TEN
Chantilly, France
The magnificent Château de Saint-Meurice was situated thirty-five kilometers from Paris, a vast seventeenth-century manse whose splendor was dramatically illuminated by scores of artfully placed spotlights. No less dramatic or magnificent were its surroundings, great sculpted gardens lit this evening like a stage set. This was most appropriate, for the Château de Saint-Meurice was indeed a stage on which the rich and powerful promenaded, making their skillfully timed entrances and exits, exchanging carefully scripted banter. The actors and the audience, however, were one and the same. All were there to impress each other; all knowingly played their roles within the artificial confines of an elaborate masque.
Although the evening’s occasion was a gathering of European trade ministers, an offshoot of the annual G-7 Conference, the cast of characters did not change much from party to party at the Château de Saint-Meurice. The beautiful people of Paris and its environs were all there, tout le beau monde, or at least everyone who mattered. Clad in their finest evening wear, their tuxedoes or evening gowns, the women glittering with jewels normally sequestered in a safe or bank vault, they arrived in their sparkling, chauffeured Rolls Royces or Benzes. There were comtes and comtesses, barons and baronnes, vicomtes and vicomtesses; there were royalty from the corporate world and celebrities from the world of the broadcast media and the theater; they came from the highest levels of the Quai d’Orsay, from the most rarefied circles in which high society intersected with high finance.
Across the drawbridge and up the front steps of the château, the walkway lined with hundreds of candles whose flames danced in the gentle evening breezes, came elegant men with silver hair, but also inelegant men, squat and balding, whose coarse appearance belied the immense power and influence they wielded, some of whom wore on their arms their flashiest accoutrements, long-legged, glamorous mistresses to be displayed before one and all.
Bryson wore a tuxedo from Le Cor de Chasse, and Layla wore a spectacular strapless black gown obtained at Dior. Around her neck was a simple choker of pearls whose understated elegance did not detract from her extraordinary beauty. Bryson had been to many a function like this in his previous life, and had always felt like an observer rather than a participant, though he was meant to fit in as one of them—as he inevitably did. The semblance of poise came naturally to him, though not the sense of belonging.
Layla, however, seemed entirely at ease. A few traces of makeup, deftly and subtly applied—little more than eyeliner and lip gloss—accentuated her natural beauty, her olive skin, her large liquid brown eyes. Her wavy chestnut hair was pinned up, with just a few strands deliberately unrestrained, emphasizing her lovely swan neck; the risqué though tasteful décolletage of her gown highlighted her magnificent breasts. She could, and did, pass for either Israeli or Arab, being in fact both. She smiled easily, laughed merrily, her eyes inviting and withholding all at once.
She was greeted by several people, all of whom seemed to know her in her legend as an Israeli diplomatic functionary from the Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv with mysterious clout and connections. Layla seemed to be known, yet not known, which was the perfect situation for a covert operative to be in. She had placed a call, earlier the day before, to a casual acquaintance at the Quai d’Orsay known to have close ties to Jacques Arnaud, the master of the Château de Saint-Meurice and a fixture at Arnaud’s many parties. The acquaintance, who served as one of the arms manufacturer’s social antennae, was delighted to hear that Layla was in Paris for a few days, mortified that she had not been directly invited to this fête, which was surely an oversight, and had insisted that Layla by all means must come; Monsieur Arnaud would be most offended, appalled, if she did not. And by all means, she must bring an escort, for the acquaintance knew that the lovely Layla was rarely without one.
Bryson and Layla had talked late into the night, strategizing their visit to Arnaud’s château. For it was a supremely risky venture, after the destruction of the Spanish Armada. Obviously there were no survivors who might recognize either of them, but powerful men like Calacanis and any others aboard the ship, including the emissaries and agents sent by powerful men, simply did not perish in a fiery inferno without alarms going off in boardrooms and inner offices all around the world. Powerful men engaged in nefarious and hugely profitable enterprises would be on a heightened state of alert. Jacques Arnaud had lost one of his conduits, and therefore he had to be concerned for his own safety; who knew whether the obliteration of Calacanis’s tanker had been merely the first shot fired in a campaign being waged against black-market arms dealers worldwide? As France’s leading arms manufacturer, Jacques Arnaud would always be careful about possible threats to his life and livelihood; in the aftermath of the explosion off the Cabo Finisterre, he would be extra-cautious.
