The Prometheus Deception begins with a deep-cover operative, a beautiful
cryptographer with a shadowy past, a government organization that's not
what it seems, and an assignment that goes very, very wrong. Nicholas
Bryson, a spy for a secret intelligence group known only as the
Directorate, has his cover blown on a Tunisian operation and is retired
to a new identity: Jonas Barrett, lecturer in Near Eastern history at a
small liberal arts college. Five years later, the CIA corners
Bryson/Barrett and tells him that his entire 15-year career in the
Directorate was a fraud, that the organization was really an elaborate
front for the GRU--Soviet military intelligence--and that his former
boss, Ted Waller, was actually Gennady Rosovsky, a GRU muckety-muck.
Even Bryson's beloved estranged wife, Elena, was actually a Romanian
Securitate agent assigned to keep him in line. And now...
"Damn it!" Bryson shouted.
"This makes no sense! How ignorant do you think I am?
The goddamn GRU, the Russians--that's all in the past. Maybe you Cold
War cowboys at Langley haven't yet heard the news--the war's over!"
"Yes," Dunne replied raspily, barely audible.
"And for some baffling reason the Directorate is alive and well."
So far so good; after 22 thrillers in this vein, Robert Ludlum could
probably have written this one in his sleep. Fortunately for his fans,
he was not only awake at the wheel, but ready to race--on a track with
more twists and bumps than a roller coaster in an earthquake. The CIA
claims it needs Bryson to reinfiltrate the Directorate and help them
bring it down, but when Bryson is cornered by an erstwhile Directorate
acquaintance aboard a floating arms bazaar and rescued by a woman named
Layla just before the ship blows up, he begins to realize how the years
of retirement have dulled his formerly keen reaction time. While
Bryson cautiously feels (and fights) his way from Virginia to Spain and
back again, mistrustful of his new CIA colleagues even as he dodges
murder attempts by his former Directorate henchmen, there are rumblings
in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Congress. Several respected
statesmen are raising a ruckus about widespread invasions of privacy,
behind which stand a Seattle software billionaire and a mysterious
nexus of power called Prometheus. But is Prometheus allied with the
Directorate--or with a different group altogether? Filled with
post-Cold War double-crosses, New Economy high jinks, and even a few
Wall Street shenanigans thrown in for good measure, The Prometheus
Deception is pure old-style Ludlum, repackaged for the new
millennium.
cryptographer with a shadowy past, a government organization that's not
what it seems, and an assignment that goes very, very wrong. Nicholas
Bryson, a spy for a secret intelligence group known only as the
Directorate, has his cover blown on a Tunisian operation and is retired
to a new identity: Jonas Barrett, lecturer in Near Eastern history at a
small liberal arts college. Five years later, the CIA corners
Bryson/Barrett and tells him that his entire 15-year career in the
Directorate was a fraud, that the organization was really an elaborate
front for the GRU--Soviet military intelligence--and that his former
boss, Ted Waller, was actually Gennady Rosovsky, a GRU muckety-muck.
Even Bryson's beloved estranged wife, Elena, was actually a Romanian
Securitate agent assigned to keep him in line. And now...
"Damn it!" Bryson shouted.
"This makes no sense! How ignorant do you think I am?
The goddamn GRU, the Russians--that's all in the past. Maybe you Cold
War cowboys at Langley haven't yet heard the news--the war's over!"
"Yes," Dunne replied raspily, barely audible.
"And for some baffling reason the Directorate is alive and well."
So far so good; after 22 thrillers in this vein, Robert Ludlum could
probably have written this one in his sleep. Fortunately for his fans,
he was not only awake at the wheel, but ready to race--on a track with
more twists and bumps than a roller coaster in an earthquake. The CIA
claims it needs Bryson to reinfiltrate the Directorate and help them
bring it down, but when Bryson is cornered by an erstwhile Directorate
acquaintance aboard a floating arms bazaar and rescued by a woman named
Layla just before the ship blows up, he begins to realize how the years
of retirement have dulled his formerly keen reaction time. While
Bryson cautiously feels (and fights) his way from Virginia to Spain and
back again, mistrustful of his new CIA colleagues even as he dodges
murder attempts by his former Directorate henchmen, there are rumblings
in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Congress. Several respected
statesmen are raising a ruckus about widespread invasions of privacy,
behind which stand a Seattle software billionaire and a mysterious
nexus of power called Prometheus. But is Prometheus allied with the
Directorate--or with a different group altogether? Filled with
post-Cold War double-crosses, New Economy high jinks, and even a few
Wall Street shenanigans thrown in for good measure, The Prometheus
Deception is pure old-style Ludlum, repackaged for the new
millennium.
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