The Prometheus Man

by Scott Reardon

  CHAPTER 7

  On the drive back to the embassy, Karl was secretly pleased when Tom in his shy, indirect way inquired as to the nature and intensity of Osama bin Laden’s pornography. Out of respect for the dead, Karl told him he didn’t really want to get into it, but suffice to say in one of the brief clips he’d seen, there was a blonde wearing chaps and a World War II gas mask.

  Tom gave him the horrified, vindicated look everyone got when they heard this. It was part Really? and part I always fucking knew it.

  Karl grinned. “Wait, you know about the sex tape, don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Uh, no, I don’t believe—”

  “The agency considered staging an Osama bin Laden gay sex tape and one for Saddam too.”

  Tom just stared at him.

  “Think about it: what better way to discredit a man in the Muslim world. Osama, they decided, was a top. You know, proud guy like that. It fits. But Saddam has those roomy hips.” Karl leaned in and lowered his voice. “So they were going to make him a power bottom.”

  Tom looked horrified—and yet fascinated. “So what stopped them?”

  “Well, the gay agents thought it was brilliant. But the straight ones thought it was just too bigoted.”

  They both started laughing, Karl loudly and Tom almost silently. Then they drove a few blocks without a word.

  “Hey,” Karl said. “I’m making you second chair.”

  Tom looked like he was trying not to seem as pleased as he actually was about this.

  “What?” Karl said.

  “May I ask why?”

  “Why?” Karl shrugged. “Because I find people assigned to you by your boss don’t work for you, they work for your boss. And in this case those two people remind me of Ken dolls.”

  “You mean Henry and James?”

  “They look like they have that odd, little plastic mound between their legs, is what I’m saying.”

  Tom made a right on Victor Hugo. Outside, the sky was overcast, and people moved like they didn’t want to be on the street. A homeless man sat under a poster of a woman about to dab herself with L’Oréal anti-aging skin cream. He stared up at the sky and either started laughing or crying.

  “You got any family back home?” Karl asked.

  Tom nodded, but his eyes turned inward. “You?”

  “I had a wife once.”

  “What happened?”

  The question surprised Karl. Most people didn’t ask.

  “She died,” Karl said. “Cancer.”

  “What was it like?” Tom said. “Being married.”

  “It was good.”

  At first Karl thought he was going to leave it at that. He stared at his palms, noticed the lines on them for the first time in years.

  “What? You really want to know?” he said.

  Tom nodded.

  “You ever see the movie Network?”

  Tom nodded again.

  “Okay, there’s this scene where William Holden’s wife is yelling at him for cheating on her—you know, fist raised.” Karl raised his fist and shook it like he was wielding a rolling pin. “And the last thing she says is ‘And if you can’t work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance. I’m your wife, damn it.’ And the way she says ‘wife’…you get the idea this lady’s not describing their relationship, she’s standing up for her motherfucking rights. That was how my wife said it. The way you tell other people they’re on your property.” Karl laughed once, shook his head. “It was the best four years of my life.”

  Karl looked at Tom, and Tom nodded, like he couldn’t quite understand but he was eager to. They drove in silence for a while.

  “My brother was obsessed with Network,” Tom said.

  “So he was a real pervert, is what you’re saying?”

  Tom turned and just looked at him.

  “Only someone with a twisted mind, a real sicko, could love that movie,” Karl said. “Let me ask you something: does he smoke menthols and drink Tab?”

  “In his mind, it’s only a matter of time before we all wind up on the sex offender registry.”

  Karl burst out laughing. “This brother of yours is a goddamn prophet. What is he, a defense attorney or a gynecologist or something?”

  “He’s in medicine.”

  Karl stopped smiling. “What do you mean he was obsessed with Network?”

  Tom took a second too long to answer. “He lives in Phoenix with his wife and kid. Doesn’t have much time for movies anymore is all.”

  Something about how Tom phrased his response seemed off to Karl, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  The embassy came into view. As soon as they parked, Tom looked over at him. “Karl, thank you. For the promotion. And for telling me about, you know, your wife and everything.”

  Karl gave him a nod and got out of the car. He realized he was smiling.

  Back in the war room, the first thing Karl did was look up Alexander Nast, the doctor from Prometheus. He wanted to see if Dr. Nast had a son named Jonathan. He prayed not. From what he’d been told, Nast had known nothing about the chimps outside Paris. In fact he thought he was working to save the life of Karl’s volunteer, a man named Ian Bogasian. They’d told him Bogasian was terminally ill with some neuromuscular disease Karl couldn’t even pronounce the name of. Nast was the perfect asset. When he heard about Bogasian’s diagnosis, he was the one rushing them.

  The system said there was no file for a Dr. Alexander Nast. Either it had never been made in the first place or someone had deleted it.

  As Tom went through Jonathan Nast’s hard drive, Karl got up and went over to the window. The streets outside were empty. Gray clouds expanded in the sky. It was late morning, and already the city existed only in shadow. Even the daylight was too dark.

  “Karl.”

  It took a moment for the sound of his own name to pull him out of his thoughts. “Yeah?”

  “You should see this.”

