The Prometheus Deception

by Robert Ludlum

  “Sir, is this the same ticket you were issued when you entered?” the attendant asked, handing it back to Bryson.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bryson said irritably. Was the attendant questioning whether this was in fact Bryson’s vehicle, whether Bryson might be trying to take someone else’s? He turned to look at the attendant and was immediately bothered by something, some aspect of the man’s hands.

  “No, sir, you’re misunderstanding me,” the attendant said, leaning in. Bryson suddenly felt the cold hard steel of a gun barrel pressed against his left temple. The attendant held a small-caliber, snub-nosed pistol to Bryson’s temple! It was insane! “I’m saying, sir, that I want you to keep both of your hands on the steering wheel,” said the attendant in a low, steady voice. “I’d rather not have to use this thing.”

  Jesus Christ!

  That was it! The hands, the manicured nails—they were the soft, well tended hands of a man who took inordinate care with his appearance, who likely traveled in exclusive, moneyed circles and had to fit in—not the hands of a parking-garage attendant. But the realization had come an instant too late! The attendant abruptly opened the car’s rear door and leaped into the backseat, the gun once again to Bryson’s temple.

  “Let’s go! Move it!” shouted the fake attendant, just as the barrier lifted. “Don’t remove those hands from the wheel. I’d hate to slip, pull the trigger by accident, you know? Let’s go for a little drive, you and me. Get some fresh air.”

  Bryson, having stowed his weapon in his glove compartment, had no choice but to drive out of the garage and onto K Street, following the false attendant’s directions. As the car entered traffic, Bryson felt the gun barrel cut into the flesh of his left temple, and he heard the low, steady, conversational banter of the man behind him.

  “You knew this day was going to come, didn’t you?” the professional said. “Odds are it’ll happen to all of us at some point. You overstep, go a little too far. Push when you should have pulled. Stick your nose into something that’s no longer your business.”

  “Care to fill me in on where we’re going?” Bryson said, trying to keep his voice light. His heart hammered, his mind raced. He added, as an aside, “Mind if I put on the news…?” He casually reached out his right hand for the radio knob, then felt the pistol’s barrel slam into his head as the hit man roared, “Goddamn you, get those hands back on the wheel!”

  “Jesus!” Bryson exclaimed as the pain spread. “Watch it!”

  The killer had no idea that Bryson’s Glock was nestled against the base of his spine, in his rear waist holster. But he was not going to take any chances.

  Then how to retrieve it? The hit man—for he was a hit man, Bryson knew, a professional, whether on the Directorate payroll or a contract employee—insisted that Bryson keep his hands visible at all times. Now he had to follow instructions, waiting for a moment of distraction on the part of the hit man. The earmarks were in everything about the man: the confident plan of action; the quick, efficient moves; even the glib speech.

  “Let’s just say we’re going someplace outside the Beltway, someplace where a couple of guys can talk freely.” But talking, Bryson realized grimly, was the last thing on the hit man’s agenda. “A couple of guys in the same business who just happen to be on different ends of a gun, that’s all. It’s nothing personal, I’m sure you realize that. Strictly business. One minute you’re looking through the sights, next minute you’re looking at the barrel. Happens. The wheel’s always turning. I’m sure you were very good in your time, which is why I have no doubt you’re going to take this like a man.”

  Bryson, considering his options, didn’t reply. He’d been in roughly similar circumstances countless times before, though never, except during his early training days, on the other side of a pistol. He knew how the man in the seat behind him was thinking right now, the way the flow chart was patterned: if A, then B … How a sudden move on Bryson’s part, a direction ignored, the steering wheel spun in the wrong direction, would initiate a countermeasure. The hit man would try to avoid pulling the trigger while they were in traffic, for fear the vehicle might careen out of control, imperiling both men. This familiarity with the options available to his enemy was one of the few cards Bryson had to play.

  Yet at the same time Bryson was quite aware that the man would not hesitate to fire directly into Bryson’s head if he had to, lunging forward to grab and steady the steering wheel. Bryson didn’t like the odds.

