PART FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Nicholas,” she said, coming closer. She came into focus. It was Elena, still ravishingly beautiful, though she had changed: her face had gotten thinner, more angular, which made her eyes seem even larger. She looked wary, even frightened, but her voice was matter-of-fact. “It’s been so long. You’ve aged so.”

Bryson nodded, managed to rasp, “Thanks.”

Someone handed him a plastic cup of water: a nurse. He took it, gulped it down, handed back the cup. The nurse refilled it and gave it to him again. He drank greedily, gratefully. Elena sat beside the bed, close to him. “We must talk,” she said, suddenly urgent.

“Yes,” he said. His throat was raw; it hurt to speak. “There’s—there’s so much to talk about, Elena—I don’t know where to begin.”

“But there’s so little time,” she said. Her voice was brusque and businesslike.

There’s no time, her voice echoed in his head. There’s no time? For five years I’ve had nothing but time, time to ponder, to agonize.

She went on, “We need to know everything you’ve learned, everything you have. Any way in to Prometheus. Any way we can break the cryptographic perimeter.”

He looked at her in astonishment. Was he hearing her right? She was questioning him about cryptography, about something called “Prometheus” … She had disappeared from his life for five years and she wanted to talk about cryptography?

“I want to know where you went,” Bryson said hoarsely. “Why you vanished.”

“Nicholas,” she said briskly, “you told Ted that you took the key from Jacques Arnaud’s encrypted phone. Where is it?”

“I …I did? When did I …?”

“On the plane,” said Waller. “Have you forgotten? You said you had a disk or a chip, some such thing. You took it, or copied it, from Arnaud’s private office—you weren’t entirely clear about it. And no, you weren’t under the influence of chemicals. Though you were somewhat delirious, I must say.”

“Where am I?”

“In a Directorate facility in the Dordogne. France. That IV in your arm is just for rehydration and antibiotics to ward off sepsis from your wounds.”

“A Directorate …”

“Our headquarters. We’ve had to move here in order to maintain operational security. Washington was breached; we had to take evasive action, we had to leave the country in order to do our work.”

“What do you want with me?”

“We need whatever you have, and we need it immediately,” said Elena. “If our calculations are right, we have just a few days, perhaps only hours.”

“Before what?”

“Before Prometheus takes over,” said Waller.

“Who is Prometheus?”

“The question is, what is Prometheus, and we don’t have the answer. That’s why we need the cryptochip.”

“And I want to know what happened!” thundered Bryson. He gasped; he felt as if his throat would split. “With you, Elena! Where you went— why you went!”

He could see by the set of her jaw that she was determined not to be diverted from her line of questioning. “Nick, let us please talk about these personal matters another time. The time is very short —”

“What was I to you?” Bryson said. “Our marriage, our life together— what was that to you? If that’s ancient history, if that’s the past, you at least owe me an explanation—what happened, why you had to leave!”

“No, Nick —”

“I know it had something to do with Bucharest!”

Her lower lip seemed to be trembling, her eyes brimmed with tears.

“It did, didn’t it?” he said in a softer voice. “If you know anything, you must know that what I did, I did for you!”

“Nick,” she said desperately. “Please. I’m trying to hold myself together here, and you’re not helping things.”

“What do you think happened in Bucharest? What lies were you told?”

“Lies?” she suddenly exploded. “Don’t talk to me about lies! You lied to me, you lied straight to my face!”

“Excuse me,” said Waller. “You two need privacy.” He turned and left the room, and then the nurse did too, and they were alone.

Bryson’s head ached, his throat was so raw it felt as if it were bleeding inside. But he talked through the pain, desperate to communicate, to arrive at the truth. “Yes, I lied to you,” he said. “It was the biggest mistake I ever made. You asked me about my weekend in Barcelona, and I lied. And you know that—you knew that. At the time you knew that, didn’t you?”

She nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“But if you knew I was lying, you must have known why I lied! You must have known I went to Bucharest because I loved you.”

“I didn’t know what you did, Nick!” she cried, looking up at him.

He ached for her, for the intimacy they had once shared. He wanted to throw his arms around her, but at the same time he wanted to grab her by the collar, shake the truth out of her. “But you know now, don’t you?”

“I—I don’t know what I know, Nick! I was terrified, and I felt so hurt, so horribly betrayed by you—so frightened for my life, for my parents— that I had to disappear. I know how good you are at finding people, so I had to leave without a trace.”

“Waller knew where you were all along.”

She looked up at the ceiling, and he followed her eyes to a tiny red dot: a video surveillance camera; there was no doubt that if this were a Directorate facility there were cameras throughout. What did that mean, that Waller was likely watching, listening? If he was, then he was; so what?

She was clenching and unclenching her hands. “It was just a few days after you said you were going to Barcelona for the weekend. In the normal course of my work—processing the ‘harvest,’ the signals-intercept product — that I came across a report that a Directorate operative had made an unscheduled appearance in Romania, in Bucharest.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“You know, I was just doing my job, and so of course I followed up the lead and found that it was you. I was—I was devastated, because I knew you were supposed to be in Barcelona. I knew this wasn’t any cover story: it was such a rare thing for you to have a weekend off, and you had coordinated all your plans in an entirely overt way. And well—you know me, I’m very emotional, I feel things so strongly—I went to see Ted and told him what I had found. Demanded, really, that he level with me. He could see at once he was dealing with a distraught wife, a jealous wife, and yet he didn’t attempt to cover for you. It was a relief yet not a relief. If he had tried to cover for you, I would have been angry, terribly angry. Yet the fact that he wasn’t trying to do so told me that this was news to him—this information had taken him by surprise. And that was even more of a worry for me. Even Ted didn’t know you were in Bucharest.”

Bryson covered his eyes with a hand, shaking his head. Good God, he had been under surveillance the entire time! He had been so thorough in his “dry-cleaning,” so careful to shake any tails. How could this have happened? What did this mean?

“Did he investigate?” Bryson asked. “Or have you investigate?”

“Both, I’m sure. I downlinked the photo-reconnaissance, so now I had a photo of you in Bucharest, which somehow made it more concrete, more awfully true. Then a separate and independent source, an agent code-named Titan, corroborated the information and added more. This was the intelligence that nearly did me in. Titan reported that you had had a secret meeting with Radu Dragan, the head of the ex-Securitate’s vengeance squad.”

“God, no!” Bryson cried out. “You must have thought—since I was being so secretive, you must have thought I was doing something underhanded, something I had to keep hidden from you!”

“Because I knew through Ted that you were meeting with Dragan without Directorate knowledge! You had to be making a deal, one you weren’t proud of, one you had to conceal. But I gave you a chance. I asked you one day—asked you point-blank.”

“You had never asked me before about anything I did when I wasn’t home.”

“You could tell how important the answer was to me, I’m sure. Yet you continued to lie! Baldly!”

“Elena, darling, I was protecting you! I didn’t want to alarm you, I knew you would object if I’d given you advance notice. If I’d told you after the fact you’d have worried endlessly, you couldn’t have taken it!”

She shook her head. “I know this now. But then Titan reported that you had cut a deal with Dragan, that you had given up my parents’ location in exchange for some larger concession —”

“That was a lie!”

“But I didn’t know that at the time!”

“How could you have thought I was capable of selling them out? How could you have accepted that?”

“Because you had lied to me, Nicholas!” she screamed. “You gave me no reason to think otherwise! You lied!”

“Dear God, what you must have thought of me.”

“I went to Ted and demanded that he get me out of the country. Hide me somewhere, somewhere safe! Somewhere you could never track me down. And I wanted my parents moved as well—at once—which was an enormous expense because of the security cordon that was in place. Ted agreed this was for the best. I was wounded to—to the marrow by your betrayal, and most of all I was desperate to protect my parents. Waller moved me here, to the Dordogne facility, and settled Mama and Papa an hour or so from here.”

“Waller believed that I’d done this?”

“Waller knew only that you’d lied to him as well, that you were doing something off the books.”

“But he never raised it with me, never once mentioned it!”

“Does that surprise you? You know how he keeps things close to the vest. And I begged him not to say a thing to you, not to alert you.”

“But don’t you know what I did?” Bryson shouted. “Don’t you know? Yes, I did make a deal with the sweepers—a deal to protect your parents! I threatened them, I made it clear that if ever anyone so much as laid a finger on your parents, Dragan’s entire extended family would be wiped out. That this was personal for me! I knew that only the threat of a Sicilian-style revenge would get his attention.”

Now Elena was sobbing. “In the years—the years since—I’ve wondered. Papa died two years ago, and Mama last year. Without him she had no will to live. Oh, God, Nicholas. I thought you were a monster!”

His arms went up to embrace her, though he could barely sit up. Weeping, she fell forward, collapsing into his arms. She touched the bandaged wound, hit a nerve; the pain almost took off the top of his head. But his arms closed around her, patting her gently, reassuring her. She seemed fragile, her beautiful eyes liquid, bloodshot. “What I did,” she moaned. “What I assumed of you, what I assumed you did …!”

“Compounded by my failure to trust you, be honest with you. But Elena, this was not just a simple misunderstanding—you were deliberately and systematically misled by this agent code-named Titan. Why? To what end?”

“It must be Prometheus. They know we’re on to them, closing in on them. And they must have seized upon the circumstance to poison the well, to spread a fog of uncertainty and dissension within our ranks. To set one against another, husband against wife in this case. False reports were filed in order to exploit the vulnerability—to hobble us where they could.”

“‘Prometheus’ … you and Waller both keep mentioning it. But you must know something, have some notion as to what it is, its objectives …”

Elena caressed his face, looked into his eyes. “How I’ve missed you, my darling.” She sat up, took his hand in hers and squeezed, then slowly she got up off the bed. She began pacing as she spoke, just as she had always done whenever puzzling out a particularly complex problem. It was as if the physical activity, the repetitive motion catalyzed something in her thought processes.

“Prometheus is a name we first encountered only some twenty months ago,” she said slowly, distantly. “It appears to refer to some sort of international syndicate, perhaps a cartel, and as best we can make out the Prometheus Group involves a consortium of technology companies and defense contractors, and their agents highly placed in governments around the world.”

Bryson nodded. “Jacques Arnaud’s vertically integrated defense corporations, General Tsai’s PLA-owned defense contractors, Anatoly Prishnikov’s extensive holdings throughout the old Soviet Union, the new Russia. Corporate alliances being established on a global scale.”

She looked at him sharply, stopped pacing for a moment. “Yes. Those three cardinal among them. But there seem to be many participants, acting in concert.”

“Acting how? Doing what?”

“Corporate acquisitions, mergers, consolidation—all seem to be accelerating.”

“Mergers, consolidations in the defense sector?”

“Yes. But with an emphasis on telecommunications and satellites and computers. And it’s more, much more than the amassing of a corporate empire. Because in the last five months there has been an epidemic of terrorist incidents, from Washington and New York to Geneva and Lille … .”

“Prishnikov and Arnaud both knew about Lille in advance,” Bryson said suddenly. “I overheard this, saw them discussing Lille a few days before. ‘The way will be clear,’ they said. ‘The outrage will be enormous.’”

“‘The way will be clear,’” she mused aloud. “Defense industry insiders, owners fomenting chaos in order to boost the value of their stock …” She shook her head. “No, that doesn’t track. The most direct way to increase demand for armaments is to foment war, not isolated, individual terrorist attacks. It’s one of the theories behind the massive arming that led to World War Two, that international cartels of arms dealers built up the young Nazi Germany knowing that not too far down the line there would be a global war.”

“But this is a different era—”

“Nicholas, think this through. Key players in Russia, China, and France—at least, and surely there are others—in a position to pit their nations against one another, sound the drumbeats of coming war, the need to strengthen national defenses … . That’s how it should be done.”

“There’s more than one way to spur calls for ‘defense readiness.’”

“But if you hold the levers of power, there must be a good reason why you don’t pull them. No, we’re not seeing a global arms race. That’s not the pattern at all. Separate incidents, that’s what we’re seeing. Individual acts of terrorism, unclaimed, unattributed. All happening on an accelerating schedule. But why?”

“Terrorism is another form of war,” Bryson said slowly. “War by other means. A psychological war whose intent is to demoralize.”

“But a war requires at least two sides.”

“The terrorists and those who fight them.”

She shook her head. “It still doesn’t track. ‘Those who fight them’— that’s too nebulous.”

“Terrorism is a form of theater. It’s committed by an actor for an audience.”

“So the desired end result is not the destruction itself, but the publicity caused by the destruction.”

“Exactly.”

“The publicity almost always helps attract attention to some cause, some group. But this recent wave of terrorism had no known authors, no cause or group. So we have to examine the publicity, the news, to see what links them all. What do these terrorist incidents all have in common?”

“That they could have been prevented,” said Bryson abruptly.

Elena stopped and turned toward him with a curious smile. “What makes you say that?”

“Go back over the newspaper accounts, the transcripts of the television and radio coverage. Every time, after each incident, a comment appeared in the stories—usually attributed to some unnamed government official— to the effect that had adequate surveillance measures been in place, the tragedy would certainly have been prevented.”

“Surveillance measures,” she repeated.

“The treaty. The International Treaty on Surveillance and Security, which has just been agreed to by most of the countries of the world.”

“The treaty creates a sort of international watchdog agency, right? A sort of super-FBI?”

“Right.”

“Which would require the investment of billions and billions of dollars in new satellite equipment, police equipment, and the like. Potentially very lucrative for the companies … like Arnaud’s, Prishnikov’s, Tsai’s … maybe that’s it. An international treaty that serves as a mask, a cover for massive buildups in defense. So that we’re all armed, protected against terrorists—terrorism being the new, post—Cold War threat to peace. And all the members of the U.N. Security Council have signed it and ratified it by now, isn’t that right?”

“All but one. Great Britain. That’s supposed to happen any day now. The main agitator there is Lord Miles Parmore.”

“Yes, yes. He’s a—how do you say, he’s a blowhard, but he’s been quite effective at organizing support for the treaty. Never underestimate the man who’s willing to put himself out there. Remember the Reichstag in 1933.”

Bryson shook his head. “That’s not how the Prometheans operate. Lord Parmore has been brilliantly effective, but I suspect he’s not a brilliant man. I’ll bet the controlling intellect is elsewhere. It’s what our fearless leader likes to say—‘follow the brawn, look for the brains.’”

“You’re saying there are puppetmasters in London directing the Parliamentary debate?”

“Count on it.”

“But who? If we could find out …”

“I’m going to have to go there, meet with Parmore, question him, dig as deeply as I can.”

“But can you go? Are you well enough?”

“If you get these damned tubes out of my arm, I’m fine.”

She fell silent for a moment. “Nicholas, normally I’d be the overprotective wife, insisting you stay in bed and get better. But if you honestly feel well enough—time is of the essence —”

“I can go to London. I want to go. As soon as we can get a flight there.”

“I’ll make a call, arrange for them to get the private jet ready for a departure in six hours or so, assuming Ted doesn’t need it.”

“Good. The airstrip is close.”

“A very short drive.” She nodded, stopped in midpace. “So now Cassidy makes sense.”

“Cassidy? Senator Cassidy?”

“Right.”

“What about him? He was forced out of office because of revelations having to do with—what was it, his wife was caught dealing drugs or something?”

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, but those are the basic outlines of the story. Years ago his wife was addicted to painkillers, and she bought drugs from an undercover police officer. Senator James Cassidy was able to get her police record expunged, then he got her into a treatment program.”

“What does that have to do with the treaty?”

“First of all, he was the Senate’s leading opponent of the treaty. He saw it as marking the end of individual privacy. In fact, he was the loudest voice in Washington warning of the steady erosion of privacy in the age of the computer. Many commentators saw irony in the fact that a senator so obsessed with privacy would be brought down because of something hidden in his past—they sniggered that he obviously had something to hide, that’s why he was so obsessed with privacy.”

“There may be something to that.”

“That’s not the point. The thing is, he’s the ninth member of Congress in the last few months to either resign or announce he wasn’t going to run again.”

“It’s a difficult time to be a politician, that’s all.”

“No question. But you know me—I’m trained to look for patterns where others don’t necessarily see them. I noticed that among those nine were five who resigned under a cloud, you might say. In disgrace. And those five had been outspoken opponents of the international treaty on surveillance. Surely that was no coincidence—and it doesn’t take an expert in elliptic curve cryptography or asymmetric key cryptosystems to see that. Private information had been leaked. Information that somehow became public—mental-health treatment in one case, extensive use of antidepressant medication, renting pornographic videos, a check written to an abortion clinic …”

“So supporters of the treaty are playing rough.”

“More than that. Supporters of the treaty with access to the most private records.”

“Some renegade elements within the FBI?”

“But the FBI generally doesn’t have such information on people, vou know that! Certainly not since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. maybe when they do an in-depth investigation of a criminal suspect, but otherwise they don’t.”

“Then who, or what?”

“I began to look for the deeper pattern to see whether there might be a controlling intelligence behind this pattern of exposure. What did these congressmen all have in common? I inputted extensive biographies on them, whatever I could get, whatever financial information I could gather on the Internet—and, as you know, there’s quite a bit out there as long as you can get a Social Security number, which is simple to get. And a curious fact turned up. Two of the disgraced congressmen had mortgages from a Washington, D.C., bank, First Washington Mutual Bancorp. And then I found the link: all five of them were clients of First Washington.”

“So either the bank is somehow complicit in the blackmail, or somehow someone managed to access the bank’s records.”

“Right. Bank records, checks, money transfers … which can lead to health-insurance records, then medical records.”

“Harry Dunne,” Bryson said.

“Another Prometheus member. The CIA’s deputy director of central intelligence.”

“Dunne is?”

“Yes, yes, or so we speculate,” she said hastily. “Go on, what about him?”

“Dunne was the one who plucked me out of retirement, yanked me from my quiet life and all but forced me to investigate the Directorate. By then you were already on the track of Prometheus, and Dunne wanted to find out what you knew, presumably to neutralize you. Because the CIA is behind this treaty—they want to see increased surveillance around the world.”

“It may be, yes. For a variety of reasons, not least being the CIA’s need for a mission, a reason to survive now that the Cold War’s over. And yes, I have been on the track of Prometheus, but I still haven’t been able to get a clear sense of its outlines. I’ve been using the Directorate’s computers here, hacking away at Prometheus signals. We’ve identified certain members, like Arnaud, Prishnikov, Tsai, and Dunne; we’re also able to record communications between and among them. But everything is encrypted, of course. We can see the pattern of transmissions, but we can’t see the content. It’s sort of like a hologram—you need two ‘data spaces’ to be able to read the signals in the clear. I’ve been struggling with that long and hard, and so far without success. But if you have code information, anything …”

Bryson sat up in the hospital bed. He was feeling stronger; his legs felt crampy and needed to be exercised. “Hand me my phone, could you? It’s right there, on the table.”

“Nicholas, it’s not likely to work well here—we’re underground, and the signal—”

“Just hand it to me.” She gave him his small silver GSM mobile phone. He turned it over and pulled something out of its battery compartment. It was a tiny black oblong. “This may help you.”

She took it. “It’s—a chip, a silicon chip … ?”

“An encryption chip, to be precise,” he said. “Copied from Jacques Arnaud’s office phone.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

She took him down a long subterranean passage that led from the clinic to another wing of the facility. The floors were highly polished stone, the walls white, the low ceilings acoustically insulated. There was no sunlight, no window; they could have been anywhere in the world.

“This facility was built a decade ago or so as the Directorate’s European base of operations,” she explained. “And I’ve been working here since—well, since I left the States.” She left unspoken: since I left you. “But when it became clear that our U.S. operations had been breached— likely a result of our investigation into Prometheus—Waller ordered the entire Washington office transferred here, which necessitated additional construction. As you’ll see, very little is visible from the outside; it appears to be nothing more than a posh little research facility built into the side of a mountain.”

“I’ll take your word for it that we’re in the Dordogne,” Bryson said. His legs were fine; the only discomfort came from the wound in his side, which shot daggers of pain up and down his back as he walked.

“Well, you’ll see soon enough when I take you for a walk outside. We’ll probably have a little downtime waiting for the chip to process.”

They came to a brushed-steel double-door where Elena entered a code on a small pad and then placed her thumb on a sensor. The doors slid open. The air inside was cool and dry.

The walls of the low-ceilinged room were lined with racks of supercomputers, workstations, television monitors. “We believe this is the most powerful supercomputer center in the world,” Elena said. “We have Crays with petaflops of processing power, capable of quadrillions of operations per second. There are linked IBM-SP nodes, multithreaded-architecture computers, an SGI Onyx Reality Engine system. There’s a mass-storage system with a hundred and twenty gigabytes of on-line capacity, a twenty-terabyte robotic tape server.”

“You’re losing me, darling.”

But her excitement was palpable; she could barely contain it. She was in her element here, the Romanian graduate student who’d learned advanced mathematics on blackboards and rudimentary 1970s-era computers and now suddenly found herself in wonderland. She had always been like this, as long as he’d known her—transported by her work, bewitched by the technology that made it all possible.

“Don’t forget the seventy-five miles of fiber-optic cable that’s here, Elena.” It was Chris Edgecomb, the tall, slender, green-eyed Guyanan with mocha skin. “Man, every time I see you, you look rougher and rougher!” Chris threw his arms around Bryson, hugged him hard. “They brought you back.”

Bryson winced but smiled, happy to see the computer specialist again after so long a time. “I guess I can’t stay away.”

“Well, I know your wife must be glad to see you again too.”

“I don’t think ‘glad’ is a strong enough word,” said Elena.

“Saint Christopher seems to take good care of you, though,” said Chris. “No matter what you go through. I’m not going to ask where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing, of course. But it’s good to see you. I’ve been helping Elena on the software side of things, trying to crack the Prometheus message traffic. But it’s a bear. Strong crypto. And we’ve got toys here, man—a serious, high-speed connection to the Internet backbone for distributed computing. An all-digital, gigabit-capacity communication satellite operating in the K- and Ka-frequency bands, in geosynchronous orbit, with the ability to carry digital communications at fiber-optic data rates.”

Elena inserted the cryptochip in a port in one of the Digital Alpha machines. “You see, stored on tape here are five months of encrypted communications among the Prometheans,” she explained. “We’ve been able to pick it up by means of simple phone taps and satellite sweeps, but we haven’t been able to crack them—we haven’t been able to read them, listen to them, to understand! The encryption is too strong. If this is really a bug-free copy of the Prometheus algorithmic ‘key,’ we may have a breakthrough.”

“How quickly will you know?” asked Bryson.

