The Prometheus Deception (20 page)

A flash of light. It was the strong morning sunlight glinting off something reflective nearby; he turned his head to see a pair of high-powered binoculars being held up to the face of another uniformed policeman, who was standing atop a bench. Like his colleagues manning the barricades, he was also scrutinizing the faces of those entering the city along Avenida Juan Carlos I. He was a backup, or perhaps a second filter, and he was scanning the crowd with a methodical regularity. The sun was already beating down, though it was early morning, and the man's pale complexion was flushed.

Bryson did a double-take, puzzled by the paleness of the man's skin, the blond hair beneath the visored cap. Blonds were not common in this part of Spain, but they were not unheard of. Yet that wasn't what drew his attention. It was the pale skin, almost white. No policeman or border guard could last for long in this climate without his face tanning, or at least turning ruddy, from the powerful sun. Even a deskbound official couldn't avoid being out in the sun on his way to work or at lunchtime.

No, this was not a local, not a native. Bryson doubted the man was even a Spaniard.

The blond policeman was sweating profusely, and he briefly lowered his binoculars to mop his face with a crooked elbow, and that was when Bryson first saw the man's facial features.

The sleepy-looking gray eyes that belied the ferocious concentration, the thin lips, the chalky skin, the ash-blond hair. The man was familiar.

Khartoum.

The blond man had been posted as a technical expert from Rotterdam, visiting the Sudanese capital with a group of European specialists advising Iraqi officials on the construction of a ballistic-missile plant and taking orders for turnkey equipment that could be used to assemble Scud missiles. The blond man was in fact an interloper, an infiltrator, a penetration agent. He was Directorate. He was also a dispatch agent, an expert in the quick-kill. Bryson had been in Khartoum to install surveillance, obtain hard evidence that could later be used against the Iraqis. He had done a brush-pass exchange with the blond killer, providing him with microdot dossiers of the desired targets, including information on where they were staying, their schedules, the presumptive holes in their security. Bryson didn't know the blond man's name; he knew only that the man was a stone killer, one of the best in the trade: supremely skilled, probably a sociopath, the perfect dispatch agent.

The Directorate had sent one of their best here to kill him. Now there could be no doubt his former employers had marked him “beyond salvage.”

Yet how had they found him? The smugglers must have talked, angry about their stolen truck, eager to earn a no-doubt generous bribe. There were not many roads in this part of the country, very few routes from Finisterre, therefore easily scrutinized by air if they had quick access to a helicopter. Bryson had not heard or seen a helicopter, but there had been that stretch of time when he had been asleep. Also, the old farm truck had been so loud that a helicopter could have passed directly overhead and he would not have heard it.

It had to be the hastily abandoned truck, which served as a veritable beacon to their pursuers, evidence that he and Layla were in the immediate vicinity. And there were only two ways to go on that road: into Santiago de Compostela, or away from it. No doubt both possibilities had been covered, roadblocks placed at points of convergence.

He wanted to turn back, confirm that Layla was still behind him, still safe, but he could not risk doing so.

Bryson's pulse quickened. He looked away, but it was too late. He had seen the instant of recognition in the killer's eyes.
He saw me; he knows me
.

Yet to run, to make any sudden moves that made him stand out from the crowd, was to throw up a flag, confirm the killer's suspicions. For the dispatch agent could not be sure at that distance. Not only had it been years since Khartoum, but the hooded cassock Bryson was wearing obscured his face, and the killer would not fire indiscriminately.

Time had slowed almost to a stop as Bryson's mind raced. His body surged with adrenaline, his heart pounded, yet he restrained himself from accelerating his pace. He could not stand out from the crowd.

In his peripheral field of vision Bryson saw the killer turn toward him, his right hand moving toward the holstered weapon at his waist. The crowd of pilgrims was so thick that it almost carried Bryson along, but at a rate that was excruciatingly slow. How can the killer be sure I'm the man he wants? With this hood … and then Bryson had the sickening realization that it was the very fact that he was wearing a hood that made him stand out from the crowd; in the brutally hot sun, some of the men wore caps to shield their heads from the rays of the sun, but a hood trapped in the heat and was unbearably hot; none of those who had hoods on their old-fashioned monastic garb wore them up. He stood out.

