The Lazarus Vendetta

Chapter Eight

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Katherine (“Kit”) Pierson stood at the window of her fifth-floor office, frowning down at the rain-slick surface of Pennsylvania Avenue. There were just a few cars waiting at the nearest traffic lights and only a small scattering of tourists scurrying along the avenue's broad sidewalks beneath bobbing umbrellas. The usual evening mass exodus of the city's federal workforce was still a couple of hours away.

She resisted the urge to check the time again. Waiting for others to act had never been one of her strengths.

Kit Pierson glanced up from the street and caught a faint glimpse of her reflection in the tinted glass. For a brief instant she studied herself dispassionately, wondering again why the slate gray eyes gazing back at her so often seemed those of a stranger. Even at forty-five, her ivory white skin was still smooth, and her short dark brown hair framed a face that she knew most men considered attractive.

Not that she gave them many chances to tell her so, she thought coolly.

A failed early marriage and a bitter divorce had proved to her that she could not successfully mix romance with her career in the FBI. The national interests of the Bureau and the United States always came first-even those interests her superiors were sometimes too afraid to recognize.

Pierson was aware that the agents and analysts under her command called her the Winter Queen behind her back. She shrugged that off. She drove herself much harder than she ever drove them. And it was better to be thought a bit cold and distant than to be seen as weak or inefficient. The FBI's Counter-Terrorism Division was no place for clock-punching nine-to-fivers whose eyes were fixed on their pensions rather than on the nation's ever-more dangerous enemies.

Enemies like the Lazarus Movement.

For several months now she and Hal Burke over at the CIA had warned their superiors that the Lazarus Movement was becoming a direct threat to the vital interests of the United States and those of its allies. They had zeroed in on all the signs that the Movement was escalating its rhetoric and moving toward violent action. They had presented policy papers and analysis and every scrap of evidence they could lay their hands on.

But no one higher up the ladder had been willing to act forcefully enough against the growing threat. Burke's boss, CIA Director David Hanson, talked a good game, but even he fell short in the end. Many of the politicians were worse. They looked at Lazarus and saw only the surface camouflage, the do-gooder environmental organization. It was what lay beneath that camouflage that Kit Pierson feared.

“Imagine a terrorist group like al-Qaeda, but run instead by Americans and Europeans and Asians — by people who look just like you or me or those nice neighbors down Maple Lane,” she often reminded her staff. “What kind of profiling can we run against a threat like that?”

Hanson, for one, understood that the Lazarus Movement was a clear and present danger. But the CIA director insisted on fighting this battle within the law and within the bounds set down by politics. In contrast, Pierson and Burke and others around the world knew that it was too late to play by “the rules.” They were committed to destroying the Movement by aggressive action — using whatever means were necessary.

The phone on her desk rang. She turned away from the window and crossed her office in four long, graceful strides to pick it up on the second ring. “Pierson.”

“Burke here.” It was the call she had been expecting, but her stocky, square-jawed CIA counterpart sounded uncharacteristically edgy. “Is your line secure?” he asked.

She toggled a switch on the phone, running a quick check for any sign of electronic surveillance. The FBI spent a lot of time and taxpayer money making sure its communications networks were untapped. An indicator light glowed green. She nodded. “We're clear.”

“Good,” Burke said, in a flat, clipped tone. There were sounds of traffic in the background. He must be calling on his car phone. “Because something's fouled up in New Mexico, Kit. It's bad, real bad. Worse than we expected. Turn on any one of the cable news stations. They practically have the pictures on continuous loop.”

Puzzled, Pierson leaned over her desk and hit the keys that would display TV signals on her computer monitor. For a long moment she stared in shocked silence as the live footage shot earlier outside the Teller Institute flickered across her high-resolution screen. Even as she watched, new explosions erupted inside the burning building. Thick columns of smoke stained the clear blue New Mexico sky. Outside the Institute itself, thousands of Lazarus Movement demonstrators fled in terror, trampling one another in their frenzy to escape. The camera zoomed in, showing nightmarish images of human beings melting like bloodstained wax.

She drew a short, sharp breath, fighting for composure. Then she gripped the phone tighter. “Good God, Hal. What happened?”

“It's not clear, yet,” Burke told her. “First reports say the demonstrators broke through the fence and they were swarming the building when all hell broke loose inside — explosions, fires, you name it.”

“And the cause?”

“There's speculation about some kind of toxic release from the nano-tech labs,” Burke said. “A few sources are calling it a tragic accident. Others are blaming sabotage by as-yet-unidentified perps. The smart money is on sabotage.”

“But no confirmation either way?” she asked sharply. “No one's been taken into custody?”

“No one so far. I don't have contact with our people yet, but I expect to hear something soon. I'm heading out there myself, pronto. There's an Air Force emergency flight taking off from Andrews in thirty minutes — and Langley wangled me a seat on the plane.”

Pierson shook her head in frustration. “This was not the plan, Hal. I thought we had this situation locked down tight.”

“Yeah, so did I,” Burke said. She could almost hear him shrug. “Something always goes wrong at some point in every operation, Kit. You know that.”

She frowned. “Not this wrong.”

“No,” agreed Burke coldly. “Not usually.” He cleared his throat. “But now we have to play the cards we're dealt. Right?”

“Yes.” Pierson reached out and shut down the TV link on her computer. She did not need to see any more. Not now. She suspected those images would haunt her dreams for a very long time.

“Kit?”

“I'm here,” she said softly.

“You know what has to happen next?”

She nodded, forcing herself to focus on the immediate future. “Yes, I do. I have to lead the investigative team in Santa Fe.”

“Will that be a problem?” the CIA officer asked. “Arranging it with Zeller, I mean.”

“No, I don't think so. I'm sure he'll jump at the chance to assign the job to me,” Pierson said carefully, thinking it through out loud. "I'm the Bureau expert on the Lazarus Movement. The acting director understands that. And one thing is going to be very clear to everyone, from the

White House all the way on down the chain of command. Somehow, somewhere, in some way, this atrocity must be linked to the Movement."