“It might be an hour, maybe several hours. Or maybe less, depending on a number of factors, including what level the key is from. Think of it as a key to an apartment building: the key may be a master, the kind that opens every door in the whole building. Or maybe it just opens the door to an individual unit. We’ll see. Either way, it’s exactly what we’ve needed to break Prometheus.”

“Why don’t I give you a page or a call when I have a hit?” Chris said. “In the meantime I think Ted Waller wants to see you two.”

 

 

Waller’s spacious, though windowless, office was furnished identically to his old one on K Street—the same seventeenth-century Kurdish rugs on the floor, the same British oil paintings of dogs grasping fowl in their mouths.

Waller was sitting behind his same massive French oak desk. “Nicky, Elena, I have a morsel of information that might be of interest to you. Elena, I don’t believe you’ve met one of our most talented and redoubtable field operatives, who’s honoring us with an all-too-infrequent visit home.” A large, high-backed chair that had been facing Waller’s desk swiveled around slowly. It was Layla.

“Ah, yes,” Elena said, taking Layla’s hand icily. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

“And I of you,” Layla replied, her tone no warmer. She did not get up. “Hello, Nick.”

Bryson nodded. “I believe last time we saw each other you were trying to kill me.”

“Oh, that,” Layla said, blushing. “Nothing personal, you understand.”

“Of course.”

“In any case, I thought you might want to know that it seems as if our friend Jacques Arnaud may be taking himself out of the picture,” Layla said, regarding them both with a clear, confident gaze.

“How do you mean?” Bryson asked.

“He’s taking steps to liquidate all his holdings. The actions, I’d have to say, of a frightened man. This isn’t an orderly retreat, or the migration of assets from one sector to another. Not business as usual, so to say. The merchant of death is putting himself out to pasture.”

“But that makes no sense!” Bryson said. “I don’t see the logic— do you?”

“Well,” Layla said, almost smiling, “that’s why we have analysts like Elena. To make sense of what operatives like you and I work so hard to collect.”

Elena had been silent, her lips forming a thoughtful moue. Now her eyes focused. “Your source, Layla?”

“One of Arnaud’s great rivals. A man nearly as estimable, and every bit as amoral, as Arnaud himself—a brother in malevolence—and yet he despises him with the enmity Cain felt for Abel. His name is Alain Poirier. It will not be new to you, I am sure.”

“So you’ve just learned from Arnaud’s great rival about the incipient dissolution of Arnaud’s enterprises,” Elena said.

“That’s pretty much the shape of it,” Layla said. “In English, anyway. You’d no doubt find it more memorable couched in the language of algorithms. I’m sure your methods are unfathomably obscure.”

Waller watched the jousting between the two women as if at Wimbledon.

“Actually,” Elena replied, “they begin with a pretty commonplace axiom: consider the source. For instance, you believe that Poirier is an enemy of Arnaud’s. This is a natural assumption. They have depicted themselves in that light. In fact, they have done so all too assiduously.”

“What are you trying to say?” Layla said coolly.

“I think if you investigate further, you’ll discover that Poirier and Arnaud are actually business partners. Principals in a series of interconnected, widely dispersed holding companies. The rivalry is a ruse, pure and simple.”

Layla narrowed her eyes. “You’re saying the information I have is worthless?”

“Not at all,” Elena said. “The fact that you’ve been ‘rumbled’—identified and fed a line—is very useful intelligence indeed. Obviously Arnaud wishes us to believe this about him. We must attend not to the falsehood so much as the attempt to propagate the falsehood.”

Layla fell silent for a moment. “You may have a point,” she conceded sullenly.

“If Arnaud is trying to discourage our scrutiny,” Bryson said, “the natural conclusion is that he’s part of an enterprise that must elude scrutiny to succeed. They want us off our guard, to sow confusion. Something is happening, and soon. We can’t let anything escape us now. Christ, we’re dealing with forces that have marshaled an unprecedented degree of power and knowledge. Our best hope is that they underestimate us.”

“My fear,” Layla said ruefully, “is that they’ll be right to.”

 

 

Waller had left Directorate headquarters for an urgent meeting in Paris, and in the meantime Bryson and Elena had to wait. They passed the time by going for a long hike outside, down the mountainside, through hedges of rosemary, along the banks of the Dordogne. They were indeed in France, as Bryson realized once they’d emerged from the subterranean tunnels of the Directorate facility. The main entrance and exit seemed to be through an ancient stone villa built into the mountain face. Observers and passersby would see only the villa, which was large enough to plausibly contain offices and research facilities for an American think tank, presumably an off-site boondoggle for American scientists. It would explain the traffic in and out of the facility, the flights arriving and departing from the local airstrip. No one would have any idea of how large and far-ranging the facility really was, how deeply carved into the mountain.

Bryson walked more carefully than he otherwise might have, favoring his wounded right side, from time to time grimacing at the pain. They descended the craggy cliffs, walking along an old pilgrim path through a valley of walnut farms that hugged the Dordogne River, that ancient watercourse that wound its way past Souillac and down to Bordeaux. These were the farms of solid peasants, the salt of the earth and the dour custodians of the French countryside, though some of the simple stone cottages had over the years become the homes of Englishmen who couldn’t afford to vacation in Provence or Tuscany. Higher on the cliffs were the local wine châteaux that made good vin du pays. In the distance, the verdant landscape north of Cahors was dotted with medieval hill towns where the small restaurants served up humble but serious cuisine du terroir to the large peasant families on Sundays. Bryson and Elena wended their way through the woods, with their famous truffles hidden away beneath the roots of ancient trees, whose secret locations are passed down in families from generation to generation, kept secret even from the very owners of the land.

“It was Ted’s idea to relocate here,” Elena explained as they walked, hand in hand. “You can see why a man who so loves to eat would fall in love with the countryside, with the chevres and the walnut oil and the truffles. But it’s quite practical as well. We’re quite well hidden here, the cover is plausible, the airstrip convenient. And there are fast, efficient highways in every direction—north to Paris, east to Switzerland and Italy, south to the Mediterranean, west to Bordeaux and the Atlantic. My parents loved it here.” Her voice became soft, pensive. “They missed the homeland, of course, but it was such a wonderful place to spend their last years.” She pointed to a cluster of stone cottages far off in the distance. “We lived in one of those little houses there.”

“‘We’?”

“I lived with them, took care of them.”

“I’m happy for you. My loss was their gain.”

She smiled, squeezed his hand. “You know, the old saying is true. Mai rrut, mai drãgut.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he translated. “And what did you always used to say—celor ce duc mai mult dorul, le pare mai dulce odorul? Absence sharpens love, but presence strengthens it, right?”

“Nicholas, it’s been hard for me, you know. Very hard.”

“And for me. More so.”

“I’ve had to rebuild my life without you. But the ache, the sense of loss, never went away. Was it the same for you?”

“I suspect it was much harder for me, because of the uncertainty. Because of never knowing why—why you disappeared, where you went, what you thought.”

“Oh, iubito! Te ador! We were both victims—victims, hostages to a world of distrust and suspicion.”

“I was told you were ‘assigned’ to me as a watcher.”

“Assigned? We fell in love, and that quite by accident. How can I ever prove to you I was not? I was in love with you, Nicholas. I still am.”

He took her through Harry Dunne’s lies, the tale of a young man selected for his athletic and linguistic abilities, then recruited blind, manipulated, his parents killed.

“They are very clever, the Prometheans,” she said. “With an organization that is so cloaked in layers of secrecy like ours, it is not difficult to construct a plausible lie. Then they made it seem that you were a hostile, that you were trying to destroy us—so you could not check on the accuracy of what they told you.”

“But did you know about Waller?”

“About —”

“About his …” Bryson spoke tentatively. “His background.”

She nodded. “About Russia. Yes, he briefed me. But not long ago, just recently. I think only because he was planning to bring you in, and he knew we would talk.”

Her phone rang. “Yes?” Her face brightened. “Thank you, Chris.”

Hanging up, she said to Bryson, “We have something.”

 

 

Chris Edgecomb handed Elena a pile of red-bordered folders, each thick with printouts. “Man, when this code cracked, it cracked. We had five high-speed laser printers smoking, printing out all this stuff. The main thing that slowed us down was the artificial-intelligence transcript agent— converting the spoken word to the printed one requires huge computing power and a lot of time, even at the speed of our processors. And we’re still nowhere close to done. I tried to winnow out anything extraneous, but I decided to err on the side of being inclusive, and leave the main decisions to you as to what’s important and what’s not.”

“Thanks, Chris,” she said, taking the folders and laying them out on the long table in the conference room adjacent to the supercomputer center.

“I’ll have coffee brought in for you two. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”

They divided up the pile of printouts and began poring over them. By far the most valuable product was the decrypts of telephone conversations among the principals, of which there were many, some extensive, some conference calls. Since the exchanges were encrypted, the participants tended to speak freely. Some of them—the more canny ones, including Arnaud and Prishnikov—remained circumspect. They used coded language, references that the other would understand without having to resort to explicitness. Here, Elena’s knowledge of speech patterns, her ability to discern deliberate concealment even in plain speech, was crucial. She flagged quite a few transcripts with sticky pads. And since Bryson was more familiar with the players and their backgrounds, as well as with the specifics of certain operations, he was able to pick up on different references, other meanings.

Barely had they started reading through the papers than Bryson said, “I’d say we’ve got the goods on them. It’s no longer a matter of hearsay. Here, Prishnikov is actually planning the Geneva anthrax attack, fully three weeks in advance.”

“But they’re clearly not running the show,” Elena said. “They’re deferring to another—really, to two others, possibly Americans.”

“Who?”

“So far they don’t use the names. There’s a reference to West Coast time, so one of them may be either in California or somewhere on the Pacific Coast of the U.S.”

“What about London? Any idea who the puppetmaster might be there?”

“No … .”

Chris Edgecomb suddenly came into the room, holding aloft a few sheets of paper. “This just broke,” he said, excitement evident in his face. “It’s a pattern of funds-transfer traffic into and out of the First Washington Mutual Bancorp—I think you might find it interesting.” He handed Elena several sheets of paper, each covered with columns of figures.

“That’s the bank in Washington used by a majority of members of Congress, isn’t that right?” said Bryson. “The one you suspect was involved in blackmailing—leaking personal information on opponents of the treaty?”

“Yes,” said Elena. “These are proprietary transfers.”

Edgecomb nodded.

“The cycles, the periodicity—it’s unmistakable.”

“What is it?” asked Bryson.

“This is a sequence of authorization codes characteristic of a wholly owned entity. A trail, as it were.”

“Meaning what?” Bryson demanded.

“This Washington bank appears to be owned and controlled by another, larger financial institution.”

“That’s not uncommon,” Bryson said.

“The point is, there’s a pattern of deliberate obfuscation going on here—that is, the ownership is elaborately concealed, carefully hidden.”

“Is there a way to find out who the secret owner is?” Bryson asked.

Elena nodded, distracted, as she studied the figures. “Chris, the recurring number here has to be the ABA routing code. Do you think you can run it down, identify which —”

“I’m one step ahead of you, Elena,” he said. “It’s a New York-based firm called Meredith Waterman …?”

“My God,” she said. “That’s one of the oldest, most respected investment banks on Wall Street. It makes Morgan Stanley or Brown Brothers Harriman look like upstarts. I don’t understand—why would Meredith Waterman be involved in blackmailing senators and congressmen into supporting the International Treaty on Surveillance and Security … ?”

“Meredith Waterman is probably privately held,” said Bryson.

“So?”

“So it may itself be a holding company, in a sense—a front. In other words, maybe it’s being used by another institution or an individual or a group of individuals—say, the Prometheus Group—to mask their true holdings. So if there’s a way to get a list of all past and present partners in Meredith Waterman, maybe also majority owners …”

“That shouldn’t be hard at all,” said Edgecomb. “Even privately held firms are strictly regulated by the SEC and the FDIC, and they’re required to file all sorts of documents which we should be able to access.”

“One or more of those names may indicate Prometheus ownership,” said Bryson.

Edgecomb nodded and left the room.

Bryson suddenly thought of something. “Richard Lanchester was a partner at Meredith Waterman.”

“What?”

“Before he left Wall Street and went into public service, he was a big star in investment banking. Meredith Waterman’s golden boy. That’s how he made his fortune.”

“Lanchester? But he—you said he was sympathetic, he was helpful to you.”

“He lent a sympathetic ear, yes. He seemed genuinely alarmed. He listened, but in reality he did nothing.”

“He said he wanted you to come back to him with more evidence.”

“Which is just a variant of what Harry Dunne wanted—to use me as a cat’s paw.”

“You think Richard Lanchester could be part of Prometheus?”

“I wouldn’t rule him out.”

Elena returned to the transcript she’d been scrutinizing, and then she looked up suddenly. “Listen to this,” she said. “‘The transfer of power will be complete forty-eight hours after the British ratify the treaty.’”

“Who’s speaking?” asked Bryson.

“I —I don’t know. The call originates in Washington, routed through a sterile pipeline. The unnamed caller is speaking to Prishnikov.”

“Can you get a voice ID?”

“Possibly. I’d have to listen to the actual recording, determine whether the voice was altered, and if so, how well it was altered.”

“Forty-eight hours … the ‘transfer of power’ … to whom, from whom. Or to what, from what? Jesus, I’ve got to get to London right away. When is the jet scheduled to leave?”

She looked at her watch. “Three hours and twenty minutes from now.”

“Not soon enough. If we drove …”

“No, it would take far too long. I suggest we just go out to the airstrip and invoke Ted Waller’s name, pull all the strings we’ve got, ask them to fly out as soon as absolutely possible.”

“It’s just as Dmitri Labov said.”

“Who?”

“Prishnikov’s deputy. He said, ‘The machinery has just about fallen into place. Power is to be transferred fully! Everything will come into view.’ He said that only days remained.”

“This must be the deadline he was talking about. My God, Nick, you’re right, there’s no time to waste.”

As she stood up, the lights in the room seemed to flicker briefly, the interruption a fraction of a second at most.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Is there an emergency generator in the facility somewhere?”

“Yes, of course, there must be.”

“It just went on.”

“But it would only go on in case of a true emergency,” she said, puzzled. “Nothing has happened, as far as I can tell—”

“Move!” shouted Bryson suddenly. “Out of here!”

“What?”

“Run! Elena, move it—now! Something’s been patched into the power grid … . Where’s the nearest exit to outside?”

Elena turned, pointed to the left.

“Jesus, Elena, let’s go! I’ll bet the doors lock automatically, sealing intruders in as well as out. I know that’s what’s going on!”

He raced down the hallway; Elena scooped up several computer diskettes from the table and then ran after him.

“Which way?” he screamed.

“Straight through those doors!”

She led the way, and he followed. In a matter of seconds they had come to a set of steel doors marked EMERGENCY EXIT; a red crash-bar at the middle of the doors was used to force the doors open, probably setting off an alarm at the same time. Bryson slammed himself against the crash bar; the double-doors opened outward into the dark night as an alarm rang. A rush of cold air came at them. No more than two feet in front of them was a floor-to-ceiling gate constructed of steel bars. The gate was slowly closing, automatically, from left to right.

“Jump!” shouted Bryson, diving through the steadily narrowing space. He spun around and grabbed Elena, dragging her through the gap between the gate and the stone wall, her body just barely clearing it. They were on the steep hillside next to the old stone villa, the electric gate concealed by tall hedges.

Bryson and Elena ran directly ahead, away from the villa and down the hill. “Is there a car around here somewhere?” asked Bryson.

“There’s an all-terrain vehicle parked right in front of the villa,” she replied. “It’s—there it is!”

A small, boxy, four-wheel-drive Land Rover Defender 90 glinted in the moonlight twenty yards ahead. Bryson ran toward it, jumped into the front seat, and felt for the key. It wasn’t in the ignition. Jesus, where the hell was it? In a remote setting like this, wouldn’t it be left in the car? Elena leaped into the car. “Under the mat,” she said.

He reached down, felt the key under the rubber floor mat. Inserting the key in the ignition, he started it; the Land Rover roared to life.

“Nick, what’s happening?” Elena cried out as the car lurched forward and down the steep path away from the compound.

But before Bryson had a chance to speak, there was an immense, dazzlingly bright flash of white light, and a rumbling explosion that seemed to come from deep in the mountain. In a second or two the blast surfaced, the sound terrifyingly loud, deafening, all-enveloping. As Bryson steered the Land Rover around a sharp twist, crashing into and then through vegetation, he could feel the heat sear his back, exactly as hot as if he’d leaned right back into the fire.

Elena turned back, gripping the handrails to steady herself. “Oh, my God, Nick!” she screamed. “The facility—the compound—it’s been completely destroyed! Oh, God, Nick, look at that!”

But Bryson would not turn around; he did not dare. They had to keep moving. There was not a second to lose. The wheels spun through the underbrush as he accelerated, faster and faster, and he thought just one thing: My love—you’re safe.

You’re safe, you’re alive, you’re with me.

For now.

Dear God, for now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

They arrived in London, both of them, by ten o’clock in the evening, by which point it was too late to accomplish what they had to do. They spent the night together in a hotel in Russell Square, in the same bed for the first time in five years. They were strangers to each other, in a sense, but each found the other’s body immediately familiar—reassuringly yet excitingly so. For the first time in five years they made love, the passion urgent, almost desperate. They fell asleep entangled in each other, exhausted both from the lovemaking and from the enormous strains that had impelled them there.

In the morning they spoke of the nightmare they had both witnessed, sifting details, trying to make some sense of the penetration.

“When you called the airstrip to reserve the jet,” asked Bryson, “you probably didn’t use a sterile line, did you?”

She shook her head slowly, her face taut with anxiety. “The airstrip wasn’t equipped with a scrambler on its end, so there was no point. But calls originating in the Directorate facility were generally considered safe, since our internal communications center was beyond the reach of outside interference. If we phoned London or Paris or Munich, say, we usually used the sterile channels—but only to protect the other end.”

“But calls made across such a distance—a hundred miles or more, for instance—generally are routed from landlines to microwave towers, and it’s the microwave transmission that’s penetrable by satellite surveillance, right?”

“That’s right—landlines can be tapped into, but not by satellite. It has to be by conventional means—phone taps placed on the wires and such. And that requires knowing exactly where the calls originated.”

“Prometheus obviously knew the details of the Dordogne center,” Bryson said quietly. “For all Waller’s precautions, the comings and goings, into and out of the airfield, must have been observed, noted. And the airstrip was an easy target for a conventional phone tap.”

“Waller—thank God, he was gone! But we have to reach him.”

“Jesus. I’m sure he knows. But Chris Edgecomb —”

She covered her eyes with her hand. “Oh, dear God, Chris! And Layla!”

“And dozens of others. Most of them I didn’t know any longer, but you must have had quite a few friends among them.”

She nodded silently, removed her hand from her eyes, which were flooded with tears.

After a moment’s silence, Bryson resumed. “They must have patched into the power grid and planted explosives—plastique—throughout and beneath the facility. Without inside resources—without human beings who’d been turned—they could never have done it. The Directorate was on the verge of unraveling the Prometheus Group’s plans, and so it had to be neutralized. They sent me—and others, I’m sure—and when those efforts didn’t pan out, they went for the direct approach.” He closed his eyes. “Whatever secrets, plans they’re protecting, we have to assume they’re of monumental importance to the men behind Prometheus.”

A direct, frontal approach to the treaty’s most vocal proponent, Lord Miles Parmore, was therefore doomed to fail: it would only alert their enemies without yielding information; such men were well guarded, well prepared for deception, misdirection. Moreover, Bryson’s instinct told him that Lord Parmore was not their man. He was a figurehead, a very public figure, closely watched, incapable of maneuvering behind the scenes. He could not be a Prometheus control. The true control would have to be someone affiliated with Parmore, connected to him in a tangential way. But connected how?

The Prometheus conspirators were too clever, too thorough, to allow connections to remain visible. Records would be altered, erased. Even close scrutiny would not reveal the hidden controls, the puppetmasters. The only giveaway would be what was not there, records missing, obviously deleted. Yet the search for such gaps would be the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

Finally, it was Bryson’s idea that they dig more deeply, dig into the past. It had been his experience that the truth could often be discerned there, in old files and books—records rarely accessed, too dispersed, too difficult to alter convincingly.

It was a theory, but only a theory, and it took them that morning to the British Library at St. Pancras, which lay sprawled across a landscaped square off Euston Road, its orange, hand-molded Leicester brick shimmering in the bright morning sun. Bryson and Elena made their way through the plaza, past the large bronze of Newton by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, and into the spacious entrance hall. Bryson scanned the faces of the people he passed, attuned to the slightest sign of recognition. He had to assume that the Promethean networks had been alerted to him, perhaps even to their presence in London, though so far there was no sign of it. Inside the library, a broad flight of travertine steps took them to the main reading room—an expanse of oak desks with individual desk lamps—and they walked through the discreet paneled doors that led to the carrels. The double carrel they had reserved was private but not cramped, its round-backed oak chairs and green leather-topped desks creating a slightly clubby feeling.

Within an hour, they had gathered most of the necessary volumes, starting with selections from the official proceedings of Parliament— heavy, large volumes with rugged, black library bindings. Many had been unopened for years, and gave off a musty smell of decay when the pages were turned. Nick and Elena went through them with intense and single-minded focus. Had there been earlier debates about civil threats and civil liberties—other decisions with implications for civilian surveillance? On a pad, they each jotted down errant facts—unexplained references, names, sites. These were areas where the marks of the sculptor’s chisel might be in evidence.

It was Elena who first spoke the name aloud. Rupert Vere. A low-key, soft-spoken, and highly expert maneuverer, the embodiment of political moderation but also—the chronicles made this clear over the years—a master of procedural cunning. Was it possible? Was the intuition worth checking out?

Rupert Vere, Member of Parliament from Chelsea, was Britain’s foreign secretary.

Bryson followed the intricate tracery of the Chelsea MP’s career through the smaller regional papers, which were more attuned to incidental details, less preoccupied with the official significance of events. It was painstaking, even stupefying work, the matter of collating a hundred tiny articles in dozens of local gazettes and circulars, the paper often yellowed and brittle. At times, Bryson was seized with exasperation—it seemed like madness to think that they’d find clues to the most concealed of conspiracies right out there in the open, in the public record.