Though he did not dare turn to look, he became aware of the sudden, jerking motion in his peripheral vision, the glint of light on a metal object that was surely a gun. The killer had his weapon out; Bryson sensed this almost instinctually.

Suddenly he sagged to his feet, feigning heat stroke, causing those immediately around him to stumble. Shouts of annoyance; a woman's cry of concern.

And then a split second later came the deadly cough of a silenced weapon. Screams, shrill and terrified. A young woman just a few feet to his left crumpled, the top of her head blown off. Blood sprayed in a radius of six feet or so. The crowd began to stampede; cries of fear, shouts of anguish went up. Dirt exploded nearby as bullets sprayed the ground. The killer was firing rapidly, in semiautomatic mode. Having spotted his target, he no longer cared whether he struck the innocent.

Amid the pandemonium, Bryson found himself nearly trampled by the frenzied, stampeding crowd; he struggled to his feet, his hood down, only to be knocked to the earth again. All around him were the screams and cries of the wounded and the dying, and those surrounding them. Managing to gain a foothold, he lurched forward, enduring repeated impact from those trying to flee the madness.

He had guns, but to take one out, to return fire, would be suicide. He was certainly far outnumbered; the moment he squeezed the trigger, he was in effect sending up a flare, advertising his location to the single-minded killers sent here by the Directorate. Instead, he rushed forward, keeping his head down, low to the ground, camouflaged by the tangle of bodies.

A fusillade of bullets ricocheted off the steel of a street sign ten feet away, indicating that the blond killer had lost sight of him, disoriented by the surging crowd. Twenty feet ahead, there was another scream, and the body of a man on a bicycle arched as he was struck in the back. The blond was firing at phantoms now; this only served Bryson's purpose, creating a maximum disturbance into which he could disappear. He risked a glance around, as so many others were straining to see the source of the gunfire, and was astonished to see the blond killer suddenly propelled forward as if shoved from behind. He had been hit by a bullet! The marksman twisted his torso, then toppled off the fence, either dead or seriously wounded. But who had gotten off the shot? A flash of scarlet: a bright red kerchief, which then disappeared into the crowd.

Layla
.

Relieved, he turned back around and kept moving with the crowd, like a piece of driftwood borne on a powerful current. He could not move toward her, against the stream, if he wanted to; he certainly dared not flash her a signal. He knew how the Directorate staged high-priority hits, of which this was certainly one. They did not stint on manpower. A dispatch agent was like a cockroach: where you found one, there were certain to be others. But where? The blond marksman from Khartoum seemed to be operating like a lone asset, which meant that the others were backup. Yet no backup was visible. Bryson knew the Directorate's methodology too well to believe that the blond was acting alone.

The crowd of pilgrims was now out of control, a riot, a seething, teeming mass of frightened people, some trying to run down the
avenida
, others running in the opposite direction. What had been ideal cover but a few moments ago had become dangerous, violent. He and Layla would have to detach themselves from the panicked throng, disappear into Santiago, and find a way to the airport at Labacolla, eleven kilometers to the east.

He pulled out of the stream of pedestrians and cycles, nearly sideswiped by an unsteady bicyclist, and grabbed hold of a street lamp to steady himself against the onrush while he waited for Layla to emerge. He searched the passing crowd for her face, but mostly for her scarlet kerchief. Alert, too, for other anomalies: flashes of steel, police uniforms, the unmistakable look of a hired killer. Bryson knew he must have been a strange sight: he was attracting stares. One pilgrim in particular, clutching what seemed to be a Bible beneath the folds of his brown monk's outfit, seemed to be peering at him with undisguised curiosity from across the swarming Avenida Juan Carlos I. Bryson caught the monk's eye just as the man pulled out his Bible, but the object was long, blue steel.

A gun.

In the split second that his brain processed what his eyes were seeing, Bryson lurched to his right, crashing into a bicycle and causing it to topple, its middle-aged male rider frantically trying to steady himself while shouting angrily.

A spit; an explosion of blood that spattered Bryson's face. The bicyclist's temple had been blown off, leaving only a gaping wound, a sickening mass of crimson. Screams erupted anew from all around. The man was dead, the shooter a man in a monk's cassock fifty feet away, his gun still pointed, still firing.

