The Prometheus Deception (30 page)

*   *   *

The Rosamund Cleary Extended Care Facility was, in plain English, a nursing home. It was a handsome, low-slung red-brick facility surrounded by a few acres of wooded land in Dutchess County, in upstate New York. Whatever it was called, it was an expensive, well-managed place, a last home for the financially privileged who needed medical attention that relatives and other loved ones could not give them. For the last twelve years it had been the home of Felicia Munroe, the woman who, with her husband, Peter, had taken the teenaged Nicholas Bryson in after Bryson's parents had been killed in an automobile crash.

Bryson had loved the woman, had always had a close and loving relationship with her, but he had never thought of her as his mother. The accident had happened too late in his life for that. She was just Aunt Felicia, the doting wife of Uncle Pete, who'd been one of his father's best friends. They had taken loving care of him, welcomed him into their home, even paid his way through boarding school and then college, for which he was eternally grateful.

Peter Munroe had met George Bryson at the Officers Club in Bahrain. Colonel Bryson, as he was then, had been supervising construction of a major new barracks, and Munroe, a civil engineer for a multinational construction firm, had been a bidder on the project. Bryson and Munroe had become fast friends over too many beers—the specialty of the club in that nonalcoholic nation—and yet, when the bids were submitted, Colonel Bryson recommended
against
Pete Munroe's firm. He had no choice, really; another construction company had underbid them. Munroe took the bad news in good spirit, took Bryson out for a round of drinks on him, and said he didn't really give a shit—he'd gotten more out of this fucking country than he'd ever expected to—a friend. Only later—too late, as it turned out—did the senior Bryson learn why the winning bidder came in so low: dishonesty. The firm tried to stick the army with millions of dollars in cost overruns. When George Bryson tried to apologize, Munroe refused to accept his apology. “Corruption's a way of life in this business,” he said. “If I really wanted the job, I would have lied, too.
I
was the naïve one.” The friendship between George Bryson and Pete Munroe, however, was sealed.

But was that the truth? Was there really more to it? Was Harry Dunne telling him the truth? Now that he had concrete evidence that an active CIA operative on the Agency payroll had attempted to kill him in France, everything was in question. For if Dunne had had anything to do with that, was anything else he said to be trusted? In some ways Bryson regretted not coming here first, before flying off to the
Spanish Armada
. He should have found old Aunt Felicia and questioned her before agreeing to do Dunne's dirty work. Bryson had visited Felicia twice before, once with Elena, but not in several years.

Dunne's words to him that day in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the day that changed his life, still echoed in his head. He would not soon forget them.

“Let me ask you something, Bryson. Did you believe this was an accident? You were fifteen, a brilliant student, terrific athlete, prime of American youth, all that. Now both your parents are suddenly killed. Your godparents take you in—”

“Uncle Pete … Peter Munroe.”

“That was the name he took, sure. Not the name he was born with. And he made sure you went to college where you did, and made a lot of other decisions for you besides. All of which pretty much guaranteed that you'd end up in their hands. The Directorate's, I mean.”

Bryson found Aunt Felicia sitting in front of a television set in a spacious public sitting room tastefully appointed with Persian rugs and massive mahogany antiques. Several other elderly people were scattered about the room, a few reading or crocheting, several dozing. Felicia Munroe appeared to be watching golf with rapt fascination.

“Aunt Felicia,” Bryson said heartily.

She turned to look at him, and for a fleeting instant recognition seemed to dawn on her face. But it immediately gave way to a foggy bewilderment. “Yes?” she said sharply.

“Aunt Felicia, I'm Nick. Remember me?”

She stared at him with incomprehension, squinting. He realized that the traces of senility he had seen in her years ago had grown into something far deeper and more serious. After staring for an uncomfortably long time, she gave a slow smile. “It
is
you,” she breathed.

“Remember? I lived with you—you took care of me…?”

“You've come back,” she whispered, finally seeming to comprehend. Tears sprang to her eyes. “My heavens, how I've missed you.”

Bryson's heart lifted.