But he persevered. They both did. Elena made the analogy to her signals-intercept work: within the cascade of noise, the abundance of useless information, might be a signal somewhere—if only they could make it out. Rupert Vere had graduated with a first from Brasenose College, Oxford; he had a reputation for laziness, which was quite likely a cunning subterfuge. He also had a distinct gift for cultivating friendships, a Guardian columnist noted: “ … and so his influence goes beyond the formal ambit of his authority.” A picture was coming gradually into focus: for years, Foreign Secretary Rupert Vere had been working behind the scenes to prepare the way for passage of the treaty, calling in political debts, inveigling friends and allies. And yet his own pronouncements were temperate, his ties to the firebrands nowhere in evidence.

Finally, it was a seemingly trivial piece of data that caught Bryson’s attention. In the yellowing pages of the Evening Standard, there was an account of the 1965 rowing races in Pangbourne, on the Thames, where nationally ranked teams from secondary schools around the country competed. In small agate type, the paper reported on the teams. Vere, it appeared, rowed for Marlborough, where he was a sixth-former. The language was stilted, the account seemingly innocuous.

At the Pangbourne Junior Sculls, a number of the quads and doubles distinguished themselves. In particular, the J18 quad from Sir William Borlase School recorded the fastest time of the day (10m 28s), but were pressed quite close by the crews in the strong J16 class where St George’s College Crew (10m 35s), with the GBv France double scullers Matthews and Loake aboard, were chased hard by Westminster. In both the J14 classes the Hereford Cathedral School doubles proved outstanding (12m 11s, and 13m 22s). There were also some high-class performers among the J16 singles. At the front Rupert Vere (11 m 50s) had 13 seconds on his Marlborough team mate Miles Parmore, while David Houghton (13m 5s) finished almost half a minute clear of his pursuers. Showing real promise, Parrish of St George’s (12m 6s) and Kellman of Dragon School (12m 10s) headed the MJ16 class, finishing fourth and fifth overall. The younger age groups race over a 1500m distance at Pangbourne. The WJ13 winner, Dawson of Marlborough (8m 51s), had finished a creditable second-equal in the morning’s WJ14 race and now finished fifth overall, behind MJ13 winner Goodey.

He reread the item and soon found a couple of similar ones. Vere had rowed for Marlborough, in the same eight as Miles Parmore.

Yes. The British Foreign Secretary and MP from Chelsea, an early champion of the treaty, had been a teammate and longtime friend of Lord Miles Parmore.

Had they found their man?

 

 

The New Palace of Westminster—better known as the Houses of Parliament—was, in its very blend of antiquity and modernity, a quintessentially British institution. As far back as the Viking King Canute, a royal palace existed on these grounds. But it was Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror in the eleventh century who enlarged the ancient dream of royal munificence and splendor. The historical continuities were as real as the Magna Carta; the discontinuities were greater still. And when the structure was rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century, it represented the height of the Gothic Revival style, an enduring legacy to the ingenuity of its architects—a vision of an artificial, invented antiquity, which would be reinvented once more when a World War II blitzkrieg destroyed the Commons Chamber. Carefully restored, albeit in a more subdued interpretation of late Gothic, it was a replica of a replica.

Even as it opened onto one of London’s busiest centers of traffic, Parliament Square, the Houses of Parliament themselves remained aloof and protected by their eight-acre arcadian redoubt. The “new palace” itself was a whirlpool of human traffic. It had almost twelve hundred rooms, and fully two miles of passages. The areas of the buildings that members routinely used, that tourists routinely saw, were impressive indeed, but there was much more, the plans for which were, for reasons of security, not readily accessible. But they, too, could be found in the historical archives. Bryson had given himself two hours to learn and master their details. A series of shifting orthogonal forms arranged themselves in his mind into a layout that had a visceral immediacy to him. He knew precisely how the Peers’ Library related to the Prince’s Chamber; he knew the distance between the Speaker’s Residence and the Sergeant-at-Arms residence, knew how long it would take to go from the Commons Lobby to the first of the Minister’s rooms. In an era without central heating, it was essential to have some special chambers that were protected from the exterior wall by unused, insulating spaces. Moreover, any vast public work would, it was understood, be in constant need of repair and refurbishment, and there had to be passageways for workmen to go about their tasks without disturbing the grandeur of the public spaces. Like government itself, its functioning required complex spaces and relays that were invisible to the citizenry.

Elena, meanwhile, scoured every recorded detail of Rupert Vere’s life. Another tiny detail had caught her attention: when Vere was sixteen, he’d won a Sunday Times crossword puzzle competition. He was a gamesman, which seemed somehow apt: yet the game he was playing was anything but trivial.

At five o’clock in the morning, a backpacker in a leather flight jacket and black plastic glasses walked around the perimeter of the Houses of Parliament, like a sleepless tourist trying to walk off a hangover. Or at least Bryson hoped he would be taken for one. He stopped before the black statue of Cromwell, near St. Stephen’s Entrance, and read the carefully lettered sign: PACKAGES LARGER THAN A4, OTHER THAN FLOWERS, MUST BE DELIVERED VIA THE BLACK ROD’S GARDEN ENTRANCE. He walked past the Peer’s Entrance, noting its precise location vis-à-vis the others; then made his way through the small stand of horse-chestnut trees and noted the location of each security camera, invariably posted high in white enameled hoods. The Metropolitan Police of London, Bryson had learned, maintains a network of traffic cameras, three hundred of them fixed on posts and high buildings across the city. Each has a number, and if an authorized person types in the number, he or she can call up a clear, color image of London. It is possible to rotate the camera and zoom it in. It is possible to follow police chases, moving from camera to camera, and to follow a motorist or pedestrian without being detected. It would not be wise to spend much time on surveillance here, he decided; this would have to be brief.

He took in the four-tiered structure of the main gallery, mapping the physical structure itself with the mental representations he had formed, turning the abstract metrics into concrete perceptions. It was essential to transmute data into intuition, which could be accessed instantly and unreflectively, without calculation and consideration. That was one of Waller’s early lessons to him, and among the most valuable. In the field, the only maps that matter are in your head.

St. Stephen’s Tower, the clock tower at the north end of the Parliament building, was three hundred and twenty feet tall. The Victoria Tower, on the opposite end of the complex, was wider but nearly as high. Between the towers, the roofing was garlanded with scaffolding; the process of exterior repair work was almost unceasing. External stairs surmounted the roof twenty feet from the Victoria Tower. And then he ambled toward the Thames and scanned the far side of the complex, which abutted directly onto the Thames. By the galleries, there was a fifteen-foot terrace, but at the towers to either end, the drop was sheer, a plumb line. Across the river, he saw a few anchored boats. Some were designated for sightseeing trips, others for maintenance purposes. One was stenciled FUEL AND LUBRICATION SERVICE. He took note of it.

The plan was set, the schedule determined. Bryson made his way back to their hotel and changed, and then he and Elena went over the plan twice more. Yet his concerns were not allayed. The plan had too many moving parts; he knew the probability of a mishap grew geometrically as the sequence of constituent events lengthened. But there was no choice now.

 

 

Smartly attired in a double-breasted, pin-striped suit and round hornrimmed glasses, Bryson—or rather, as his pass attested, Nigel Hilbreth— ascended the stairs from the lower waiting hall to the upper waiting hall of the Chamber of Commons and took his seat in the gallery. His face was composed into a mask of bland disinterest, his sandy hair neatly parted, mustache tidy. He was every inch a midlevel civil servant, including even the fragrance—Penhaligon’s Blenheim, purchased on Wellington Street. A simple expedient perhaps, but in some ways equally as effective as the dye, glasses, and adhesive-backed facial hair. It was originally Waller, too, who first alerted him to the rarely discussed olfactory aspects of camouflage. When Bryson had an assignment in East Asia, he would abstain from meat and dairy products for several weeks: Asians, with their diets of fish and soy, found Westerners to have a characteristically “meaty” smell, their skin proteins affected by their beef-rich diet. He made similar dietary accommodations preceding assignments in the various Arabic regions. An adjustment in fragrance was a trivial change, but Bryson knew that it was often through such subliminal clues that we detect the strangers among us.

“Nigel Hilbreth” sat quietly observing the tense parliamentary deliberations, a small black briefcase by his feet. Below, on the long, green leather-upholstered benches, the MPs sat with an unusual measure of attentiveness, their documents lit by the small capsule lamps that dangled just above their heads, suspended on long wires from a vaulted ceiling. It was an ungainly solution to a problem that admitted no elegant one. The ministers of the current government sat on the front bench to the right side; the opposition faced them to the left. The gallery benches, paneled with precisely incised dark-brown woodwork, rose steeply above them, in balcony formation.

Bryson had arrived in the middle of the emergency session, but he knew precisely what was being bruited about: it was the issue that was at the forefront of every organ of governmental deliberation in the world right now, or had been only recently: the Treaty on Surveillance and Security. In this instance, however, the precipitating incident was the horrendous damage wrought by a recidivist splinter faction of Sinn Fein, which had detonated a shrapnel bomb in the middle of Harrods during one of its busiest hours, wounding hundreds. Was that, too, secretly funded and instigated by the Prometheus Group?

For the first time, he was able to see Rupert Vere in the flesh. Foreign Secretary Vere was a deceptively wizened-looking man, seemingly older than his fifty-six years, but one could tell that his small, darting eyes missed little. Bryson glanced at his watch—another subtle prop, an old tank watch from McCallister & Son.

Half an hour earlier, Bryson had, adopting the blase manner of a Whitehall civil servant, asked a messenger to deliver a note, presumably official and semi-urgent Whitehall business, to the foreign secretary. Any minute now it would be brought to Vere by one of his assistants. Bryson wanted to study his reaction when he opened the note and read its contents. The note—a simple, almost childish contrivance that Elena, a lover of puzzles, had devised—was framed like an English crossword-puzzle clue:

Put yourself between support and a definite article, then add a couple. Puzzled? See you at your alcove suite during the intersession.

It had been Elena’s inspiration to put, in the form of a clue, the one watchword that he could not ignore.

As a member of the Opposition held forth on the threats to civil liberties posed by the prospective treaty, Rupert Vere was handed an envelope. He opened it, scanned the note, and then looked up into the gallery directly at Bryson. He had an intent yet nearly unreadable expression. It was all Bryson could do not to flinch; long seconds passed before he realized the foreign secretary was merely gazing up into the middle distance, that his eyes weren’t focusing on anyone at all. Bryson struggled to maintain his placid, bored expression, but it was not easy. If he attracted notice, he was done for: that had to be the operating assumption. The sentries controlled by the Prometheus Group undoubtedly knew exactly what he looked like. But there was a good chance that they hadn’t been notified about Elena, or that if they knew about her, they would assume she had been killed in the destruction of the Directorate’s Dordogne headquarters.

It was Elena, therefore, who would have to make the direct approach. The session would adjourn in ten minutes. What happened next would determine everything.

 

 

Members of the British cabinet typically have offices on Whitehall and other nearby streets; the foreign secretary is the titular head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and his official quarters are on King Charles Street. But Bryson knew that because of his hours negotiating with members of parliament, Rupert Vere also maintained quarters beneath the sloping roof of the Palace of Westminster. The suite was a mere five-minute walk from the Commons chambers, and provided a discreet meeting area for matters that required sensitivity and immediacy.

Would Vere do what the note had suggested, or would he surprise them with another response altogether? Bryson believed that Vere’s primary reaction would be curiosity, that he would indeed return directly to his office under the eaves. But in case Vere panicked, or decided for some reason to go elsewhere, Bryson had to tail him. Having identified the foreign secretary, he was able to follow him out of the Commons Chambers by picking him out of the crowd of Parliament members. He shadowed Vere as he made his way up the stone committee staircase, past busts of prime ministers past, to his Parliamentary office, until he could follow him no longer without attracting attention.

Rupert Vere’s personal secretary was Belinda Headlam, a thickset woman in her early sixties who wore her gray hair in a tight bun. “This lady says you’re expecting her,” she murmured to the foreign secretary as he entered the antechamber. “She says she’s left you a note?”

“Yes, well,” Vere replied, and then he saw Elena sitting on the tufted leather sofa outside his office. She had taken care to project the right image: her navy suit revealed décolletage, though not inappropriately so; her glossy brown hair was pulled back; her lips were painted in eggplant gloss. She looked stunning, yet at the same time professional.

Vere raised his eyebrows and smiled rapaciously. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. “But you’ve certainly got my attention. Your note, that is.” He beckoned her to follow him into his small, dim, but exquisitely appointed office built in the eaves beneath the Parliament building’s vast slate roof. He sat behind his desk and indicated that she should sit in a leather chair a few feet away.

For a moment, he shuffled his correspondence. Elena was conscious of Vere sizing her up—less, it almost seemed to her, as an adversary than as a potential conquest.

“You must be a puzzler, too,” he said at last. “The answer is ‘Prometheus,’ is that right? A rather crude clue, though. Me between pro and the, plus us.” He paused, his eyes boring into hers. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Miss …?”

“Goldoni,” she replied. She had not lost her accent, so it would have to be a foreign name. She watched him closely but could not read him. Rather than pretending he didn’t understand what she was hinting at, he had immediately acknowledged the word Prometheus—yet his bland reaction revealed no alarm, no fear, not even any defensiveness. If he was acting, he was skilled, though that would not have surprised her: he had not gotten as far as he had without some talent at dissembling.

“I assume your office is sterile?” Elena said. He gave her a look of puzzled incomprehension, but she persisted. “You know who sent me. You’ll have to excuse the irregularity of this means of making contact, but then that’s the reason for my visit. The matter is urgent. The existing channels of communication may have been compromised.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said haughtily.

“You must not use the existing codes,” Elena said, watching his face closely. “This is of utmost importance, particularly with so little time remaining before the Prometheus plan goes into force. I will be in touch with you soon to indicate when the channels have been normalized.”

Vere’s tolerant smile faded. He cleared his throat and got to his feet. “You’re starkers,” he said. “Now, if you’ll please excuse me —”

“No!” Elena interrupted in an urgent whisper. “All cryptosystems have been compromised. Their integrity cannot be relied upon! We are changing all the codes. You must await further instructions.”

All of Vere’s professional charm had vanished; his face grew hard. “Get out of here at once!” he demanded in a loud, clipped voice. Was that panic in his voice? Was he using indignation to cover his fear? “I’ll be reporting you to the constabulary, and you’ll be making a grave mistake if you ever try to enter these halls again.”

Vere reached over to press his intercom button, but before he could do so, the door to his chambers swung open. A slim, tweedy man entered, shutting the door behind him. Elena recognized the face from her recent researches: it was Rupert Vere’s longtime deputy, Simon Dawson, the seniormost member of Vere’s staff, who was charged with formulating policy.

“Rupes,” Simon Dawson said in an almost languorous drawl. “I couldn’t help overhearing. Is this woman being tiresome?” Dawson’s pale brown hair, apple cheeks, and lanky figure gave him the unsettling look of a middle-aged schoolboy.

Vere was visibly relieved. “As a matter of fact, Simon, yes,” Vere said. “She’s nattering at me all kinds of hogwash—about something called Prometheus, about crypto-something-or-other, ‘Prometheus plans being in force’—utter madness! The lady must be reported to MI-5 at once—she’s a public danger.”

Elena took a few steps away from Vere’s desk, her gaze shifting from one man to the other. Something was very wrong. Dawson had closed the heavy oak door behind him, she noticed. That made no sense.

Unless …

Dawson withdrew a flat, silenced Browning from his Harris tweed jacket.

“Crikey, Simon, what are you doing with a pistol?” Vere asked. “That really shouldn’t be necessary. I’m sure this woman has the sense to leave at once, don’t you?” She studied the shifting expressions of Vere’s face, a rapid sequence of puzzlement, dismay, and fear.

The civil servant’s long, tapered fingers rested by the trigger with practiced ease. Elena’s heart was pounding, her eyes darting wildly around the room hoping to find an opportunity for disruption or escape.

Dawson looked into her eyes, and she returned the stare, boldly, brazenly, almost daring him to fire. Suddenly Dawson squeezed the trigger. Frozen with terror, she watched as the pistol bucked slightly in his hand. There was a spitting sound of a silenced bullet, and then a splotch of crimson spread across Foreign Secretary Rupert Vere’s heavily starched white shirt, and he collapsed onto the oriental carpet.

Dawson turned to Elena with a faint, glacial smile. “Now, that was unfortunate, wasn’t it? Having to cut short such a distinguished career. But then you really left me no choice. You told him far too much. He’s a clever man, and he’d easily put things together, and that wouldn’t do at all. That’s something you can understand, can’t you?” He moved closer to her, then closer still, until she could feel the clammy moisture of his breath. “Rupes may have been an indolent fellow, but he wasn’t dim. What did you think you were up to, chatting to him about Prometheus? This really isn’t on. But let’s talk about you, shall we?”

My God! Simon Dawson! It was another name she’d come across in the old Pangbourne news clips, the name of a younger classmate she’d assumed had later become Vere’s protégé.

Wrong.

Dawson was the control.

The same logic that had ruled out Miles Parmore should have ruled out Rupert Vere: he was too visible. The real puppetmaster was the faceless deputy, working through his oblivious superior.

“So you kept him in the dark all along,” Elena said, half to herself.

“Rupes? There was no need for him to know. He’s always trusted my advice implicitly. But nobody had his charm. One needed the charming stooge. Needed, past tense. He’s not exactly necessary any longer, is he?”

She took a step back. “You mean because Britain’s now a signatory to the treaty.”

“Exactly. As of ten minutes ago. But who are you? I fancy we haven’t been introduced properly.” The Browning still rested comfortably in Dawson’s right hand. He pulled a flat metallic case from his breast pocket, evidently some sort of wireless personal digital assistant. “Let’s see what the Network has to say,” Dawson murmured. He held the device up in the air and pointed it toward her. An image of her face immediately appeared on the square LCD screen. Then the screen began to flicker as hundreds of faces flashed by almost in a blur, until a match was found.

“Elena Petrescu,” he said. He read from an electronic file. “Born in 1969, Bucharest, Romania. Only daughter of Andrei and Simona Petrescu, Andrei having been Romania’s leading specialist in cryptography. Ah, most intriguing. Exfiltrated from Bucharest just before the 1989 coup d’etat by … Nicholas Bryson.” He looked up. “You’re married to Nicholas Bryson. Now it comes together. Directorate employees, both of you. Separated for five years … in the year before you left, you bought, let’s see, three ovulation kits—obviously trying to get pregnant. Hmm … didn’t happen, I take it. Regular weekly sessions with a psychotherapist—I wonder, were you dealing with the difficulty of being a political defector in a strange country, or working at an agency as secret as the Directorate, or was it the crumbling marriage?”

There was something about the disjunction between what he was saying and his casual tone that made Elena shudder. She noticed that although he was still holding his Browning, he was paying it little attention.

“Your plans have leaked, you should know that,” Elena said.

“It really doesn’t concern me,” Dawson replied airily.

“I doubt that. You were concerned enough about Rupert Vere knowing and informing MI-5 that you killed him.”

“The CIA and MI-6 and MI-5 and all the other three-letter spy agencies have all been neutralized. The Directorate took us longer—perhaps by virtue of your paranoid structure—though the very secrecy that insulated you from penetration also made it that much easier for us to paralyze you, funnily enough. It’s strange how long it’s taken you people to realize that time has passed you by, that there’s simply no need for you any longer! The NSA is overwhelmed with the sheer volume of traffic—the E-mails and cell-phone calls it struggles to vacuum up, all the Internet traffic. Good God, it’s a Cold War relic—it thinks the Soviet Union never went away! And to think that there was once a time when the NSA was the crown jewel of American intelligence, the biggest, the best! Well, encryption has pretty much ended that reign. And the CIA—the folks who accidentally had us bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, who had no idea India had nuclear weapons! The ineptitude! The less said of them, the better. Intelligence agencies are a thing of the past. No wonder you all try so hard to block the rise of Prometheus—you’re like dinosaurs impotently raging against the inevitability of evolution! But by this weekend, your demise will be evident to the entire world. On the shores of the lake, a new global order will be assured, and the welfare of the human race will be secure as it’s never been before.” He turned his attention to the Browning once again, pointing it at her. “Sometimes the few must be sacrificed at the altar of the many. I can already see the headlines in the Telegraph—FOREIGN SECRETARY VERE SLAIN BY SUICIDAL STALKER. And in the Sun, something like SLAYS CAB MIN, THEN SELF. They’ll probably intimate some sordid sexual angle. And the gun and the powder spray will positively identify you as the killer.”

As Dawson spoke, he was unscrewing the silencer from the Browning; then, as tightly coiled as a mountain cat, he took two long, rapid steps toward Elena. With a grip of iron, he placed the gun in her hand, crushing her fingers around it, then bent her arm so that the barrel pressed hard against her temple. Elena started thrashing violently, convulsively: if nothing else, she would spoil the tableau he had planned. She screamed at the top of her lungs. She felt as if another force altogether had taken possession of her body, the concentrated will to survive transmuting into a primal muscular response. She writhed and flailed, and when she heard another voice it seemed to come from a great distance.

Nick Bryson’s voice.

“Dawson, what on earth are you doing? She’s one of ours!” Bryson shouted. The door to the closet opened, and Bryson stepped out, disguised as a Whitehall civil servant with hairpiece, mustache, and glasses; only upon close examination did he bare any resemblance to Nicholas Bryson. The shoulders of his suit were flecked with wood splinters and dust, evidence that he had made his way into the office through a crawl space. “She was dispatched personally by Jacques Arnaud!” Bryson warned.

“What—who the hell are you?” gasped Dawson, spinning around to look at the intruder with mingled astonishment and uncertainty; in so doing, he momentarily loosened his grip on Elena, who suddenly lunged to one side. In one violent motion she was able to wrench the pistol, which Dawson had been forcing into her hand, away from him. Elena hurled it toward Bryson, who dove into the air and retrieved it.

Bryson gripped it in both hands, aiming it at Vere’s deputy. “Don’t move,” he said sharply. “Or there’ll be two bodies on the floor.”

Dawson froze, staring malevolently at Bryson, then shifting his eyes toward Elena.

“Now, we have a few questions for you,” Bryson said, advancing toward Dawson, the gun still pointed. “And you’d be wise to answer them as completely and truthfully as you can.”

Dawson shook his head in disgust, backing up slowly. “You’re sadly mistaken to think that you can threaten me. Prometheus has been in the planning for over a decade. It’s larger than any one person, any one nation for that matter.”

“Freeze!” Bryson shouted.

“You can kill me,” said Dawson, still backing up, edging closer and closer to Elena, “but it’s not going to change a thing, or even slow anything down. The gun in your hands was used to kill my dear friend there; if you’re so foolish as to kill me too, you’ll have two homicides on your head. And it’s only fair to warn you that this office is equipped with electronic eavesdropping devices; the moment your friend here entered the foreign secretary’s office and I saw what she was really up to, I placed a call to the Alpha squad, Grosvenor Square detachment. I’m sure you know about the Alpha squad.”