“Right,” Burke said. “And in the meantime, I'll keep pushing TOCSIN from my end.”

“Is that wise?” Pierson asked sharply. “Maybe we should pull the plug now.”

“It's too late for that,” Burke told her bluntly. “Everything is already in motion, Kit. We either ride the wave, or we get pulled under.”

Chapter Nine

The members of the president's national security team who were gathered around the crowded conference table in the White House Situation Room were in a somber, depressed mood. As they damned well should be, thought Sam Castilla grimly. The first accounts of the Teller Institute disaster had been bad enough. Each new report was even worse.

He glanced at the nearest clock. It was much later than he had thought. In the confines of this small artificially lit underground room, the passage of time was often distorted. Several hours had already passed since Fred Klein first flashed him the news of the horror unfolding in Santa Fe.

Now the president looked around the table in disbelief. “You're telling me that we still don't have a firm estimate of casualties — either inside the Teller Institute itself, or outside among the demonstrators?”

“No, Mr. President. We don't,” Bob Zeller, the acting director of the FBI, admitted. He sat miserably hunched over in his chair. "More than

half of the Institute's scientists and staff are listed as missing. Most of them are probably dead. But we can't even send in search-and-rescue teams until the fires are out. As for the protesters…" Zeller's voice trailed away.

“We may never know exactly how many of them were killed, Mr. President,” his national security adviser, Emily Powell-Hill, interrupted. “You've seen the pictures of what happened outside the labs. It could take months to identify what little is left of those people.”

“The major networks are saying there are at least two thousand dead,” said Charles Ouray, the White House chief of staff. “And they're predicting the count could go even higher. Maybe as high as three or four thousand.”

“Based on what, Charlie?” the president snapped. “Spitballing and raw guesswork?”

“They're going with claims made by Lazarus Movement spokesmen,” Ouray said quietly. “Those folks have more credibility with the press— and the general public — than they used to. More credibility than we do right now.”

Castilla nodded. That was true enough. The first terrifying TV footage had gone out live and unedited over several news network satellite feeds. Tens of millions of people in America and hundreds of millions around the world had seen the gruesome images with their own eyes. The networks were now showing more discretion, carefully blurring the more graphic scenes of terrified Lazarus Movement protesters being eaten alive. But it was too late. The damage was done.

All the wild, lurid claims made by the Lazarus Movement about the dangers posed by nanoteclmology seemed vindicated. And now the Movement seemed determined to push an even more sinister and paranoid story. This theory was already showing up on their Web sites and on other major Internet discussion groups. It claimed that the Teller labs were developing secret nanotech war weapons for the U.S. military. Using eerily similar photos of the ravaged dead in both places, it connected the horror in Santa Fe to the earlier massacre at Kusasa in Zimbabwe. Those pushing the story were arguing that these pictures proved that “elements within the American government” had wiped out a peaceful village as a first test of those nanotech weapons.

Castilla grimaced. In the prevailing hysteria, no one was going to pay any attention to calm technical rebuttals by leading scientists. Or to reassuring speeches by politicians like him, the president reminded himself. Pressured by frightened constituents, many in Congress were already demanding an immediate federal ban on nanotech research. And God only knew how many other governments around the world were going to buy into the Movement's wild-eyed claims about America's secret “nanotech weapons program.”

Castilla turned to David Hanson, sitting at the far end of the table. “Anything to add, David?”

The CIA director shrugged. “Beyond the observation that what happened at the Teller Institute is almost certainly an act of coldly calculated terrorism? No, Mr. President, I do not.”

“Aren't you jumping the gun just a bit?” Emily Powell-Hill asked curtly. There was no love lost between the former Army brigadier general and the Director of Central Intelligence. She thought Hanson was far too eager to apply extreme solutions to national security problems.

Privately, the president agreed with her assessment. But the uncomfortable truth was that Hanson's wilder predictions often hit the mark, and most of the clandestine operations he pushed forward were successful. And in this case, the CIA chiefs assertion tied in perfectly with what Castilla had already heard from Fred Klein at Covert-One.

“Am I speculating in advance of all the facts? Clearly, I am,” Hanson admitted. He peered condescendingly over the rims of his tortoiseshell glasses at the national security adviser. “But I don't see that we need to waste much time on alternate theories, Emily. Not unless you honestly believe that the intruders who broke into the Teller Institute had nothing to do with the bombs that exploded less than an hour later. Frankly, that seems a bit naive to me.”

Emily Powell-Hill flushed bright red.

Castilla intervened before the dispute could get out of hand. “Let's assume you're right, David. Say this disaster is an act of terrorism. Then who are the terrorists?”

“The Lazarus Movement,” said the CIA director bluntly. “For precisely the reasons I outlined when we discussed the Joint Intelligence Threat Assessment, Mr. President. We wondered then what the 'big event' in Santa Fc was supposed to be.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Well, now we know.”

“Are you seriously suggesting the leaders of the Lazarus Movement arranged the deaths of more than two thousand of their own supporters?” Ouray asked. The chief of staff was openly skeptical.

“Deliberately?” Hanson shook his head. “I don't know. And until we get a better sense of exactly what killed those people, we won't know. But I am quite sure that the Lazarus Movement was involved in the terrorist attack itself.”

“How so?” Castilla asked.

“Consider the timing, Mr. President,” the CIA director suggested. He began making his points, ticking them off with the precision of a professor presenting a much-loved thesis to a particularly slow freshman class. “One: Who organized a mass demonstration outside the Teller Institute? The Lazarus Movement. Two: Why were the Institute's security guards outside the building when the counterfeit Secret Service team arrived — and not able to intervene against them? Because they were pinned down by that same protest. Three: Who prevented the real Secret Service agents from entering the building? Those same Lazarus Movement demonstrators. And finally, four: Why couldn't the Santa Fe police and sheriffs intercept the intruders as they left the Institute? Because they were tied down handling the chaos outside the Institute.”

