The Prometheus Deception (23 page)

“My God … Your employers—but you said ‘no other intelligence agency' would ever attempt such a thing.… Did CIA…”

He shrugged. “Leave it at that.” He thought,
But what's the point of withholding anything, anymore?
“These fellows, the Sangiovanni brothers, were there to overpower night sentries, take out armed guards swiftly and silently. So they were muscle, of a rarefied sort.” He smiled grimly.

“How'd they do?”

“We got the goods.”

While they waited for Paolo to come to, Layla went to the church's front door and reassembled the broken hasp and padlock so that it appeared unbroken. Meanwhile, Bryson stood watch over the Italian assassin. In about twenty minutes, Paolo began to stir, his eyes shifting beneath his closed lids. He groaned slightly, and then his eyes came open, unfocused.

“Al è pasât tant timp di quand che jerin insieme a Novosibirsk,”
Bryson said. It's been a long time since Novosibirsk. “I always knew you were devoid of any allegiances. Where's your brother?”

Paolo's eyes widened. “Coleridge, you bastard.” He tried to pull his hands up, grimaced as the thin wires cut into his wrists. He snarled through bloody teeth,
“Bastard, tu mi fasis pensà a che vecje storie dal purcìt, lo tratin come un siôr, a viodin di lui, i dan dut chel che a voe di vè, e dopo lu copin.”
Bryson smiled and translated for Layla's benefit. “He says there's an old Friulian peasant proverb about the hog. They treat it like a prince, cater to it, serve its every need—until the day they slaughter it for meat.”

“Who's the hog supposed to be?” asked Layla. “You or him?”

Bryson turned back to Paolo, speaking in Friuliano. “We're going to play a little game here called truth or consequences. You tell me the truth, or you face the consequences. Let's start with a simple question: Where's your brother?”

“Never!”

“Well, you've just answered one of my questions—that Niccolo came here with you. You almost killed me back in the square. What kind of gratitude is that to show your old boss?”

“No soi ancjmò freât dal dut!”
Paolo bellowed. I'm not done yet! He struggled against the restraints, wincing.

“No,” Bryson said with a smile. “Neither am I. Who hired you?”

The Italian spit a gobbet of saliva, which hit Bryson's face.
“Fuck you!”
he shouted in English, one of the few phrases he knew.

Bryson wiped at the spittle with his sleeve. “I'll ask you one more time, and if I don't get a truthful answer—the operative word being
truthful
—I'll be forced to use this.” He held up the Beretta for display.

Layla approached, spoke quickly in a low voice. “I'm going to keep watch at the door. All this shouting may attract some unwanted attention.”

Bryson nodded. “Good idea.”

“Go ahead and kill me,” the assassin taunted in his native language. “It makes no difference to me. There are others,
many
others. My brother may have the pleasure of killing you himself—it would be my dying gift to him.”

“Oh, I have no intention of killing you,” said Bryson coolly. “You're a brave fellow; I've seen you face down death fearlessly. Death doesn't frighten you, which is one of the things that make you so good at what you do.”

The Italian's eyes narrowed in suspicion as he attempted to puzzle out the meaning. Bryson could see him shifting his ankles, his wrists, testing the restraints for weaknesses. But there were none.

“No,” Bryson continued, “instead, I would rather take away the only thing that means anything to you: your ability to hunt, whether it's
cinghiale
, your beloved wild boar, or human beings placed ‘beyond salvage' by the liars who control the secret arms of government.” He paused, aimed the Beretta at the assassin's kneecap. “The loss of one knee, of course, won't keep you from walking—not with all the advanced prosthetic joints that are available these days—but you certainly won't be able to run very well. The loss of both of your knees—well, that will certainly deprive you of your livelihood, don't you think?”

The assassin's face went ashen. “You goddamned sellout,” he hissed.

“Is that what they tell you? And who do they say I sold out
to?
”

Paolo stared defiantly, but his lower lip quivered.

“So I ask you one more time, and consider very carefully before you either refuse to answer or attempt to lie to me:
Who hired you?
”

“Fuck you!”