Layla had been a green-eyed blonde, so at least her appearance had been radically altered. Bryson, however, could not take the chance that he would not be recognized. If surveillance video had been uplinked from the ship via satellite at any time before the ship’s destruction, then video stills of his likeness would have been circulated among private security forces with enormous resources.
So Bryson had purchased certain products at a stage-costume-supply shop near the Opera, and by the next day his appearance had been altered dramatically. His hair was now silver-gray, with the variegated tones of a blond man who had gone gray. The technical services wizards at the Directorate had tutored Bryson well in the black arts of disguise. Cheek inserts had turned his face jowelly; the application of spirit gum had put latex pouches under his eyes, as well as wrinkles and fine lines around the eyes and mouth. Subtlety was paramount, as Bryson had learned from years of disguise: minor changes could have major effects yet raise no suspicions. He now looked easily twenty years older, a distinguished older gentleman who fit right in with the other men of accomplishment and position who frequented the Château de Saint-Meurice. He had become James Collier, an investment banker and venture capitalist from Santa Fe, New Mexico. As was not uncommon among certain venture capitalists who preferred to work away from the glare of public scrutiny, he would say little about what he actually did, turning away polite inquiries with self-deprecating wit.
Bryson and Layla were staying at a small, moderately priced, anonymous hotel on rue Trousseau. Neither one of them had stayed there before; its chief distinction was its very mediocrity. Each of them had arrived in Paris by a different route from Labacolla Airport—Bryson via Frankfurt, and Layla via Madrid. There had been a certain awkwardness about the sleeping arrangements, no doubt unavoidable. They were traveling as a couple, which usually meant sharing a bed or at least a room. Yet Bryson had requested that the hotel put them in separate bedrooms in an adjoining suite. A bit out of the ordinary, perhaps, but it did bespeak a certain level of propriety on the part of the unmarried couple, an old-fashioned discretion. In truth, Bryson knew the temptations of the flesh threatened to overwhelm him. She was a beautiful, highly sexual woman, and he had been solitary for far too long. But he did not want to destabilize an already tenuous working relationship, he told himself. Or perhaps he feared losing a necessary wariness. Was that it? Was it that he wanted to keep his distance so long as Elena remained a question mark in his life?
Now, as Layla guided him-across the crowded room, smiling and nodding to social acquaintances, she kept up a lilting patter. “The story is that the château was built in the seventeenth century by one of Louis the Fourteenth’s ministers. It was so grand that the king became jealous, had the minister arrested, stole his architect and landscaper and all the furniture, and then, inspired by a fit of envy, started construction on Versailles, determined never to be outdone.”
Bryson smiled and nodded, maintaining the appearance of a moneyed guest suitably impressed by his surroundings. As Layla spoke, his eyes roamed the crowd, ever alert for the familiar face, the quickly averted glance. He had done this sort of thing countless times before, but this time wa
s different, nerve-racking: he had stepped into the unknown. Also, his plan was vague, a necessary improvisation based on his own finely honed instincts.
Exactly what was the connection, if any, between Jacques Arnaud and the Directorate? The team of assassins dispatched to kill him had been working with Arnaud’s man on the Spanish Armada. The assassins—the Friulian brothers—were Directorate hires, which strongly indicated that Arnaud himself was at least affiliated with the Directorate in some mysterious, unspecified capacity. More than that, a man known by Bryson to be Directorate—Vance Gifford, or, as he’d styled himself, Jenrette—had been aboard the ship, having arrived in the company of Arnaud’s emissary.
It was all highly circumstantial, but taken together, the pieces of circumstantial evidence created a mosaic that was highly suggestive. Jacques Arnaud was one of the shadowy powers who now controlled the Directorate.
