The Prometheus Deception (62 page)

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
.

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 born 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 PalmPilot 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.…