Almost against his will, Castilla nodded. The case the CIA chief made was not airtight, but it was persuasive.

"Sir, we cannot go public with an unsupported allegation like that

against the Lazarus Movement!“ Ouray broke in. ”It would be political suicide. The press would crucify us for even suggesting it!"

“Charlie's absolutely right, Mr. President,” Emily Powell-Hill said. The national security adviser shot a quick glare at the head of the CIA before continuing. “Blaming the Movement for this would play straight into the hands of every conspiracy theorist around the world. We can't afford to give them more ammunition. Not now.”

A gloomy silence fell around the Situation Room conference table.

“One thing is certain,” David Hanson said coldly, breaking the hush. “The Lazarus Movement is already profiting from the public martyrdom of so many of its followers. Around the world, hundreds of thousands of new volunteers have added their names to its e-mail lists. Millions more have made electronic donations to its public bank accounts.”

The CIA chief looked straight at Castilla. “I understand your reluctance to act against the Lazarus Movement without proof of its terrorist activities, Mr. President. I know the politics involved. And I earnestly hope that the FBI probe at the Teller Institute produces the evidence you require. But it is my duty to warn you that delay could have terrible consequences for this nation's security. With every passing day, this Movement will grow stronger. And with every passing day, our ability to confront it successfully will diminish.”

The man called Lazarus sat alone in a small but elegantly furnished compartment. The window shades were pulled down, shutting out any glimpse of the larger world outside. Images flickered across the computer screen set before him, televised images of the carnage outside the Teller Institute.

He nodded to himself, coolly satisfied by what he saw. His plans, so carefully and patiently prepared over the course of several years, were at last coming to fruition. Much of the work, like that involved in selectively pruning the Movement's former leadership, had been difficult and painful and full of risk. The Horatii, physically powerful, precisely trained in the arts of assassination, and infinitely cruel, had served him well in that effort.

For a moment a trace of sorrow crossed his face. He genuinely regretted the need to eliminate so many men and women he had once admired — people whose only fault had been a reluctance to see the need for sterner measures to accomplish their shared dreams. But then Lazarus shrugged. Personal regrets aside, events were proving the correctness of his vision. In the past twelve months, under his sole leadership, the Movement had accomplished more than in all the prior years of halfhearted conventional activism combined. Restoring the purity of the world required bold, decisive action, not dreary oratory and weak-kneed political protests.

In fact, as the name of the Movement suggested, it meant bringing new life out of death itself.

His computer chimed softly, signaling the arrival of another encrypted report relayed to him from the Center itself. Lazarus read through it in silence. Prime's death was an inconvenience, but the loss of one of his three Horatii was far outweighed by the results from the attack on the Teller Institute and the resulting slaughter of his own followers. Gulled by the information he had fed them, information that confirmed their own worst fears, officials in the American CIA and FBI and those of other allied intelligence services had trapped themselves in an act of mass murder. What must seem to those poor fools to have been a terrible error was, in fact, intended from the beginning. They were guilty and he would use their guilt against them for his own purposes.

Lazarus smiled coldly. With a single deadly stroke he had made it virtually impossible for the United States, or for any other Western government, to act decisively against the Movement. He had turned their own strength against them — just as would any master of jujitsu. Though his enemies did not yet realize it, he controlled the essential levers of power.

Any action they took against the Movement would only strengthen his grip and weaken them in the same moment.

Now it was time to begin the process of setting once-loyal allies at one another's throats. The world was already suspicious of America's military and scientific power and of Washington's motives. With the right prodding and media manipulation, the world would soon believe that America, the sole superpower, was tinkering with the building blocks of creation, creating new weapons on a nanoscale — all in pursuit of its own cruel and selfish aims. The globe would begin to divide between those who sided with Lazarus and those who did not. And governments, pressured by their own people, would increasingly turn against the United States.

The resulting confusion, chaos, and disorder would serve him well. It would buy the time he needed to bring his grand design to completion — a design that would transform the Earth forever.

Chapter Ten

Night was falling fast across the high desert country around Santa Fe. To the northwest, the highest peaks of the Jemez Mountains shone crimson, lit by the last rays of the setting sun. The lower lands to the east were already immersed in the gathering darkness. Just south of the city itself, tongues of fire still danced eerily amid the twisted and broken ruins of the Teller Institute, flickering orange and red and yellow as the flames fed on broken furniture and supporting beams, spilled chemicals, bomb-mangled equipment, and the bodies of those trapped inside. The rank, acrid smell of smoke hung heavy in the cool evening air.

Several fire engine companies were on the scene, but they were being held outside the area cordoned off by local police and the National Guard. There was no longer any real hope of finding any survivors inside the burning building, so no one wanted to risk exposing more men to the runaway nanomachines that had killed so many Lazarus Movement activists.

Jon Smith stood stiffly near the outside edge of the cordon, watching the fires burn out of control. His lean face was haggard and his shoulders

were slumped. Like many soldiers, he often experienced a feeling of melancholy in the aftermath of intense action. This time it was worse. He was not accustomed to losing. Between them, he and Frank Diaz must have killed or wounded half of the terrorists who had attacked the Teller Institute, but the bombs they had planted had still gone off. Nor could Smith forget the horror of seeing thousands of people reduced to slime and bone fragments.

The encrypted cell phone in his inner jacket pocket vibrated suddenly. He pulled the phone out and answered. “Smith.”

“I need you to brief me in more detail, Colonel,” Fred Klein said abruptly. “The president is still meeting with his national security team, but I expect another call from him in the not-too-distant future. I've already passed your preliminary report to him, but he'll want more. I need you to tell me exactly what you saw and exactly what you think happened there today.”

