You’ve seen the tanks on the streets of Moscow—now all that remains is for the conspirators to order their forces to strike. To attack civilians. It will be a bloodbath
. Thousands will be killed! But the orders to strike will not be issued unless the Dirizhor gives his approval. Everything hangs on him—he is the linchpin.”

  “But he’s not one of the plotters?”

  “No. As you know, he’s the ultimate insider, a man who controls the levers of power in absolute secrecy. He will never appear at a news conference; he acts in stealth. But he is in sympathy with the coup plotters. Without his support, the coup must fail. With his support, the coup will surely succeed. And Russia will once again become a Stalinist dictatorship—and the world will be at the brink of nuclear war.”

  “Why did you call me here?” asked Metcalfe. “Why me?”

  The general turned to face Metcalfe, and in his eyes Metcalfe could see fear. “Because you’re the only one I trust. And you’re the only one who has a chance of reaching him. The Dirizhor.”

  “And why will the Dirizhor listen to me?”

  “I think you know,” said the Russian quietly. “You can change history, my friend. After all, we both know you did it before.”

  Paris, November 1940

  Stephen Metcalfe—aka Daniel Eigen, aka Nicolas Mendoza, aka Eduardo Moretti, aka Robert Whelan—pulled the door closed behind him, making sure it sealed. The steel door was set into a rubber gasket, a soundproofing measure.

  The entire room he was entering was, of course, soundproofed, using the most advanced technology available. It was actually a room-within-a-room, double-walled, resting on and surrounded by steel plates, six-inch rubber walls; even the air ducts were insulated with rubber and fiberglass. It was low-ceilinged, the inner walls constructed of new cinder block painted U.S. Army gray.

  Not much of the shiny new gray paint was visible, though, for the entire perimeter of the room was lined with complicated-looking consoles. Even Metcalfe, who came by at least weekly, didn’t know what half of it was. Some of the equipment he recognized—Mark XV and Paraset shortwave radio transceivers, teletypewriters, scrambler telephones, an M-209 cipher machine, wire recorders.

  The consoles were manned by two young fellows wearing headphones and taking notes on pads, their faces bathed in the eerie green glow emanating from the round cathode-tube screens. They were wearing gloves, carefully turning knobs, calibrating frequencies. The staticky Morse signals they monitored were bolstered by aerial cables that ran throughout the building—which was owned by a sympathetic Frenchman—to the roof.

  Every time Metcalfe paid a visit to the Cave, as this clandestine outstation was called—no one remembered whether the nickname came from the bar upstairs, Le Caveau, or from the fact that the base resembled an electronic cave—he was impressed with the array of equipment. All of it had been smuggled into France in parts via ship or parachuted in, and all of it was strictly outlawed, of course, by the Nazi occupiers. Simple possession of a shortwave radio transmitter could send you to the firing squad.

  Stephen Metcalfe was one of a handful of agents who operated out of Paris for an Allied network of spies whose existence was unknown but to a handful of powerful men in Washington and London. Metcalfe had met few of the other agents. That was the way the network operated. Each part of the network was kept separate from the others; everything was compartmented. One node never knew what the other node was up to. Security dictated the procedures.

  Here in the Cave, three young radiotelegraph operators and cipher clerks monitored and initiated covert radio links with London, with Washington, and with a far-reaching web of deep-cover agents in the field, in Paris, in the other cities of the occupied zone of France, and across Europe. The men—two Brits and one American—were the very best, trained by the Royal Corps of Signals at Thame Park near Oxford and then at Special Training School 52. Qualified radiotelegraph operators were rare these days, and the British were far ahead of the Americans in training personnel.

  A radio, tuned to the BBC, was playing low; the wireless was closely monitored for encoded signals delivered in the form of curious “personal messages” before the evening news broadcast. At a small folding table in the center of the room, a chess game had been abandoned. Evening was the busiest time, when the radio frequencies were least crowded and they could transmit and receive most easily.

  The walls were lined with maps of Europe, of the borders and coastlines of France, of each arrondissement of Paris. There were navigation charts, topographical maps, charts of ship and cargo movements in Marseille, detailed maps of naval bases. Yet the room was not entirely devoid of human touches: amid the maps and charts was a Life magazine cover photo of Rita Hayworth, and another magazine clipping, of Betty Grable sunbathing.

  Derek Compton-Jones, the ruddy-cheeked man who’d opened the door for him, clasped Metcalfe’s hand, shook it hard. “Glad you’re back safe and sound, mate,” he said solemnly.

  “You say that every time,” Metcalfe teased. “Like you’re disappointed.”

