The Prometheus Deception (26 page)

She blushed again. “You flatter me.”

“Only to twist your arm, Layla,” Bryson said dryly.

“Whatever works, is that it?”

“Something like that.”

She smiled, shook her head. “I'd never get clearance from Tel Aviv.”

“Then don't request it.”

She hesitated, dipped her head. “It would have to be a temporary alliance, which I may be forced to jettison at any moment.”

“Just get me inside the château, and you can abandon me at the front door if you want. Now tell me something: Exactly
why
does Mossad have Jacques Arnaud in its sights?”

She gave him a look of surprise, as if the answer were so obvious it was scarcely worth saying. “Because in the last year or so, Jacques Arnaud has become one of the world's leading suppliers of arms to terrorists. This is why I found it interesting that the man who was summoned to see you—what was his name, Jenrette?—came aboard the ship in the company of Arnaud's agent, Jean-Marc Bertrand. I assumed this American named Jenrette was buying for terrorists. So I was quite intrigued to see that
you
were meeting with Jenrette. I must say, for much of the evening I wondered what you were doing.”

Bryson fell silent, his mind working feverishly. Jenrette, the Directorate operative he knew as Vance Gifford, had come aboard with Jacques Arnaud's agent. Arnaud was selling weapons to terrorists; the Directorate was buying. Did that mean—by logical extension—that the Directorate was sponsoring terrorism around the globe?

“It's vital that I get to Jacques Arnaud,” Bryson said very quietly.

She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “But we may get nothing out of it, either one of us. And that's really the least of our worries. These are very dangerous men who will stop at nothing.”

“I'm willing to take that chance,” Bryson said. “It's all I have right now.”

*   *   *

The team of professional killers followed the screams. They had been assigned to mop up, which entailed searching the narrow, cobblestone streets that radiated off the Praza do Obradoiro in Santiago de Compostela. Now that it had been conclusively determined that their subject had eluded all location attempts, their next order of business was to locate all stray team members. The dead had been loaded into unmarked vehicles and brought to a cooperating local
mortuorio
where falsified papers would be drawn up, certificates of death stamped, the bodies buried in unmarked graves. Next of kin would be compensated handsomely and knew not to ask questions; this was standard operating procedure.

When the wounded and the dead had been rounded up and accounted for, there still remained two team members at large: the Friulian-speaking peasant brothers from the remote corner of northwestern Italy. A quick sweep of the streets turned up nothing; no emergency codes had been received. The brothers were not responding to repeated radio calls. They were presumed killed, but that was not a certainty, and black-operations procedures stipulated that the wounded were either to be extracted or finished off. So one way or another, the brothers had to be checked off on a list.

Finally it was a report of muffled screams emanating from a side street that drew the mop-up team's attention. They traced the sounds to an abandoned, boarded-up church. Once they burst in, they located first one brother, then the other. Both were manacled, tied up, and gagged, though one of the brother's gags was loose, which was fortunate: that had enabled his screams to be heard, and the brothers thereby located.

“Christ, what took you so long?” gasped the first brother in Spanish, through the loosened gag. “We could have died here! Paolo's lost a huge amount of blood.”

“We couldn't permit that to happen,” said one of the mop-up team. He took out his semiautomatic pistol and fired twice into the Italian's head, killing him instantly. “Weak links are unacceptable.”

By the time he found the second brother, crouched in a fetus position, pale and shaking and surrounded by a large pool of blood, he could see that the brother knew what to expect. It was in Paolo's wide, unblinking eyes. Paolo did not even whimper before the two shots came.

TEN

Chantilly, France

The magnificent Château de Saint-Meurice was situated thirty-five kilometers from Paris, a vast seventeenth-century manse whose splendor was dramatically illuminated by scores of artfully placed spotlights. No less dramatic or magnificent were its surroundings, great sculpted gardens lit this evening like a stage set. This was most appropriate, for the Château de Saint-Meurice was indeed a stage on which the rich and powerful promenaded, making their skillfully timed entrances and exits, exchanging carefully scripted banter. The actors and the audience, however, were one and the same. All were there to impress each other; all knowingly played their roles within the artificial confines of an elaborate masque.