“My darling George,” she trilled. “My dearest darling George. How long it's been.”

For a moment he was perplexed, and then he understood. Bryson was about the same age that his father, General George Bryson, was when he died. In Aunt Felicia's confused mind—a mind that probably could recall clearly events of half a century ago, yet could not remember her own name—he
was
George Bryson. And indeed the resemblance was strong. He was often startled to see how much he was coming to look like his father, the older he got.

Then, as if she had suddenly grown bored with her visitor, she turned her gaze back to the television set. Bryson stood, shifting his weight from foot to foot, unsure what to do next. In a minute or so, Felicia seemed to become conscious of his presence, and she turned to look at him again.

“Why, hello there,” she ventured tentatively. Her face looked worried, the expression rapidly turning frightened. “But you—but you're
dead!
I thought you were dead!”

Bryson simply looked at her neutrally, not wanting to disturb the illusion.
Let her believe what she wants to believe; perhaps she will say something.…

“You died in that terrible accident,” she said. Her face was racked with tension. “Yes, you did. That terrible, terrible accident. You and Nina both. What an awful thing. And you leaving poor young Nicky an orphan. Oh, I don't think I stopped crying for three days. Pete was always the strong one—he got me through it.” The tears glistened in her eyes once again, and they began to course down her cheeks. “So much Pete didn't tell me about that night,” she continued, her voice almost a singsong. “So much he couldn't tell me,
wouldn't
tell me. How the guilt must have eaten him up inside. For years he wouldn't talk to me about that night, about what he did.”

A chill ran down Bryson's spine.

“And he'd
never
talk to your little Nicky about it, you know. What a thing to carry with you, what a terrible, terrible thing!” She shook her head, dabbing at her eyes with the frilly cuff of her white blouse. Then she turned back to the television.

Bryson strode to the TV, shut it off, and stood right in front of her. Though the poor woman's short-term memory had been destroyed by the effects of senility, or perhaps Alzheimer's disease, it appeared that many of her long-term memories might have been spared.

“Felicia,” he said gently, “I want to talk to you about Pete. Pete Munroe, your husband.”

The direct stare seemed to unnerve her; she studied the pattern on the carpet. “He used to make me a whiskey sling when I had a cold, you know,” she said. She seemed lost in the memory, her manner now relaxed. “Honey and lemon juice and just a
wee
bit of bourbon. No, more than a wee bit. You'll be better in no time.”

“Felicia, did he ever talk about something called the Directorate?”

She looked up at him blankly. “An untreated cold can linger for a week. But with treatment, it will pass in seven days!” She giggled, waggling her finger. “Peter always said an untreated cold can linger for a week…”

“Did he ever talk about my father?”

“Oh, he was a great talker. Told the funniest stories.”

At the other end of the room, one of the patients had had an accident, and two janitors appeared with mops. The two custodians chattered to each other in Russian. A Russian phrase, spoken loudly, was audible.
Ya nye znayu
, one of them said brusquely: I don't know. The accent was Muscovite.

Felicia Munroe had heard it, too, and she perked up in response.
“Ya nye znayu,”
she repeated, then giggled. “Gibberish! Gibberish!”

“Not really gibberish, Aunt Felicia,” Bryson put in.

“Gibberish!” she replied defiantly. “Just the sort of nonsense Pete would say in his sleep.
Ya nye znayu
. All that craziness. Whenever he talked in his sleep, he'd talk in that funny language, and he just
hated
when I teased him about it.”

“He talked like that in his sleep?” Bryson said hollowly, his heart thudding in his rib cage.

“Oh, he was a terrible sleeper.” For a moment she seemed lucid. “Always talked in his sleep.”

Uncle Pete spoke Russian in his sleep, the one time when you can't control your utterances. Was Harry Dunne right: was Peter Munroe an associate of Gennady Rosovsky's, a.k.a. Ted Waller? Could it be true? Was any other explanation even
possible?
Bryson was dumbstruck.