Smith closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted. “Understood,” he said dully.

“Were you injured, Jon?” the head of Covert-One asked, sounding concerned. “You didn't say anything earlier and I assumed — ”

Smith shook his head. The abrupt movement set every bruise and torn muscle on fire. “It's nothing serious,” he said, wincing. “A few cuts and scrapes, that's all.”

“I see.” Klein paused, plainly doubtful. “I suspect that means you are not actively bleeding at this moment.”

“Really, Fred, I'm all right,” Smith told him, irritated now. “I'm a doctor, remember?”

“Very well,” Klein said carefully. “We'll proceed. First, are you still convinced that the terrorists who hit the Institute were professionals?”

“No question about it,” Smith said. “These guys were smooth, Fred. They had Secret Service procedures, weapons, and ID all down cold. If the real Secret Service team hadn't shown up early, the bad guys could have been in and out without anyone batting an eye.”

“Right up to the moment the bombs went off,” Klein suggested.

“Until then,” Smith agreed grimly.

“Which brings us to the protesters who died,” the head of Covert-One said. “The common assumption seems to be that the explosions released something from one of the labs — either a toxic chemical substance or more likely a nanotech creation that went wild. You were assigned out there to review the labs and their research. What do you think happened?”

Smith frowned. Ever since the shooting and screaming had stopped, he had been racking his brains, trying to piece together a plausible answer to that question. What could possibly have killed so many demonstrators outside the Institute so quickly and so cruelly? He sighed. “Only one lab was working on anything directly connected to human tissues and organs.”

“Which one?”

“Harcourt Biosciences,” Smith said. Speaking rapidly, he sketched in the work Brinker and Parikh had been doing with their Mark II nanophages — including their last experiment, the one that had killed a perfectly healthy mouse. “And one of the major bomb blasts went off inside in the Harcourt lab,” he concluded. “Both Phil and Ravi are missing, and presumed dead.”

“That's it, then,” Klein said, sounding faintly relieved. “The bombs were set deliberately. But the deaths outside must have been unintended, basically a kind of high-tech industrial accident.”

“I don't buy it,” Smith said bluntly.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, the mouse I saw die showed no signs of cellular degeneration,” Smith answered, thinking it through. “There was nothing remotely resembling the wholesale disintegration I watched this afternoon.”

“Could that be the difference between the effects of these nanophages inside a mouse and inside human beings?” Klein asked carefully.

“That's highly unlikely,” Smith told him. “The whole reason for using lab mice for preliminary tests is their biological similarity to humans.” He sighed. “I can't swear to it, Fred, not without further study, anyway. But my gut feeling is that the Harcourt nanophages could not have been responsible for those deaths.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a long moment. “You realize what that would mean,” Klein said at last.

“Yeah,” Smith agreed heavily. “If I'm right and nothing inside the Institute could have killed all those people, then whatever did came in with the terrorists and was set deliberately — as part of some cold-blooded plan to massacre thousands of Lazarus Movement activists. And that doesn't seem to make any sense.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. He swayed, feeling the fatigue he had been holding at bay gaining the upper hand.

“Jon?”

With an effort, Smith forced himself back upright. “I'm still here,” he said.

“Wounded or not, you sound all in,” Klein told him. “You need a chance to rest and recover. What's your situation there?”

Despite his exhaustion, Smith could not help smiling wryly. “Not great. I'm not going anywhere soon. I've already given my statement, but the local Feds are holding every single Institute survivor who can still walk and talk right here, pending the arrival of their great white chief from D.C. And she's not due in until sometime early tomorrow morning.”

“Not surprising,” Klein said. “But not good, either. Let me see what I can do. Hold on.” His voice faded.

Smith looked out into the darkness, watching rifle-armed men in camouflage fatigues, Kevlar helmets, and body armor patrolling the cordon between him and the burning building. The National Guard had deployed a full company to seal off the area around the Teller Institute. The troops had been issued shoot-to-kill orders to stop anyone trying to break through their perimeter.

From what Smith heard, more National Guard units were tied up in Santa Fe itself, protecting state and federal offices and trying to keep the

highways open for emergency traffic. One of the local sheriffs had told him that several thousand people from the city were evacuating, fleeing to Albuquerque or even up into the mountains around Taos in search of safety.

The police also had their hands full keeping tabs on survivors from the Lazarus Movement rally. Many had already fled the area, but a few hundred dazed activists were wandering aimlessly through the streets of Santa Fe. Nobody was sure if they were really in shock or if they were only waiting to cause more trouble.

Fred Klein came back on the line. “It's all arranged, Colonel,” he said calmly. “You have clearance to leave the security zone — and a ride back to your hotel.”

Smith was deeply grateful. He understood why the Bureau wanted to secure the area and maintain control over its only dependable witnesses. But he had not been looking forward to spending a long, cold night on a cot in a Red Cross tent or huddled in the back of some police squad car. As so often before, he wondered briefly just how Klein — a man who operated only in the shadows — could pull so many strings without blowing his cover. But then, as always, he filed those questions away in the back of his mind. To Smith, the important thing was that it worked.

Twenty minutes later, Smith was riding in the back of a State Police patrol car heading north on Highway 84 through the center of Santa Fe. There were still long lines of civilian autos, pickups, minivans, and SUVs inching slowly south toward the junction with Interstate 25, the main road to Albuquerque. The message was clear. Many locals were not buying the official line that any danger was limited to a relatively small zone around the Institute.

Smith frowned at the sight, but he could not blame people for being scared to death. For years they had been assured that nanotechnology was absolutely, positively safe — and then they turned on their TV sets and watched screaming Lazarus Movement protesters being torn to shreds by tiny machines too small to be seen or heard.

The patrol car turned east off Highway 84 onto the Paseo de Peralta, the relatively wide avenue ringing Santa Fe's historic center. Smith spotted a National Guard Humvee blocking an intersection to the right. More vehicles, troops, and police were in position along every road heading into the downtown area.