Bryson only stared.

“They’ll be here any moment now. They’re probably entering the building already, you goddamned son of a bitch!” And as he raised his voice, he leaped toward Elena, grabbing her by the throat, his thumbs squeezing the cartilage in a death grip. Elena’s screams quickly became gagging, strangulated sounds.

There was a thunderous explosion as the bullet was fired from the unsilenced Browning in Bryson’s hands. At the top of his forehead, near the hairline, a tiny oval wept blood. Dawson, his face oddly immobile, slumped face forward onto the floor.

“Quick!” Bryson said. “Grab his pocket computer, his wallet, whatever else is in his pockets.”

Her face wrinkled with distaste, she searched the dead man’s pockets, taking keys, wallet, Palm Pilot, and assorted scraps of paper. Then she followed him through the open closet door and saw where Bryson had removed the plywood backing.

 

 

Belinda Headlam’s experience in Foreign Secretary Rupert Vere’s employ had taught her the supreme importance of discretion. She knew that he conducted negotiations of exquisite sensitivity in his alcove suite, and she had her suspicions that it might also be his lair for the occasional assignation, as well. Last year, the young woman from the agricultural ministry had seemed ever so slightly flushed and dishabille when she’d had to interrupt their conversation with the urgent summons from the prime minister. Foreign Secretary Vere had been just a little short with her for a few days afterward, as if he had been embarrassed by the interruption and displeased at her. But all that passed and she tried to put the episode out of her head. Men had their weaknesses, she knew; they all did.

Yet the foreign secretary was a most eminent man, one of the most capable members of the government, as the leader page of the Express often repeated, and she was honored that he had handpicked her as his personal assistant. But surely something was wrong. She wrung her hands, agonized about what to do, and finally decided she couldn’t dither any longer. The foreign secretary’s office was well soundproofed—he had insisted on that—but that noise, muffled though it was, sounded terribly like a gunshot. Could that be? And if it were a gunshot and she’d done nothing—why, then what? What if the foreign secretary were wounded and in dire need of help? Then there was the fact that Simon Dawson, his deputy, had joined them, and it wasn’t like him to stay for so long. There was, furthermore, something peculiar about the tarted-up woman who’d passed him a note. Mrs. Headlam had an inkling of what Foreign Secretary Vere’s appraising look might mean, but the woman didn’t seem as if she were there on such … business.

Something was dodgy.

Belinda Headlam stood up and rapped sharply on the secretary’s door. She waited five seconds and rapped again. Then, saying, “I’m so terribly sorry,” she pushed open the door. And then she screamed.

The sight was so shattering it took her almost half a minute before she had enough sense to notify security.

 

 

Sergeant Robby Sullivan of the Palace of Westminster Division of the Metropolitan Police kept himself lean and taut with an hour of hard jogging each morning, and he looked askance at his colleagues who, as the years wore on, allowed themselves to—well, get a little podgy. You might have thought they didn’t take the beat seriously. Robby had been assigned to Westminster Division for seven years, charged with policing the halls of Parliament, ousting intruders, and generally keeping the peace. Though the time had passed with relatively few incidents, years of IRA threats had given him much practice at responding to alarms.

Still, nothing had prepared him for the scene in the foreign secretary’s suite. He and Police Constable Eric Belson, his young redheaded deputy, radioed New Scotland Yard for immediate backup, but in the interim they sealed off Vere’s chambers and used the existing detail to station an officer by every major stairwell. From Mrs. Headlam’s account, there was likely a killer on the loose in the building—a woman, at that. Though how she’d managed to get out of the office without going past Mrs. Headlam was a puzzlement. She would not be permitted to escape from the building, he was determined—not on his watch. He’d gone through regular drills, knew all the requisite moves and maneuvers. Of course, this time it was the real thing. The adrenaline reminded him of that.

 

 

The air in the long, dark passageway was musty, dead, and stifling, evidently having been undisturbed for years. Bryson and Elena moved quickly yet silently through the gloom, crawling on hands and knees in some places, walking erect with an awkward, stoop-shouldered gait where space allowed. Bryson carried with him the briefcase he had brought into the Parliament building, an encumbrance but perhaps a vital asset. The only light came from the daylight that filtered in through cracks in the mortise work or ceiling molding. The ancient wood flooring creaked alarmingly as they passed between offices and public spaces and supply rooms. Voices on the other side of the wall were muffled, louder in some places than in others. At one point Bryson noticed something, a peculiar noise pattern, and he stopped. Their eyes were beginning to get used to the dark; he could see Elena turn to him quizzically, and he put a finger to his lips as he peered through a crack.

He saw the boots, then the fatigues, of U.S. Marines. The secret Alpha squad had arrived and had dispersed to search the building. The welcoming committee. He guessed that the Marines were ordinarily assigned to the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, interspersed among the regular contingent whose job it was to guard the building and the ambassador. Their lethal presence was alarming in the extreme: the highly trained hit squad would be mobilized only upon top-secret-code-word orders dispatched at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Oval Office authority was required. Whatever the terrifying agenda of Prometheus — he had overheard part of Dawson’s rant, which seemed in some way to concern a new generation of governmental espionage—it was being put into place with the cooperation of the White House, knowingly or not.

Madness! This was no mere bureaucratic transformation, no simple governmental shift. The Prometheus killers seemed instead to be front men of some kind of officially sanctioned power struggle, an epochal transfer of power. But what could it be?

Immediately ahead of them, the crawlspace was interrupted by a metal enclosure: an air duct. Feeling with his fingertips, he located a hinged access door for maintenance purposes. Panels of air filters were tightly lodged in place. Bryson pulled out a long, flat screwdriver from the briefcase and worked the filters loose from their frames until the passageway was unblocked. Now he and Elena entered the square-sided steel enclosure, shimmying and sliding down a steep decline through a narrow space of ribbed steel, which vibrated with regular bursts of cold air. “This leads to a space over the Chancellor’s Gate,” Bryson said, his voice echoing and metallic, “and then to Victoria Tower. But we’re going to have to play this by ear.”

However large the Alpha squad detachment, it would not be numerous enough to search the immense Palace of Westminster, which contained, in seven acres, the two houses of Parliament—twelve hundred rooms, more than a hundred staircases, over three kilometers of passages. There would undoubtedly be others in plainclothes searching for them who would be no less lethal: field operatives in the employ of the Prometheus Group. They could be anywhere. Bryson’s mind was a whirl of memorized maps and plans; he needed to simplify, to find the order in the chaos. If he and Elena were to survive, he’d have to trust his instincts, and the training that shaped them. It was all they had.

Their pursuers would, he was sure, examine all possible means of egress, of escape, from Rupert Vere’s office; that would determine the avenues of their search. Calculations would be made, search routes decided, based upon a fixed set of variables. The window was one obvious way out, but that was high above the ground, and no evidence would be found of any ropes or climbing apparatus. Vere’s personal secretary, who guarded the entrance to the office suite, would assert that no one had run past here, though it was possible that she had been absent, away from her desk, for some period of time, in which case that route could not be ruled out.

That left one more avenue that had to be searched by their pursuers, and it would not take the killers long to realize that the plywood panel at the back of the closet was loose, though propped back into place. This meant that several killers from the Alpha squad or Prometheus were likely to be already finding their way through the crawlspace. Bryson and Elena’s only hope was that the searchers might be confounded by the maze of hidden passages.

But a few seconds after they emerged from the steel air duct, Bryson could hear footsteps whose proximity seemed to indicate that they were coming from within the crawlspace, and not from outside. There was a certain echoing tonality, accompanied by a wooden creak. Yes. Bryson was now sure of it. Someone was following them through the concealed passage.

He felt Elena grab his shoulder, put her mouth to his ear, and whisper, “Listen!”

He nodded: I hear.

His mind raced. He had Dawson’s Browning, with whatever ammunition was loaded in the chamber and magazine, and he had several implements in the briefcase that would be less effective in hand-to-hand combat. But the dismal fact-was, there would be no hand-to-hand, closerange struggle. If they were spotted, guns would be fired, whether silenced or not.

Bryson stopped suddenly at another crack of light that seeped through the mortise work, and he peered through. He was looking into a fluorescent-lit utility room, its floors covered with old green linoleum. Looking more closely, he could make out shelving on one end stacked with what appeared to be cleaning supplies. Though the room was lit, it also appeared to be empty. He felt along the walls of the crawlspace until he found the detachable plywood panel that likely covered an egress into a closet that gave onto the utility room. With a small Phillips-head screwdriver he took from his briefcase, he unscrewed the panel and then pulled it loose. The wood squeaked and groaned as it came off. Indirect light shone through the opening; they could make out the outlines of the small closet, illuminated by a narrow slit of light that came in where the closet door met the linoleum floor.

Quietly, they squatted down and squeezed through the low, small opening. Bryson went first into the cluttered closet, and Elena followed. There was a sudden, jarring sound: Elena had knocked against a bucket, sending the wooden handle of a mop or broom clattering against the wall. They froze. Bryson held a hand in the air, signifying a command to halt. They listened, waited. Bryson’s heart thundered.

After an endless minute, Bryson was satisfied that the noise had not attracted attention, and they resumed. Slowly, carefully, he opened the closet door. The utility room was indeed empty, though the lights were on; it was likely that someone had been here only recently, a cleaning person, who would therefore be returning at any time.

They raced silently across the room to the door that had to lead to a hallway. It was open a crack. Bryson pushed it open just enough to get his head through; he looked to either side down the dim hall. He saw no one. He whispered to Elena, “Stay here until I signal that it’s safe to come out.”

Bryson passed a vending machine and an old brown bucket in which stood a wet-mop, and then a figure appeared. He stopped short, reached for the Browning, which he had jammed into his waistband.

But it was only an old lady, a slow-moving cleaning woman pushing a metal cart. Relieved, Bryson continued down the hall toward her, mentally preparing a response in case he was asked questions. He was a civil servant, as his clothing—though dust-covered—indicated. Yet he was mindful that the old woman could become a resource as well, and they could afford to bypass no resources.

“Excuse me,” Bryson said as he approached, dusting off his shoulders with a flick of his hand.

“Lost, are you?” the cleaning woman said. “Can help you, dearie?” She had a kindly, wrinkled face, her white hair thin and wispy. She seemed old to be doing such manual labor, and she moved with such apparent physical exhaustion that she stirred Bryson’s sympathy. Yet her eyes regarded him shrewdly.

Lost? But wasn’t it a natural question: dressed as he was, Bryson appeared to be out of place in this service corridor. Had the word been circulated so quickly that one—or more—fugitives were roaming the building? He thought rapidly.

“I’m with Scotland Yard,” Bryson replied in a flawless English lower-middle-class accent. “Some security breaches in the area. Maybe you’ve heard …?”

“Aye,” the old lady said wearily. “I don’t ask questions. Be more than my job’s worf, it would.” She wheeled the cart down the hall toward them and parked it against the wall. “Lot of rumors flying around.” She mopped her careworn brow with an old faded-red kerchief as she waddled up to him. “But you mind answerin’ me just one question?”

Guardedly, Bryson said, “What’s that?”

The ancient cleaning lady gave a perplexed look as she sidled up to Bryson and continued in a low, confiding voice, “What the hell are you doing still alive?” She whipped out a large blue-steel gun from the folds of her smock, pointed it at Bryson, and squeezed the trigger. Lightning-fast, Bryson swung his Kevlar-lined briefcase upward in a sharp arc, crashing it hard into her forearm. The gun clattered to the floor, skidding across the linoleum down the hall, away from him.

With a shrill scream, the harridan crouched and then sprang forward, her face contorted, her hands extended like claws, like deadly instruments. She slammed into him, knocking him to the floor just as he was reaching for the concealed gun. The wound in his side ached. She’s a goddamned old lady! Bryson thought, then realizing—as she clawed at his eyes—that she was no old lady, she was far younger, far stronger, something more akin to a wild beast than a woman. She jabbed one thumb directly into his eye socket, the pain immense, blinding him, while she slammed her knee into his crotch, connecting at once with his genitals. Bryson roared with agony and determination, summoning his considerable strength, and slammed her to the floor. His right eye was bloodied, but he could still see through it, and what he saw made an eel of fear wriggle in his belly. She had pulled out a flashing blade, a long, thin stiletto. It gleamed wetly, as if coated with a viscous fluid. He knew at once that the blade must be coated with the alkaloid toxiferene, which made it an extremely dangerous weapon. The slightest nick or scrape would lead to immediate paralysis and a suffocating death.

Bryson could smell the blade and its acrid poison as it whisked millimeters from his face: he had jerked his head back just in time to save his life. Now the crazed woman reared up and lunged, and again Bryson’s evasive action was only just sufficient; a button from his shirt was sliced off and went flying into the air. He went at her with both hands, with all of his strength, unable to risk reaching for the gun. The stiletto flashed in a blur near Bryson’s face, but now Bryson lashed out with his left arm, like a cobra, directly toward the blade—a counterintuitive move, because it meant rising up and greeting the instrument of death, or the appendage that held it, rather than retreating from it—and as he seized the wrist of the hand holding the stiletto, the harridan was clearly taken by surprise.

But only for an instant. Bryson’s strength would normally be far superior, but he was no longer in peak physical condition, nowhere close to it. He was, he was now realizing, badly weakened by the gunshot wound in Shenzhen; he had not given himself time to recover. And she had a mastery of moves he had never seen before. As her arm struggled against Bryson’s grip, the long blade trembling, her left foot, clad in a steel-toed leather shoe, swung around, striking him again in the genitals. He groaned as he felt the pain radiating coldly through his testicles; he felt sick to his stomach. He shoved her again, slamming her back to the floor and knocking her white wig off her head, revealing close-cropped black hair and the lines of a latex face mask.

They were locked in struggle. She screamed again, her eyes wild. She was powerful and extraordinarily coordinated, and she lashed back and forth like a rabid beast. She tried to kick at him again, using her other foot, but Bryson had anticipated the move and rolled onto her, locking her legs in place, using his greater body mass, still holding her wrist, the stiletto blade still pointed at him. He had to move carefully around it, keeping all skin, all appendages clear of its lethal point. She was bucking violently, but he concentrated his strength, his energy, on angling her wrist back at her, directing the slickly gleaming stiletto toward her neck. Her arm shook with all the muscular resistance she could summon, but it was not enough: Bryson commanded more brute strength. Inch by inch, he pushed the tremulous blade back toward the soft exposed skin of the rabid woman’s neck. Her eyes, hooded with latex skin folds, widened in terror as the blade gently creased her skin.

The effect was immediate. Her lips spread into a contorted rictus, spittle coming from her mouth, and she suddenly went limp against the floor and began to thrash wildly, her mouth opening again and again like a fish out of water, in soundless gasps. Then, as the deadening paralysis spread through her body, all respiration ceased; only a few muscles continued to twitch spasmodically.

Bryson pulled the blade from the dead woman’s slackened grip, located the leather scabbard in the folds of her smock, and replaced the stiletto inside, then slid the scabbard into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He gasped for breath, touched the sticky blood that covered his right eye. He heard a cry: Elena rushed forward from the utility room, placing her hands on either side of his face, her panicked eyes searching his face. “Oh, God, my darling!” she whispered. “I think your eye looks worse than it actually is. Was that a poison of some sort?”

“Toxiferene.”

“She could have killed you, so easily!”

“She was strong, and very, very good.”

“Alpha, do you think?”

“Almost certainly Prometheus. Alpha units are marines or navy SEALs. She was some sort of an exotic, probably hired from Bulgaria or the old East Germany—one of the defunct Eastern-bloc services.”

“I hated staying back there, doing nothing!”

“You would have just gotten hurt, and she might have used you against me. No, I’m glad you did.”

“Oh, Nicholas, I’m useless. I know nothing about combat, about fighting! Draga mea, we have to get out of here. They want to kill you and me both!”

Bryson nodded, gulped. “I think we should separate —”

“No!”

“Elena, by now they know there are two of us, a man and a woman. Their surveillance is too good, too complete. The foreign secretary of England has been assassinated, and all forces are going to be on alert, not just Prometheus and Alpha.”

“There must be a thousand people in this building. Surely there’s safety in numbers.”

“Crowds are better for killers than their targets, especially when the killers know what the marks look like. These are people who will not be deterred by normal considerations of prudence.”

“I can’t! I’m sorry—on my own I can’t fight, you know that! I can help you in many ways, but. . please!”

Bryson nodded; she was terrified, and he couldn’t send her off on her own in such a state. “All right. But we’re going to have to take back hallways wherever we can find them, service corridors, that sort of thing. The crawlspaces and air ducts are no longer safe—they’re probably crawling with agents by now. Somehow we have to get to the east side of the building. if our escape plan’s going to have any chance of succeeding.”

Standing to one side of the utility room window so that he could not be seen from outside, Bryson saw at once that it was worse than he’d imagined. He counted six men in fatigues—members of the Alpha squad. Two of them were patrolling the state officer’s courtyard; two others were checking building exits, and two were walking along the roof, surveying the area with binoculars.

He turned back to Elena. “Well, that’s just modified the plan. We’re going to have to go out to the hallway and look for a freight elevator.”

“To the ground floor?”

He shook his head. “That’s going to be crawling with police—and others. First or second floor, and then we’ll look for an alternative way out.” He walked quickly to the door and listened for a few seconds. He heard nothing; no one had come by even during his struggle with the crone. Obviously this was a little-used area. But the fact was, the Prometheus decoy had been circulating here, obviously expecting one or both of them to come by. That told him two things: that this was probably near a convergence point, where various routes came together and led to an exit from the building; and that there would be others not too far away. The sooner they were out of this section, the better.

He opened the door a crack, peered out, then looked to either side; it was clear. He signaled to Elena. They raced down the empty service corridor to the left, and when they reached a turning, Bryson stopped, looked right, spotted an elevator. He ran toward it, Elena close behind. It was an old-fashioned type of elevator with a tiny diamond-shaped glass window and a folding accordion gate inside. This was good: it meant that it was not likely to require a key to operate, since it predated such security precautions. He pressed the call button, and the cab whined slowly up, its compartment dimly illuminated. It was empty. He pulled the gate open, and they got in. He pressed the button marked 2.

For a moment he closed his eyes, visualizing the map. Obviously this would open on to a back service hall, used for cleaning and maintenance, but exactly where it led he wasn’t certain. The layout of the Parliament building was exceedingly ornate; he had managed to memorize the main routes, though not all of them.

The elevator stopped on the second floor. Bryson looked out, surveying as much as he could of the area, which also looked clear. He pushed the door open, and they got out. Turning to the right, he saw an old green-painted door, with a scuffed crashbar mounted at hip-height. He approached it and pushed it open easily. Now they were in an ornate, marble-tiled hallway lined with mahogany doors labeled with gilt numerals. This was not a public, ceremonial area, nor was it grand enough for Parliament members, and there were no names or titles on the doors. Apparently these were offices belonging to committee staff—office clerks, executive officers, audit officers, secretaries, and other support staff. It was long and dimly lit; several people, presumably civil servants, walked unhurriedly into and out of offices. None of them seemed to glance at Bryson or Elena, nor did anything about their body language suggest that they were watchers or undercover operatives. Instinct, again: Bryson had nothing else to go on.

He stopped for a moment, trying to orient himself. The eastern end of the building was to the right; that was therefore the direction in which they should head. A well-dressed woman strode down the hall toward them, her heels clicking against the marble and echoing in the long hallway. Instinctively he looked at her, sizing her up; she approached them and passed with a curious stare. He suddenly remembered that, though he was still nominally attired as a respectable clerk, he had to be a frightful sight: one eye was bloodied, perhaps blackened, and his clothes were torn and disheveled from doing battle with the decoy cleaning lady. Elena’s clothes were disheveled as well. Both of them looked decidedly out of place, their physical appearance drawing attention, which was exactly what he did not want. There was no time to look for a restroom in which to clean themselves up; now they would have to rely on a combination of speed and good luck. But luck was something he never liked to count on; luck inevitably ran out just when you took it for granted.

He continued down the hall, his head down as if deep in thought, walking quickly, holding Elena’s hand, pulling her along. Here and there an office door was open and clusters of people stood talking quietly. If they glanced at the two of them, at least they might not see his bloodied face.

But something was not right here; he was overcome by anxiety. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck become prickly. The noises were wrong. The normal pattern of ringing telephones was absent; instead, the phones seemed to be ringing in sequence, at different offices and on different sides of the hallway. He could not rationally articulate why this bothered him, and he knew it was possible that he was beginning to imagine things. Too, he noticed that people engaged in conversation seemed to fall silent as he passed. Was he being paranoid?

He’d spent fifteen years in the field, and he had learned above all that one’s instinct was the most valuable weapon one had. He did not ignore feelings that others might dismiss as delusional or paranoid.

They were being watched.

But if they were really being watched, why was nothing happening?

Pulling Elena’s hand, he quickened his stride. He no longer cared whether his actions stood out or attracted attention; the situation was beyond that now.

About seventy-five yards ahead of them was a small leaded stained-glass window of the sort usually seen in a medieval cathedral. He knew that the windows here overlooked the Thames. “Straight ahead and to the left,” he said to Elena under his breath.

She squeezed his hand in silent response. In a few seconds the corridor ended, and they turned left. Elena whispered, “Look—a committee room—it’s probably empty. Do you think we should duck into there?”

“Excellent idea.” He did not want to turn around to see whether they were being followed, but he heard no footsteps close behind. On their right was a massive, arched, oak double-door labeled, on a frosted-glass pane, COMMITTEE TWELVE. If they were able to enter it quickly, they might be able to lose any followers, or at the very least confuse them for a while. The doorknob turned freely; the door was unlocked, but the lights—two massive crystal chandeliers—were switched off and the immense room was vacant. It was an amphitheater, with several raised seating areas of leather-backed, brass-studded wooden chairs above a depressed center floor, which was of highly decorated, brightly colored encaustic tile. At the center of the room was a long wooden conference table, topped with green leather, and behind it two long, tall wooden pews—the benches for the committee members. Light came in through two large, tall leaded windows on the opposite side of the room facing the doors, a long rectangular shade running down the middle of each to block the direct sunlight that reflected off the Thames. Even in repose the room was at once solemn and grand. The vaulted ceiling was at least thirty feet high; the walls were wainscoted in dark wood more than halfway up, and above the wainscoting was elaborate burgundy wallpaper of a Gothic pattern. Several large, dreary nineteenth-century oil paintings hung on each wall: battle scenes, portraits of early kings commanding troops at sea, swords poised, Westminster Abbey crowded with nineteenth-century subjects mourning a casket draped with the Union Jack. The only touches of modernity were jarring: several microphones that dangled on long wires from the ceiling, and a television monitor mounted on one wall and labeled HOUSE OF COMMONS ANNUNCIATOR.

