The Prometheus Deception

by Robert Ludlum

  “But—”

  “Now!” he snapped.

  Speechless and scarlet, Laura turned and hurried back toward the building. A change had come over Professor Jonas Barrett—as she would explain it to her roommate that evening, he suddenly seemed different, scary—and she quickly decided she’d better do what he told her.

  Soft footsteps were audible from the opposite direction. Bryson spun. Another man: redheaded, freckled, younger, wearing a navy blazer, tan chinos, and bucks. More plausible as a campus costume, except for the buttons on the blazer, which were too bright and brassy. Nor did the blazer lie quite flat over his chest: a bulge was visible where you’d expect to find the shoulder holster.

  If not Directorate, then who? Foreign hostiles? Others from the more overt U.S. agencies?

  Now Bryson identified the noise that had alerted him in the first place: the sound of a car that was idling, quietly and continuously. It was a Lincoln Continental with dark tinted windows, and it wasn’t in a parking space but parked in the lane where he’d left his own car, blocking it.

  “Mr. Barrett?” The larger, older man made eye contact with him, his loping stride swiftly decreasing the distance between them. “We really need you to come with us.” The accent was bland, Midwestern. He stopped barely two feet away and gestured toward the Lincoln.

  “Oh, is that right?” Bryson said, his delivery cold. “Do I know you?”

  The stranger’s reply was nonverbal: hands on hips, chest out to display the contours of his holstered handgun beneath his suit jacket. The subtle gesture of one professional to another, one armed, the other not. Then abruptly the man doubled over in agony, his hands grabbing at his stomach. With lightning speed, Bryson had driven the steel nib of his slim fountain pen into the man’s muscled belly, and the professional responded with an unprofessional, if wholly natural, move indeed. Reach for your weapon, never the wound: one of Waller’s many axioms, and though it meant countermanding a natural instinct, it had saved Nick’s life more than a few times. This man was not top-rank.

  As the stranger’s hands flailed at the ruined flesh, Bryson plunged his hands into the man’s jacket and retrieved the small but powerful blue-steel Beretta.

  Beretta—not Directorate issue; then whose?

  He slammed the butt against the man’s temple—heard the sickening crunch of bone against metal, heard the senior agent slump to the ground—and with the weapon pointed, spun to face the redheaded man in the blue blazer.

  “My safety’s off,” Nick shouted to him, urgent and demanding. “Yours?”

  The play of confusion and panic on the young man’s face gave away his inexperience. He had to have calculated that Nick would easily be able to squeeze off the first shot the instant he heard the click of the safety release. Bad odds. But the inexperienced could be the most dangerous, precisely because they didn’t react in a rational and logical manner.

  Amateur hour. His gun aimed steadily at the redheaded field man, Bryson backed up slowly in the direction of the idling vehicle. The doors would be unlocked for immediate access, of course. In one fluid motion, all the while keeping the Beretta leveled at the redheaded novice, he yanked open the car door and slid into the driver’s seat. With a glance he knew the vehicle’s windows and windscreen were bulletproof, as they had to be. Bryson had only to throw the gearshift out of park, and the car lurched forward. He heard a bullet strike the back of the car—the license plate, he judged from the clatter. And then another struck the rearview window, pitting it but doing no further damage. They were firing at the car’s tires, hoping to stop his flight.

  In a matter of seconds he was roaring through the tall, ornamental wrought-iron gates of the campus. Barreling down the tree-lined main drive, one assailant down and the other firing wildly yet ineffectually, his mind raced. He thought: Time’s up. And: Now what?

  * * *

  If they’d really intended to kill me, I’d be dead.

  Bryson sped down the Interstate, his eyes scanning the lanes ahead and behind for pursuers. They caught me unarmed and unaware, deliberately so. Which meant that they were up to something else. But what? And how did they find him in the first place? Could someone have gained access to a 5-1 classified Directorate database? There were too many variables, too many unknowns. But Bryson felt no fear now, only the icy calm of the seasoned field operative he had once been. He wouldn’t drive to any of the airports, where they’d certainly be expecting him; instead, he’d drive directly back to his house on campus, the least expected place to go. If this was inviting another confrontation, so be it. Confrontation meant exposure of limited duration: flight could go on indefinitely. Bryson no longer had the patience for protracted flight: Waller had been right about that, at least.