What Bryson needed was proof. Hard, incontrovertible evidence.
It was here somewhere, but where?
According to Layla, the Israelis believed that Jacques Arnaud’s firm was involved in laundering enormous sums of money for criminal elements that included the Russian mafiya. The Mossad’s surveillance suggested that Arnaud often received and placed business-related calls here, at his château, and repeated attempts by the Mossad and other intelligence services to tap his phones had proven useless. His communications were undecipherable, protected by hard encryption. This strongly suggested to Bryson that somewhere in the château there had to be specialized telecommunications equipment, “black” telephones at least, capable of encrypting, and decrypting, telephonic signals—phone calls, faxes, and E-mails.
As they maneuvered through the crowds, from room to room, Bryson noticed the paintings that crowded the walls, and that gave him an idea.
* * *
In a small room upstairs, two men in business suits sat in semidarkness, their faces illuminated only by the eerie bluish flicker from the banks of video monitors. The stainless steel and brushed chrome, the fiber-optic cables and cathode-ray tubes, made up a peculiar modern-art installation mounted on the ancient stone walls. Each monitor displayed a different angle in a different room below. Miniaturized cameras concealed in the walls, in fixtures and fittings, unseen and unnoticed by the myriad guests, relayed high-resolution video images to the security men huddled before the monitors. The clarity was such that the watchers could zoom in on any face that was of interest or concern, pulling in tight for a close-up that took up an entire screen. Images could be digitized, electronically compared against other images stored in a vast off-site data bank known as the Network. Any questionable persons could be identified and discreetly invited to leave, if need be.
Buttons were pushed; a face was enlarged on one monitor, the features screened onto a grid and scrutinized by the two men. It was the silver-haired, slightly jowelly, sun-lined face of a man whose name, furnished in advance to Arnaud’s security people, was James Collier of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
What drew the attention of the two men was not that they recognized the man’s face. Instead, it was the fact that they did not recognize the face. The man was an unknown quantity. To Arnaud’s ever-vigilant security force, the unknown was always a cause for concern.
* * *
Jacques Arnaud’s wife, Giséle, was a tall, imperious woman of aristocratic bearing, with an aquiline nose and gray-streaked black hair. Her hairline was unnaturally high, her facial skin too taut, unmistakable evidence of regular visits to a “clinic” in Switzerland. Bryson spotted her holding court in a corner of the book-lined library, a small crowd hanging on her every word. Bryson recognized her face from her regular appearances in the society pages of Paris Match, several years of which he had pored over in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The hangers-on seemed dazzled by her cleverness, her every aperçu received with uproarious merriment. Accepting two flutes of champagne from a waiter and handing one to Layla, Bryson pointed to a canvas that hung near where Madame Arnaud was holding forth. Striding up to it eagerly, thereby positioning himself within earshot of the hostess, Bryson remarked in a voice just loud enough to be overheard by the adjacent gathering, “Fantastic, isn’t it? Ever see his portrait of Napoleon? Extraordinary—he turns Napoleon into a Roman emperor, posing him frontally like a statue, a living icon.”
His gambit worked; the proud owner could not resist turning her head toward a conversation she found more intriguing, since it concerned one of her own works of art. Bestowing upon Bryson a gracious smile, she said in fluent English, “Ah, and have you ever seen a stare as hypnotic as the one Ingres gives Napoleon?”
Bryson returned the smile, glowing as if he had found a soul mate. He bowed his head and extended his hand. “You must be Madame Arnaud. James Collier. A wonderful evening.”
“Pardon me,” she announced to her gathering, gently dismissing them. Moving closer, she said, “I see you’re an admirer of Ingres, Mr. Collier.”
“I would say I’m an admirer of yours, Madame Arnaud. Your collection of pictures demonstrates a truly discriminating eye. Oh, may I introduce my friend, Layla Sharett, of the Israeli embassy.”