He nodded to himself. Those responsible for law and order were making the best use of their limited resources. If you had to pick just one place to defend against looting or lawlessness, that area was it. There were other beautiful museums, galleries, shops, and homes scattered around the rest of the city, but the heart and soul of Santa Fe was its historic center — a maze of narrow one-way streets surrounding the beautiful tree-lined Plaza and the four-centuries-old Palace of the Governors.

The streets of the old city followed the winding trace of old wagon roads like the Santa Fe and Pecos Trails, not an antiseptic ultra-modern grid. Many of the buildings lining those roads were a blend of old and new in the Spanish-Pueblo revival style, with earth-toned adobe walls, flat roofs, small, deep-set windows, and protruding log beams. Others, like the federal courthouse, displayed the brick facades and slender white columns of the Territorial style — dating back to 1846 and the U.S. conquest during the Mexican-American War. Much of the history, art, and architecture that made Santa Fe so unique an American city lay within that relatively small district.

Smith frowned as they drove past the darkened, deserted streets. On most days, the Plaza was bustling with tourists taking photos and browsing through the wares of local artists and craftsmen. Native Americans sat in the shade of the portal, the covered walkway, outside the Palace, selling distinctive pottery and silver and turquoise jewelry. He suspected that those places would be eerily abandoned in the coming morning, and possibly for many days to come.

He was staying just five blocks from the Plaza, at the Port Marcy Hotel

Suites. Back when he was first assigned as an observer at the Teller Institute, it had amused him to check into a hotel with a military-sounding name. But there was nothing Army-issue or drab about the Fort Marcy suites themselves. Eighty separate units occupied a series of one- and two-story buildings set on a gentle hillside with views of the city or the nearby mountains. All of them were quiet, comfortable, and elegantly furnished in a mix of modern and traditional Southwestern styles.

The state trooper dropped him off at the front of the hotel. Smith thanked him and limped along the walkway to his room, a one-bedroom suite nestled in among shade trees and landscaped gardens. Few lights were on in any of the neighboring buildings. He suspected that many of his fellow guests were long gone — heading for home as fast as they could.

Jon fumbled through his wallet for the room card key, found it, and let himself in. With the door firmly closed, he felt himself starting to relax for the first time in hours. He carefully shrugged out of his bullet-ripped leather jacket and made his way into the bathroom. He splashed some cold water on his face and then looked in the mirror.

The eyes that stared back at him were haunted, weary, and full of sadness.

Smith turned away.

More out of habit than of real hunger, he checked the refrigerator in the suite's kitchen. None of the tinfoil-wrapped restaurant leftovers inside looked appealing. Instead, he took out an ice-cold Tecate, twisted off the cap, and set the beer bottle out on the dining room table.

He looked at it for a long moment. Then he swung away and sat staring blindly out the windows, seeing only the horrors he had witnessed earlier replaying over and over in his exhausted mind.

Chapter Eleven

Malachi MacNamara paused just inside the doors of Cristo Rey Church. He stood quietly for some moments, surveying his surroundings. Pale moonlight filtered in through windows set high up in massive adobe walls. A large high-ceilinged nave stretched before him. Far ahead, at the altar, he could see a large screen, a reredos, composed of three large sections of white stone. Carvings of flowers, saints, and angels covered the stone screen. Groups of weary men and women sat slumped here and there among the pews. Some were weeping openly. Others sat silent, staring into nothingness, still numbed by the horrors they had witnessed.

MacNamara moved slowly and unobtrusively down one of the side aisles, watching and listening to those around him. He suspected the men he was hunting were not here, but it was best to make sure of that before moving on to the next possible sanctuary. His feet ached. He had already spent several hours walking the meandering streets of this city, tracking down several of the dispersed groups of Lazarus Movement survivors. It would have been faster and more efficient with a car, of course. But terribly out of character, he reminded himself — and bloody damn obvious. The vehicle he had brought with him to New Mexico would have to stay hidden for a while longer.

A middle-aged woman with a pleasant, friendly face hurried up to him. She must be one of the parishioners who had opened their church to those they saw in need, he realized. Not everyone in Santa Fe had panicked and run for the hills. He could see the concern in her eyes. “Can I help you?” she asked. “Were you at the rally outside the Institute?”

MacNamara nodded somberly. “I was.”

She put her hand on his sleeve. “I am so sorry. It was frightening enough to watch from a distance, on the television, I mean. I can't imagine how it must feel to have…” Her voice died away. Her eyes widened.

He suddenly became aware that his expression had grown cold, infinitely forbidding. The horrors he had seen were still too close. With an effort, he pushed away the dreadful images rising in his mind. He sighed. “Forgive me,” he said gently. “I didn't intend to frighten you.”

“Did you lose…” The woman hesitated. “That is… are you looking for someone? Someone in particular?”

MacNamara nodded. “I am searching for someone. For several people, in fact.” He described them for her.

She listened attentively, but in the end she could only shake her head. “I'm afraid there's no one here like that.” She sighed. “But you might try at the Upaya Buddhist temple, farther up Cerro Gordo Road, back in the hills. The monks there are also offering shelter to survivors. If you like, I can give you directions to the temple.”

The lean blue-eyed man nodded appreciatively. “That would be most kind.” He pulled himself upright. There are many more miles to go before you sleep, he told himself grimly. And quite probably in vain, too. The men he was after had undoubtedly already gone to ground.

The woman looked down at his scuffed, dust-smeared boots. “Or I could give you a ride,” she suggested hesitantly. “If you've been walking all day, you must be just about worn-out.”

Malachi MacNamara smiled for the first time in days. “Yes,” he said softly. “I am extremely tired. And I would be very glad of a lift.”