Although the evening's occasion was a gathering of European trade ministers, an offshoot of the annual G-7 Conference, the cast of characters did not change much from party to party at the Château de Saint-Meurice. The beautiful people of Paris and its environs were all there,
tout le beau monde
, or at least everyone who mattered. Clad in their finest evening wear, their tuxedoes or evening gowns, the women glittering with jewels normally sequestered in a safe or bank vault, they arrived in their sparkling, chauffeured Rolls Royces or Benzes. There were
comtes
and
comtesses, barons
and
baronnes, vicomtes
and
vicomtesses
; there were royalty from the corporate world and celebrities from the world of the broadcast media and the theater; they came from the highest levels of the Quai d'Orsay, from the most rarefied circles in which high society intersected with high finance.

Across the drawbridge and up the front steps of the château, the walkway lined with hundreds of candles whose flames danced in the gentle evening breezes, came elegant men with silver hair, but also inelegant men, squat and balding, whose coarse appearance belied the immense power and influence they wielded, some of whom wore on their arms their flashiest accoutrements, long-legged, glamorous mistresses to be displayed before one and all.

Bryson wore a tuxedo from Le Cor de Chasse, and Layla wore a spectacular strapless black gown obtained at Dior. Around her neck was a simple choker of pearls whose understated elegance did not detract from her extraordinary beauty. Bryson had been to many a function like this in his previous life, and had always felt like an observer rather than a participant, though he was meant to fit in as one of them—as he inevitably did. The semblance of poise came naturally to him, though not the sense of belonging.

Layla, however, seemed entirely at ease. A few traces of makeup, deftly and subtly applied—little more than eyeliner and lip gloss—accentuated her natural beauty, her olive skin, her large liquid brown eyes. Her wavy chestnut hair was pinned up, with just a few strands deliberately unrestrained, emphasizing her lovely swan neck; the risqué though tasteful décolletage of her gown highlighted her magnificent breasts. She could, and did, pass for either Israeli or Arab, being in fact both. She smiled easily, laughed merrily, her eyes inviting and withholding all at once.

She was greeted by several people, all of whom seemed to know her in her legend as an Israeli diplomatic functionary from the Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv with mysterious clout and connections. Layla seemed to be known, yet not known, which was the perfect situation for a covert operative to be in. She had placed a call, earlier the day before, to a casual acquaintance at the Quai d'Orsay known to have close ties to Jacques Arnaud, the master of the Château de Saint-Meurice and a fixture at Arnaud's many parties. The acquaintance, who served as one of the arms manufacturer's social antennae, was
delighted
to hear that Layla was in Paris for a few days,
mortified
that she had not been directly invited to this fête, which was
surely
an oversight, and had insisted that Layla by all means
must
come; Monsieur Arnaud would be
most
offended,
appalled
, if she did not. And by all means, she must bring an escort, for the acquaintance knew that the lovely Layla was rarely without one.

Bryson and Layla had talked late into the night, strategizing their visit to Arnaud's château. For it was a supremely risky venture, after the destruction of the
Spanish Armada
. Obviously there were no survivors who might recognize either of them, but powerful men like Calacanis and any others aboard the ship, including the emissaries and agents sent by powerful men, simply did not perish in a fiery inferno without alarms going off in boardrooms and inner offices all around the world. Powerful men engaged in nefarious and hugely profitable enterprises would be on a heightened state of alert. Jacques Arnaud had lost one of his conduits, and therefore he had to be concerned for his own safety; who knew whether the obliteration of Calacanis's tanker had been merely the first shot fired in a campaign being waged against black-market arms dealers worldwide? As France's leading arms manufacturer, Jacques Arnaud would always be careful about possible threats to his life and livelihood; in the aftermath of the explosion off the Cabo Finisterre, he would be extra-cautious.

Layla had been a green-eyed blonde, so at least her appearance had been radically altered. Bryson, however, could not take the chance that he would not be recognized. If surveillance video had been uplinked from the ship via satellite at any time before the ship's destruction, then video stills of his likeness would have been circulated among private security forces with enormous resources.