“Nicholas, we’re not going to be able to hide in here,” Elena said quietly. “At least not for long. Are you thinking of—the windows?”

He nodded, setting down his briefcase. “We’re three flights above ground level.”

“Such a drop!”

“It’s not without risks,” he agreed. “But it could be worse.”

“Nick, I’ll do it if you insist, if you really think we have no choice. But if there’s any way —”

There was a noise in the hallway immediately outside. The doors flung open, and Bryson dropped to the ground, pulling her down after him. Two men entered, dark silhouettes, then two more. Bryson saw at once that they were policemen, wearing the blue uniforms of the Metropolitan Police!

And Bryson knew he and Elena had been spotted. “Freeze!” one of the policemen shouted. “Police!”

The men, unusual for British police, were carrying sidearms, aimed at them.

“Hold it right there!” another man shouted.

Elena screamed.

Bryson whipped out his Browning but did not draw. He calculated: four policemen, four handguns. It was far from impossible to take them on, using the wooden chairs as shields, as obstacles.

But were they in fact policemen? He could not be certain. They looked resolute, their expressions fierce. But they did not fire. Prometheus killers would probably not have hesitated. Would they?

“That’s the buggers!” one of the policemen shouted. “The assassins!”

“Drop the weapon,” called the one who appeared to be in charge. “Drop it at once. You got nowhere to go now.” Bryson turned around, saw that they were indeed trapped; they were fish in a barrel. The four police constables continued to advance into the room, closer and closer, spreading out so that they had Bryson and Elena surrounded.

“Drop it!” the same one repeated, now shouting. “Drop it, you scum. Get to your feet, hands in the air. Move it!”

Elena looked at Bryson, desperate, unsure what to do. Bryson considered his option. To surrender was to give themselves up to a questionable authority, to police who might in fact not be police, might be Prometheus killers in disguise.

And if they were legitimate members of the Metropolitan Police? If so, he could not kill them. Yet if they were true police constables, they believed they were on the verge of apprehending a couple of assassins, a man and a woman who had just killed the foreign secretary. They would be taken into custody and questioned for hours—hours they could not spare. With no certainty that they would be released.

No, they could not surrender to them! Yet to do anything else was madness, was suicide!

He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, he got to his feet. “All right,” he said. “All right. You’ve got us.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

One of the men seemed clearly to be in charge: a tall, fit man whose name tag said SULLIVAN.

“All right, drop the gun and put your hands in the air, and you won’t get hurt,” Sullivan said steadily. “There’s four of us and only two of you, but I guess you’ve already figured that out.”

Bryson held his pistol up, though not directly pointed at anyone. Were they really who they said they were? That was his greatest concern right now.

“Agreed,” Bryson answered with forced calm. “But I first want to see some identification.”

“Shutcher gob!” bellowed one of the policemen. “Here’s my identification right here, you sod.” He indicated his pistol. “Try me.”

But Sullivan replied, “Fine. As soon as you’re cuffed you’ll have all the time in the world to study our warrant cards.”

“No,” Bryson said. He raised the Browning ever so slightly, still pointed at no one in particular. “I’ll be happy to cooperate once I’m confident you are who you say you are. But there are teams of mercenaries and assassins roaming the halls of Parliament, operating in violation of about a dozen British laws. Once I’m satisfied you’re not one of them, I’ll drop the gun.”

“Take the arsehole down,” growled one of the men.

“We fire when I give the order, Constable,” Sullivan said. Then, addressing Bryson: “I’ll show you my warrant card, but be warned—you’ve killed the foreign secretary, you bastard, so you’re probably fool enough to try for one of us blokes. If you’re lucky enough to squeeze off a shot, it’ll be the last thing you ever do, so don’t fuck with us, you hear me?”

“Understood. Take it out with your left hand, slowly, and display it for me, palm open. Got it?”

“Got it,” Sullivan said, following Bryson’s instructions. The leather folding wallet lay open in his left hand.

“Good. Now slide it across the floor to me—toss it slowly, gently. No quick moves—don’t startle me or I’m likely to fire in self-defense.”

Sullivan flicked his left wrist, sending the wallet across the floor. It stopped right at Bryson’s feet. As Bryson leaned to pick it up, he became aware of one of the men—the one who was obviously itching to fire— advancing on him from the left side. Bryson whirled around, gun pointed directly at the constable’s face. “Don’t move, you idiot. I meant what I said. If you believe I really murdered the foreign secretary in cold blood, then you surely don’t think I’d hesitate to blow you away, do you?” The trigger-happy man froze, backed up a few steps, but kept his gun still leveled at Bryson.

“That’s it,” said Bryson. He sank slowly to his knees to retrieve the wallet, all the while keeping the gun level, shifting it back and forth from man to man. He quickly snatched the leather wallet from the floor, opened it, and glanced at the silver badge on the right flap in the form of the Metropolitan Police crest. Inside the plastic sleeve on the left side was a white laminated card with Sergeant Robert Sullivan’s photograph, in uniform, along with his warrant number, rank, serial number, and signature. It certainly looked legitimate, though it was easily within the Prometheus team’s capabilities to obtain genuine or cleverly forged police identification. The name, Sullivan, matched the leader’s name tag, and the collar number on the epaulet of his navy blue sweater matched the number on the warrant card. Sullivan was identified as a member of the Special Operations Unit, meaning that he, and presumably the others, were allowed to carry weapons. It was possible, of course, that they had simply been thorough about these details. In truth, very little could be determined conclusively from the badge, in fact, except for the fact that there was one and, upon quick examination, it checked out. An undercover team of assassins assembled on such short notice was not likely to have every detail of their disguises straight, yet so far he had not spotted a gaffe.

His instincts told him the policemen were legitimate. He based this assessment on a whole range of minor details, behavioral cues, attitudes, and, most important, the fact that they had held their fire. They could easily have killed him, but they had not done so. In the end it was that simple fact that led Bryson to drop his gun and raise his hands in the air, and Elena did the same.

“All right, nice and easy now, move toward that wall, the both of you, and put your hands flat against it,” said Sullivan.

They walked slowly to the closest wall and placed their hands against it. Bryson kept alert for any departure from expected behavior patterns. Weapons were now lowered; that was good. Two members of the team approached, quickly locked handcuffs on their wrists, then patted both of them down for concealed weapons. Another scooped up Bryson’s gun.

“My name is Police Sergeant Sullivan. You’re both under arrest in connection with the murder of Foreign Secretary Rupert Vere and Undersecretary Simon Dawson.” Sullivan flipped a switch on his two-way pocket radio and detailed his location, calling for backup.

“I understand the necessity for going through established procedures,” said Bryson, “but a careful ballistic examination will reveal that it was Dawson who murdered the foreign secretary.”

“Murdered by his own deputy? Bloody likely.”

“Dawson was a control, an agent of an international syndicate with a significant interest in passing the surveillance treaty. He was far too careful, I’m sure, to leave any evidence in plain sight linking him to this group, but there will be evidence—altered phone logs, visitors admitted to the Parliament building to see him yet not recorded in his own records —”

Suddenly the great arched doors banged open again, and two large, heavily muscled, uniformed men carrying automatic submachine guns came rushing into the room. “Ministry of Defense, Special Forces!” called the taller of the two men in a husky baritone.

Officer Sullivan turned in surprise. “We weren’t notified of your participation, sir.”

“Nor we of yours. We’ll take over from here,” the tall man said. He had steel-gray brush-cut hair and cold blue eyes.

“That won’t be necessary,” Sullivan said. His tone was calm, but there was no mistaking his resolve. “We’ve got everything under control.”

Bryson turned with alarm, his hands cuffed. The machine guns were Czech, nothing that would have been issued by the British Ministry of Defense. “No!” he shouted. “Mother of Christ, they’re not who they say!”

Baffled, Sullivan looked from Bryson to the crew-cut man. “You’re Ministry of Defense, you say?”

“Right,” the man replied brusquely. “We’ve got the situation under control.”

“Get down!” Bryson screamed. “They’re killers!”

Elena dove to the floor, screaming, and Bryson dove next to her, a row of wooden chairs the only barrier between them and the intruders.

But it was too late. Even before he finished speaking, the hall echoed with the deafening thunder of automatic fire as the gray-haired killer and his cohort sprayed bullets into the four police constables, riddled their bodies with bullets. Stray rounds pinged against the stone floor and chewed into the mahogany wainscoting. Caught off guard, their sidearms holstered, the genuine policemen were easy targets. A few of them reached, seconds too late, for their weapons. They staggered, their bodies twisting from side to side, almost dancing in a pathetic but vain attempt to dodge the bullets before they crumpled to the floor.

Elena shrieked, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

Horrified and sickened, Bryson watched, powerless to do anything.

The air was acrid with cordite, with the coppery smell of blood. The brush-cut Promethean killer consulted his wristwatch.

Bryson understood what had just happened and why. The Prometheus Group would never countenance the risk of letting the two of them be taken into official custody: the dangers posed by what they might divulge could not be gauged with precision. Rather, the Promethean hirelings would themselves want to interrogate them, and only then kill them. That was the only possible explanation for why they were still alive.

Now the tall killer spoke in a deep voice. His accent, which on first hearing had sounded British, now seemed to be Dutch, Bryson decided. “We’re going to have a few hours of fun together,” the Prometheus killer said. “Chemical interrogation has become quite advanced in recent years, as you’ll see.”

On the floor, Bryson struggled, quietly and discreetly, with the handcuffs, but without a key, or something he could use as a key, it was no use. He looked around; the policemen who lay dead, their bodies riddled with bullets, were no closer than six to eight feet away. He would not be able to take a handcuff key off one of their bodies without being seen doing so; he would never get away with it. But to stay here meant to face chemicals, probably administered inexpertly and in such quantities that they would sustain serious and irreversible damage.

No, he corrected himself. After the chemicals will be death.

 

 

Robby Sullivan had felt the impact across his midriff like the kick of a horse, and the next thing he knew he was slumped to the floor. His shirtfront was soaked with blood; he couldn’t get his breath. A bullet must have punctured a lung, because he felt as if he were slowly drowning. His breathing was shallow, labored. And all the while, his. mind fought for some semblance of comprehension. What was going on? The couple who had surrendered appeared to be unharmed, even while his loyal and devoted men, good men all of them with girlfriends or wives and families, had been brutally mowed down. They had all been trained to expect such a possibility, but in reality their jobs in the Westminster Division could not have been more peaceful. What had happened to his men was ghastly, unthinkable! And me too, he thought ruefully. I’m not long for this world either. But he didn’t understand: had the armed men come to rescue the assassins? Then why had the handcuffed man tried to warn him? He stared at the ceiling, his gaze moving in and out of focus, steadily weakening, wondering how much longer he would remain conscious.

He had been unable to get his gun out in time, but who on God’s green earth would have expected soldiers from the Ministry of Defense to suddenly turn on them with machine guns? They weren’t, of course, from the Ministry. The uniforms—their uniforms weren’t Ministry of Defense … something was definitely off. The handcuffed man was right, which might well mean that the protestations of innocence were justified. Things were happening beyond his ability to understand, but this much seemed clear: the handcuffed man had surrendered peacefully, his protests plausible; and the intruders with machine guns were unquestionably cold-blooded killers. Robby Sullivan felt reasonably certain that he was dying, that he was just minutes from death, and he prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ that He would allow him just one more chance to set things right. Slowly, through a haze, he felt around for his gun.

 

 

“You are wanted internationally, as I’m sure you know,” said the Dutchman matter-of-factly.

Elena was weeping, her cuffed hands up to her face. “No, please,” she moaned softly. “Please.”

He noticed that the second man, who had the slightly thickened features of a pugilist, had shifted position and was moving in closer, his machine gun clutched in one hand and what looked like a hypodermic needle in the other.

“The assassination of a British cabinet member is a most serious crime. But we simply want to talk to you—we want to know why you are so determined to interfere, to instigate such trouble.”

Bryson’s keen ears heard a faint sound from a few feet away. He allowed himself to glance quickly and saw that the constable named Sullivan was moving his hand, reaching …

Bryson moved his eyes back to the brush-cut killer, staring at him fiercely. Don’t let him see what I just saw.

“The Directorate is no longer, I’m sure you know that,” continued the gray-haired man. “You have no support, no backup—no resources. You are alone, and you are tilting at windmills, as the saying goes.”

Keep him occupied! Don’t let his attention stray, don’t let him hear … “We’re far from alone,” Bryson said intensely, his eyes flashing. “Long before you destroyed the Directorate, we had put out the word. You and your coconspirators have already been found out, and whatever the hell you’re attempting to pull off is already finished.”

The police constable’s fingertips were brushing the barrel of the handgun, clawing at it, flailing at it; it was mere inches beyond his reach!

The crew-cut man continued as if he hadn’t heard a word Bryson said. “There’s really no reason for any more blood to be shed,” he said reasonably. “We simply want to have an honest, heart-to-heart conversation with you. That’s all.”

Bryson did not dare look again, but he heard the tiniest scrape of metal against the stone floor. Distract him! Engage his attention elsewhere—he must not hear, must not notice! Bryson abruptly raised his voice. “What is it that’s worth all the destruction, the terrorism?” he shouted. “The bombs? What is it that justifies blowing an airliner out of the sky that’s packed with hundreds of people—with innocent men and women and children?”

“But you see, we believe that the few must be sacrificed at the altar of the many. The lives of a few hundred mean nothing compared to the safety and security of millions—of billions—the protection of untold generations of …” The Prometheus killer’s words trailed off as his face creased with suspicion. He cocked his head to one side, listening. “Tomas!” he called.

The two gunshots were nearly deafening, twin explosions, one immediately following the other. The policeman had done it! He had lifted his pistol and, summoning a strength and resolve that momentarily banished the shock and lethargy of extreme blood loss, had fired two very well-aimed shots. There was a spray of blood as the large-caliber bullet drilled through the Promethcan’s head and exited at the back, the round freezing him in midturn, his expression a combination of fury and surprise. His shorter cohort twitched spasmodically before sinking to his knees: the bullet had passed through his neck, obviously having intersected with both his spinal cord and a major artery.

Elena had rolled out of the way, frightened by the sudden gunfire and not understanding where it had come from. When the explosions stopped, she waited a few seconds and then raised her head, and this time she did not scream; the shock was too great, and she was probably numbed by now to all the violence. Eyes wide and liquid with tears, she murmured a low prayer, clasping her cuffed hands.

The police constable who had done it, Sergeant Sullivan, was breathing noisily, a death rattle. He’d been wounded badly in the torso, a sucking wound. Bryson looked over and saw that the sergeant had probably a few minutes left.

“I don’t know … who you are …” the policeman said weakly. “Not who we thought …”

“We’re not killers!” Elena called. “You know that, I know you do!” In a trembling voice she added, quietly, “You’ve just saved our lives.”

Bryson heard the jangle of metal on the floor right by his head: Sullivan had tossed him his key ring.

Must hurry, he thought. How much time remained before others would arrive, attracted by the explosions? Two minutes? One? Seconds?

Bryson reached over with his manacled hands and grabbed the key ring, quickly locating a handcuff key. With a little maneuvering, Bryson worked the small key into Elena’s cuffs, springing them open; she then took the key and swiftly unlocked his. One of the policeman’s two-wary radios crackled to life: “Jesus, what’s going on?” a tinny, staticky voice demanded.

“Go,” the sergeant told the two in a faint whisper.

Elena saw Bryson racing toward the right-hand arched window. “We can’t leave this man here—not after what he’s done for us!” she protested.

“He’s not answering his radio,” Bryson replied quickly as he unhooked the long shade and threw it, clatteringly, to the floor, then began working loose a bolt on the window frame. “They’ll locate him quickly, and they’ll be able to do more for him than we could do.” But there’s nothing they can do for him, he thought but didn’t say. “Come on!” he shouted.

Elena rushed to the window, tugged at a sliding bolt until it came free. Bryson turned, saw Sullivan slump back on to the floor, now silent and still. The man turned out to be a hero, Bryson thought. There aren’t many of them. He yanked at the window, hard. It seemed not to have been opened in years, perhaps decades. But after another hard tug it yielded, admitting a rush of cold air into the room.

This side of the Palace of Westminster, the east side, fronted directly onto the Thames, the length of the building running nearly nine hundred feet. Most of it, about seven hundred feet, was taken up by a terrace, furnished with chairs and tables, where members of Parliament had tea or entertained; but on either side of the terrace two narrow, somewhat taller sections of the building jutted out, with just a short stone embankment and a low steel fence, and then water. They were in one of the two protruding ends, as Bryson had planned; the river was directly below them, almost a straight plumb line down.

Elena looked out, turned to Bryson with a frightened expression, but then, to Bryson’s astonishment, she said, “I’ll go first. I’ll—I’ll pretend I’m diving off the highest diving board in Bucharest.”

Bryson smiled. “Protect your head and neck from the impact. Better to cannonball it, tuck your head and neck into your arms as you drop. And jump out as far as you can so you’re sure to hit the water.”

She nodded, bit her lower lip.

“I see it—the boat,” he said.

She looked, nodded again. “At least that much I did right,” she said with a wan smile. “Thames River Cruises was happy to rent a speedboat to my boss, a rich and eccentric unnamed Member of Parliament who wanted to impress his latest lady friend by taking her directly from the Parliament embankment to the Millennium Dome in the fastest boat they had. That was the easy part. But their boats are moored at the Westminster pier—to get one of them to rope it up right in front of the palace required a rather sizable bribe. In case you wonder where all the cash went.”

Bryson smiled. “You did great.” He could see the boat bobbing in the water about twenty feet to the left, tied to the steel fence in front of the terrace. Elena took a short step from the floor to the bottom of the window, Bryson assisting her. He looked around, saw no sharpshooters on this section of the roof, nor any patrolling the terrace, this hardly being a logical or expected escape route. Valuable resources had to be expended carefully, priorities assessed, men assigned where they were deemed to be most needed.

She stood on the ledge of the open window, took a deep breath. Her left hand squeezed his shoulder. Then she leaped straight out into the air, tucking herself into a ball, and dropped the fifty feet into the water with a loud splash. He waited for her to give him the thumbs-up signaling that she was fine, and then Bryson climbed onto the window ledge and jumped.

The water was cold and murky, the current powerful; when he surfaced, he saw that Elena, a strong swimmer, had almost reached the boat. By the time he had swum to it, she had started the motor. He climbed up and jumped into the cockpit and within seconds they were speeding across the water, away from Parliament, from the teams of killers.

 

 

Within a few hours they were in their hotel room on Russell Square. Bryson had gone shopping, with a highly specific list Elena had provided, and returned with the equipment she needed: the fastest and most powerful laptop computer he could buy, equipped with an infrared port; a fast modem; a variety of computer cables.

She looked up from the laptop, which was connected by telephone wire to the phone jack, and from there to the Internet. “I think I need a drink, darling.”

Bryson poured her a Scotch, neat, from the room’s bar, then poured one for himself. “You’re downloading something?” he asked.

She nodded and took a grateful sip. “Password-recovery software— shareware. Dawson took precautions—his handheld device was password-protected. Until and unless I can crack that, we’re not going to get a thing. But once we get past the password, I’ll bet we’re in.”

He picked up Dawson’s billfold. “Anything here?”

“Just credit cards, some cash, a bunch of papers. Nothing useful—I’ve checked.” She turned back to the laptop. “This may be it.” She entered a password into Dawson’s personal digital assistant. A moment later her face lit up. “We’re in.”

Bryson took a celebratory drink. “You’re a remarkable woman.”

She shook her head. “I am a woman who loves her work. You, Nicholas, are the remarkable one. I’ve never known a man like you.”

“You must not know many men.”

She smiled. “I’ve known my share. Maybe more than my share. But no one like you—no one as brave and as … stubborn, I would say. You never gave up on me.”

“I don’t know if that’s quite true. Maybe for a while—in my deepest, darkest depression, when I was drinking far too much of this stuff”—he held up his glass, toasted her—“maybe then I did. I was angry—hurt and confused and angry. But I was never sure, I was never certain—”

“About what?”

“About the reasons why you left. I had to know. I knew I’d never be satisfied until I knew the truth, even if it tore the heart out of me.”

“You never asked Ted Waller?”

“I knew better than to ask him. I knew that if he knew anything—or if he wanted to tell me anything—he would.”

She looked distant, vaguely troubled, and she began tapping at the device with a small black stylus. “I’ve often wondered,” she said, her voice trailing off. “Oh, my.”

“What?”

“‘There’s an entry here in his date book. ‘Call H. Dunne.’”

Bryson looked up suddenly. “Harry Dunne. Jesus. Is there a phone number?”

“No. Just ‘Call H. Dunne.’”

“When is the entry?”

“It’s—it’s three days ago!”

“What? My God, of course—of course he’s still around—still reachable by those who he’s willing to talk to. Does that thing have phone numbers or an address book?”

“It seems to have everything—an enormous amount of data.” She tapped again at the screen. “Shit.”

“Now what?”

“It’s encrypted. Both the telephone and address-book database, and something else that’s labeled ‘transfers.’”

“Shit.”

“Well, that’s good and bad.”

“How is that good?”

“You only encrypt something valuable, so there must be something interesting here. The locked room is the one you want to go into.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“The problem here is limited resources. This is a top-of-the-line notebook computer, but it doesn’t have a fraction of the computing power of the supercomputers we had in the Dordogne. Now, this is a 56-bit DES encryption algorithm, fortunately—it doesn’t use 128-bit keys, thank God—but it’s still strong.”

“Can you crack it?”

“Eventually.”

“Eventually meaning … hours?”

“Days or weeks with this computer, and that’s only because I know these utilities, these systems, inside out.”

“We don’t even have days.”

She was silent for a long time. “I know,” she said at last. “I suppose I can try to improvise—basically, parcel out the work to different hacker sites on the Internet, distribute the chore of crunching billions of number combinations. And see if we get anything that way. It’s sort of like that old saying about how an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters will eventually come up with Shakespeare.”

“Sounds dubious.”

“Well, I’ll be frank—I’m not very hopeful.”

Three hours later,.when Bryson returned with carry-out Indian food, Elena looked careworn and gloomy.

“No luck, huh?” Bryson said.