  Turning down the campus road to his residence on Villier Lane, he heard, then saw, a helicopter raking the sky, making its way toward the small campus helipad atop the science building tower donated by a software billionaire, the tallest building on campus by far. It was normally used only by major donors, but this chopper had federal markings. The helicopter was a follow-on; it had to be. Bryson pulled up in front of his house, a ramshackle Queen Anne–style dwelling with a mansard roof and plaster facade. The place was empty, and he knew from the alarm system, which he had installed himself, that no one had entered the house since he’d left it that morning.

  Entering, he verified that the system hadn’t been tampered with. The strong sun streamed through a parlor window onto the wide pine floorboards, giving rise to a resinous, evergreen smell. That was the chief reason why he’d bought the house: the scent reminded him of a happy year he’d spent in a half-timbered house outside Wiesbaden when he was seven and his father was stationed at the military base there. Bryson was no typical army brat—his father was, after all, a general, and the family was usually provided with comfortable living quarters and a household staff. Still, his childhood was all about learning how to pick up stakes and put them down again in some other part of the world. Transitions were helped by his natural facility with languages, which others always marveled at. Making new friends didn’t come quite as easily, but in time he developed a skill at that, too. He’d seen too many army brats who styled themselves as surly outsiders to want to join their ranks.

  He was home now. He would wait. And this time the meeting would be on his territory, on his terms.

  It didn’t take long.

  Only a few minutes elapsed before a black government Cadillac sedan, complete with a small U.S. flag flying from the antenna, pulled into his driveway. Bryson, watching from the house, realized that the very overtness of the display was meant to provide reassurance. A uniformed government driver got out and opened the vehicle’s rear door, and a short, wiry man stepped out. Bryson had seen him before—a fleeting face from C-SPAN. Some sort of intelligence official. Bryson stepped out onto his porch.

  “Mr. Bryson,” the man said in a husky voice, the accent New Jersey. He was in his mid-fifties, Bryson estimated, with a thatch of white hair, the face narrow and creased; he wore an unstylish brown suit. “You know who I am?”

  “Somebody with a lot of explaining to do.”

  The government man nodded, his hands raised in a gesture of contrition. “We fucked up, Mr. Bryson, or Jonas Barrett if you prefer. I take full responsibility. Reason I’ve come up here is to apologize to you personally. And also to explain.”

  An image from a TV screen came to Bryson, white letters beneath a talking head. “You’re Harry Dunne. Deputy chairman of the CIA.” Bryson remembered watching him testify to a Congressional subcommittee once or twice.

  “I need to talk to you,” the man said.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you. I wish I could direct you toward your Mr. Breyer or whatever his name is, but I’m drawing a blank.”

  “I’m not asking you to say anything. I’m just asking you to listen.”

  “Those were your goons, I take it.”

  “Yes, they were,” Dunne admitted. “The
y overstepped the bounds. They also underestimated you—they figured, wrongly, that after five years out of the field you’d gone soft. You’ve also taught them a couple of key tactical lessons that will no doubt come in handy for them down the road. Especially Eldridge, once he gets stitched up.” There was a dry rattle in his throat when he laughed. “So now I’m asking you nice as I can. All aboveboard.” Dunne walked slowly over to the porch where Bryson was leaning against a wooden column, his arms folded behind his back. Taped to his upper back was the Beretta, which he could mobilize in an instant if he had to. On television, on the Sunday-morning talking-head shows, Dunne possessed a somewhat commanding presence; in person, he seemed almost shrunken, a little too small for his clothes.

  “I have no lessons to teach,” Bryson protested. “All I did was defend myself against a couple of men who were in the wrong place and didn’t seem to wish me well.”

  “The Directorate trained you well, I’ll say that much.”

  “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”

  “You know full well. Your reticence is to be expected.”

