The Prometheus Deception (56 page)

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 horn-rimmed 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 blasé 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 bonkers,” 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.