It was insanity!

Bryson rolled over, enduring kicks to his head and back inflicted by the panicked, stampeding crowd. He grabbed a holstered weapon, the Beretta, yanked it out.

A man screamed:
“Unha pistola! Ten unha pistola!”
He's got a gun!

Bullets struck the iron street lamp, ringing loudly, and spit into the ground a few yards away. Bryson scrambled to his feet, steadied himself, located the monk-killer, squeezed the trigger.

The first shot hit the assassin in the chest, causing his gun to drop; the second shot, squarely to the center of his chest, knocked the man over entirely.

Off to his left, glinting in his peripheral vision, was an object that Bryson's instincts told him was another weapon. He turned just in time to see another man, also in the guise of a pilgrim, leveling a small black pistol at him from less than twenty feet away. Bryson spun to the right, out of the line of fire, but the sudden explosion of pain in his left shoulder, shooting lines of fire down his chest, told him he had been hit.

He lost his footing, his legs collapsing beneath him. He crumpled to the pavement. The pain was excruciating; he felt blood hotly soaking his shirt, his left arm going numb.

Hands grabbed at him. Disoriented, seeing through a scrim of haze, Bryson reflexively pummeled his attacker just as he heard Layla's voice. “No, it's me.
This
way. This way!”

She was clutching his good shoulder, his elbow, helping him to stand erect, supporting him.

“You're all right!” Bryson shouted with relief, amid the chaos—illogically, for it was
he
who had been shot.

“I'm fine. Come
on!
” She pulled him toward one side, across the stampede of frenzied pilgrims whose panic had now reached fever pitch. Bryson forced himself to move, quickening his stride, moving through the pain. He caught sight of another monk watching him from a few feet away, also clutching something. Jolted into action, Bryson raised his pistol, pointing it, just in time to see the monk lift the oblong object—a Bible—to his lips, kissing it, praying aloud amid the violence, the madness.

They were entering a large park, broad and spacious, with manicured gardens and rows of eucalyptus trees. “We must find a place to let you rest,” Layla said.

“No. The wound is superficial—”

“The
blood!
”

“I think it's more of a graze. Obviously it nicked blood vessels, but it's nowhere near as serious as it may look. We can't afford to rest here; we have to keep moving!”

“But where?”

“Look. Straight ahead—across the road—a cathedral, a square. The Praza do Obradoiro—it's jammed with people. We have to stay with the crowds, disappear into them whenever we can. Whatever we do, we can't stand out.” He sensed her momentary hesitation and added, “We'll take care of my wound later. Right now it's the least of our problems.”

“I don't think you know how much blood you're losing.” With an almost clinical detachment, she unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt and delicately pulled the blood-matted cloth away from the skin of his shoulder; he felt a twinge of pain. She gently palpated the wound; the pain intensified, a jagged bolt of lightning. “All right,” she pronounced, “we can tend to it later, but we have to stanch the blood flow.” Whipping the red scarf from her head, she tied it firmly around his shoulder, anchoring it at the underarm, fashioning a sort of tourniquet that would do for the time being. “Can you move your arm?”

He lifted it, winced. “Yeah.”

“It hurts? Don't be a hero.”

“I'm not. I never ignore pain; it's one of the most valuable signals the body gives us. And yes, it does hurt. But I've suffered a lot worse, believe me.”

“I believe you. Now, there's a cathedral up the hill—”

“The main Cathedral of Santiago. The square surrounding it, the Praza do Obradoiro, sometimes called Praza de Espana, is the endpoint of the pilgrim's journey, always crowded. A good place to lose our pursuers, find a vehicle. We have to get out of this open area immediately.”

They started up the eucalyptus-lined path. Suddenly a pair of bicyclists zoomed by, veering around them just a few inches away, then continued up the path. Entirely innocent, presumably a couple of pilgrims heading for the center of town, but it startled Bryson. Perhaps the loss of some blood had dulled his reactions. The assassins sent by the Directorate were disguised, with diabolical cleverness, as religious pilgrims. Anyone they passed, anyone in a crowd, could be a killer sent to terminate him. At least in a minefield the trained eye could distinguish the mine from the field. Here, there was no such distinction.