  “I think you’ve got the wrong man,” Bryson said quietly. “A case of mistaken identity. I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

  The CIA man exhaled noisily, followed by a rattling cough. “Unfortunately, not all of your former colleagues are as discreet, or maybe the correct word is principled, as you. Oaths of fealty and secrecy tend to loosen their holds when money changes hands, and I do mean serious money. None of your former colleagues came cheap.”

  “Now you’ve really lost me.”

  “Nicholas Loring Bryson, born Athens, Greece, the only son of General and Mrs. George Wynter Bryson,” the CIA man recited, almost in a monotone. “Graduated from St. Alban’s School in Washington, D.C., Stanford, and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. Recruited while at Stanford into an all-but-invisible intelligence agency known to the very few who know about it as the Directorate. Trained in fieldwork, fifteen highly successful and secretly decorated years of service, with operations ranging from—”

  “Nice bio,” Bryson interrupted. “Wish it were mine. We academics sometimes like to imagine what it might be like to live an active life outside these cloistered, ivied walls.” He spoke with some bravado. His legend was designed to evade suspicion, not withstand it.

  “Neither one of us has any time to waste,” Dunne said. “In any case, I do hope you realize that we intended no harm.”

  “I realize no such thing. You CIA boys, from everything I’ve read, have a long menu of ways to inflict harm. A bullet in the brain, for one. Twelve hours on a scopolamine drip, for another. Shall we talk about poor Nosenko, who made the mistake of defecting to our side? He got the red-carpet treatment from you gentlemen, didn’t he? Twenty-eight months in a padded crypt. Whatever it took to break him, you were all too willing to do.”

  “You’re talking ancient history, Bryson. But I understand and accept your suspicion. What can I do to allay it?”

  “What’s more suspicious than the need to allay suspicion?”

  “If I really wanted to take you down,” Dunne said, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and you know that.”

  “It might not be quite as easy as you think,” Bryson said, his tone blasé. He smiled coldly to let the CIA man pick up on the implied threat. He had given up the pretense; there seemed little point.

  “We know what you can do with your hands and your feet. No demonstrations are required. All I’m asking you for is your ears.”

  “So you say.” How much did the Agency really know about him, about his Directorate career? How could the security firewall have been breached?

  “Listen, Bryson, kidnappers don’t supplicate. I guess you know I’m not a man who makes house calls every day. I’ve got something to tell you, and it won’t be easy to hear. You know our Blue Ridge facility?”

  Bryson shrugged.

  “I want to take you there. I need you to listen to what I’ve got to tell you, watch what I’ve got to show you. Then, if you want, you can go home, and we’ll never bother you again.” He gestured toward the car. “Come with me.”

  “What you’re proposing is sheer madness. You do realize this, don’t you? A couple of third-rate thugs show up outside my class and try to strong-arm me into a car. Then a man I’ve seen only on TV news shows—a high official in an intelligence agency with little credibility to speak of, frankly—shows up on my front lawn trying to entice me with a titillating combination of threats and lures. How do you expect me to respond?”

  Dunne’s gaze did not waver. “Frankly, I expect you’ll come anyway.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  Dunne was silent for a moment. “It’s the only way you’ll ever satisfy your curiosity,” he said at last. “It’s the only way you’ll ever know the truth.”

  Bryson snorted. “The truth about what?”

  “For starters,” the CIA man said very quietly, “the truth about yourself.”

  THREE

  In the Blue Ridge mountains of western Virginia, near the borders with Tennessee and North Carolina, the CIA maintains a secluded area of hardwood forest interspersed with northern spruce, hemlock, and white pine, about two hundred acres in all. Part of the Little Wilson Creek wilderness, within the Jefferson National Forest, it is a rugged territory of a wide range of elevations, dotted with lakes, streams, creeks, and waterfalls, far removed from the main hiking trails. The nearest towns, Troutdale and Volney, are none too close. This wilderness preserve, enclosed by electric security fence and topped with concertina wire, is known within the Agency by the generic, colorless, and quite forgettable name of the Range.

