The Prometheus Deception (75 page)

Then Elena would gallop back along the deserted beach, the mile and a half to their bungalow. By that time, Nicholas was usually sitting on the stone patio he had laid himself, drinking coffee and reading. After breakfast they would go for another swim. So passed their days. It was paradise.

Even when the blood test administered by the island's sole doctor confirmed what she'd been feeling for several days, that she was pregnant, Elena continued to ride, though more carefully. They were overjoyed, planning for the arrival of a son or a daughter, discussing for hours how their lives would change and yet not change, their love deepening by the day.

Money was not a concern. The government had provided them a generous lump-sum settlement which, invested carefully, yielded more than enough to live on. Rarely did they discuss what had brought them here, why it was so important for them to escape, why they had to live here under new identities. It was understood between them: that was the past, a terribly painful episode, and the less said about it, the better.

The mini-DVD she had recorded from Manning's surveillance system that night had provided them with all the protection they needed. Not because it afforded them the opportunity to blackmail, strictly speaking—but because the explosive secrets it contained were secrets everyone preferred to remain buried. It could only be destabilizing for the world to know how close it had come to a bloodless coup, a nonviolent takeover by a group of individuals who believed that governments were obsolete—yet were on the verge of creating a supranational security administration that would have made Stalin's U.S.S.R. or Hitler's
Bundesrepublik
seem lax.

Most of those individuals had perished in the fire at Manning's San Simeon, burned alive in a terrible end. Yet there were others who had aided and abetted those men and women; and so arrests were made. Quietly and discreetly, the reasons understood without being made explicit, deals were struck. Gregson Manning was believed to be in a special federal facility in North Carolina, serving time for unspecified violations of section 1435 of the National Security Act, said to involve economic espionage; he was rumored to be isolated from all contacts or means of communication. Powerful voices in the Senate called for a recall vote on the treaty, renouncing votes made in haste. Some blamed Richard Lanchester for manipulating the process. Without American backing, the treaty agreement fell apart. The truth never had to come out.

So sixteen copies of the DVD were made; one was couriered to the White House, using a code that Bryson knew marked it for the president's eyes only; a second went to the Attorney General of the United States. Others went to London, Moscow, Beijing, Berlin, Paris, and other world capitals. Heads of state had to know what had almost transpired, or else the virus would endure.

Of the three copies that remained, one was deposited with a lawyer Bryson knew to be trustworthy above and beyond, another was sealed in a safe-deposit box, and a third went with them, hidden somewhere on the island, insulated and protected. They were insurance policies. Bryson and Elena hoped they'd never have to collect on them.

This morning, about an hour after bringing the morning paper, Elena emerged from the perfect water to find Bryson absorbed in the newspaper, which rippled and crinkled in the wind.

“Only when you finally give up that nasty habit will you finally be free,” she scolded him.

“You make it sound like smoking.”

“It's almost as bad.”

“And probably almost as hard to give up. But if I do, what excuse will you have for your morning ride?”

She chuckled. “Milk? Eggs? I'll think of something.”

“Jesus.”
He was leaning close over the paper.

“What is it?”

“Buried on page D-16. The business section.”

“What does it say?”

“It's a tiny item—reads like nothing more than a rewritten press release from the Systematix Corporation in Seattle.”

“But … but Manning's in prison!”

“He is. His company's being run by certain of his deputies in the interim. This dispatch says that the National Security Agency has just acquired a fleet of low-orbit surveillance satellites manufactured by Systematix.”

“They try to bury the news, but it's really not very subtle, is it? Where are you going?”

Bryson had gotten up from his beach chair and was bounding up the dune to their bungalow. She followed him up. The wind carried the sound to her, so that she knew he had the television on. Another terrible habit she wanted to break him of: he had rigged up a satellite dish so that he could watch the news, though he had promised to keep that to a minimum.