So Bryson had purchased certain products at a stage-costume-supply shop near the Opera, and by the next day his appearance had been altered dramatically. His hair was now silver-gray, with the variegated tones of a blond man who had gone gray. The technical services wizards at the Directorate had tutored Bryson well in the black arts of disguise. Cheek inserts had turned his face jowelly; the application of spirit gum had put latex pouches under his eyes, as well as wrinkles and fine lines around the eyes and mouth. Subtlety was paramount, as Bryson had learned from years of disguise: minor changes could have major effects yet raise no suspicions. He now looked easily twenty years older, a distinguished older gentleman who fit right in with the other men of accomplishment and position who frequented the Château de Saint-Meurice. He had become James Collier, an investment banker and venture capitalist from Santa Fe, New Mexico. As was not uncommon among certain venture capitalists who preferred to work away from the glare of public scrutiny, he would say little about what he actually did, turning away polite inquiries with self-deprecating wit.

Bryson and Layla were staying at a small, moderately priced, anonymous hotel on rue Trousseau. Neither one of them had stayed there before; its chief distinction was its very mediocrity. Each of them had arrived in Paris by a different route from Labacolla Airport—Bryson via Frankfurt, and Layla via Madrid. There had been a certain awkwardness about the sleeping arrangements, no doubt unavoidable. They were traveling as a couple, which usually meant sharing a bed or at least a room. Yet Bryson had requested that the hotel put them in separate bedrooms in an adjoining suite. A bit out of the ordinary, perhaps, but it did bespeak a certain level of propriety on the part of the unmarried couple, an old-fashioned discretion. In truth, Bryson knew the temptations of the flesh threatened to overwhelm him. She was a beautiful, highly sexual woman, and he had been solitary for far too long. But he did not want to destabilize an already tenuous working relationship, he told himself. Or perhaps he feared losing a necessary wariness. Was that it? Was it that he
wanted
to keep his distance so long as Elena remained a question mark in his life?

Now, as Layla guided him-across the crowded room, smiling and nodding to social acquaintances, she kept up a lilting patter. “The story is that the château was built in the seventeenth century by one of Louis the Fourteenth's ministers. It was so grand that the king became jealous, had the minister arrested, stole his architect and landscaper and all the furniture, and then, inspired by a fit of envy, started construction on Versailles, determined never to be outdone.”

Bryson smiled and nodded, maintaining the appearance of a moneyed guest suitably impressed by his surroundings. As Layla spoke, his eyes roamed the crowd, ever alert for the familiar face, the quickly averted glance. He had done this sort of thing countless times before, but this time was different, nerve-racking: he had stepped into the unknown. Also, his plan was vague, a necessary improvisation based on his own finely honed instincts.

Exactly what
was
the connection, if any, between Jacques Arnaud and the Directorate? The team of assassins dispatched to kill him had been working with Arnaud's man on the
Spanish Armada
. The assassins—the Friulian brothers—were Directorate hires, which strongly indicated that Arnaud himself was at least affiliated with the Directorate in some mysterious, unspecified capacity. More than that, a man known by Bryson to be Directorate—Vance Gifford, or, as he'd styled himself, Jenrette—had been aboard the ship, having arrived in the company of Arnaud's emissary.

It was all highly circumstantial, but taken together, the pieces of circumstantial evidence created a mosaic that was highly suggestive. Jacques Arnaud was one of the shadowy powers who now controlled the Directorate.

What Bryson needed was
proof
. Hard, incontrovertible evidence.

It was here somewhere, but
where?

According to Layla, the Israelis believed that Jacques Arnaud's firm was involved in laundering enormous sums of money for criminal elements that included the Russian
mafiya
. The Mossad's surveillance suggested that Arnaud often received and placed business-related calls here, at his château, and repeated attempts by the Mossad and other intelligence services to tap his phones had proven useless. His communications were undecipherable, protected by hard encryption. This strongly suggested to Bryson that somewhere in the château there had to be specialized telecommunications equipment, “black” telephones at least, capable of encrypting, and decrypting, telephonic signals—phone calls, faxes, and E-mails.