The Prometheus Deception (37 page)

Bryson had arrived by rail, at the Gare du Nord, and had grabbed a quick late-night dinner of soggy
moules et frites
and watery pilsener at a snack bar on the way. He asked the dour proprietress for the room number of his female friend who had, he believed, checked in earlier. She raised her eyebrows insinuatingly and divulged the number with a smirk.

Layla had arrived a few hours earlier, via a Sabena flight into Zaventem Airport, having purchased a ticket at the last minute. Although it was after midnight, and he expected she was as bone-tired as he was, he noticed the light seeping through the crack between her door and the filthy carpet, and he knocked. Her room was as dismal, as dingy as his.

She poured them each a Scotch, neat, from a bottle she had picked up near the Vieux Marché. “So who is this ‘honest man' from Washington you want to meet here?” She added impishly: “It can't be anyone from your CIA—unless you've actually found one honest man at Langley.” The bruises on her face from the struggle with Jan Vansina were bluish-purple, nasty looking.

Bryson took a sip, took a seat in a rickety armchair. “No one from the Agency.”

“Well?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Not yet
what?
”

“I'll fill you in when the time is right. Just not yet.”

Sitting in a mismatched, but equally rickety, chair on the other side of a small table whose wood-grain veneer was flaying off, she set down her drink. “You're withholding from me—you're
continuing
to withhold, really—and that's not the deal.”

“There was no deal, Layla.”

“Did you really think I would join you blindly, in a mission I don't understand?” She was angry, and it was more than the alcohol or the exhaustion.

“No, of course not,” he said wearily. “Quite the opposite, Layla. Not only did I not ask your help, I've tried to discourage you, push you away. Not because I didn't think you'd be helpful—you've been remarkable,
invaluable
—but because I couldn't assume the responsibility of endangering your life the way I'm endangering my own. But this is
my
battle to fight,
my
mission. If there's a subsidiary benefit to you, if whatever we end up learning serves your purpose, too, so much the better.”

“That's so coldhearted.”

“Maybe I am coldhearted. Maybe I
have
to be.”

“But there's a gentle, caring side to you as well. I can sense it.”

He didn't reply.

“Also I think you've been married.”

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

“You have, yes?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But why do you say it?”

“Something about the way you are with me, the way you are with women. You are wary, of course—you don't
know
me, after all—yet at the same time you're comfortable with me, yes?”

Bryson smiled, amused, but said nothing.

She continued, “I think that most men in our … our line of work are unsure how to treat women field operatives. Either we are neuters, sexless, or we are potential romantic conquests. You seem to understand that it is more complex than that—that a woman, like a man, can be both, or neither, or something else entirely.”

“You speak in riddles.”

“I don't mean to. I just think—well, I suppose I'm saying that we are man and woman…” She tipped her glass toward him, a strange sort of salute.

He understood what she was hinting at, yet he pretended not to. She was an extraordinary woman, and the truth was that he was strongly attracted to her, increasingly, the more time he spent with her. But to pursue the attraction was to be selfish, to raise expectations he did not intend to meet,
could
not meet, until he finally understood what had happened between himself and Elena. The physical pleasure might well be considerable, but it would be momentary, fleeting; and it would simply end up confusing them, altering their relationship, introducing a destabilizing element.

“You seem to speak from experience,” he said. “About how some men don't understand women who do the sort of work you do. Your husband—you said you married an Israeli soldier—was he one of those men who didn't understand?”

“I was a different person then. Not even a young woman—I was a girl, half formed.”

“Was it his death that changed you?” asked Bryson gently.

“And my father's death, even though I never knew him.” She looked pensive, and took another sip.

He nodded.

Her head bowed, she said, “Yaron, that was my husband, he was stationed at Kiryat Shmona during the
intifada
, helping to defend the village. One day the Israeli Air Force launched a rocket attack on a Hezbollah terrorist base in the Bekaa Valley, not too far from where I lived as a child, and by accident they killed a mother and all five of her children. It was a nightmare. Hezbollah retaliated, of course, by launching their Katyusha rockets against Kiryat Shmona. Yaron was helping get villagers into bomb shelters. He was hit by one of the rockets, his body incinerated almost beyond recognition.” She looked up, tears in her eyes. “So tell me, who was in the right? Hezbollah, whose sole mission seems to be to kill as many Israelis as they can? The Israeli Air Force, which was so determined to eliminate a Hezbollah camp that they didn't care if they killed the innocent?”

“You knew the mother who was killed with her five children, didn't you?” said Bryson quietly.

She nodded, finally losing her composure, biting her lip as the tears flowed. “She was my sister, my … my older sister. My little nieces and nephews.” For a few moments she could not speak. Then she said, “You see, it is not always the men who fire the Katyushas who are the guilty ones. Sometimes it's the men who supply the Katyushas. Or the men who sit in their bunkers with their charts and plan the attack. A man like Jacques Arnaud, who owns half of the French National Assembly and grows rich selling to the terrorists, the madmen, the fanatics of the world. So I want you to know that when you finally decide you can trust me, when you finally tell me why you are risking your life, and what it is you hope to find … I want you to know who it is you'll be telling.” She stood, kissed him on the cheek. “And now I need to go to sleep.”

*   *   *

Bryson returned to his room, his mind working feverishly. It was vital that he reach Richard Lanchester as soon as possible; in the morning he would begin to make telephone calls to reach the national security adviser. He realized that he still had far too little information, and too little time. With Harry Dunne mysteriously vanished, for whatever reason, Lanchester was the one man in government with both the power and the independence of mind to do something about the Directorate's metastasizing power. Although Bryson had not met the man, he knew the rudimentary biography: Lanchester had made millions on Wall Street but gave up business in his mid-forties to pursue a life of public service. He had run his friend Malcolm Davis's successful presidential election campaign and in return had been named as Davis's national security adviser, where he rapidly distinguished himself. His probity and intelligence made him an anomaly among the grandstanding and corruption of the Beltway; he was notable for his fair-mindedness and an unassuming, amiable brilliance.