  On the screen, there was a picture of a black hood, the kind you put over a prisoner’s face. It was pointed at the top like a Ku Klux Klan mask.

  “I found this in his download history. Even if you delete your browser history, sometimes things you look at online get saved in Windows Photo Gallery.”

  “So he didn’t take the picture?”

  “No, but there’s more.” Tom kept scrolling. “I think he was looking at buying them.” The variety was horrifying. Each hood had its own personality somehow, the same way jack-o’-lanterns do.

  Tom kept going through the pictures Nast hadn’t known to delete. There were images from banner ads and photos of other products he’d considered buying. Tom stopped on a picture of two brass rods. He sat there, looking at them.

  “What is that?” Karl said.

  “If I’m not mistaken, those are brass contact points.” Tom looked over. “I think he was building some kind of cattle prod.”

  Karl barged into Marty’s office, told his assistant there was no need to announce him, he’d just let himself in, and shut the door behind him. Marty was sitting at the table by the window, looking outside and sipping what smelled like a particularly healthful green tea.

  Karl walked over and put a printout of the hoods and the brass contact points on the table. “We just pulled these off the computer of a guy named Jonathan Nast.”

  Marty leafed through the photos. “Jesus Christ.” He stopped on the brass contact points. “What are those?”

  “We think they’re the contact points for a stun gun of some kind.”

  Blood drained from Marty’s face. He started to say something, then looked out the window suddenly. “Any idea what for?” he asked finally.

  “No.”

  “Do you have him? Jonathan Nast?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Marty looked up.

  “Don’t look at me. I didn’t do it,” Karl said. “What do you know about Jonathan Nast?�
��

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whenever you ask something, and someone says ‘What do you mean?’ that tells you they know exactly what you mean.”

  Marty stared at him for a moment. “Really you’re asking two questions, and the answer is yes—to both of them. Yes, Jonathan Nast is Dr. Alexander Nast’s son, and yes, I know who Jonathan Nast is. In fact you might even say I know more about him than his own father does.”

  “And why the hell is that?”

  “Jonathan is a bad apple, or at least he was. It’s sad really. He fell in with an Albanian network—you know, the half-Muslim kind who hate the white man but who run drugs and teenage prostitutes and honor-kill their wives. I had him hired three years ago through a proxy to do some work for us on Prometheus. Small stuff, but the little weasel turned out to be good at it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was Dr. Nast’s son, and Dr. Nast knew a lot about us. Know how the Chinese ensure someone’s compliance? They give his relatives a job, and the message is clear: We know how to help you, but we also know where to hurt you.”

  “Do you know how we found Nast’s son? We connected him to Alan Sarmad.”

  Karl waited for a reaction. Three years ago Marty had told him Alan Sarmad was dead, murdered by some associates of his in the shipping business. Marty had lied about Bogasian and now Sarmad, and Karl wanted to know why.

  Marty dabbed his mouth and set his teacup on the saucer so carefully it didn’t make a sound. “I saw you went with someone else over the people I provided you. How’s he working out?”

  “He’s fine.”

  Marty rocked gently in his chair and nodded.

  “How come you never told me Alan Sarmad is still alive?” Karl asked.

  For a moment Marty didn’t seem like he was going to respond. “It appears he survived the hunting accident, Karl.”

  “And you didn’t think that warranted an update—”

  “And I wrote it off, because that’s what you do. If I had to go around Europe killing everyone who knew something about us, then I’d kill the number of people usually required to take office in a small African country. Besides, Sarmad isn’t exactly an easy man to get to.”

  “Sarmad is dangerous. He knows all the wrong people. And you owe me an answer.”

  “He’s a non-issue. If he gets picked up and starts talking, he knows what will happen. Once his silent partners get word of his loose lips, they’ll kill his wife and his parents and sell his children to a nice man in Dubai who pays in ounces of gold.”

  Karl started to say something.

  “But”—Marty smiled—“I promise you that if he’s involved in what’s going on with Bogasian, I will happily turn you loose on him—with a smile in my heart and a song on my lips.”

  Karl had always respected the way Marty found an almost Christian joy in the rare times when bad things actually happened to bad people. But he didn’t smile back.

  “I thought I told you, I’m not your hatchet man,” he said.

  “Then what are you?”

  They watched each other.

  Finally Karl said, “Listen, there are files here on Alan Sarmad and on Benjamin Kotesh. Someone’s put them together, and they’re not sharing. I need access to everything.”

  “Your clearance was just reinstated. Now you want it upped?”

  “See, I think what we have here is a cockroach-in-the-kitchen situation. You’ve already told me two lies. Now I’d like to turn on the light and see what else is crawling in its own filth on the floor.”

  “You’re like one of those fat children from the Stanford marshmallow test. If you don’t eat the marshmallow, you can have another one later. But if you just stuff it down your throat, you only get type 2 diabetes. I can’t do it.”

  “But I believe in you, Marty. I believe you can do anything you put your mind to.”

  “It shines a spotlight on the very thing we want left in the dark.”

  Karl gave him a sympathetic look, the evil of which got him to stop rocking. “Maybe this should go to committee.”

