The Prometheus Deception (27 page)

As they maneuvered through the crowds, from room to room, Bryson noticed the paintings that crowded the walls, and that gave him an idea.

*   *   *

In a small room upstairs, two men in business suits sat in semidarkness, their faces illuminated only by the eerie bluish flicker from the banks of video monitors. The stainless steel and brushed chrome, the fiber-optic cables and cathode-ray tubes, made up a peculiar modern-art installation mounted on the ancient stone walls. Each monitor displayed a different angle in a different room below. Miniaturized cameras concealed in the walls, in fixtures and fittings, unseen and unnoticed by the myriad guests, relayed high-resolution video images to the security men huddled before the monitors. The clarity was such that the watchers could zoom in on any face that was of interest or concern, pulling in tight for a close-up that took up an entire screen. Images could be digitized, electronically compared against other images stored in a vast off-site data bank known as the Network. Any questionable persons could be identified and discreetly invited to leave, if need be.

Buttons were pushed; a face was enlarged on one monitor, the features screened onto a grid and scrutinized by the two men. It was the silver-haired, slightly jowelly, sun-lined face of a man whose name, furnished in advance to Arnaud's security people, was James Collier of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

What drew the attention of the two men was not that they recognized the man's face. Instead, it was the fact that they did not recognize the face. The man was an unknown quantity. To Arnaud's ever-vigilant security force, the unknown was always a cause for concern.

*   *   *

Jacques Arnaud's wife, Giséle, was a tall, imperious woman of aristocratic bearing, with an aquiline nose and gray-streaked black hair. Her hairline was unnaturally high, her facial skin too taut, unmistakable evidence of regular visits to a “clinic” in Switzerland. Bryson spotted her holding court in a corner of the book-lined library, a small crowd hanging on her every word. Bryson recognized her face from her regular appearances in the society pages of
Paris Match
, several years of which he had pored over in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

The hangers-on seemed dazzled by her cleverness, her every aperçu received with uproarious merriment. Accepting two flutes of champagne from a waiter and handing one to Layla, Bryson pointed to a canvas that hung near where Madame Arnaud was holding forth. Striding up to it eagerly, thereby positioning himself within earshot of the hostess, Bryson remarked in a voice just loud enough to be overheard by the adjacent gathering, “Fantastic, isn't it? Ever see his portrait of Napoleon? Extraordinary—he turns Napoleon into a Roman emperor, posing him frontally like a statue, a living icon.”

His gambit worked; the proud owner could not resist turning her head toward a conversation she found more intriguing, since it concerned one of her own works of art. Bestowing upon Bryson a gracious smile, she said in fluent English, “Ah, and have you ever seen a stare as hypnotic as the one Ingres gives Napoleon?”

Bryson returned the smile, glowing as if he had found a soul mate. He bowed his head and extended his hand. “You must be Madame Arnaud. James Collier. A wonderful evening.”

“Pardon me,” she announced to her gathering, gently dismissing them. Moving closer, she said, “I see you're an admirer of Ingres, Mr. Collier.”

“I would say I'm an admirer of
yours
, Madame Arnaud. Your collection of pictures demonstrates a truly discriminating eye. Oh, may I introduce my friend, Layla Sharett, of the Israeli embassy.”

“We've met before,” said the hostess. “So good to see you again,” she said, taking Layla's hand, though her attention remained riveted on Bryson. In her prime, Bryson saw, she must have been a woman of striking beauty; even as a woman in her early seventies, she was a coquette. She had the courtesan's talent for making a man feel he was the most fascinating man in the room, that no other man or woman existed. “My husband tells me he finds Ingres
boring
. He is not the connoisseur of art you seem to be.”

Bryson, however, did not want to seize this potential opening to be introduced to Jacques Arnaud. On the contrary, he preferred not to be called to the arms tycoon's attention. “If only Ingres had been so fortunate as to have you as a subject for one of his portraits,” he said, shaking his head wistfully.