  Now they were crossing the Key Bridge. “Left,” the man barked, indicating the direction of Reagan National Airport. Bryson obeyed, careful to seem compliant, resigned, the better to put the other man off his guard.

  “Now take this exit,” the killer resumed. The exit would take them toward the area immediately outside the airport where most of the rental-car agencies had offices.

  “You could have done me back there at the parking garage,” Bryson muttered. “You should have, actually.”

  But the hit man was too skilled to be drawn into a discussion of tactics or to allow Bryson to challenge his competence. Obviously the expert had been fully briefed as to the nature of Bryson’s mind, how Bryson would likely react in such a circumstance. “Oh, don’t even try that,” the professional said with a low chuckle. “You saw all the video-cams back there, the potential witnesses. You know better than that. You wouldn’t have done it there either, I’ll bet. Not based on what I hear about your skills.”

  A slip there, Bryson reflected. The man was definitely a contract employee, an outsider, which meant any backup was unlikely. He would be operating on his own. A Directorate staffer would be protected by others. This was a valuable piece of data to store away.

  Bryson steered the car into a deserted, vacant parking area, the far end of what was once a used-car lot. He parked as instructed. He turned his head to his right to address the other man, then felt the barrel of the gun grind painfully into his temple: the professional made no secret of his displeasure. “Don’t move,” came the steely voice. Turning his head back around, staring straight ahead, Bryson said, “Why don’t you at least make this quick?”

  “So now you’re feeling the way the other guys felt,” said the professional, amused. “The fear, the sense of futility, of hopelessness. Of resignation.”

  “You’re waxing entirely too philosophical for me. I’ll bet you don’t even know who’s issuing your checks.”

  “Beyond the fact that they clear, I don’t really care.”

  “No matter who they are, what they do,” said Bryson quietly. “No matter whether they’re working against the U.S. or not.”

  “Like I said, so long as the checks clear. I don’t do politics.”

  “That’s a pretty short-term way of thinking.”

  “We’re in a short-term business.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.” Bryson let a moment of silence pass. “Not if we come to mutually agreeable terms. We all lock some away; it’s expected of us. Discretionary accounts, reimbursed expenses, overstated of course—a percentage of our expense allowance salted away, laundered clean, invested in the market. Put your money to work for you. I’m willing to put some of it to work for me right now.”

  “To buy your own life,” the professional said solemnly. “But you seem to forget that my livelihood goes beyond one transaction. You may be one account, but they’re the entire goddamned bank. And you don’t bet against the house.”

  “No, you don’t bet against the house,” Bryson agreed. “You just report back that the mark was even better than you’d been led to believe, more skilled. Managed to escape, Jesus, the guy’s good. They’re not going to doubt you on that; it’s what they want to believe anyway. You’ll still keep your retainer, your deposit, and I’ll double the contract amount. Sound business practice, my friend.”

  “Accounts are watched very carefully these days, Bryson. It’s not like when you were in the game. Money is digital, and digital transactions leave tracks.”


  “Cash doesn’t leave tracks, not if it’s unsequenced.”

  “Everything leaves tracks these days, and you know it. Sorry, I’ve got a job to do. And in this case, it’s facilitating suicide. You have a history of depression, you know. You had no personal life to speak of, and the groves of academe could never compare to the excitement of spy work. Your clinical depression was diagnosed by a top-rank psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist—”

  “Sorry, the only shrinks I’ve ever seen were government-issue, years ago.”

  “A few days ago, according to your health-insurance records,” replied the killer, a grim smile in his voice. “You’ve been seeing a shrink for over a year.”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  “Anything’s possible in this day and age of the computerized database. Pharmacy records, too—antidepressants prescribed for you, purchased by you, along with antianxiety drugs, sleeping pills. It’ll all be there. A suicide note left on your home computer, too, I’m told.”

  “Suicide notes, are almost always handwritten, never typed or computer-generated.”