  There, certain exotic forms of instrumentation, such as miniaturized explosives, are tested amid the rocky outcroppings. Various transmitters and tracking devices are put through their paces there, too, their frequencies calibrated away from the surveillance range of hostile parties.

  It is entirely possible to spend time on the Range and never notice the low-slung concrete-and-glass building that serves as combination administrative headquarters, training and conference facility, and barracks. This building is situated a hundred yards or so from a helipad clearing that, owing to peculiarities of elevation and vegetation, is nearly impossible to find.

  Harry Dunne had said little during the trip there. In fact, the only opportunity for chat had been the brief limousine ride to the campus helipad; during the helicopter trip to Virginia, both men, accompanied by Dunne’s silent aide-decamp, wore protective noise-insulating headphones. Debarking from the dark green government helicopter, the three men were met by an anonymous-looking assistant.

  Bryson and Dunne, the assistants in tow, passed through the facility’s unremarkable-looking main lobby and descended a set of stairs into a subterranean, spartan, low-ceilinged chamber. On the smooth, white-painted walls were mounted, like blank rectangular canvases, a pair of large, flat, gas-plasma display monitors. The two men took their seats at a gleaming table of brushed steel. One of the silent assistants disappeared; the other took a seat at a station just outside the closed door to the chamber.

  As soon as Dunne and Bryson were seated, Dunne began to speak without ceremony or preface. “Let me tell you what I believe you believe,” he began. “You believe you’re a fucking unsung hero. This is in fact the central unshakable conviction that has enabled you to endure a decade and a half of tension so brutal, any lesser man would have cracked long ago. You believe you spent fifteen years in the service of your country, working for an ultraclandestine agency known as the Directorate. Virtually nobody else, even at the highest levels of the U.S. government, knows of its existence, with the possible exception of the chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a couple of key players in the White House who’ve been cleared up the wazoo. A closed loop—or rather, as close as you can come to a closed loop in this fallen world.”

  Bryson took measured breaths, determi
ned not to betray his emotions by any visible display of shock. Yet he was shocked: the CIA man knew of matters that had been cloaked with extraordinary thoroughness.

  “Ten years ago, you even received a Presidential Medal of Honor for services rendered above and beyond,” Dunne went on. “But, your operations being so hush-hush, there was no ceremony, no president, and I bet you didn’t even get to keep the medal.” Bryson flashed back to the moment: Waller opening the box and showing him the heavy brass object. Of course, it would have put operational secrecy unacceptably at risk if Bryson had been invited to the White House for the presentation; still, he’d swelled with pride all the same. Waller had asked him if it bothered him—the fact that he’d achieved the highest civilian honor in America and nobody would ever know. And Bryson, moved, told him honestly no—Waller knew, the president knew; his work had made the world just a little safer, and that was enough. He’d meant it, too. That, in a nutshell, was the ethos of the Directorate.

  Now Dunne pressed a sequence of buttons on a control panel embedded in the steel-topped table, and the twin flat screens shimmered into vibrant display. There was a photograph of Bryson as an undergraduate at Stanford—not an official portrait, but a candid, taken without his knowledge. Another of him in a mountain region of Peru, clad in fatigues; this dissolved into an image of him with dyed skin and grizzled beard, impersonating one Jamil Al-Moualem, a Syrian munitions expert.

  Astonishment is an emotion impossible to sustain for any length of time: Bryson felt his shock gradually ebbing into sharp annoyance, then anger. Obviously he’d been caught in the middle of some interagency squabble over the legality of Directorate methods.

  “Fascinating,” Bryson interjected dryly, finally breaking his silence, “but I suggest you take up these matters with others better placed to discuss them. Teaching is my only profession these days, as I assume you know.”

  Dunne reached over and gave Bryson a comradely pat on his shoulder, no doubt intended to reassure. “My friend, the question isn’t what we know. It’s what you know—and, more to the point, what you don’t. You believe you’ve spent fifteen years in the service of your country.” Dunne turned and gave Bryson a penetrating stare.