She affected a scowl, though Bryson could see she was secretly pleased. “Please! I would
hate
to have my portrait done by Ingres!”

“He did take forever on some of his portraits, didn't he? Poor Madame Moitessier had to sit for twelve years.”

“And he turned her into a Medusa, her fingers into
tentacles!
”

“But an extraordinary portrait.”

“Claustrophobic, I think.”

“They say he may have used a
camera lucida
to produce some of his compositions—in effect, spying on his subjects before he captured them, you might say.”

“Is that right?”

“Still, as much as I admire his paintings, nothing compares to his drawings, don't you agree?” Bryson knew that the Arnauds' private collection included some of Ingres's drawings, displayed in less public rooms of the château.

“I couldn't agree more!” Giséle Arnaud exclaimed. “Though he himself considered his drawings to be potboilers.”

“I know, I know—while he lived in poverty in Rome, he was forced to support himself by drawing pictures of visitors and tourists. Some of the greatest paintings were done by artists working just to keep food on the table. The fact is, Ingres's drawings are his best work by far. The use of white, of negative space, the way he captures light—they're truly masterpieces.”

Madame Arnaud lowered her voice and said confidentially, “Actually, we have a few of his drawings hanging in the billiards room, you know.”

*   *   *

The ruse had worked. Madame Arnaud had invited Bryson and his guest to stroll into parts of the house that were not open to the other guests. She had offered to show him the drawings herself, but Bryson had declined, refusing to steal her away; but if she really didn't mind, perhaps they could take a quick look by themselves?

As he and Layla wandered through halls and more intimate, less public rooms, whose walls were hung with less impressive works by lesser French artists, Bryson oriented himself. He had prepared well: he had located the collection of blueprints of historically important châteaux, maintained at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and had studied the layout of the Château de Saint-Meurice. He knew it was highly unlikely that the Arnauds would have done anything to alter Château de Saint-Meurice's floor plan; the only variable was the use they made of the rooms, the location of the bedrooms and offices, particularly Arnaud's private office.

Bryson walked idly arm-in-arm with Layla down one hallway, turning left into another. As they rounded a corner, they heard low, muffled, male voices.

They froze. The voices gradually became more audible and more distinct. The words were in French, but one speaker's French had a definite foreign accent, which Bryson quickly placed as Russian, probably from Odessa.

“… to return to the party,” the Frenchman was saying.

The Russian said something that Bryson couldn't quite make out. Then the Frenchman replied, “But once Lille happens, the outrage will be enormous. The way will be clear.”

Signaling Layla to stay back, Bryson flattened himself against the wall and inched forward, his tread silent, all the while listening, concentrating. Neither the voices nor the footsteps seemed to be approaching. He took from the breast pocket of his tuxedo what looked like a silver ballpoint pen, then pulled from one end a long, thin, glasslike wire, telescoping it to its maximum eighteen-inch length. He bent the tip of the flexible fiber-optic periscope cable, then nudged it along the wall until it jutted out no more than half an inch beyond the wall's end. Looking into the small eyepiece, he was able to see the two men clearly. One, a trim, compact man with heavy black glasses, entirely bald, was clearly Jacques Arnaud. He was conferring with a tall, florid-faced man whom Bryson did not immediately recognize. A few seconds later the man's identity came to him: Anatoly Prishnikov.

Prishnikov. The mogul widely believed to be the true power behind the figurehead currently occupying the president's office in the Kremlin.

Shifting the fiber-optic periscope slightly, Bryson was startled to discover another man, much closer, seated just around the corner. A guard, clearly armed, stationed at the beginning of the corridor. Shifting the scope yet again revealed another seated figure, another armed guard, stationed halfway down the hall, where the men were standing, in front of a large, steel-paneled door.

Arnaud's private office.

They were in a part of the château that had no windows; ordinarily, it would be an unlikely location for an office. But Arnaud's chief concern was security, not views.

The two men made the sort of final gestures that indicated they were finished talking, and fortunately they headed down the hall in the other direction. There was no need for Bryson and Layla to disappear.