The safe house secured by the TOCSIN action team was high up in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, not far off the road leading to the Santa Fe Ski Basin. A narrow drive blocked by a chain and a large keep OUT sign wound uphill between gold-leafed aspens, oak trees covered in copper-red foliage, and towering evergreens.

Hal Burke turned off the main road and rolled down the window of the Chrysler LeBaron he had rented immediately after arriving at Albuquerque's international airport. He sat waiting, careful to keep his hands in plain sight on the steering wheel.

A shadow)' figure moved out from the shelter of one of the big trees. The dim glow of the car's headlights revealed a narrow, hard-edged, suspicious face. One hand hovered conspicuously near the 9mm Walther pistol holstered at his hip. “This is a private road, mister.”

“Yes, it is,” Burke agreed. “And I am a private man. My name is Tocsin.”

The sentry drew nearer, reassured by Burke's use of the correct recognition code. He flashed a penlight across the CIA officer's face and then into the backseat of the Chrysler, making sure Burke was alone. “Okay. Show me some ID.”

Burke carefully fished his CIA identity card out of his jacket pocket and handed it over.

The sentry scrutinized the picture. Then he nodded, handed back the ID card, and undid the chain blocking the drive. “You can go ahead, Mr. Tocsin. They're waiting for you up at the house.”

The house, a quarter-mile up the narrow road, was a large half-timbered Swiss-style chalet, with a steeply pitched roof designed to shed large masses of accumulated snow. In an average winter, well over a hundred inches fell on this part of the Sangre de Cristo range — and the winter often took shape in late October. Twice that much snow usually accumulated at the ski areas on the higher slopes.

Burke parked on a weather-cracked concrete pad close to a set of stairs leading up to the chalet's front door. Against the darkness, lights shone yellow behind drawn window blinds. The woods surrounding the house were silent and perfectly still.

The front door of the chalet opened before he even finished getting out of the car. The sentry below must have radioed ahead. A tall auburn-haired man stood there, looking down at him with bright green eyes.

'You made good time, Mr. Burke."

The CIA officer nodded, staring up at the bigger man. Which one of the strange trio who called themselves the Horatii was this? he wondered uneasily. The three big men were not brothers by birth. Instead, their identical appearance, enormous strength and agility, and wide range of skills were said to be the result of years of painstaking surgery, elaborate physical conditioning, and intensive training. Burke had selected them as section leaders for TOCSIN at their creator's urging but could not entirely suppress a feeling of mingled fear and awe whenever he saw one of the Horatii. Nor could he tell them apart.

“I had every reason to hurry, Prime,” he replied, guessing at last.

The green-eyed man shook his head. “I am Terce. Unfortunately, Prime is dead.”

“Dead? How?” Burke asked sharply.

“He was killed in the operation,” Terce told him calmly. He stepped aside, ushering Burke into the chalet. Carpeted stairs led up to the second floor. A long stone-flagged hall paneled in dark pine led deeper into the house. Bright light spilled out through an open door at the back. “In fact, you have arrived just in time to help us decide a small matter connected with Prime's death.”

The CIA officer followed the big man through the open door and into a large glass-enclosed porch running the width of the house. The gently sloping concrete floor, a metal drain in the middle, and the racks on the walls told him this room was normally used as a storage and drying room for snow-encrusted outdoor gear — heavy boots, cross-country skis, and snowshoes. Now, though, the chalet's new owners were using it as a holding cell.

A small stoop-shouldered man with olive skin and a neatly trimmed mustache perched uneasily on a stool set squarely in the middle of the room — right above the drain. He was gagged and his hands were tied behind him. His feet were bound to the legs of the stool. Above the gag, a pair of dark brown eyes were wide open, staring frantically at the two men who had just entered.

Burke turned his head toward Terce. He raised a single eyebrow in an unspoken question.

“Our friend there, Antonio, was the assault team's backup driver,” the bigger man said quietly. “Unfortunately, he panicked during the extraction phase. He abandoned Prime.”

“Then you were forced to eliminate Prime?” Burke asked. “To prevent his capture?”

“Not quite. Prime was… consumed,” Terce told him. He shook his head grimly. “You should have warned us about the plague our bombs would release, Mr. Burke. I earnestly hope your failure to do so was only an oversight — and not intentional.”

The CIA officer frowned, hearing the implicit threat in the other man's voice. “No one knew how dangerous those damned nanomachines really were!” he said quickly. “Nothing in the classified reports I studied from Harcourt, Nomura, or the Institute suggested anything like that could happen!”

Terce studied him for a few moments. Then he nodded. “Very well. I accept your assurances. For now.” The second of the Horatii shrugged. “But the mission has backfired. The Lazarus Movement will be stronger now, not weaker. Given that, do you wish to proceed further? Or should we fold our tents and steal away while there is still time?”

Burke scowled. He was in too far to back out now. If anything, it was more imperative than ever to arrange the destruction of the Movement. He shook his head decisively. “We keep going. Is your team ready to activate the cover plan?”

“We are.”

“Good,” the CIA officer said flatly. “Then we still have a fighting chance to pin what happened at the Institute on Lazarus. Trigger the cover — tonight.”

“It will be done,” Terce agreed quietly. He indicated the bound man. “In the meantime, we need to resolve this disciplinary problem. What do you suggest we do with Antonio here?”

Burke eyed him closely. “Isn't the answer obvious?” he said. “If this man broke once under pressure, the odds are that he will break again. We can't afford that. TOCSIN is already risky enough. Just finish him and dump the body where it won't be found for a few weeks.”

The driver moaned softly behind his gag. His shoulders slumped.

Terce nodded. “Your reasoning is impeccable, Mr. Burke.” His green eyes were amused. “But since it is your reasoning and your verdict, I think you should carry out the sentence yourself.” He offered the CIA officer a long-bladed fighting knife, pommel first.