She shook her head. She was smoking, something Bryson had not seen her do since first escaping Romania. Popping out from the computer’s floppy drive one of the diskettes she had rescued from the Dordogne facility, containing decrypted Prometheus information, she put out her cigarette and went to the bathroom. She returned with a wet washcloth plastered on her forehead, then sank into an armchair. “My head hurts,” she said. “From thinking too much.”

“Take a break,” Bryson said. He set down the paper bags of food and came around to the back of her chair, then began massaging her neck.

“Oh, that feels great,” she murmured. After a moment, she said, “We have to reach Waller.”

“I can try one of the emergency relay channels, but I have no idea how deeply the Directorate has been penetrated. I can’t even be sure he’ll get it.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Yes, but only if it doesn’t compromise our own security. Waller would understand that, approve of it.”

“Our security,” she mumbled. “Yes.”

“What are you saying?”

“‘Security’ made me think of passwords and encryption.”

“Naturally.”

“And that made me think of Dawson, and how an obviously busy and careful man like that keeps track of all his passwords. Because someone like that never uses just one password—it’s not secure.”

“How would he keep track?”

“There would be a list somewhere.”

“It’s always been my experience that the weakest link in computer security in an office is always the secretary who keeps the password taped in her desk drawer because she can never remember it.”

“I’m sure Dawson was more cunning than that. Yet the cryptographic ‘key’ is a long series of numbers—truly impossible to memorize. So he has to keep it … can you hand me his Palm Pilot?”

Bryson retrieved it from her work station and gave it to her. She turned it on and tapped at the screen with the sylus. For the first time in hours she smiled. “There’s a list here, all right. With the mysterious label ‘Tesserae.’”

“If I remember my high school Latin, that’s plural for tessera, meaning ‘password.’ Is the list in the clear?”

“No, it’s encrypted, but it’s a light encryption utility—it’s called ‘secure information management software.’ A password protector. This is not difficult at all. It’s sort of like locking the front door but leaving the garage door open. I can use the same password-recovery software I downloaded earlier. Child’s play.”

Her usual energy and enthusiasm having been restored, she returned to the work table. Ten minutes later, she announced that she had broken the code. She was able to read through all of the data Dawson had so carefully locked away.

“Dear God, Nick. The file marked ‘Transfers’ is a record of wire-transfer payments made into a long list of London bank accounts. Amounts ranging from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand pounds, in some cases triple that!”

“Who are the recipients?”

“These names! This is like a Who’s Who of Parliament—members of the House of Commons across the whole political spectrum—Labor, Liberal Democrat, Conservative, even Ulster Unionists. He’s got names, dates of receipt, amounts, even times and locations of his meetings with them. A complete documentary record.”

Bryson’s pulse was racing. “Bribery and blackmail. The two cardinal elements of illicit political influence-peddling. It’s an old Soviet technique for blackmailing Westerners—they’d pay you some token amount for your services as a consultant, perfectly legitimate-seeming, and then they’d have you—they had proof of Soviet payments into your bank account. So Dawson not only paid off members of Parliament, but he kept the proof of it, as potential blackmail, in case anyone wavered. That’s how Simon Dawson exerted power. That’s how he became the secret control behind Rupert Vere, his boss, the foreign secretary. And probably behind Lord Parmore, and no doubt behind dozens of other influential voices in Parliament. Simon Dawson was the secret paymaster. If you want to influence a political debate as charged and as crucial as the debate over the surveillance treaty in Parliament, money certainly helps grease the wheels. Payoffs. Bribes to unscrupulous politicians, to those whose votes are for sale.”

“Apparently most of the most influential politicians in Parliament were selling their votes.”

“I’m willing to wager there was more to some of those cases than simple bribery. If we were to go through the British press in the last year or so, I’ll bet we’d find a pattern similar to what happened in the Congress in the U.S.—leaks of sensitive, private information, embarrassing and damaging secrets, human weakness revealed to the world. I’ll bet the most diehard opponents of the treaty were forced out of office, just as Senator Cassidy was forced out in America. And the others were warned, compromised — and then given the carrot, a nice, fat ‘campaign contribution.’”

“In laundered funds,” Elena said. “Untraceable.”

“Is there any way to determine the source of the funds?”

She popped one of the diskettes from the Dordogne facility into the computer. “Dawson’s record is so complete it even has the bank codes for the originating bank. He doesn’t list the bank name, just the code.”

“You’re comparing it against the data Chris Edgecomb downloaded?”

Her face seemed to cloud at the mention of Edgecomb’s name; it had obviously recalled the nightmare. She didn’t answer, but instead peered at the screen, at the long columns of numbers flashing by. “We have a match.”

“Let me guess,” Bryson said. “Meredith Waterman.”

“That’s right. The same firm that secretly owns the, uh, First Washington Mutual Bancorp. The place where you say Richard Lanchester made his fortune.”

He inhaled sharply. “An old-line investment banking house has somehow become the conduit of illicit funds into Washington and London.”

“And maybe other world-power centers as well—Paris, Moscow, Berlin …”

“No doubt. Meredith Waterman in effect owns Congress and Parliament.”

“You said Richard Lanchester got very rich there.”

“Right, but the story is that he left all that behind to go to Washington. That he severed all formal ties, all financial connections.”

“I learned as a child never to believe what I read in the Bucharest papers. I was taught always to distrust the official story.”

“A useful lesson, I’m sorry to say. You’re speculating that Lanchester still has influence there, and that’s how he’s able to use his old bank to channel massive amounts of bribes?”

“Meredith Waterman is a privately held bank—a limited partnership, from what I’ve learned. It’s basically owned by ten or twelve general partners. Do you think it’s possible that he’s still a partner there?”

“No. Can’t be. Once he started working in the government, he would have had to give all that up—resign his partnership and put any assets there into a blind trust. To work at the White House requires full financial disclosure.”

“No, Nick. Financial disclosure to the FBI, not public disclosure. He’s never had to go through a Senate confirmation, has he? Think about it— maybe this is the reason why he refuses to accept the president’s nomination to become secretary of state! Maybe it’s not some kind of modesty — maybe he just doesn’t want to go through the additional public attention, the scrutiny, that would come with it. Maybe he has things to hide—skeletons in his closet.”

“Well, you’re right that a national security adviser doesn’t have to go through the same baptism by fire that the secretary of state does,” Bryson conceded. “But White House officials are still under the microscope no matter who they are, their every move scrutinized, everyone always looking for financial improprieties.”

Elena seemed impatient; she was a mathematician comfortable with abstract principles most of all, and she was developing a theory that he insisted on poking holes in. “I want you to consider this about Lanchester. In the last few months I’ve been watching closely what’s happening with this International Treaty on Surveillance and Security. In our line of work, we’re naturally very interested, right?”

He nodded.

“And, well, once this treaty is ratified, it will create an international executive, a new, global law-enforcement body with sweeping powers. And who’s going to head this new agency? In the last few weeks, if you’ve been reading the newspaper reports very closely, you’d always find the same few names mentioned—always deep into the article, always couched as speculation—as possible directors. The term they always use is ‘czar’—a word that always makes me nervous. You know how we Romanians felt about the Russian czar.”

“The czar being Lanchester.”

“His name is being floated—what do they call that, a ‘trial balloon’?”

“But that makes no sense—he’s known to be opposed to the treaty! He’s supposed to be one of the voices in the White House who lobbied hardest against it, believing that such a worldwide law-enforcement agency could be abused, could infringe upon fundamental personal freedoms …”

“And how do we know he’s opposed to it? Leaks, right? Isn’t that how it works? But leaks to the press always have a hidden motive—people have reasons for making things known, for influencing public perceptions. Maybe Richard Lanchester wanted to sort of cloak his ambitions because he actually wants to be named to this position—which he would then reluctantly accept!”

“Jesus. I suppose it’s possible he’s been engaged in some sort of diversion for some reason.”

“That ‘some reason’ being that at the same time he’s behind the Prometheus conspiracy, and it’s important to him that he not seem to be connected to any such maneuverings. Think of that game that is played with the shells and little ball, where you move the shells around and people try to guess which shell the ball is under. A shell game, yes? So this is a diversion, as you put it—a deflection. We all watch the public battle over legislation, over laws—while behind the scenes the real battle is being waged. The one involving immense amounts of money and power! A battle waged by wealthy and powerful private citizens who stand to become ten times as wealthy and powerful.”

Bryson shook his head. Much of what she was saying was logical, made sense. Yet a national security adviser to the president, a White House official—a man in such a goldfish bowl simply could not orchestrate such a massive conspiracy. The risks were too great, the danger of exposure too grave. That did not make sense. And then there was the question of motive. The drive for money and power was as old as human civilization itself—older, perhaps. But … all of this simply to ensure that Lanchester was named to another bureaucratic position? Ludicrous. It couldn’t be.

Yet he was now convinced that Richard Lanchester was the key to Prometheus—a vital link in the chain that led to Prometheus. “We have to get inside,” he whispered urgently.

“Inside Meredith Waterman?”

Bryson nodded, deep in thought.

“In New York?”

“Right.”

“But to do what?”

“To find out the truth. To find out what the exact connection is between this Richard Lanchester and Meredith Waterman and the Prometheus conspiracy.”

“But if you’re right—if Meredith Waterman is really the node, the locus of massive payments around the world—then it’s going to be locked as tight as a drum. It’s going to be well guarded, every file cabinet triple-locked, every computer code word protected, the files encrypted.”

“That’s why I want to get you inside.”

“Nicholas, that’s crazy!”

He chewed at his lower lip. “Let’s think this through fully. To adapt one of your metaphors, if the door is locked, go in through the window.”

“What’s the window?”

“If we want to find out how a reputable old merchant bank got into the money-laundering business, I guarantee we’re not going to dig up records in the expected places. Because, as you say, it’ll be locked tight as a drum. All contemporary records will be sealed, locked away, unreachable. So we have to look at yesterday—at the old Meredith Waterman, the prestigious investment bank, back in its glory days. At the past.”

“What are you saying?”

“Look, Meredith Waterman used to be one of those old-shoe Wall Street partnerships—a bunch of doddering old inbred geezers who made all the decisions around a coffin-shaped conference table under oil paintings of their ancestors. So when—how —did they start channeling money for bribes? And who did it? How did it happen, and when?”

She shrugged. “But where do you look for such records?”

“The archives. Every old-line bank with a sense of history stores its old files, archives, saving every damned scrap of paper, filing them away, labeling them for posterity. They had a true sense of history, these old guys, a sense—no doubt inflated—of their own immortality. The new owners would be unlikely to discard the old records, considering them essentially benign, since they came from the days before all the secret funds transactions. And that’s our window, the soft underbelly. The place where security is most likely to be lax. Now, can you book us a couple of plane tickets on that thing?”

“Of course. To New York, right?”

“Right.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tonight. If you can find two seats tonight, grab them, on any airline, together or not, it makes no difference. We have to get to New York as soon as possible.”

To the Wall Street headquarters of a venerable old investment bank, he thought. A once-reputable bank that is now a vital link to the Prometheus deception.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The headquarters of the eminent investment bank Meredith Waterman was located on Maiden Lane in southernmost Manhattan, just a few blocks from Wall Street, in the shadow of the World Trade Center. Unlike the mock-Renaissance palazzo of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York nearby, where much of the nation’s gold reserve was stored in five underground floors, the Meredith Waterman building was unassuming yet proud, quietly elegant. It was a graceful, four-story neoclassical building with a mansard roof and brick-and-limestone façade, constructed a century earlier in the style of the French Second Empire; it seemed to belong to a different place, a different era—to Paris in the time of Napoleon, when the French dared to dream of a world empire.

Surrounded by the new skyscrapers of the financial district as it was, the landmark Meredith Waterman building radiated a serene confidence borne of its aristocratic pedigree, for Meredith Waterman was the oldest private bank in America. It was famous for its genteel reputation, for managing the fortunes of generations of America’s wealthiest families, its clients the oldest of old money. The name Meredith Waterman called to mind its legendary mahogany-paneled partners’ room, yet at the same time it had a global reach. Articles and profiles in financial publications from Fortune to Forbes to The Wall Street Journal talked of the privately held bank’s clubbiness, of the fact that it was owned by fourteen general partners whose families traced their roots back to the very founding of Manhattan, that it was the last remaining private partnership among America’s large investment banks.

Bryson and Elena had spent a few hours in preparation. She had done considerable on-line research on Meredith Waterman, using the Internet facilities of the New York Public Library. Very little financial information about the bank was available: since it was not a publicly held corporation, it was required to divulge relatively little about its operations. About the general partners she was able to pull up considerably more, though largely in the realm of straightforward biography. Richard Lanchester was not among the listed partners; he had resigned shortly after being named the President’s national security adviser. Since then he seemed to have no ties at all to his old employer.

And what about social ties, personal ones, friendships dating back to school days, family connections? Elena searched and searched, and found nothing. Lanchester’s social circles seemed not to overlap with those of his old partners; neither had he gone to the same schools. If there was a Lanchester connection, it was not overt.

In the meantime, Bryson gathered information in the way in which he was most comfortable: by foot, by eye, by telephone call. He spent several hours walking around the neighborhood, posing as a telephone repairman, as a software salesman, as an entrepreneur in search of office space to rent, chatting up computer specialists who worked out of neighboring buildings. By the late afternoon he had amassed a decent amount of information about Meredith Waterman’s physical plant, its computer systems, even its old corporate records.

Then in a final sweep of the area before his rendezvous with Elena, he walked past the building, directly in front of it, with the casual curiosity of a tourist from out of town. The main entrance was at the top of a broad, steep granite staircase. Inside, the oval marble lobby was illuminated dramatically, the centerpiece a large bronze statue on a pedestal. It appeared, at first glance, to be a Greek mythological figure; it looked familiar. Bryson had seen it somewhere before. Then he remembered: the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.

Yes. It appeared to be modeled after the famous gilded bronze statue in Rockefeller Center.

The statue of Prometheus.

 

 

It was five o’clock in the afternoon; they had completed their preparations, yet Bryson’s surveillance indicated that they should not attempt a covert entry until after midnight. At least seven hours from now.

So long a wait, yet so short a time. Time was a scarce commodity, not to be wasted. Others had to be reached, chief among them Harry Dunne. Yet he was not to be found, no information offered as to his whereabouts beyond a vague statement that the deputy director of Central Intelligence was “on leave” for unspecified “family reasons”; rumors circulated that “family” was coded language for “medical,” that the senior intelligence official was seriously ill.

Elena had done searches, made inquiries, yet turned up nothing.

“I tried the front-door approach,” she said. “I called his home number, but the person who answered, a housekeeper, said he was very ill, and no, she had no information as to where he was.”

“I don’t believe she doesn’t know.”

“I don’t either. But she was obviously very well briefed, and she was very quick to get off the phone. So that’s a dead end.”

“But obviously he is reachable—if we’re correctly interpreting that note in Simon Dawson’s Palm Pilot from a few days ago.”

“I went through Dawson’s PDA, and there’s no phone number for Harry Dunne. Not even encrypted. Nothing.”

“What about on-line records searches—medical records?”

“Easier said than done. I tried all the conventional medical-records searches using his name and social-security number, but nothing came up. I even tried a little outright deception, which I was fairly sure would work. I called the CIA personnel office pretending to be a White House secretary—I said the president wants to send flowers to his old friend Harry Dunne, and I needed an address to send them.”

“That’s nice. Didn’t work?”

“Unfortunately, no. Dunne obviously doesn’t want to be found. They insisted they had no information. Whatever his reasons, he’s got a pretty effective cordon of privacy.”

Cordon of privacy. A realization dawned on Bryson. What was the term Dunne had used once, in connection with Aunt Felicia? A ‘security cordon’? “There may be another way,” he said softly.

“Oh? How so?”

“There’s an administrator at the nursing home where my Aunt Felicia lives—a woman named Shirley, as I recall—who always knows how to reach Harry Dunne. Always has his phone number so she can call him whenever anyone calls or visits Felicia.”

“What? Why would Harry Dunne care who sees Felicia Munroe? The last time we saw Felicia together, wasn’t she in very bad shape, mentally?”

“Sadly, yes. But Dunne obviously thinks it’s important to keep a careful watch on her—a security cordon, he called it. Dunne wouldn’t have placed a security cordon on her unless he feared she had something to reveal. Presumably whatever she knows—whether she’s aware of its importance or not—had to do with the fact that Pete Munroe was in the Directorate.”

“He was?”

“There’s so much to tell you—more than we have time for now. We’ll talk on the way.”

“On the way where?”

“To the Rosamund Cleary Extended Care Facility. We’re going to take a little drive upstate, to Dutchess County. To pay an unannounced, unscheduled visit to my Aunt Felicia.”

“When?”

“Now.”

 

 

They arrived at the well manicured, beautifully landscaped grounds of the Rosamund Cleary Extended Care Facility shortly after six-thirty. The air was cool, fragrant of flowers and newly mown lawn and the end of a long, hot day.

Elena entered first and asked to speak to an administrator. She was driving by—she was staying with friends in town—and she had heard such wonderful things about the facility. It sounded like the perfect environment for her ailing father. Of course, it was late in the day, but was there maybe someone who worked there named Shirley? One of her friends had mentioned a Shirley … .

A short while later, Bryson entered and asked for Felicia Munroe. Since Elena was monopolizing Shirley’s time, and Shirley was Dunne’s contact, it was possible that a call might not be placed to Dunne. That would make things easier, but Bryson was not counting on that. For there was nothing wrong, really, with misleading Dunne into thinking that Bryson remained preoccupied with his own past. Perhaps it would falsely reassure the Prometheans that Bryson was on the wrong path, that he was therefore not that immediate a threat.

Let them think that I am dwelling on the past, on my own history. Let them think I’m obsessed.

But I am.

I am obsessed with unearthing the truth.

He prayed that Felicia would be in a lucid state.

She was eating dinner when Bryson was shown in, sitting by herself at a small, round mahogany table in the handsome dining room, where other residents sat by themselves or with one another at similar round tables. She looked up as he approached, and it was as if she were seeing someone she had just been speaking to five minutes earlier. Her eyes displayed no surprise. Bryson’s heart sank.

“George!” she trilled, delighted. She smiled, her pearly dentures smeared with lipstick. “Oh, but this is so very confusing. You’re dead!” Her tone became scolding, as if lecturing a naughty child. “You really shouldn’t be here, George.”

Bryson smiled, gave her a peck on the cheek, and sat across the table from her. She still mistook him for his father. “You caught me, Felicia,” Bryson said sheepishly, his tone lighthearted. “But tell me again—how did I die?”

Felicia’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “George, none of that! You know very well how it happened. Let’s not rehash all that. Pete feels bad enough, you know.” She took a forkful of mashed potatoes.

“Why does he feel bad, Felicia?”

“He wishes it were him instead. Not you and Nina. He just berates himself over and over again. Why did George and Nina have to die?”

“Why did we have to die?”

“You know very well. I don’t need to tell you.”

“But I don’t know why. Perhaps you can tell me.”

Bryson looked up and was surprised to see Elena. She put her arms around Felicia, then sat down next to her, clasping in her two hands Felicia’s bony, liver-spotted hand.

Did Felicia recognize Elena? It was impossible, of course; they had seen each other on only one occasion, years earlier. But there was something about Elena’s manner that Felicia found comforting. Bryson wanted to catch Elena’s eye, to find out what had happened, but Elena was devoting all her attention to Felicia.

“He really shouldn’t be here,” Felicia said, giving Bryson a sidelong glance. “He’s dead, you know.”

“Yes, I know that,” said Elena gently. “But tell me what happened. Wouldn’t it make you feel a little better to talk about what happened?”

Felicia looked troubled. “I always blame myself. Pete always says he wishes they didn’t have to die—he wishes it were him. George was his best friend, you know.”

“I know. Is it too painful for you to talk about? What happened, I mean? How they were killed?”

“Well, it’s my birthday, you know.”

“Is it? Happy birthday, Felicia!”

“Happy? No, it’s not happy at all. It’s so very, very sad. It’s such a terrible night.”

“Tell me about that night.”

“Such a beautiful, snowy night! I made dinner for us all, but I didn’t care if dinner got cold! I told Pete that. But no, he didn’t want to spoil my birthday dinner. He kept telling George to hurry, hurry! Drive faster! And George didn’t want to, he said the old Chrysler couldn’t handle the icy roads, the brakes were bad. Nina was upset—she wanted them all to pull over and wait out the storm. But Pete kept pushing them, urging them on! Hurry, hurry!” Her eves grew wide and filled with tears; she looked at Elena desperately. “When the car went out of control and George and Nina were killed … oh, my Pete was in the hospital for over a month, and the whole time he kept saying, over and over and over again, ‘It should have been me who was killed! Not them! It should have been me!’” The tears were spilling down her cheeks as the painful memory emerged from deep in the confused mind of a woman for whom the past and the present were a mingled palimpsest. “They were best friends, you know.”

Elena put a comforting arm around the old woman’s fragile shoulders. “But it was an accident,” she said. “It was an accident. Everyone knows that.”

Bryson reached over and hugged Felicia, blinking back tears himself. She was tiny, birdlike in his embrace.

“It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “It’s all right.”

 

 

“It must be such a relief for you,” said Elena, sitting beside Bryson in the rented green Buick.

Bryson nodded as he drove. “I think I needed to hear it—even given the circumstances, even given the confused state of her mind.”

“There’s a certain observable consistency to her thoughts, even given the confusion, the thought disorder. Her long-term memory is sharp: that usually remains intact. She might not remember where she is at any given moment, but she’ll clearly remember her wedding night.”

“Yes. I suspect Dunne was counting on her advanced senility in the event that I contacted her for confirmation of his carefully constructed lies. As the sole surviving witness to the events, she’s as unreliable as they come; Dunne knew that, knew she wouldn’t be able to effectively contradict his fraudulent version.”

“Though she just did,” Elena pointed out.

“She did. But it took a degree of trust, of patience and persistence, of gentleness that I doubt Dunne’s CIA men possess. Well, thank God for you, is all I can say. You’re the one with the gentleness, and I think she picked up on it. Who’d ever have thought that such a gentle creature could have the makings of a deep-cover operative?”

She smiled. “You mean the phone number?”

“How’d you get it, and so quickly?”

“For one thing, I simply thought about where I’d put it if I were her, a place where I could get it quickly. I also figured that if Harry Dunne wanted the administrator to think he was a concerned relative, he wasn’t at the same time going to insist on security precautions.”

“Where was it, in her Rolodex, right on her desk?”