According to the newspaper account about the carnage at Lille, Lanchester was visiting Brussels on what was billed as a largely ceremonial visit to SHAPE, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe; there, he was consulting with the secretary general of NATO.

It would not be easy to reach Lanchester, particularly in the environs of NATO's world headquarters.

But there might be a way.

*   *   *

Shortly after five in the morning, having passed a tense and restless night punctuated by the ceaseless cacophony of traffic and the shouts of all-night revelers, Bryson awoke, bathed in cold water since there seemed to be no hot, and drew up a plan.

He dressed quickly, went out to the street, located a newsstand that stayed open all night and sold a good selection of international newspapers and magazines, heavily favoring European. As he expected, many of the papers, from the
International Herald Tribune
to the
Times
of London, from
Le Monde
and
Le Figaro
to
Die Welt
, published extensive coverage of the Lille attack. Many of them cited Richard Lanchester, often using the same quotation; a few of them ran longer, sidebar interviews with the White House adviser. Bryson bought an array of newspapers and took them to a café, ordered several strong cups of black coffee, and began reading through the articles, marking them up with a pen.

Several newspapers mentioned not only Lanchester but his spokesman, who was also the spokesman for the National Security Council, a man named Howard Lewin. Lewin was in Brussels as well, accompanying his boss and the White House delegation on their visit to NATO headquarters.

Press spokesmen like Howard Lewin had to be available at all times to handle urgent inquiries from journalists. Returning to his hotel room, Bryson was able to reach the spokesman in just one phone call.

“Mr. Lewin, I don't believe we've ever spoken before,” said Bryson in an urgent, hard-bitten voice. “I'm Jim Goddard, European bureau chief for the
Washington Post,
and I'm sorry to disturb you so early in the morning, but we've got a bombshell on our hands, and I'm going to need your help with it.”

He had Lewin's attention at once. “Absolutely—uh, Jim?—what's up?”

“I wanted to give you a heads-up. We're about to go to press with a full-dress, above-the-fold, front-page story on Richard Lanchester. Banner headline, the works. I'm afraid you folks aren't going to be very happy with it. In fact, let me be blunt about it, it may well be the end of Lanchester's career. It's devastating stuff—the culmination of a three-month investigation.”

“
Jesus!
What the hell are we talking about here?”

“Uh, Mr. Lewin, I ought to tell you, I've been getting major pressure from the top to just run with the damned thing, not let a word of it leak before it comes off the press, but personally, I see this series as hugely damaging not only to Lanchester but potentially to national security as well, and I…” Bryson let his voice trail off for a moment, to let his words sink in. Then he offered the lifeline, which the spokesman had no choice but to grab at. “… I wanted to give your boss an opportunity to at least respond to this—maybe even, hell, stall it for a while. I'm trying not to let my personal feelings, my admiration for the man, get in the way of my newsroom responsibilities here, and maybe I shouldn't have even made this call, but if I can get the great man himself on the horn, maybe I can finesse this thing—”

“Do you know what
time
it is in Brussels?” Lewin stammered. “This—this last-minute notice—this is a goddamned setup, it's
completely
irresponsible on the
Post
's part—”

“Look, Mr. Lewin, I'm going to make this your judgment call, but I want us to be
absolutely
clear that I gave you the opportunity to put out this fire, that this is all going to be on your head—hold on a second”—he shouted across the room to an imaginary colleague, “No,
not
that photo, the
head shot
of Lanchester, you idiot!” and then resumed speaking into the phone—“but you tell your boss I need to hear from him on this cell number in the next ten minutes or we're running with this thing, including the line ‘Mr. Lanchester declined to comment,' are we
clear?
Tell Lanchester—I'd advise you to use these exact words—that the brunt of the piece concerns his relationship with a Russian official named
Gennady Rosovsky,
got that?”

“Gennady …
what?
”

“Gennady Rosovsky,” Bryson repeated, giving the Washington number of his cell phone, which would give no indication that he was in Brussels. “Ten minutes!”

Bryson's phone rang barely ninety seconds later.

Bryson recognized the cultured baritone, the mid-Atlantic accent, at once. “This is Richard Lanchester,” the national security adviser said in a tone just short of frantic. “What the
hell's
going on here?”

“I assume your spokesman filled you in on the piece we're running with.”

“He mentioned some Russian name I've never heard before—Gennady something-or-other. What's this all about, Mr. Goddard?”

“You know damned well Ted Waller's real name, Mr. Lanchester—”

“Who the hell is Ted Waller? What
is
this?”

“We need to talk, Mr. Lanchester. Immediately.”

“Well, talk away! I'm here. What kind of hatchet job is the
Post
preparing? Goddard, I don't know you, but as I'm sure you're well aware, I do have your publisher's home number, I see her socially, and I won't hesitate for a second to call her!”

“We have to talk in person, not over the phone. I'm in Brussels; I can be at SHAPE headquarters in Mons in an hour. I want you to call ahead to the front-gate security post, so I can pass right through, and the two of us can have a heart-to-heart.”

“You're in
Brussels?
But I thought you were in Washington! What the hell—?”

“One hour, Mr. Lanchester. And I suggest you make not a single phone call about this between now and the time I arrive.”

*   *   *

He knocked softly at Layla's door. She opened it quickly; she was already dressed, freshly bathed, fragrant of shampoo and soap. “I passed by your room a few minutes ago,” she said as he entered. “I overheard you talking on the phone. No, don't tell me—I won't ask; I know: ‘when the time is right.'”