  “Granted—we’ve both set up hits to look like suicides, I’m sure. But believe me, no one’s ever going to dig into this that far. There’ll be no postmortems for you. You have no family to request an autopsy.”

  The professional’s words, though no doubt prescripted, still wounded, because they were the truth: he had no family, not since Elena had left. Not since my parents were killed by the Directorate, he added to himself bitterly.

  “But let me say, I’m honored to be given this assignment,” the hit man resumed. “They say you were one of the top field men, after all.”

  “Why do you think you were assigned?” Bryson said.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care. A job’s a job.”

  “You think you’re expected to survive it? You think they want you around telling tales? Who knows how much I might have told you? You think you’re going to survive this last job?”

  “I don’t really give a shit,” said the man unconvincingly.

  “No, I don’t think your employers ever planned to let you live,” Bryson went on, grimly. “Who the hell knows what I spilled to you?”

  “What are you trying to say?” asked the hit man after a moment of uncomfortable silence. He seemed to hesitate for an instant; Bryson could feel the grinding pressure of the pistol barrel momentarily let up. It was all the opportunity he needed, this second or two of genuine indecision on the part of his intended assassin. Quietly, he slipped his left hand off the steering wheel and slithered it down around to his back. He had the Glock! With lightning speed he pointed it toward the back of his seat and, firing blind, squeezed the trigger again and again in quick succession. Three rapid explosions filled the car’s interior as the large-caliber bullets pierced the seat cushions, the noise ear-shattering. Had he hit the man? In an instant he got his answer as the barrel of the pistol fell away from the back of his head. Bryson spun around, whipping his pistol around, too, as he did so, and he realized that the man was dead, half of his forehead blown away.

  * * *

  They met at Langley this time, in Dunne’s seventh-floor office in the Agency’s new building. Standard security procedures were bypassed; Bryson was admitted to CIA headquarters with a minimum of ceremony.

  “Why does it not surprise me the Directorate boys declared you beyond salvage?” Harry Dunne said with a hoarse laugh that became a sustained hacking cough. “I just think they must have forgotten who they were dealing with.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that you’re better than anyone they can send after you, Bryson. For Christ’s sake, you’d think those fucking cowboys would know that by now.”

  “They also know they don’t want me in this office, in this building, spilling my guts.”

  “Wish you had anything to spill,” replied Dunne. “But they knew how to keep all of you isolated, atomized. You don’t know real names, just legends, and a fat lot of good that does us. Legends that are, or were, internal to the Directorate yield nothing in our own in-house data search. Like this ‘Prospero’ you keep mentioning.”

  “I told you, that’s all I knew him as. Plus, it was over fifteen years ago. In the field, that’s a geological era. Prospero was, I believe, Dutch, or at least of Dutch origins. Very resourceful operative.”

  “The best Agency sketch artists have produced a drawing based on your description, and we’re trying to match the image against stored photographs, sketches, verbal descriptions. But the artificial-intelligence software still hasn’t advanced enough yet. It’s arduous, hit-or-miss work. So far we’ve had just one hit, as the digital hard-disk jockeys like to say. A fellow you said you worked with in Shanghai on a particularly sensitive exfiltration case.”

  “Sigma.”

  “Ogilvy. Frank Ogilvy, of Hilton Head, South Carolina. Or maybe I should say, late of Hilton Head.”

  “Moved? Transferred?”

  “A crowded beach, a hot day. Seven years ago. Keeled over from a massive heart attack, apparently. Caused a minor commotion on the boardwalk that day, one witness told us, so crowded and all.”

  Bryson sat quietly for a moment, examining the windowless walls of Dunne’s office, contemplating. Abruptly he said, “If you’re looking for ants, go find yourself a picnic.”

  “Come again?” Dunne was once again absently shredding a cigarette.

  “That was one of Waller’s sayings. If you’re looking for ants, go find yourself a picnic. Instead of looking for them where they were, we need to figure out where they are. Ask yourself: What do they need? What kind of spread are they in the mood for?”