Bryson was watching CNN, but was frustrated that there was no news, just some fashion segment. He turned toward her. “Ted Waller didn't die in that fire, you know. I saw the forensic reports, everything out of the Seattle Medical Examiner's office, and all the bodies were identified. Waller wasn't among them.”

“I
know
that. We've known that for a year. What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that I see Waller's hand in this. Wherever he went, wherever he disappeared to, he has to be involved in this. I'm certain of it.”

“Trust your instincts, I always say,” came the voice from the television.

Elena screamed, pointed at the television. Bryson whirled around. His heart was thudding rapidly. Ted Waller's face filled the screen.

“What is this?” Elena gasped. “Is this a
show
…?”

“Call it reality TV,” said Waller.

“
We were assured we'd be left alone!
” Bryson thundered. “However you managed this satellite-feed interruption, it's a
violation!
” Bryson started pressing buttons on the remote, changing channels frantically. Waller's face was on each one, staring out at them phlegmatically.

“I still regret that we weren't able to say good-bye properly,” Waller said from the TV screen. “I really do hope there's no bad blood.”

Speechless, Bryson scanned the small living room frantically. Microscopic surveillance devices could be planted absolutely anywhere and everywhere, undetectable …

“I'll be in touch when the time is right, Nicky. Now may be premature.” Waller looked off into the distance as if about to add something, and a hint of a smile came to his lips. “Well, I'll be seeing you.”

“Not if I see you first, Ted,” Bryson said acidly, and now he settled back in his chair. “We have a great deal of evidence in safekeeping, evidence we won't hesitate to release.”

On the screen, Waller's gaze turned wary.

“Remember, Ted—it's what you don't see that always gets you.”

Abruptly, Waller's image disappeared, replaced by a game show.

*   *   *

A move had been made. And countered. Bryson felt fury, outrage at the violation—and yet, after so many years in the service of the great game, oddly stirred as well. If Elena caught a glimpse of this, she kept it to herself. She still went for her early-morning rides, and they still spent much of the day outdoors, either on the shimmering white beach or on their wooden deck, surrounded by bougainvillea and shaded by young palm trees that undulated gently in the breeze.

Bryson had made a complete break from his past life, while he and Elena prepared to nurture the new life that was on its way. In the sun, his scars faded, and there were days when—the air fragrant with frangipani and lime and salt water—the dull ache from his old wounds grew imperceptible, like memories just out of reach. At moments, he almost thought he had left the world behind.

Almost.

 

Read on for an excerpt from

THE TRISTAN BETRAYAL

by Robert Ludlum

Available from St. Martin's Paperbacks

Moscow, August 1991

The sleek black limousine, with its polycarbonate-laminate bullet-resistant windows and its run-flat tires, its high-tech ceramic armor and dual-hardness carbon-steel armor plate, was jarringly out of place as it pulled into the Bittsevsky forest in the southwest area of the city. This was ancient terrain, forest primeval, densely overgrown with birch and aspen groves interspersed with pine trees, elms, and maples; it spoke of nomadic Stone Age tribes that roamed the glacier-scarred terrain, hunting mammoths with hand-carved javelins, amid nature red in tooth and claw. Whereas the armored Lincoln Continental spoke of another kind of civilization entirely with another sort of violence, an era of snipers and terrorists wielding submachine guns and fragmentation grenades.

Moscow was a city under siege. It was the capital of a superpower on the brink of collapse. A cabal of Communist hard-liners was preparing to take back Russia from the forces of reform. Tens of thousands of troops filled the city, ready to fire at its citizens. Columns of tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled down Kutuzovsky Prospekt and the Minskoye Chausse. Tanks surrounded Moscow City Hall, TV broadcasting facilities, newspaper offices, the parliament building. The radio was broadcasting nothing but the decrees of the cabal, which called itself the State Committee for the State of Emergency. After years of progress toward democracy, the Soviet Union was on the verge of being returned to the dark forces of totalitarianism.