  “Bloody hell!” Compton-Jones spluttered. He looked at once embarrassed and indignant. “Anyone tell you we’re in the middle of a war?”

  “That right?” Metcalfe replied. “Come to think of it, there did seem to be an awful lot of military uniforms out there.”

  One of the men wearing headphones and sitting at a console across the room turned to look at Compton-Jones and remarked wearily, “Maybe if he kept his willy in his trousers, he might notice what’s happening outside of the bedrooms he spends so much time in.” The adenoidal voice and upper-class British accent belonged to Cyril Langhorne, an ace cryptographer and cipher clerk.

  The other one, Johnny Betts, from Pittsburgh, a topflight radiotelegraph operator, turned and said, “Roger that.”

  “Ha,” said Langhorne. “Stephen here would roger anything in a skirt.”

  Compton-Jones laughed, blushing. Metcalfe joined the laughter good-naturedly, then said, “I think maybe you boffins need to get out a little more. I ought to take you all over to One Two Two.” They all knew he was talking about the famous bordello at 122 rue de Provence.

  “I’m all set there,” boasted Compton-Jones. “I’ve got a regular girl now.” He winked at the others and added, “I’ll be seeing her later on after I pick up the latest shipment of spare parts.”

  “That your idea of a deep penetration of France?” asked Langhorne.

  Compton-Jones’s face turned an even deeper crimson, while Metcalfe roared with laughter. He liked the men who worked here, particularly Compton-Jones. He often referred to Langhorne and Betts as the Bobbsey Twins, though they looked nothing alike. Their Morse and cipher work was the crux of the operation. It was grueling and tense, and Metcalfe knew that their japery was one of the few ways they had of relieving the grinding tension. They also considered Metcalfe their own personal Errol Flynn and regarded him with a combination of jealousy and awe.

  He cocked his head, listening to the music playing low from the radio. “‘In the Mood,’” he said. “Good old American music—that’s Glenn Miller, broadcasting from the Café Rouge in New York City.”

  “No, sorry,” corrected Compton-Jones, “I’m afraid that’s the Joe Loss Orchestra, mate. From London. That’s their signature tune.”

  “Well, I’m glad you guys have all that leisure time to listen to the radio,” Metcalfe said. “Because somebody’s got to do some work.”

  He reached inside his dinner jacket and pulled out from its lining the wad of papers, somewhat the worse for wear. He held them aloft, smiling proudly. “Complete plans of the German sub base at Saint-Nazaire, including details on the U-boat pens, even the water-locks system.”

  “Good show!” marveled Compton-Jones.

  Langhorne looked impressed despite himself. “Get that from your little Gestapo crumpet?”

  “No, actually, from the private study of the Comte Maurice Léon Philippe du Châtelet.”

  “The Vichy arsehole?” Langhorne said.

  “The very one.”

  “You’re codding me! How’d you get into his private study?”

  Metcalfe inclined his head
. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, Cyril,” he mock-scolded.

  “His wife! Good Lord, Stephen, have you no pride? The madame’s an old mare!”

  “And the mademoiselle’s quite a little filly. Now we’ve got to smuggle this out to a courier as soon as possible and fly it over to Corky in New York. I also need you to key in a digest of this and put it over the airwaves for further analysis.”

  He meant, of course, Alfred “Corky” Corcoran. His boss. The brilliant spymaster who ran the private network of agents that included Metcalfe.

  Private network: they answered only to Corcoran, not to some government agency, not to a committee. But there was nothing illegal about this, nothing extragovernmental. For it was the inspiration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself.

  It was a strange time in America. Europe was at war, but America was not. America watched, waited. The voices of isolationism were loud and strong. As were the voices that argued passionately that the United States must get involved, must attack Hitler and defend her European friends—or all of Europe would be under the sway of Nazi Germany and it would be too late. Then Hitler would be an overwhelming foe.

  Yet there was no centralized intelligence agency. Roosevelt desperately needed reliable, unbiased information on what the Nazis were really up to, on how strong the resistance to Hitler was. Would Britain survive the war? Roosevelt didn’t trust Military Intelligence, which was amateurish at best, and he despised the State Department, which was both isolationist and prone to leak to every newspaper around.

  So, late in 1939, Franklin Roosevelt called in an old friend and fellow Harvard man. Alfred Corcoran had served in G-2 Military Intelligence during the First World War, then attained great prominence within the top-secret world of MI-8—known as the “Black Chamber,” the New York–based code-breaking unit that had cracked Japan’s diplomatic ciphers in the 1920s. After the Black Chamber was shut down, in 1929, Corcoran played a major behind-the-scenes role in resolving a series of diplomatic crises throughout the 1930s, from Manchuria to Munich.