  Dunne put down the ruined cigarette and looked up, suddenly alert. “Weaponry, the word is. Seems they’re trying to stockpile an arsenal. We think they’re instigating some kind of turbulence in the southern Balkans, although their ultimate target is elsewhere.”

  “Weaponry.” Something was turning in Nick’s mind.

  “Guns and ammo. But sophisticated stuff.” Dunne shrugged. “Things that go boom in the night. When the bombs and bullets start flying, your own generals always start to look more appealing. Whatever they’re hatching, we’ve got to put an end to it. By whatever means.”

  “‘Whatever means’?”

  “You and I understand the definition. Though a straight-shooter like Richard Lanchester never could. A whole lot of good intentions, but where does all that idealism get you in the end? Notice all the saints are dead.” The venerable and revered Richard Lanchester was chairman of the National Security Council in the White House. “Dick Lanchester believes in rules and regulations. But the world doesn’t play by rules. Anyway, sometimes you gotta break ’em to save ’em.”

  “Can’t play by Queensberry Rules, is that it?” Bryson said, recalling Ted Waller’s words.

  “Tell me how you used to get hold of weaponry. You sure weren’t using U.S. government requisitions. You pick up stuff on the street, or what?”

  “Actually, we were always particular about our ‘instruments,’ as we called them. The munitions. And you’re right—given the restrictions, the deep secrecy, we had to round up the stuff ourselves. We couldn’t exactly drive up to an army warehouse with a transfer order. Take a fairly typical ordnance-intensive operation—like the one in the Comoros, in ’eighty-two, where the idea was to stop a band of Executive Outcome mercenaries from overtaking the place.”

  “They were CIA,” Dunne put in, almost wearily. “And all they were after was a dozen Brits and Americans that some loony-tune named Colonel Patrick Denard had kidnapped and was holding for ransom.”

  Bryson flinched, but pressed on. “First, a few hundred Kalashnikov assault rifles. They’re cheap, reliable, lightweight, and they’re made in about ten different countries, so they’re hard to trace. You’d want a smaller number of sniper rifles with night-vision scopes—preferably a BENS 9304 or Jaguar Night Scope. Rocket launchers, and rocket grenades, preferably CPAD Tech. Sti
nger missiles can come in handy—the Greeks make a lot of them under license, and they’re easy to come by. You’ve got your Kurdish guerrillas, the PKK, raising cash by selling them to the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  Bryson sighed impatiently. “Where you’re routing arms illegally, there’s always substantial quantities that go astray. Somehow they lose a few with every truckload.”

  “Fall off the back of the truck.”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. Then, of course, you want to stockpile ammunition rounds. That’s where the amateurs would always go wrong—they end up with more guns than ammo.”

  Dunne looked at him strangely. “You were good, weren’t you.” It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t a compliment either.

  Bryson stood up suddenly, his eyes wide. “I know where to find them. Where to start, anyway. Right around this time of year”—he looked at the date on the face of his digital watch—“hell, in about ten days’ time or so, there’s going to be an annual floating arms bazaar off the Costa da Morte—in international waters off Spain. It’s something like a twenty-year institution, as regular an event as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. An immense container ship filled with major-league munitions, and a lot of major-league gunrunners to keep them company.” Bryson paused. “The ship’s registered name is the Spanish Armada.”

  “The picnic,” Dunne said with a sly smile. “Where the ants gather. Sure. Not a bad idea.”

  Bryson nodded, his thoughts far away. The thought of returning to his old line of work—especially now that he realized how he was deceived into it—filled him with repugnance. Yet there was something else, too, another emotion: rage. The desire for revenge. And one more emotion as well, a quieter one: a need to understand, to delve into his own past. To force his way through all the secrets and lies to something like truth. A truth he could live with. “That’s right,” Bryson added wearily. “For any group, whether outlaw or deep-undercover governmental, that’s interested in acquiring arms without official scrutiny, the Spanish Armada is always a picnic.”