  Marty’s thin, birdlike lips pressed together.

  Anything that went to committee would eventually get to the director of the CIA and from there to the White House. And at that point the politicians would have it in their orbit. As a matter of sacred personal policy, Marty only made the politicians aware of the issues he already had an answer to. Once there was consensus on the importance of the issue, Marty waited until there was urgency. And once he had that, he provided the answer. Then he got his hand shaken. Then he returned to work that actually had a point.

  “Your job is to investigate whoever’s running Bogasian,” Marty said, “not the CIA.” He stared at Karl for a few seconds. “Perhaps we need to find somebody else for this assignment.”

  Karl hadn’t been planning to investigate the CIA, just free-ride off work that had already been done. But hearing Marty put it like this gave him an idea. The CIA could track its agents’ phones, even in another country. He could check who’d been by Nast’s home in the last twenty-four hours.

  “Look,” Karl said. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me. I was…out of line.”

  Marty sighed. “No, you weren’t. There’s something I’ve been meaning to say. You worked for me for eight years, and I was never much of a mentor to you. You did a lot of things you weren’t comfortable with, and I never honored you for that. Instead I kept you in the dark. I hope you can forgive me.”

  Karl was speechless. They both sat still, looking anywhere but at each other.

  “Okay,” Marty said finally. “I won’t up your clearance, but I’ll do you one better. Off the books, right after Bogasian disappeared, I used an asset to try to locate Benjamin Kotesh and Jonathan Nast. We couldn’t find them, but maybe there’s something there.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it’s evidence I know who they are. I only had hard copy files made. They’re with the original Prometheus documents, so it’ll take me a couple hours to get you everything.” He raised a finger before Karl could say anything. “If you settle down, I’m prepared to share.”

  “What do you think these people are really up to?”

  “There’s only one reason someone would steal Bogasian from us.” Marty was quiet a moment. “Obviously they plan to kill a lot of people with him.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Tom and Karl were in the war room together later that morning when Tom’s cell phone rang for the third time. It was Carlson again, calling about the lie detector. Tom muted the ringing. A second later, his phone vibrated. New voicemail. The messages had been getting increasingly threatening—until this one. Carlson’s voice had been eerily calm: “We’re searching the building for you right now.”

  Tom figured he had maybe another hour before they found him.

  He knew now that Nast was already dead by the time he’d first gone into the house. He’d looked at the beds but hadn’t thought to check the floor beside them. In fact Nast was probably in the process of dying as he was checking the street. Like before, whoever had followed him there hadn’t wavered. He just broke in and took someone’s life without hesitation.

  Now the files Karl was getting were all Tom had.

  Karl stood in front of the computer. He kept waving his right arm around, emphasizing his points with the Snickers bar he held at the end of it.

  “We lost the spy game to the Russians because they got us to doubt our own agents,” he said. “We spent more energy ferreting out moles than we did gathering intel. Now we’ve swung in the opposite direction. Our agents can do no wrong. And if they do, nobody wants to hear about it.”

  At first Tom hadn’t known why Karl had summoned him to the war room. He was starting to get an idea.

  Karl touched a piece of paper. “Why do you think in an agency this computerized so many people communicate on the material easiest to get rid of?”

  Tom nodded. “How many of your commun
ications were hard copy only?”

  Karl froze.

  “I meant, when you were—”

  Karl raised his hand to stop him, then tossed the half-eaten candy bar on the desk. “So you know about me?”

  “I just heard you’d been…out of commission.”

  Karl laughed a little in the direction of the floor. “Yeah…”

  “Was it really that bad?”

  “I got arrested trying to cross the Canadian border with a guy taped up in my trunk.”

  Tom was quiet for a moment. Then: “What kind of tape did you use?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You use duct tape?”

  Karl grinned. “Well, that was my first choice naturally. But the thing was: I ran out. So I found some blue painter’s tape.”

  “That stuff tears so easily.”

  “Ah, but what I lacked in quality, I made up for in quantity. You should have seen the freaking guy. He looked like a frightened Easter egg.”

  “Karl, I hope I wasn’t out of line earlier—”

  “Forget it. And, look, if you ever have a question about anything here, you can—” Karl shrugged. “Well, you know.”

  When Karl looked at him, Tom’s eyes shifted automatically a couple of inches off his.

  What would your family think of this? he wondered. Of what you’re about to do to a man who just wants to help you?

  The phone rang.

  Karl snatched the receiver. “Lyons.”

  Tom heard someone talking on the other end.

  “No, we’ll come by and get them.” Karl hung up. “Our files have arrived. They’re with Marty’s assistant.”

  Tom nodded, thinking, as Karl sat down and started typing at the computer. He needed to get those files now.

  “Agents aren’t supposed to turn off their cell phones, as you know,” Karl said as he loaded a map of Paris on the big screen in the front of the room. “We have a tracking package for our agents’ phones, and talking with Director Litvak gave me an idea.” Karl smiled. “I had the package enabled just a few moments ago.”

  Red dots started populating the map. The dots, representing agents, moved along the screen. One of them stopped near another dot where Nast’s home was.