“We’ve met before,” said the hostess. “So good to see you again,” she said, taking Layla’s hand, though her attention remained riveted on Bryson. In her prime, Bryson saw, she must have been a woman of striking beauty; even as a woman in her early seventies, she was a coquette. She had the courtesan’s talent for making a man feel he was the most fascinating man in the room, that no other man or woman existed. “My husband tells me he finds Ingres boring. He is not the connoisseur of art you seem to be.”
Bryson, however, did not want to seize this potential opening to be introduced to Jacques Arnaud. On the contrary, he preferred not to be called to the arms tycoon’s attention. “If only Ingres had been so fortunate as to have you as a subject for one of his portraits,” he said, shaking his head wistfully.
She affected a scowl, though Bryson could see she was secretly pleased. “Please! I would hate to have my portrait done by Ingres!”
“He did take forever on some of his portraits, didn’t he? Poor Madame Moitessier had to sit for twelve years.”
“And he turned her into a Medusa, her fingers into tentacles!”
“But an extraordinary portrait.”
“Claustrophobic, I think.”
“They say he may have used a camera lucida to produce some of his compositions—in effect, spying on his subjects before he captured them, you might say.”
“Is that right?”
“Still, as much as I admire his paintings, nothing compares to his drawings, don’t you agree?” Bryson knew that the Arnauds’ private collection included some of Ingres’s drawings, displayed in less public rooms of the château.
“I couldn’t agree more!” Giséle Arnaud exclaimed. “Though he himself considered his drawings to be potboilers.”
“I know, I know—while he lived in poverty in Rome, he was forced to support himself by drawing pictures of visitors and tourists. Some of the greatest paintings were done by artists working just to keep food on the table. The fact is, Ingres’s drawings are his best work by far. The use of white, of negative space, the way he captures light—they’re truly masterpieces.”
Madame Arnaud lowered her voice and said confidentially, “Actually, we have a few of his drawings hanging in the billiards room, you know.”
* * *
The ruse had worked. Madame Arnaud had invited Bryson and his guest to stroll into parts of the house that were not open to the other guests. She had offered to show him the drawings herself, but Bryson had declined, refusing to steal her away; but if she really didn’t mind, perhaps they could take a quick look by themselves?
As he and Layla wandered through halls and more intimate, less public rooms, whose walls were hung with less impressive works by lesser French artists, Bryson oriented himself. He had prepared well: he had located the collection of blueprints of historicall
y important châteaux, maintained at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and had studied the layout of the Château de Saint-Meurice. He knew it was highly unlikely that the Arnauds would have done anything to alter Château de Saint-Meurice’s floor plan; the only variable was the use they made of the rooms, the location of the bedrooms and offices, particularly Arnaud’s private office.
Bryson walked idly arm-in-arm with Layla down one hallway, turning left into another. As they rounded a corner, they heard low, muffled, male voices.
They froze. The voices gradually became more audible and more distinct. The words were in French, but one speaker’s French had a definite foreign accent, which Bryson quickly placed as Russian, probably from Odessa.
“… to return to the party,” the Frenchman was saying.
The Russian said something that Bryson couldn’t quite make out. Then the Frenchman replied, “But once Lille happens, the outrage will be enormous. The way will be clear.”
Signaling Layla to stay back, Bryson flattened himself against the wall and inched forward, his tread silent, all the while listening, concentrating. Neither the voices nor the footsteps seemed to be approaching. He took from the breast pocket of his tuxedo what looked like a silver ballpoint pen, then pulled from one end a long, thin, glasslike wire, telescoping it to its maximum eighteen-inch length. He bent the tip of the flexible fiber-optic periscope cable, then nudged it along the wall until it jutted out no more than half an inch beyond the wall’s end. Looking into the small eyepiece, he was able to see the two men clearly. One, a trim, compact man with heavy black glasses, entirely bald, was clearly Jacques Arnaud. He was conferring with a tall, florid-faced man whom Bryson did not immediately recognize. A few seconds later the man’s identity came to him: Anatoly Prishnikov.
Prishnikov. The mogul widely believed to be the true power behind the figurehead currently occupying the president’s office in the Kremlin.
The Prometheus Deception Page 20