The Prometheus Deception (65 page)

“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.

*   *   *

Bryson 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.”