“Close. A list of ‘emergency’ contact numbers taped to the top left-hand corner of her desk blotter. I spotted it as soon as I sat down, so I ‘accidentally’ left my purse on the chair next to her desk, and as. we were leaving for a tour, I suddenly remembered. I went to pick it up, spilled out its contents all over her desk and the floor. As I picked things up I took a glance and memorized it.”

“And if it hadn’t been right there?”

“Plan B would have required me to leave the purse there longer and retrieve it during her cigarette break. She’s a heavy smoker.”

“Was there a Plan C?”

“Yes. You.”

He laughed, a rare moment of much-needed levity relieving the prevailing tension. “You give me too much credit.”

“I don’t think so. Now it’s my turn, though. The reverse-number lookup has gotten easy these days, thanks to the Internet. I won’t even have to do it myself—I can E-mail it to one of a hundred search services that’ll get me the address in half an hour or less. Even call it in.”

“The area code is eight-one-four—where is that? There are so many area codes these days.”

“The note she scrawled beside it said ‘PA’—Pennsylvania, I assume, right?”

“Pennsylvania? Why would Harry Dunne be there?”

“Maybe he’s originally from there? A childhood home?”

“His accent is purest New Jersey.”

“Relatives, then? I’ll do a reverse-number lookup; that much should be easy to find out.”

 

 

At one o’clock in the morning there was only a skeleton staff on duty at the Meredith Waterman building: a handful of security guards and one information technology staffer.

The tough-looking female security guard stationed at the employees’ entrance at the side of the building was in the middle of reading a Harlequin romance, and she did not look happy about being disturbed.

“You’re not on the admit list,” she said dourly, her long-nailed index finger holding her place in the book.

The short-haired man in the aviator glasses and the shirt with MCCAFFREY INFORMATION STORAGE SERVICES stitched on it just shrugged. “Hey, fine. I’ll just head back to New Jersey and tell ’em you wouldn’t let me in. Makes my job easier, and I still get paid.”

Bryson turned around, readying his next riposte, when the guard relented somewhat. “What’s the purpose of your—”

“Like I told you. Meredith is one of our clients. We do the off-site backup—it’s an after-hours download. But we’re getting digital collation errors. Doesn’t happen a lot, but it happens. And it means I gotta check the routers on site here.”

She sighed in irritation and picked up the phone, punching a number. “Charlie, do we have a contract with a McCaffrey”—she examined the stitching on Bryson’s shirt—“Information Storage Services?”

She listened in silence. “The guy says he has to check on something here because of errors or something.”

She listened again. “All right, thanks.” She hung up, a superior smirk on her face. “You’re supposed to call ahead,” she said with a reproving scowl. “The service elevator’s on the right down the hall. Take it down to B.”

As soon as he reached the basement level, he raced to the freight-delivery entrance, which he had located during his earlier surveillance. Elena was waiting there, wearing the identical uniform and carrying an aluminum clipboard. The corporate records center was one large belowground room, with a low acoustic-tiled ceiling, buzzing fluorescent lights, and row upon row of open steel warehouse shelves that held endless-seeming lines of identical, tall gray archive boxes. The boxes were arranged chronologically, with just a few entries for 1860, the vcar it was founded by Elias Meredith, an erstwhile trader in Irish linen. Each succeeding year took up more linear shelf space, until 1989—the last year whose paper files were stored here—which occupied an entire row. Each year was broken down into various categories—client records, personnel records, minutes of partners’ and committee meetings, consent resolutions, amendments to bylaws, and so on. Folders were color-coded, with end tabs and bar codes.

Time was extremely limited: they knew they could not stay down here for much more than an hour before Security would begin to wonder what was taking so long. They divided up responsibilities, with Bryson surveying the paper files and Elena sitting at the computer terminal and examining the records-management database. This was an electronic records-tracking and inventory-management system, up-to-date though not password-protected. There would be no reason for it to be protected, since it was set up for ease of use by the bank’s record clerks.

It was laborious work, made even more difficult by the fact that they had no idea exactly what they were looking for. Client records? But which clients? Records of large money transfers to offshore accounts? But how could they distinguish between a wire transfer that was nothing more shady than the semilegitimate parking of clients’ assets offshore to avoid scrutiny by the IRS, or by a divorcing wife—and one that might be the beginning of a long sequence of transfers from one offshore bank to another, eventually ending up in the pocket of a senator? Elena came up with the idea of using the computer to search for them—by feeding in key words and pulling up file references. Yet after an hour they still had nothing.

In fact, they began to find documents missing, whole sections of them. After 1985, there were no partners’ income records or earning statements to be found. It was not as if the documents had been removed. Elena was able to confirm, by poring over the electronic database manager, that not a single document pertaining to monies brought in by the partners was to be found after 1985.

Frustrated, increasingly tense as the minutes ticked by, Bryson finally decided to narrow his focus to just one partner: Richard Lanchester. He proceeded to examine all the Lanchester files—personnel, compensation, clients. The story they told was, just as the Lanchester myth had it, one of the genesis of a Wall Street whiz. He started at Meredith Waterman immediately after graduation from Harvard, and did not do grunt work for long. Within a very few years he emerged as an aggressive bond trader, generating huge income for the firm. He soon headed the department. Then he added another specialty—currency speculation and investment. The money he made there made what he was doing before look like begging for pocket change. Richard Lanchester had become, in ten years, the biggest earner in the bank’s history.

The Wall Street whiz kid had become a financial powerhouse, making himself and the other general partners extremely rich through his deals, and most of all through a complex series of financial trades. He had apparently mastered the delicate art of trading in financial instruments called derivatives, placing immense, multibillion-dollar wagers on stock-index futures and interest-rate futures. Essentially he was gambling on a massive scale, the casino being the global capital markets. He kept winning and winning and winning; no doubt, like a true gambler, he believed his luck would never run out.

It was late in 1985 when his luck ran out.

In 1985, everything changed. With rapt fascination, sitting on the cold concrete floor of the records room, Bryson came upon a thin folder of internal auditors’ reports that described a reversal of fortune so abrupt, so devastating, that it was almost impossible to believe.

One of his immense bets, on Eurodollar futures, went bad. Overnight, Lanchester had lost the bank three billion dollars. This exceeded the bank’s assets many times over.

Meredith Waterman was insolvent. It had survived a century and a half of financial crises, even the Great Depression; and then Richard Lanchester lost a bet, and America’s oldest private bank was broke.

“My God,” Elena breathed as she looked through the auditors’ reports. “But … none of this was ever made known to the public!”

Bryson, as astonished as she, shook his head slowly. “Nothing. Never. Not an article, not a mention in the press—nothing.”

“How can this be?”

Bryson glanced at his watch. They had been down here for almost two hours; they were pressing their luck.

Suddenly he looked at her, eyes wide. “I think I understand now why we couldn’t find any partners’ income records after 1985.”

“Why?”

“Because they found a benefactor. Someone to bail them out.”

“What do you mean?”

He got up, found the gray file box that was marked, blandly, PARTNERSHIP INTEREST ASSIGNMENTS. He had seen it but hadn’t bothered to open it; there was far too much to look through and that seemed unlikely to yield anything interesting. He opened the box and found only one thin manila file folder inside. The folder contained fourteen thin, stapled legal documents of no more than three pages each.

Each was headed PARTNERSHIP INTEREST ASSIGNMENT. He read the first one with a racing heart. Although he knew what it would say, it was nevertheless stunning, even terrifying, to see on the page.

“Nicholas, what? What is it?”

He read phrases aloud as he skimmed. “The undersigned agrees to sell all rights, title, and interest in my interest as a partner in the partnership … . In consideration thereof … succeed to all rights and liabilities associated with that interest.”

“What are you reading? Nicholas, what are these documents?”

“In November of 1985, each of the fourteen general partners in Meredith Waterman signed a legal document selling their stake in the partnership,” Bryson said. His mouth was dry. “Each of the partners was directly and personally responsible for the more than three billion dollars of debt that Lanchester had run up. Obviously they had no choice; they were all backed into a corner. They had to sell out.”

“But … I don’t understand—what was there left to sell?”

“Just the name. An empty shell of a bank.”

“And the buyer got—what?”

“The seller paid fourteen million dollars—one million to each partner. And they were extraordinarily lucky to get that. Because the buyer was now saddled with billions of dollars of debt. Fortunately for him, he could afford it. Part of the condition of the sale was that each partner was required to sign a side confidentiality agreement—a nondisclosure agreement. A vow of secrecy. Enforceable by the threat of having their payment — the money disbursed over five years—revoked.”

“This is … it’s so bizarre,” she said, shaking her head. “Am I understanding this right? Are you saying that in 1985 Meredith Waterman was secretly sold to one person? And no one knew it?”

“Exactly.”

“But who was the buyer? Who’d be crazy enough to make such a deal?”

“Someone who wanted to become the secret owner of a prestigious, highly regarded investment bank—which he could then use as a vehicle. A front for illicit payments around the world.”

“But who?”

Bryson gave a small, wan smile, and he too shook his head in puzzlement. “A billionaire named Gregson Manning.”

“Gregson Manning—Systematix … ?”

Bryson paused. “The man behind the Prometheus conspiracy.”

There was a quiet scuffing noise, which jolted Bryson—the sound of a leather shoe scraping against the concrete floor. He looked up from the files, which were spread out on a small table before them, and saw the tall, stout man in a blue security-officer’s uniform. The man was staring at them with undisguised hostility. “You—hey, what the goddamned hell … ? You’re—you’re supposed to be from the computer company. What the hell are you doing here?”

CHAPTER THIRTY

They were nowhere near the main bank of computers, the server on the other side of the large room. A file box, clearly labeled, stood in front of them; the fourteen legal documents spread out like a fan on the table.

“What the hell took you so long?” said Bryson in disgust. “I’ve been calling up to security for the last half hour!”

Gimlet-eyed, the security man regarded them with suspicion. His two-way radio crackled. “What the hell you talking about? I didn’t get any calls.”

Elena got up, waving her clipboard. “Look, without the service contract, we’re just wasting our time! It’s supposed to be left for us in the same place each time! We’re not supposed to dig around for it—do you have any idea how much data’s going to be lost?” She gesticulated wildly, thrusting an index finger toward his chest.

Bryson watched her, impressed; he followed her lead. “Security must have shut down the system,” he said with a petulant shake of the head, getting up slowly.

“Hey lady,” the guard protested, facing her, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking—”

Bryson’s hands shot out like the strike of a cobra, grabbing the security man’s throat from behind with his left hand, and striking, with the hard edge of his rigid right hand, the brachial plexus nerve bundle at the base of the neck. The man went suddenly limp, slumping into Bryson’s arms. He set the unconscious guard down on the floor gently, dragging him the short distance to the warehouse shelving, propping him up in the aisle between two rows of shelves. He would be out for at least an hour, possibly more.

 

 

As soon as they exited the bank through the freight entrance, they ran to the rented car, parked down the block and across the street. Not until they were several blocks away did either of them say anything. They were each in a state of shock. Exhaustion would be tolerated; there was nothing to do about that now except to grab sleep when they could; otherwise, they were surviving on caffeine and adrenaline.

It was three-twenty in the morning, the streets dark and deserted. Bryson drove through the empty streets of lower Manhattan, and when he reached the area of the South Street Seaport he found a narrow side street and pulled over to the curb.

“It’s amazing,” Bryson said quietly. “One of the richest men in the country—in the world—and America’s most respected political figure. ‘The last honest man in Washington,’ or whatever the hell they call him. A partnership sealed years ago, in conditions of absolute secrecy. Manning and Lanchester never appear in public together, they’re never mentioned in the same sentence; they seem to have no connection.”

“Appearances are important.”

“Crucial. For all kinds of reasons. I’m sure Manning wanted to preserve Meredith Waterman’s impeccable reputation—it was far more valuable to him that way, as a paragon of old-line Wall Street that he could secretly use to control political leaders the world over. Now he had the perfect cover, the camouflage of unimpeachable respectability, concealing his conduit for bribes and other illegal funds channeled to Parliament and Congress, probably to the Russian Duma and Parliament, the French General Assembly—you name it. And he had a front that could in turn buy stakes in other banks, other companies, without his name ever being associated. Like the Washington bank where most Congressmen do their banking. It’s all there—bribery, the potential for blackmail by using the most sensitive personal information …”

“And of course the White House,” she put in. “Through Lanchester.”

“Certainly Manning has major influence on U.S. foreign policy through him. That’s why it was equally important to both men that not a word of how Manning bailed out Meredith Waterman ever leak. Richard Lanchester’s reputation had to remain intact. If the word got out that he had single-handedly brought down America’s oldest private bank with reckless speculation, he’d have been ruined. Instead, he was able to preserve the mystique of his financial genius. The brilliant but ethical man who made a fortune on Wall Street, who became so rich he was incorruptible, was willing to give it all up to work on behalf of his country. In ‘public service.’ How could America not be honored to have such a man in the White House assisting the president?”

A moment of silence passed. “I wonder whether Gregson Manning actually sent Lanchester to the White House? That maybe was one of the conditions of his saving Meredith Waterman.”

“Interesting. But don’t forget, Lanchester already knew Malcolm Davis before Davis announced his run for the presidency.”

“Lanchester was one of his key supporters on the street, right? In politics, money buys friendship rather easily. And then he volunteered to run Davis’s campaign.”

“No doubt Manning secretly helped out there too—shoving a lot of money Davis’s way, from Systematix, from his employees and friends and associates, and who knows how else. Thereby making Lanchester look good, look damned invaluable, in fact. So Richard Lanchester, who stared ruin in the face, who saw his illustrious career crash and burn, was suddenly a major player on the world stage. His career went supernova.”

“And he owed it all to Manning. We have no way in to Manning, do we?”

Bryson shook his head.

“But you know Lanchester—you met in Geneva. He’ll see you.”

“Not now, he won’t. By now he knows everything he needs to know about me—enough to know that I’m a threat to him. He’ll never agree to see me.”

“Unless you make that threat explicit. And demand a meeting.”

“For what? Meet with him for what, to accomplish what? No, a direct, unmediated approach to him is just too blunt an instrument. As I see it, the best way in is Harry Dunne.”

“Dunne?”

“I know the guy’s temperament. He won’t be able to resist an approach from me; he knows what I know. He’ll have to see me.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, Nicholas. He may not be in any shape to meet with anyone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That telephone number we got at the nursing home—it’s a town called Franklin, Pennsylvania. The phone number is listed as belonging to a small, private, very exclusive medical facility. A hospice. Harry Dunne may be in hiding—but he’s also dying.”

 

 

There were no direct flights to Franklin, Pennsylvania; the fastest way was to drive. But they desperately needed rest, even if only for a few hours. It was vital that they remained alert: there was still much to do, Bryson was sure of it.

Three or four hours of sleep, however, turned out to be worse than none at all. Bryson awoke groggy—they had found a motel about half an hour outside of Manhattan that looked suitably anonymous—to the sound of the tapping of computer keys.

Elena looked rested, apparently having showered, and she sat in front of her notebook computer, which was plugged into the phone jack in the wall.

She spoke without turning around, obviously having heard him stir. “Systematix,” she said, “is either the most impressive evidence of unrestrained global capitalism, or the most frightening corporation that ever existed. It depends on how you look at it.”

Bryson sat up. “I need coffee before I can look at it.”

Elena pointed to a carry-out cardboard cup next to his side of the bed. “I went out about an hour ago. It might be cold by now; I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Cold is just fine. Did you sleep at all?”

She shook her head. “I got up after half an hour or so. Too much on my mind.”

“Tell me what you found.”

She turned around to face him. “Well, if knowledge is power, then Systematix is the most powerful corporate entity on the face of the earth. Their corporate motto is ‘The Knowledge Business,’ and that seems to be the only organizing principle—the only element that unites its immense holdings.”

Bryson took a sip of coffee. It was indeed cold. “But I thought Systematix was a software company—one of Microsoft’s chief rivals.”

“Software and computers—that turns out to be a fraction of its real business. But it’s extraordinarily diversified. We already know it owns Meredith Waterman, and through them the First Washington Mutual Bancorp. I can’t prove it controls the banks in Great Britain where most members of Parliament have their accounts, but I strongly suspect it.”

“Based on what? Given the elaborate precautions Manning took to conceal his ownership of Meredith, it can’t be any easier to connect him to British banks.”

“It’s the law firms—the foreign law firms it has on retainer—that tell the story. And those firms, whether in London or Buenos Aires or Rome, are known to have close relationships to certain banks. That’s how I can connect the dots.”

“That’s an impressive line of reasoning.”

“Now, through Systematix, Manning has major stakes in the military-industrial giants. And recently it’s launched a fleet of low-earth-orbit satellites. But listen to this: Systematix also owns two of America’s three major credit-reporting agencies.”

“Credit …?”

“Think of how much information a credit company has on you. It’s staggering. An incredible amount of highly personal information. And there’s more. Systematix owns several of the largest health-insurance firms—and it also owns data-management firms that maintain the records for those insurance companies. It owns the medical data companies that manage the medical records for virtually all of the country’s HMOs.”

“My God.”

“As I said, the one element that unites all these entities, or at least many of them, is information. What they know. The information they have access to. Just step back and look at it—life insurance and health insurance records, medical records, credit and banking records. Through its web of corporate holdings, Systematix has access to the most intimate, most private records on what I estimate to be ninety percent of the citizens of the United States.”

“And that’s just Manning.”

“Hmm?”

“Manning is just one member of the Prometheus Group. Don’t forget about Anatoly Prishnikov, who probably has similar holdings in Russia. And Jacques Arnaud in France. And General Tsai in China. Who knows what personal information this group has control over?”

“This is really frightening, Nicholas, you know that? For a girl who grew up in a totalitarian state, with the Securitate, with every other person informing on you—the possibilities are terrifying.”

Bryson stood up, folded his arms. He could feel his body tense; he had the eerie and uncomfortable sensation of headlong movement, of plunging through an endless tunnel. “What Prometheus has managed to do in Washington—obtaining personal information that no one should ever have, then releasing it or threatening its release—it has the ability to do around the world. Systematix may be about information, but Prometheus —Prometheus is about control.”

“Yes,” Elena said, her voice seeming to come from very far away. “But for what? To what end?”

Control is about to be transferred … We see clearly now …

“I don’t know,” Bryson replied. “And by the time we learn the answer, it may well be too late.”

 

 

Shortly after noon they pulled their rented car into the semicircular drive of a Georgian red-brick building that appeared to have once been a grand private home. It was marked with discreet brass letters on a low brick wall: FRANKLIN HOUSE. Elena waited in the car.

Bryson wore a white doctor’s coat, purchased at a medical supply house on the way, and identified himself as a pain-management specialist from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, called in for a consult by the family of a hospice patient. Bryson relied on the generally unsuspicious environment of hospitals and other medical establishments, and he was not disappointed. No one asked to see identification. He struck an attitude of professional detachment, though with the appropriate air of concern: the family had contacted him through a colleague and asked them for any help he might suggest to ease the dying man’s last days. With amused chagrin, Bryson showed them a pink “While You Were Out” message slip with the phone number on it.

“My secretary didn’t write down the patient’s name,” he said, “and I’m embarrassed to say I left my office without the fax … . Do you have any idea who this might be?”

The receptionist glanced at the number and looked it up on her list of extensions. “Certainly, Doctor. That’d be a Mr. John McDonald in 322.”

 

 

Harry Dunne looked like a cadaver on life support. His narrow face was now sunken; most of his white hair was gone; his skin looked unnaturally bronzed, though blotchy. His eyes bulged. An oxygen tube was in his nose; he was hooked up to an intravenous drip as well as an array of monitors that recorded his respiration and heart rate, tracing irregular green squiggles on the screen behind him, beeping audibly.

There was a direct phone line, even a fax machine, but both were silent.

He looked up when Bryson entered the room. He seemed woozy but alert, and after a few seconds he grinned, a cadaver’s horrific smile. “You come to kill me, Bryson?” Dunne said with a mordant laugh. “That’d be a laugh. They got me on fucking life support. Keep the corpse breathing. Just like the goddamned CIA. No more of that shit.”

“You’re not an easy man to find,” Bryson said.

“That’s ’cause I don’t want to be found, Bryson. I got no relatives to visit me on my deathbed, and I know what happens over at Langley when they hear you’re sick—they’re already breaking the seal on your safe, pawing through your files, moving you out of your office. Like the good old Soviet Union—the premier goes on vacation to Yalta, comes back to find his stuff in banker boxes on the street outside the Kremlin.” He gave a guttural, rattling cough. “Got to cover your flanks.”

“For how much longer?” Bryson’s question was pointed and ruthless, meant to provoke. Dunne stared for a long time before he replied.

“Six weeks ago I was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. Did a last-ditch course of chemo, even radiation. The shit’s in my stomach, in my bones—my goddamned hands and feet even. You know they’re ordering me to stop fucking smoking? That’s a hoot. I said, shit, maybe I should just go on a high-fiber diet, for all the good it’s gonna do me.”

“You really set me up well,” Bryson said, not bothering to hide his anger. “Spun a whole elaborate lie about my past, about the Directorate, about how it began and what it was up to … . Was the point just to use me like your own personal cat’s paw? Do your dirty work, get me back inside the Directorate to find out what we …” He paused, wondering about his use of the pronoun ‘we.’ Is that how I think of me, of them? I’m part of ‘we,’ once more part of an agency that doesn’t exist? “ … what we knew about the Prometheus group? Because we were the only intelligence agency in the world who’d managed to find out what was going on?”

“And what did you find out, after all that? Chicken shit.” He smiled grimly, lapsed into another coughing spell. “I’m like goddamned Moses. Never gonna live to see the Promised Land. Just point the way, that’s all.”

“The Promised Land? Whose ‘promised land’? Gregson Manning’s?”

“Forget about it, Bryson,” Dunne said, closing his eyes, a contorted smile on his face.

Bryson looked over at the pouch of clear liquid hanging on Dunne’s IV stand. It said Ketamine. A painkiller, but it also had other uses. In the right quantities it could induce euphoria and delirium; it had even been used, upon occasion, as a crude truth serum by both Directorate and CIA. He strode quickly over to it, found the stopcock, and turned it to increase the flow.

“The hell are you doing?” Dunne said. “Don’t shut me off. Morphine stopped working for me, they had to move me to harder stuff.”

The increased flow of the opioid had an immediate effect. Dunne flushed, began perspiring heavily. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“You ever hear what happened to his kid?”

“Whose kid?”

“Manning’s.”

Elena had downloaded Manning’s biography. “He had a daughter who was kidnapped, didn’t he?”