Bryson fired the Beretta. The Italian screamed, and blood drenched his pants at the knee. Most if not all of the kneecap was probably gone. He would not likely hunt prey, human or animal, again. Paolo writhed in pain. At the top of his lungs he shouted a string of curses in Friuliano.

Suddenly there came a crash at the church door, followed by a male voice shouting and a throaty cry in Layla's voice. Bryson whirled around to see what had happened—had she been struck? He rushed to the entrance just in time to see two silhouetted figures struggling in the darkness. One of them had to be Layla; who was the other? He leveled his gun and shouted, “Stop or you're dead!”

“It's all right,” came Layla's voice. He felt a surge of relief. “Bastard put up a nasty fight.”

It was Paolo's brother, Niccolo, his arms trussed behind his back. A wire that hung loosely around his neck was all that remained of a garrote she had evidently used to pull tight around his throat the second he burst in. A thin, crimson line at the base of his neck was the telltale evidence of his near-strangulation. She had had the advantage of surprise, and had utilized it well; she had fashioned the restraint ingeniously so that the harder Niccolo pulled his arms, the harder the wire cut into his throat. His legs, however, were unbound, and though he sprawled on the floor, he kept kicking, wheeling around to try to gain his footing.

Bryson leaped atop Niccolo's chest, slamming his feet down to knock the wind out of him, and at the same time holding him down, enabling Layla to toss a loop of wire around his knees and ankles and bind them tightly. Niccolo bellowed like a gored ox, joining the bloodcurdling screams of his brother from the sacristy fifty feet away.

“Enough,” Bryson said disgustedly. He ripped a length of cloth from Niccolo's khaki shirt, and, bunching it up, jammed it into Niccolo's mouth to muffle the bellowing. Layla produced a roll of strong packing tape she had located somewhere, probably in the supply closet where she had found the electrical wire, and she used it to secure the gag over Niccolo's mouth. Bryson ripped off another piece of Niccolo's shirt, handed it to Layla, and asked her to gag the brother as well.

While she did that, he dragged Niccolo down the nave to another alcove, shoving him into a confessional booth. “Your brother's just been shot, badly,” Bryson told him, waving the Beretta. “But as you can hear, he's still alive. He won't be walking again.”

Niccolo whipped his head back and forth, roaring through the gag. He bucked his legs up and down against the stone floor in a mute, animal-like display of defiance and anger.

“Now, I'm going to make this as simple for you as I can, my old friend. I want you to tell me who hired you. I want the complete verbal dossier, the codes, the contact names and procedures. Everything. As soon as I remove your gag, I expect you to begin talking. And don't even
contemplate
fabricating anything, because your brother has already told me a good deal, and if anything you say doesn't jibe with what he said, I'm going to assume that
he's
the one who's lying. And I will kill him. Because I really don't like liars. Are we clear?”

Niccolo, who had stopped bucking his legs, nodded frantically, his eyes wide, searching Bryson's face. The threat was obviously effective; Bryson had located the killer's single area of vulnerability.

From the other side of the church, Bryson could hear Paolo whimpering and groaning, muffled by the gag Layla had put in his mouth.

“My partner is across the aisle with Paolo. All I have to do is give her the signal, and she'll fire one single round into his forehead. Are we clear?”

Niccolo's nodding became even more frenzied.

“All right, then.” He ripped the wide plastic tape off Niccolo's mouth, leaving a red stripe on the skin that had to have been extremely painful. Then he grabbed the bunched-up wet rag and yanked it out.

Niccolo took several deep, ragged breaths.

“Now, if you make the serious mistake of lying to me, you'd better hope your brother has already told me the exact same lie. Or you'll have killed him, just as if you yourself squeezed the trigger against his temple, understand?”

Niccolo gasped, “Yes!”

“But if I were you, I'd stick to the truth. The odds are much better. And bear in mind, I know where your families live. How's
nonna
Maria? And your mother, Alma—does she still have her boarding house?”