This was a test, Burke realized angrily. The big man wanted to see how far he would go in binding himself to the dirty work he ordered. Well, riding herd on a group of black ops mercenaries was never easy, and he had killed men before to prove himself on other operations — murders he had carefully concealed from his deskbound superiors. Hiding his distaste, the CIA officer shrugged out of his jacket and hung it over one of the ski clamps. Then he rolled up his shirtsleeves and took the dagger.

Without pausing for further reflection, Burke stepped behind the stool, yanked the bound driver's head back, and drew the blade of the fighting knife hard across his throat. Blood sprayed through the air, scarlet under the bright bulb of the overhead light.

The dying man thrashed wildly, kicking and tugging at the ropes holding him down. He toppled over, still tied to the stool, and lay twitching, bleeding his life away onto the concrete floor.

Burke turned back to Terce. “Satisfied?” he snapped. “Or do you want me to dig his grave, too?”

“That will not be necessary,” the other man said calmly. He nodded toward a large roll of canvas in the far corner of the porch. “We already have a grave for poor Joachim over there. Antonio can share it with him.”

The CIA officer suddenly realized he was looking at another corpse, this one rolled up in a tarp.

“Joachim was wounded while retreating from the Institute,” Terce explained. “He was hit in the shoulder and leg. His injuries were not immediately life-threatening, but they would soon have required significant medical attention. I did what was necessary.”

Burke nodded slowly, understanding. The tall green-eyed man and his comrades would not risk their own security by seeking medical treatment for anyone hurt too badly to keep up. The TOCSIN action team would kill anyone who threatened its mission, even its own members.

Chapter Twelve

It was after midnight and the heavy red-and-yellow Navajo drapes were drawn tight, sealing off the Oval Office from any prying eyes. No one outside the White House West Wing needed to know that the president of the United States was still hard at work — or with whom he was meeting.

Sam Castilla sat at his big pine table in his shirtsleeves, steadily reading through a sheaf of hastily drafted emergency executive orders. The heavy brass reading lamp on one corner of his desk cast a circular pool of light across his paperwork. From time to time, he jotted rough notes in the margin or crossed out a poorly worded phrase.

At last, with a quick stroke of his pen, he slashed his signature across me bottom of the several different marked-up orders. He could sign clean copies for the national archives later. Right now the important thing was to get the ponderous wheels of government turning somewhat faster. He glanced up.

Charles Ouray, his chief of staff, and Emily Powell-Hill, his national security adviser, sat slumped in the two big leather chairs drawn up in front of his desk. They looked weary, worn down by long hours spent shuttling back and forth between the White House complex and the various cabinet offices to get those orders ready for his signature. Trying to broker agreements among half-a-dozen different executive branch departments, each with its own competing views and pet agendas, was never easy.

“Is there anything else I need to know now?” Castilla asked them.

Ouray spoke up first. “We're getting our first look at the morning papers from Europe, Mr. President.” His mouth turned down.

“Let me guess,” Castilla said sourly. “We're getting hammered?”

Emily Powell-Hill nodded. Her eyes were worried. “By most of the major dailies in every European nation — France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain, and all the others. The general consensus seems to be that no matter what went wrong inside the Teller Institute, the carnage outside is largely our responsibility.”

“On what grounds?” the president asked.

“There's a lot of wild speculation about some kind of secret nanotech weapons program gone awry,” Ouray told him quietly. “The European press is playing that angle hard, with all the sensational claims front and center and our official denials buried way down near the end.”

Castilla grimaced. “What are they doing? Running Lazarus Movement press releases verbatim?”

“For all practical purposes,” Powell-Hill said bluntly. She shrugged. “Their story has all the plot elements Europeans love: a big, bad, secretive, and blundering America running roughshod over a peaceful, plucky, Mother Earth-loving band of truth-telling activists. And, as you can imagine, every foreign policy mistake we've made over the past fifty years is being raked up all over again.”

“What's the political fallout likely to be?” the president asked her.

“Not good,” she told him. "Of course, some of our 'friends' in Paris and Berlin are always looking for a chance to stick it to us. But even our

real European friends and allies will have to play this one very carefully. Siding with the world's sole superpower is never very popular and a lot of those governments are shaky right now. It wouldn't take much of a swing in public opinion to bring them down."

Ouray nodded. “Emily's right, Mr. President. I've talked to the folks over at the State Department. They're getting very worried back-channel questions from Europe, and from the Japanese, too. Our friends want some firm assurances that these stories are false — and just as important, that we can prove that they're false.”

“Proving a negative?” Castilla shook his head in frustration. “That's not an easy thing to do.”

“No, sir,” Emily Powell-Hill agreed. “But we're going to have to do our best. Either that, or watch our alliances begin crumbling, and see Europe pull even further away from us.”

For several minutes after his two closest advisers left, Castilla sat behind his desk mulling over different ways to reassure European public and elite opinion. His face darkened. Unfortunately, his options were very limited. No matter how many of its federal labs and military bases the U.S. opened to public inspection, it could never hope to completely calm the tempest of Internet-fed hysteria. Crackpot rumors, damning exaggerations, doctored photos, and outright lies could circle the globe with the speed of light, far outpacing the truth.

He looked up at the sound of a light tap on his open door. “Yes?”

His executive secretary poked her head in. “The Secret Service just called, Mr. President. Mr. Nomura has arrived. They're bringing him in now.”

“Discreetly, I hope, Estelle,” Castilla reminded her.

The faint trace of a smile crossed her normally prim and proper face. “They're coming through the kitchens, sir. I trust that is discreet enough.”

Castilla chuckled. "Should be. Well, let's just hope none of the night-shift press corps folks are foraging there for a midnight snack." He stood up, straightened his tie, and pulled on his suit coat. Being ushered into the White House past the kitchen trash cans was a far cry from the impressive ceremony that usually accompanied a visit to the American president, so the least he could do was greet Hideo Nomura with as much formality as possible.

