Robert Ludlum by The Prometheus Deception (Uc)

Author:The Prometheus Deception (Uc) [Txt] [Deception, The Prometheus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

E50

“And you think the one person in government most likely to know about its activities is the chairman of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, yes? The group that meets in secret to oversee the NSA and the CIA and all the other American spy agencies?”

“Correct.”

“And the chairman of this intelligence oversight is Richard Lanchester.”

“Exactly.”

Nodding, she said, “This is why you want to meet with him.”

“Correct.”

“But for what?” she cried.

“To tell him what?”

“To tell him what I know about the Directorate, about what I think it’s up to. This was the big question, the reason I was brought back from retirement: Who’s controlling the Directorate now? What is it really doing?”

“And you think you have the answers?” She seemed belligerent, almost outright antagonistic.

“No, of course not. I have theories, backed up by evidence.”

“What evidence? You have nothing!”

“Whose side are you on, Layla?”

“I’m on yours?” she shouted.

“I want to protect you, and I think you’re making a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“You go to see this man Lanchester with… with wisps of nothing, crackpot accusations—he’ll dismiss you at once: He’ll think you’re crazy!”

“Quite possibly,” conceded Bryson.

“But it’s my job to make him think otherwise, and I believe I can.”

“And what makes you think you can trust him?”

“What choice do I have?”

“He could be one of the enemies, one of the liars! How can you be sure he’s not?”

“I’m sure of nothing anymore, Layla. I feel like I’m in a maze, I’m lost. I don’t know where I am, who I am anymore.”

“What makes you so sure you can believe what this CIA man told you? What makes you so sure he’s not one of them, one of the liars?”

“I’m not sure, I told you that! This is not a matter of certainty, it’s a matter of calculation, of odds.”

“Then you believed it when he told you your parents were killed?”

“My stepmother—the woman who was sort of my guardian after my parents were killed—pretty much confirmed it, though she’s ill, I think she has Alzheimer’s, her mind is going. The fact is, the only people who really know the truth are the people I’m desperate to find—Ted Waller, and Elena.”

“Elena is your ex-wife.”

“Officially not an ex-wife. We never divorced. She disappeared. I suppose you’d say we’re separated.”

“She abandoned you.”

Bryson sighed.

“I don’t know what happened. I wish I knew; I badly want to know.”

“She just disappeared, she never got in touch? One day there, next day gone?”

“Right.”

She shook her head in disapproval.

“Yet I think you love her still.”

He nodded.

“It’s—it’s just so hard for me to think straight about her, to know what to believe. Did she ever love me, or was she assigned to me? Did she run away from me in despair, or out of fear, or because she was forced to? What is the truth, where is the truth?” Had his secret mission to Bucharest somehow backfired? Had Elena been reached by the sweepers, frightened into hiding somehow? But if so, wouldn’t she have left word for him to explain her actions? Another possibility:

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