But Felicia kept talking. “Particularly after you died, George. He was so sorry. He tossed and turned, he yelled and cried in his sleep, and always talking that
gibberish!
”

*   *   *

The area of Rock Creek Park in Washington, on the northern part of Beach Drive, was a good location for the rendezvous with Harry Dunne very early the next morning. Bryson had chosen it; Dunne had invited him to select the meeting point not out of deference to Bryson's field skills—after all, Dunne's experience as an operative with the Agency's clandestine division had been over twice as long as Bryson's with the Directorate—but more likely as a courtesy extended by a host to his honored guest.

The CIA deputy director's request to meet off site, outside Agency walls, was alarming to Bryson. It was hard to believe that Dunne, the number-two man in the Agency, feared his own office was bugged; that fact itself gave credence to the theory that the CIA had been penetrated by the Directorate—that Bryson's old handlers had somehow managed to extend their tentacles into the highest reaches of the CIA. Whatever information Dunne might have been able to collect, the mere fact that he insisted on continuing their discussion in a neutral, secure location was unnerving proof that something was very wrong.

Still, Bryson would take nothing at face value.
Trust no one
, Ted Waller used to say with a cackle, words now grotesquely appropriate: Waller himself had turned out to be the cardinal betrayer of trust. Bryson would not let down his guard; he would trust no one, Dunne included.

He arrived at the designated location a full hour early. It was barely four o'clock in the morning, the sky dark, the air cold and damp. Passing cars were few, spaced far apart in time: night-shift workers going home, their replacements arriving. The business of government was round-the-clock.

The silence was strange, unaccustomed. Bryson became aware of the sounds of twigs crackling underfoot as he paced the dense woods surrounding the clearing he had chosen, noises that would ordinarily be masked by the ambient roar of nearby traffic. He wore the crepe-soled shoes he favored for field work because they minimized such noise.

Bryson surveyed the location, searching for points of vulnerability. The wooded ridge overlooked a small patch of meadow, next to a small, asphalt-paved parking area, at the edge of which was a concrete, bunkerlike restroom facility, half sunken below ground, in which they had agreed to meet. Rain had been forecast, and though the forecast had turned out wrong, a sheltered location had seemed desirable. Too the facility's thick concrete walls would provide protection in the event of ambush from without.

But Bryson was determined that there would be no ambush. He made a circuit around the wooded ridge, through the dense trees overlooking the meadow, checking for recently made footsteps or branches broken in a suspicious pattern, as well as for scopes, mounts, or other devices that might have been emplaced in advance. A second sweep revealed all possible avenues of approach; nothing would be left to chance. After two more sweeps, each from different directions and covering different vantage points, Bryson was satisfied that no ambush was already in place. That did not rule out any future arrivals, but at least he would be able to authoritatively detect subtle changes in background, divergences otherwise ignored.

At precisely five o'clock in the morning, a black government sedan pulled off Beach Drive and into the parking area. It was a Lincoln Continental, unmarked except for generic government license plates. Watching through small, high-powered binoculars from a blind he had chosen in a dense copse of trees, Bryson could make out Dunne's regular driver, a slender African American in a navy blue uniform. Dunne sat in the backseat clutching a file folder. There appeared to be no one else in the vehicle.

The limousine pulled up to the restroom and came to a stop. The driver got out and went to open the door for his boss, but Dunne, impatient as always, was already halfway out of the car. He was scowling, his habitual expression. Glancing briefly to either side, he descended the short flight of steps, his face illuminated garishly by the sulphurous fluorescent lights, and then disappeared into the small building.

Bryson waited. He watched the driver, waiting for any suspicious moves—furtive phone calls placed on a concealed cellular phone, quick signals to passing vehicles, even the loading of a gun. But the driver simply sat behind the wheel, waiting with the calm, still patience his boss lacked.

After a good ten minutes had elapsed, and Bryson was sure that Dunne was probably fed up by now, he came down the hillside, following a path that kept him concealed from passersby, winding around to the back of the restroom, which was even with the ground level. Putting on a sudden burst of speed, he raced to the building, confident that he had not been observed. Now he leaped down into the moat that surrounded the bunker and circled around to the entrance, unseen.