Withdrawing the fiber-optic periscope and collapsing it back into its pen case, he turned toward Layla and nodded. She understood without his saying anything. They had located their target, the locus of Jacques Arnaud's business activities within the Château de Saint-Meurice.

Swiftly, his tread silent, he backtracked until he found the open door to a room they had just passed. The sitting room was, as he had previously noted, dark and sparsely furnished, evidently rarely used. He consulted the luminous radium dial of his Patek Philippe watch. After a full minute had elapsed, he signaled to Layla, then ducked into the room, waiting in its dark recesses.

Layla began weaving down the hall toward the room that had to be Arnaud's private, secure office, staggering as if drunk. Suddenly she let out a whoop of laughter and said to herself, though loudly enough to be heard by at least the first guard, just around the corner, “There's
got
to be a bathroom around here
somewhere!
”

Turning the corner unstably, she came upon the armed guard, seated in a delicate antique chair. He straightened, stared at her with hostility.
“Puis-je vous aider?”
May I help you? he demanded stiffly in French, in a voice that commanded her to go no further. He was barely out of his twenties, with crew-cut black hair, heavy eyebrows, a pudgy, round face, and a five o'clock shadow. His small red mouth was turned down in a pugnacious frown.

She giggled and continued to stagger toward him. “I don't know,” she replied provocatively, “
can
you help me? Why, what do we have here?
Un homme, un vrai
—a
real
man. Not like those
pédés
, those young fairies and old goats out there.”

The guard's stern expression softened somewhat, his posture relaxed as he sized her up to be no threat to the security of Jacques Arnaud's sanctum. His cheeks reddened visibly. There was no doubt he was quite taken with Layla's voluptuous body, the swell of her breasts revealed by the low-cut black gown. “I'm sorry, mademoiselle,” he said nervously, “please, stay right there—you must go no further.”

Layla smiled coyly, bracing herself against the stone wall with one outstretched hand. “But why would I
want
to go any further?” she said huskily, suggestively, as she inched closer to him. “Looks like I've found what I've been looking for.” She moved her hand along the wall, slinking ever closer to him, jutting her breasts forward.

The young guard's smile was uncomfortable. He cast a nervous glance down the hall at the other sentry, who seemed to be paying him no attention. “
Please
, mademoiselle—”

She lowered her voice. “Maybe you can help me … to find a bathroom.”

“Back down the hall you came,” he replied, attempting a businesslike tone, though without much success, “there is a restroom.”

Her voice became even more breathy and suggestive. “But I keep losing my way around here, and if you wouldn't mind showing me…”

The guard again glanced uneasily at his compatriot, who was too far down the hall to take notice.

“Perhaps,” she added, arching her brows, “a little guided tour. It needn't take long at all, hmm?”

Flush-faced and awkward, the guard rose from his chair. “Very well, mademoiselle,” he said.

There were now, Layla calculated, several possible avenues the guard could pursue. If he happened to take her into the room in which Bryson was concealed, the guard would be taken down, the element of surprise a weapon as deadly as Nicholas Bryson's hands.

But the guard instead guided her into another room, this one a
chambre de fumeur
, comfortably furnished. He was, she noticed, quite unmistakably aroused. He gave a wolfish grin as he pulled the door closed.

It was time to put Plan B into effect. She turned to him, her face full of anticipation.

Silently, Bryson rushed into the hallway, turned the corner, and then slowed his pace, sauntering toward the sole remaining guard, who kept a solitary vigil before the closed steel-paneled door of Arnaud's presumably empty office.

Now it was Bryson's turn to feign drunkenness, though to a very different end. The guard looked up as Bryson approached with a loose-limbed, swaying walk.

“Monsieur,” the guard said brusquely, part greeting and part warning.

As he sashayed closer to the guard, Bryson held up his gold Zippo lighter, shaking his head disgustedly. In English, he said, “The damnedest thing! Can you believe this? I remember my lighter, but it's the damned cigarettes I forget!”