Niccolo's eyes were at once fierce and wounded.
“I am telling you the truth!”
he screamed in Friuliano.

“As long as we're clear about that,” Bryson replied blandly.

“But we don't
know
who hired us! The procedures are the same as when we worked for you! We are the
mus
, the beasts of burden! They tell us
nothing!
”

Bryson shook his head ruminatively. “Nothing is ever sealed in a vacuum, my friend. You know that as well as I. Even when you deal with a cutout, you know your contact's cover name. You can't help but pick up bits and pieces of information. And they may not tell you
why
you're doing a particular operation, but they always tell you
how
to do it, and that can be quite revealing as well.”

“I told you, we don't
know
who our employers are!”

Bryson raised his voice, speaking with controlled fury. “You worked with a team, under a team leader; you were issued instructions; and people
always
talk. You damned well know who hired you!” He turned toward the aisle as if preparing to call out a signal.

“No!” cried Niccolo.

“Your brother—”

“My brother doesn't know either. I don't know what he said to you, but
he doesn't know!
You know how the lines, the—compartments—how this works! We're only the hired help, and they pay us in cash!”

“Language!” Bryson demanded.

“
Che
 … language?”

“The team you're working with here. What
language
do they speak to one another?”

Niccolo's eyes were wild. “Different languages!”

“The team
leader!
”

“Russian!” he shouted desperately. “He's a
Russian!
”

“KGB, GRU?”

“What do we know of these things?”

“You know faces!” Bryson spat out. Louder, he called: “Layla?”

Layla approached, understood Bryson's gambit. “Would you like me to use a silencer?” she inquired in a matter-of-fact way.

“No!” Niccolo thundered. “I tell you what you want to know!”

“I'll give him another sixty seconds,” Bryson said. “Then, if I don't hear what I want to hear, fire away—and yes, actually, a silencer might be a good idea.” To Niccolo, he said, “They hired you to kill me because you know me, know my face.”

Niccolo nodded, his eyes closed.

“But they knew you once worked for me, and they wouldn't just hire you to kill your old employer without a plausible cover story. No matter how little loyalty you two have. So they told you I was a sellout, a traitor, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“A traitor to what, to whom?”

“They only said you were selling names of agents, that we and everyone else you'd ever worked with would be identified, flushed out, executed.”

“Executed by
whom?
”

“Hostile parties … I don't know, they didn't say!”

“Yet you believed them.”

“Why would I not believe them?”

“Was a bounty placed on my head, or was this a straight job price?”

“Yes, a bounty.”

“How much?”

“Two million.”

“Lire or dollars?”

“Dollars! Two million
dollars
.”

“I'm flattered. You and your brother could have retired to the hills and hunted
cinghiale
to your hearts' content. But the problem with offering a bounty to a team is that it diminishes the incentive for the team to coordinate; everyone wants to make the hit separately. Bad strategy, self-defeating. The bearded one was the team leader?”

“Yes.”

“Was he the Russian-speaker?”

“Yes.”

“You know his name?”

“Not directly. I hear someone call him Milyukov. But I know the face. He's like me, like us—he does assignments.”

“Freelance?”

“They say he works for a—a plutocrat, a Russian baron. One of the secret powers behind the Kremlin. A very rich man who owns a conglomerate. Through it, they say he secretly runs Russia.”

“Prishnikov.”

There was a glint of recognition in the Italian's eyes. He had heard the name before. “Maybe, yes.”

Prishnikov. Anatoly Prishnikov. Founder and chairman of the mammoth, shadowy Russian consortium Nortek. Immensely rich and powerful and, indeed, the power behind the throne. Bryson's heart began beating rapidly. Why would Anatoly Prishnikov have sent someone to eliminate Bryson?

Why?

The only logical explanation seemed to be that Prishnikov was controlling the Directorate, or was among those controlling it. Harry Dunne of the CIA had said that the Directorate had been founded and, from its beginning, been controlled by a small cabal of Soviet GRU ‘geniuses,' as he put it.