“Kidnapped? That’s not the half of it, Bryson. Guy was divorced, had an eight-year-old daughter who was the whole fucking world to him.” His words began to slur. “He’s visiting Manhattan, being honored … some big charity thing, daughter Ariel’s in his apartment at the Plaza with the au pair … returns home that night, finds the au pair murdered, daughter’s gone …”

“Jesus.”

“Some wiseguys … make a little cash …” His words trailed off. “Paid the ransom … nothing … they took her to some remote cabin … Pennsylvania.” Dunne broke out into another coughing fit. “Manning … not fuck around …” His eyes fell shut.

Bryson waited a moment. Had he overdone the dose? He stood up, readjusted the IV valve just as Manning’s eyes were opening again. “The guy owns a whole fuggin’ electronics empire … offered to help out the FBI … crack it … We got satellites, only we can’t use ’em—they’re shuttered … fuggin’ Executive Order 1233—whatever the hell …”

Dunne’s eyes were becoming more focused again. “Assholes over at Justice won’t approve wiretap … cell phones of the kidnappers … Whole thing fucked up by bureau—bureaucratic bullshit. Protecting the privacy of criminals. Meanwhile, this pretty little eight-year-old girl … buried alive in a coffin three feet underground … asphyxiating slowly.”

“Dear God … What a nightmare.”

“Manning never the same after that. Saw the light.”

“What—what was ‘the light’?”

Dunne shook his head, smiled strangely.

Bryson stood up. “Where’s Lanchester?” he demanded. “They say he’s on vacation in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a bunch of crap—not at this time he’s not. Where is he?”

“Where they all are. The whole Prometheus gang, except yours truly. The hell you think? Lakeside.”

“Lakeside …?”

“Manning’s house. On that lake outside Seattle.” His voice was getting progressively weaker. His eyes closed. “Now go away, Bryson. I don’t feel so good.”

“What’s the objective?” demanded Bryson. “What’s the point?”

“It’s a fucking freight train bearing down on you, brother,” said Dunne. He stopped and hacked for almost a full minute. “Can’t be stopped. You’re too late. So you might as well get out of the fucking way.”

Bryson noticed someone approaching from down the corridor: a slim black man, a male nurse, somehow familiar. But from where?

Abruptly he rose and left the room; his instincts warned him of impending trouble. He strode quickly, an overscheduled doctor perennially late for his next appointment.

As he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced back and saw the black man entering Dunne’s room. The man was definitely familiar. All too familiar. But who was he?

Bryson ducked into a lounge filled with vending machines and Formica-topped tables, and he wracked his brain. From where, from what operation, from what country? Or was it from his civilian life, his teaching days?

A few minutes later he stuck his head into the hall and looked down toward Dunne’s room. Seeing nobody in the area, he walked toward it, intending to glance into the room as he passed, try to catch a glimpse of the male nurse.

He approached Dunne’s room. The door was open. He glanced inside; no one was there except Dunne, sleeping.

No.

The single unbroken tone from the heart-rate monitor caused him to look over. The EKG, normally jagged, was a flat line. Dunne’s heart was no longer beating. He was dead.

He rushed into the room. Dunne’s face was chalky white; he was unquestionably dead. Turning to the IV stand, he saw that the valve on the ketamine had been turned all the way, and the pouch of liquid was just about empty.

The nurse had turned the spigot. He had killed Dunne.

They had been under surveillance the entire time. The ‘nurse’—whoever it was, he was not a nurse—had killed Dunne.

For talking?

Bryson raced from the hospice.

 

 

“Sir, we have a sighting.”

The atrium was filled with banks of flat monitors, displaying constantly shifting, high-resolution images relayed from geosynchronous satellites. It was located in an upper level of a strip mall in Sunnyvale, California, above a diet center, the immense electronic capabilities well concealed as a result.

The young communications specialist pointed toward monitor 23A, striding quickly toward it. His middle-aged supervisor, wearing a lightweight telephone headset, approached the screen, squinting.

“Right there—a green Buick,” said the younger man. “License plates match. Driver is the male, passenger the female.”

“Facial recognition software?”

“Positive, sir. A confirmation. It’s them.”

“What’s the direction?”

“South.”

The supervisor nodded. “Dispatch Team 27,” he ordered.

 

 

Elena drove.

They had to get to Seattle immediately, had to find the closest airport, and from there find a commercial flight—or charter one. Lakeside. Gregson Manning’s house on the lake. Outside Seattle.

The Prometheus Group was assembling there, all of them. Meeting—to do what?

Whatever they were doing, they were all in one place. He had to get there at once.

“The male nurse,” Bryson began. He had recalled to Elena this oddly familiar person. He stopped short.

Suddenly Bryson’s head was reeling. Vividly recalled images flashed by. A concrete bunker at Rock Creek Park. Dunne’s driver bursting in, demanding to see his boss. A slender, lithe, well-muscled black man. Solomon. Firing at him, his eyes cruel, almost sadistic; the same man lying dead, crumpled on the cement floor, blood erupting from bullet wounds in his chest after being shot down by his boss.

The realization dawned, sickeningly.

“That was Dunne’s chauffeur. Obviously a Prometheus control.”

“But—but I thought you said he was dead, that Dunne killed him!”

“Christ, what was I thinking! We all have special-effects wizards on staff—blood packs, those little explosive charges triggered by battery—squibs, I think they’re called. The rigged wardrobe. The whole bag of tricks! I was straying, and Dunne had to do something dramatic to get me back into the fold … . Wait … listen.”

She cocked her head. “What do you hear?”

It was definitely there, the distant whump-whump of a helicopter. They were not near any helicopter facilities; there was no airstrip nearby.

“It’s a chopper, but one of those extremely quiet models. It’s got to be directly overhead. Do you have a makeup mirror, a compact, in your purse?”

“Of course.”

“I want you to lower your window and hold it up, catch a reflection of the sky above. Look without letting anyone see that you’re looking.”

“You think it’s following us?”

“For the last few minutes the sound has been fairly constant, neither louder nor softer. It’s been right above us for miles now.”

She opened her compact and thrust it out the open window. “There is something, Nicholas. Yes. A helicopter.”

“Son of a bitch,” Bryson muttered. A sign they had just passed indicated a rest stop a mile ahead. He accelerated, got into the right lane, following a beat-up, rust-bucket El Dorado into the rest area parking lot. The car’s body was perforated by rust, part of the tail pipe dragged almost touching the ground, and the hood was secured with twine. He watched the car’s driver get out, a scruffy-looking, bleary-eyed, longhaired man in grungy jeans, a black beret, and a black Grateful Dead T-shirt under a green canvas army jacket. A stoner, Bryson thought. A pothead.

“What are you doing?” Elena asked.

“Countermeasures.” Bryson grabbed some papers from the glove compartment of the rented car. “Follow me. Take your purse and whatever else you’ve got with you.”

Bewildered, she got out.

“You see that guy who just got out of that wreck of a car?”

“What about him?”

“Remember his face.”

“How can I forget it?”

“I want you to wait right here until he comes out.”

Bryson walked through the fast-food restaurant and saw that the driver of the El Dorado was neither in line nor seated at a table. Either the vending machines, buying cigarettes or candy or soda, or else the restroom, Bryson thought. The stoner wasn’t at the vending machines, but he was in the men’s room. Bryson recognized the man’s ratty black sneakers under the door of one of the toilet stalls. He relieved himself, then stood by the sink, washing his hands. Finally, the man came out of the stall and went up to the sink. That in itself was a surprise; Bryson hadn’t figured him for being much on cleanliness.

Bryson caught the stoner’s eye in the mirror. “Hey,” he said, “lemme ask you a favor.”

The stoner glanced over at him suspiciously, didn’t answer for a few seconds as he soaped his hands. Without catching Bryson’s eye, he staid with hostility, “What?”

“I know this might seem bizarre, but I need you to check outside for me, see if my wife’s out there. I think she followed me.”

“Sorry, man, I’m kinda in a hurry here.” He shook off his hands and looked around for the paper-towel dispenser.

“Look, I’m desperate,” Bryson said. “I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t. I’m willing to compensate you for your time.” He pulled out a wad of bills and peeled off a couple of twenties. Not too much money or it’ll seem suspicious. “Just look out there, that’s all. Tell me if you see her.”

“Aw, man. No fuckin’ paper towels. I hate those fuckin’ hot-air things.” He shook the water off his hands, then he took the proffered bills. “This better not be no setup, man—I’ll fuck you up but good.”

“On the level, man. Totally on the level.”

“What does she look like?”

“Brunette, early thirties, red blouse, tan skirt. Real pretty. You can’t miss her.”

“I get to keep this even if she’s not there?”

“Oh, yeah, of course. Man, I hope she’s gone.” Bryson thought for a moment. “Come back and tell me and then I’ll double it.”

“Jeez, I don’t know what the hell you’re up to, man,” the stoner said, shaking his head as he left the men’s room.

He walked through the vending-machine area to the outside and looked around. Elena was stationed nearby, acting the part they had worked out, her arms folded, head swiveling from side to side, a furious expression on her face.

In a minute he returned to the men’s room. “Yeah, I see her. That’s one pissed-off chick.”

“Shit,” Bryson said, handing the man another couple of twenties. “I gotta shake that bitch. I’m a desperate man.” He pulled out the roll of bills, this time removing hundred-dollar bills. When he had counted out twenty banknotes, he fanned them. “She’s like a fucking stalker now, really making my life a total nightmare.”

The stoner eyed the hundreds greedily. Distrustfully, he said, “What now? I’m not doin’ anything illegal or anything—nothin’ that gets me in trouble.”

“No, no, of course not. Don’t misunderstand me. Nothing like that.”

Another man came into the rest room and glanced at the two of them warily before using the urinal. Bryson fell silent until the man left.

Then he said, “Your car that old El Dorado?”

“Yeah, it’s a piece of shit—what about it?”

“Let me buy it from you. I’ll give you two thousand bucks.”

“No way, man, I got twenty five hundred bucks into it, with the new shocks.”

“Make it three thousand.” Bryson held up the keys to the Buick. “You can take mine.”

“That better not be hot.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Hey, that’s a rental,” he said suspiciously, seeing the Hertz key fob.

“Right. I’m not a total idiot. It’s just a set of wheels to get you wherever you need to go. It’s all paid for, and you can drop it wherever you want, I’ll take care of it.”

The stoner thought for a minute. “I don’t want you coming back to me and complaining about the car being a piece of shit and all. I already told you that. She’s got a hundred seventy-five thousand miles on her.”

“Not to worry. I don’t know you, I don’t even know your name. You’ll never see me again. All I care is, your car gets me away from my wife. It’s worth it to me.”

“Is it worth thirty-five hundred to you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bryson said with feigned irritation.

“I got stuff in there.”

“So go get it and come back with your stuff.”

The stoner went to the parking lot, took a green army duffel bag from the trunk and filled it with old clothes, bottles, newspapers and books, a Walkman, a broken set of headphones. He came back to the men’s room.

“I’ll throw in another hundred for your beret and jacket.” Bryson took off his expensive blue blazer and handed it to the man. “Take my jacket. You definitely got the better end of this deal. Plus you sold your car for three times what it’s worth.”

“It’s a good car, man,” he said sullenly.

Bryson handed him the hundred-dollar bill, then one more. “Wait for me to drive out of here before you take off, okay?”

The stoner shrugged. “Whatever.”

Bryson took the keys to the El Dorado and shook the man’s hand.

The stoner stood by the plate-glass windows of the vending-machine area until he saw his crappy old El Dorado drive slowly by. The car stopped, and then the man saw, to his astonishment, the pretty brunette wife in the red blouse run up to the car and jump in, and then the car drove away.

No freaks like suburban freaks, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief. Shit.

 

 

The Bell 300 helicopter hovered directly above the rest stop.

“We have a positive visual ID,” said the observer in the front passenger’s seat, peering through binoculars and speaking into his headset. He watched the man in the blue blazer get into the late-model Buick.

“Roger that,” the voice replied. “We’re going to satellite feed now, so give me the Buick’s license plate again.”

The observer dialed up the binoculars until he could read the license plate, then he read off the numbers. “Christ, will you look at the way that guy’s driving? Guy must have stopped off for a couple of drinks—no wonder it took him so long.”

The staticky voice came over the headset again. “You got a positive on the woman?”

“Uh, that’s a negative,” the observer replied. “There wasn’t any woman with him. Think he might have left her there?”

 

 

The stoner in the black Grateful Dead T-shirt and elegant French blue blazer couldn’t believe his luck. First he unloads the piece-of-shit El Dorado he hadn’t been able to sell for five hundred bucks last summer for thirty-five hundred. Then he gets a free rental, with what looked like no time limit. And between selling his foul army jacket and beret, and poking his head outside to ogle some fucked-up guy’s chick, he’d made more in half an hour than he’d made all month. Whatever the hell that idiot’s trip was, paying all that money to get away from his wife and then letting the bitch back in the car, who cared.

He had the radio blasting and was cruising at almost ninety when all of a sudden he saw the huge tractor-trailer bearing down on him from the left, pulling up even with him …

And then forcing him to the side of the road!

What the hell was this? The pothead swung the wheel hard to the right as the eighteen-wheeler forced him off the road and onto the shoulder.

“The fuck—!” he bellowed as he leapt out of the car, waving his fist at the truck driver. “What the fuck you think you’re doin’, you fuck?”

A man got out of the passenger’s side of the truck’s cab, a well-muscled man of around forty with a crew cut. He walked around the car, looking in the windows, then rapped his knuckles on the trunk lid. “Open it,” he commanded.

“Who the fuck you think you are, you gas-guzzling fascist son—” the stoner screamed, stopping short when he saw the flat silver pistol pointed at his eyes. “Oh, shit.”

“Open the trunk.”

Trembling, the stoner went right to the car, opened the door, and fumbled around looking for the lever on the floor. “Shoulda known I’d get fucked,” he muttered.

The crew-cut man inspected the trunk, then looked again in the backseat. He opened the back door and prodded the large green duffel bag. Just to be safe, he fired two shots into it, then another couple of shots into the front and rear seat cushions just for good measure.

The stoner just looked, still shaking, terrified.

The crew-cut man asked a few quick questions and then he put away his gun. “Get a haircut—and get a job,” he grunted as he returned to the truck.

 

 

“What the hell happened?” barked the supervisor in the surveillance control center in Sunnyvale, California.

“I—I’m not sure,” faltered the technician.

“What’s that in the rear seat? Zoom it in.”

“That there. It’s a big bundle—a bag, a sort of duffel bag. Where’d that come from?”

“I didn’t see it before, sir.”

“Replay the feed from sector S23-994, time fourteen-eleven.” He turned to the adjacent monitor. In a few seconds, he saw the strange man in the black T-shirt carrying the big green duffel bag out of the rest area and over to the late-model Buick.

“Same object,” the supervisor said. “Switcheroo.”

“Rewind it. Where’d that bag come out of?”

In a few seconds they could see the longhaired man gathering what looked like trash from the trunk and front and backseats of the rusty El Dorado.

“Shit. All right, do a capture of that vehicle—quick, now, just cut and paste the image and run a search on the visual signature.”

“Got it.”

Within thirty seconds there was a chime, and the El Dorado came into focus on the live satellite feed. “Zoom it,” the supervisor said.

“Driver is a male, passenger female,” said the technician. “We’ve got a confirmation. Subject in view again, sir.”

 

 

The El Dorado belched clouds of oil smoke as Elena and Bryson roared down the highway.

It’s still there. We didn’t lose them.

A large, square wooden sign on the left-hand side of the road about fifty feet ahead announced, in letters crudely formed out of twigs, CAMP CHIPPEWAH. The entrance was little more than a gap in the trees, a rutted dirt road leading somewhere off into the woods.

Bryson looked more closely and saw a smaller sign hanging from the larger one on which was painted CLOSED.

The racket from above gradually became louder: the helicopter was changing altitude, descending.

Why?

He knew why. The road was sufficiently deserted; the helicopter was shifting into position.

He suddenly veered off the highway and onto the dirt road. It would likely lead to a wooded area.

“Nicholas, what are you doing?” Elena cried.

“The leaf canopy should help us evade detection,” Bryson explained. “Maybe give us the opportunity to lose the chopper.”

“We didn’t lose it back at the rest stop, then …?”

“Only for a while.”

“It’s not just following us, is it?”

“No, honey. I think they’ve got other plans for us.”

The steady drone told him that the helicopter had easily spotted the turn off and was moving accordingly. The rutted dirt road led to a clearing, and then to a dirt path, apparently not meant for cars. He drove at top speed. The car was not suited to the terrain; the low-hanging undercarriage scraped continuously against the rocks. Tree branches on either side of the narrow lane scraped against the body of the car.

Then, just up ahead, he could see the helicopter hovering, slowly dropping into view. There was a clearing about a hundred feet ahead, the car speeding through the woods directly toward it. He slammed on the brakes; the car fishtailed, crashing into trees on either side. Elena screamed involuntarily and grabbed hold of the dashboard to brace herself.

Can’t turn around—no room here to maneuver!

Just as the El Dorado entered the grassy clearing, with several small wooden cabins scattered around, the helicopter dropped down until it hovered not more than twenty feet above the ground, its front end tipped down.

“Use your gun!” Elena shouted.

“Won’t do any good—it’s bulletproof, and too far off, anyway.”

He stole a lightning-fast glance at the chopper, searching for the gun turret, and instead saw a rocket launcher. He just narrowly missed plowing into a cabin, veered suddenly around it.

Suddenly there was an immense explosion: the cabin had turned into a fireball. They were firing incendiary devices, some kind of missiles!

Elena screamed again. “They’re aiming at us! They’re trying to kill us!”

With steely concentration, Bryson caught a peripheral glance at the helicopter, saw it shift again. He spun the wheel crazily to the right, sending the car careering, its wheels spinning noisily in the dirt.

Another blast! Just feet from the car, another cabin erupted in flames an instant after a missile streaked into it.

Focus! Don’t be distracted, don’t look — focus!

Need an escape, but what—where? Must get out of this clearing, out of the path of the missiles!

Bryson’s thoughts were frantic. Nowhere to go, nowhere out of range, nowhere a missile can’t reach us!

Jesus Christ! A missile streaked by so closely he could see it almost brush against the hood of the car, then hit a large oak tree, where it exploded. Fire was raging all around them now, the grassy meadow ablaze. The two destroyed cabins roared with pluming flames, pillars of fire.

“My God!” he heard himself shouting. He was nearly crazed with terror, overwhelmed by the sense of futility, the madness of the situation!

Then he spotted a bridge. Just across the burning field, a short path led down to a wide, muddy river, a rickety-looking, old wooden beam bridge across it. Flooring the accelerator, he drove straight ahead at top speed. Elena screamed, “What are you doing? You can’t—the bridge won’t hold us—it’s not for cars!”

The trees just ahead exploded into orange flames, as another missile narrowly missed its mark. They plunged ahead straight into the inferno. For a second or two everything was orange-white as flames licked the glass, blackening it, and then they emerged on the other side of the conflagration, propelled forward onto the wooden bridge. It swayed perilously ten feet above the slow-moving river of mud.

“No!” Elena screamed. “It won’t hold us!”

“Quick, roll down your window,” Bryson shouted as he did the same. “And take a deep breath.”

“What …?”

The helicopter’s blades thundered ever closer, a sound Bryson could feel more than hear.

He floored the accelerator once more, and the car lurched forward, crashing through the wooden parapets.

“No! Nicholas!”

The sensation was one of slow motion, as if time had almost come to a stop. The car teetered forward, then plunged into the river. Bryson roared, clutching the wheel and the dashboard; Elena clung to him, screaming as well.

The splash was enormous. The El Dorado plunged bumper first into the water, hurtling down. In the seconds before they were submerged in the opaque waters, Bryson heard a blast just behind them; he turned to see the bridge collapse in a starburst of flame.

Their world was dark, murky; the car sank; the brown water rushed into the windows, rapidly filling the interior. Bryson could see just a short distance ahead underwater. Holding his breath, he unbuckled the seat belt and helped Elena out of her seat belt, then out of the car, moving slowly, balletically, through the shadows, the billowy murk. Pulling her with all of his strength, they moved along just beneath the surface of the brackish water, carried along by the current, until he could no longer hold his breath and they came to the surface, surrounded by reeds and marsh grass.

They each gasped for air, gulping it in. “Stay down,” he panted. They were surrounded by tall reeds, shielded from view. He could hear, but not see, the helicopter; he pointed toward the water, and Elena nodded, then they filled their lungs with air and went under again.

The instinct for survival is a potent source of energy: it urged them along, allowed them to stay under for a longer time than they might otherwise have done, made them swim with greater endurance. When they came up for air again, still camouflaged by reeds and grass, the helicopter roar seemed to have diminished; it seemed to be farther away. Keeping his head down, Bryson looked skyward and saw that the chopper had gained altitude, likely to survey a broader area.

Good; they’re not sure where we’ve gone, whether we were trapped in the car to drown slowly …

“Again,” Bryson said. They took deep breaths, filling their lungs to the bottom, then plunged. There was a rhythm now, a pattern to their flight; they swam, let the current carry them downstream, and when they couldn’t hold their breath any longer they came up, sheltered by the wild aquatic vegetation.

They went down again, and up, then down again, and soon half an hour had gone by, and Bryson looked at the sky and saw that the helicopter had left. There were no signs of life to be observed; the watchers had lost their targets, no doubt hoping that the targets were dead.

Finally they reached a place where the river got shallow and they could stand and rest. Elena shook the muddy water from her hair, coughing a few times before she was able to catch her breath. Their faces were mud-covered; Bryson could not help laughing, though more from relief than from amusement.

“So this is what your life was like,” she said, the analyst speaking to the field operative. She coughed again. “You’re welcome to it.”

Half smiling, he said, “This is nothing. You haven’t lived until you’ve had to take a dive into the canals of Amsterdam. Three meters deep. A third of that’s muck and filth. Another third’s a layer of abandoned bicycles—they’re sharp and rusty, and when they scrape you it hurts like hell. Then you stink for about a week. As far as I’m concerned, this is a refreshing dip in a nature preserve.”

They climbed up onto the riverbank, the water draining from their soaked clothing. A cold breeze was blowing, rippling the reeds and chilling them both. Elena had begun shivering, and Bryson held her close, warming her as best he could.

About three-quarters of a mile from Camp Chippewah was a bar and restaurant. Sodden and cold, mud-encrusted, they sat at the bar, sipping hot coffee, talking quietly and ignoring the looks from the bartender and the other patrons.