Inside the limousine sat an elderly man, silver-haired, with handsome, aristocratic features. He was Ambassador Stephen Metcalfe, an icon of the American Establishment, an adviser to five Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt, an extremely wealthy man who had devoted his life to serving his government. Ambassador Metcalfe, though now retired, the title purely honorific, had been urgently summoned to Moscow by an old friend who was highly placed in the inner circles of Soviet power. He and his old friend had not met face-to-face for decades: their relationship was a deeply buried secret, known to no one in Moscow or Washington. That his Russian friend—code-named “Kurwenal”—insisted on a rendezvous in this deserted location was worrying, but these were worrying times.

Lost in thought, visibly nervous, the old man got out of his limousine only once he glimpsed the figure of his friend, the three-star general, limping heavily on a prosthetic leg. The American's seasoned eyes scanned the forest as he began to walk, and then his blood ran cold.

He detected a watcher in the trees. A second, a
third! Surveillance.
He and the Russian code-named Kurwenal had just been spotted!

This would be a disaster for them both!

Metcalfe wanted to call out to his old friend, to warn him, but then he noticed the glint of a scoped rifle in the late-afternoon sun.
It was an ambush!

Terrified, the elderly ambassador spun around and loped as quickly as his arthritic limbs would take him back toward his armored limousine. He had no bodyguard; he never traveled with one. He had only his driver, an unarmed American marine supplied by the embassy.

Suddenly men were running toward him from all around. Black-uniformed men in black paramilitary berets, bearing machine guns. They surrounded him and he began to struggle, but he was no longer a young man, as he had to keep reminding himself.
Was this a kidnapping? Was he being taken hostage?
He shouted hoarsely to his driver.

The black-clad men escorted Metcalfe to another armored limousine, a Russian ZIL. Frightened, he climbed into the passenger compartment. There, already seated, was the three-star general.

“What the hell
is
this?” Metcalfe croaked, his panic subsiding.

“My deepest apologies,” replied the Russian. “These are hazardous, unstable times, and I could not take the chance of anything happening to you, even here in the woods. These are my men, under my command, and they're trained in counterterrorist measures. You are far too important an individual to expose to any dangers.”

Metcalfe shook the Russian's hand. The general was eighty years old, his hair white, though his profile remained hawklike. He nodded at the driver, and the car began to move.

“I thank you for coming to Moscow—I realize my urgent summons must have struck you as cryptic.”

“I knew it had to be about the coup,” Metcalfe said.

“Matters are developing more rapidly than anticipated,” the Russian said in a low voice. “They have secured the blessing of the man known as the
Dirizhor
—the Conductor. It may already be too late to stop the seizure of power.”

“My friends in the White House are watching with great concern. But they feel paralyzed—the consensus in the National Security Council seems to be that to intervene might be to risk nuclear war.”

“An apt fear. These men are desperate to overthrow the Gorbachev regime. They will resort to anything. You've seen the tanks on the streets of Moscow—now all that remains is for the conspirators to order their forces to strike. To attack civilians. It will be a
bloodbath
. Thousands will be killed! But the orders to strike will not be issued unless the
Dirizhor
gives his approval. Everything hangs on him—he is the linchpin.”

“But he's not one of the plotters?”

“No. As you know, he's the ultimate insider, a man who controls the levers of power in absolute secrecy. He will never appear at a news conference; he acts in stealth. But he is in sympathy with the coup plotters. Without his support, the coup must fail.
With
his support, the coup will surely succeed. And Russia will once again become a Stalinist dictatorship—and the world will be at the brink of nuclear war.”

“Why did you call me here?” asked Metcalfe. “Why me?”

The general turned to face Metcalfe, and in his eyes Metcalfe could see fear. “Because you're the only one I trust. And you're the only one who has a chance of reaching
him
. The
Dirizhor
.”

“And why will the
Dirizhor
listen to me?”