His secretary, Mrs. Pike, opened the door for the head of Nomura PharmaTech just a minute or two later. Castilla advanced to meet him, smiling broadly. The two men exchanged quick, polite bows in the Japanese manner and then shook hands.

The president showed his guest to the big leather couch set squarely in the middle of the room. “I'm very grateful you could come at such short notice, Hideo. You flew in from Europe this evening, I hear?”

Nomura smiled back civilly. “It was no great trouble, Mr. President. The benefits of owning a fast corporate jet. In fact, it is I who should express my thanks. If your staff had not contacted me, I would be the one begging for a meeting.”

“Because of the catastrophe out at the Teller Institute?”

The younger Japanese man nodded. His black eyes flashed. “My company will not soon forget this cruel act of terrorism.”

Castilla understood his anger. The Nomura PharmaTech Lab inside the Institute had been completely destroyed and the immediate financial loss to the Tokyo-based multinational company was staggering, close to $100 million. That didn't include the cost to replicate the years of research wiped out along with the lab, and the human cost was even higher. Fifteen of the eighteen highly skilled scientists and technicians working in the Nomura section were missing and presumed dead.

“We're going to find and punish those responsible for this attack,” Castilla promised the other man. “I've ordered our national law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to make it their top priority.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. President,” Nomura said quietly. “And I am here to offer what little help I can.” The Japanese industrialist shrugged. "Not

in the hunt for the terrorists, of course. My company lacks the necessary expertise. But we can provide other assistance that might prove useful."

Castilla raised a single eyebrow. “Oh?”

“As you know, my company maintains a rather substantial medical emergency response force,” Nomura reminded him. “I can have aircraft en route to New Mexico in a matter of hours.”

The president nodded. Nomura PharmaTech spent huge sums annually on charitable medical work around the world. His old friend Jinjiro began the practice when he founded the company back in the 1960s. After he retired and entered the political world, his son had continued and even expanded its efforts. Nomura money now funded everything from mass vaccination and malaria control programs in Africa to water sanitation projects in the Middle East and Asia. But the company's disaster relief work was what really caught the public eye and generated headlines.

Nomura PharmaTech owned a fleet of Soviet-made An-124 Condor cargo aircraft. Bigger than the mammoth C-5 transports flown by the U.S. Air Force, each Condor could carry up to 150 metric tons of cargo. Operating from a central base located in the Azores Islands, they were used by Nomura to ferry mobile hospitals — complete with operating rooms and diagnostics labs — to wherever emergency medical care was needed. The company boasted that its hospitals could be up and running in twenty-four hours at the scene of any major earthquake, typhoon, disease outbreak, wildfire, or flood, anywhere in the world.

“That's a generous offer,” Castilla said slowly. “But I'm afraid there were no injured survivors outside the Institute. These nanomachines killed everyone they attacked. There's no one left alive for your medical personnel to treat.”

“There are other ways in which my people could assist,” Nomura said delicately. “We do possess two mobile DNA analysis labs. Perhaps their use might speed the sad work of— ”

“Identifying the dead,” Castilla finished for him. He thought about that. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was estimat-

ing it could take months to put names to the thousands of partial human remains left outside the ruined Teller Institute. Anything that could accelerate that slow, mournful effort was worth trying, no matter how many-legal and political complications it might add. He nodded. “You're absolutely right, Hideo. Any help along those lines would be most welcome.”

Then he sighed. “Look, it's late and I'm tired, and it's been a rotten couple of days. Frankly, I could use a good stiff drink. Can I get you one?”

“Please,” Nomura replied. “That would be most welcome.”

The president moved to a sideboard near the door to his private study. Earlier, Mrs. Pike had set a tray holding a selection of glasses and bottles there. He picked up one of the bottles. It was full of a rich amber liquid. “Scotch all right with you? This is the twenty-year-old Caol Ila, a single malt from Islay. It was one of your father's favorites.”

Nomura lowered his eyes, apparently embarrassed by the emotions stirred by this offer. He inclined his head in a quick bow. “You honor me.”

While Castilla poured, he carefully eyed the son of his old friend, noting the changes since they had last seen each other. Though Hideo Nomura was nearly fifty, his short-cropped hair was still pitch-black. He was tall for a Japanese man of his generation, so tall that he could easily look most Americans and Europeans squarely in the face. His jaw was firm and there were just a few tiny furrows around the edges of his eyes and mouth. From a distance, Nomura might easily pass for a man fully ten or fifteen years younger. It was only up close that one could discern the wearing effects of time and hidden grief and suppressed rage.

Castilla handed one of the glasses to Nomura and then sat down and sipped at his own. The sweet, smoky liquid rolled warmly over his tongue, carrying with it just a bare hint of oak and salt. He noticed that the younger man tasted his without any evident sense of enjoyment. The son is not the father, he reminded himself sadh.

“I had another reason for asking you here tonight,” Castilla said at last, breaking the awkward silence. "Though I think it may be related in some way to the tragedy at the Institute.“ He chose his words carefully. ”I need to ask you about Jinjiro… and about Lazarus."

Nomura sat up straighter. “About my father? And the Lazarus Movement? Ah, I see,” he murmured. He set his glass to one side. It was almost full. “Of course. I will tell you whatever I can.”

“You opposed your father's involvement in the Movement, didn't you?” Castilla asked, again treading cautiously.

The younger Japanese nodded. “Yes.” He looked straight at the president. “My father and I were never enemies. Nor did I hide my views from him.”

“Which were?” Castilla wondered.

“That the goals of the Lazarus Movement were lofty, even noble,” Nomura said softly. “Who would not want to see a planet purified, free of pollution, and at peace? But its proposals?” He shrugged. “Hopelessly unrealistic at best. Deadly lunacy at worst. The world is balanced on a knife-edge, with mass starvation, chaos, and barbarism on one side and potential Utopia on the other. Technology maintains this delicate balance. Strip away our advanced technologies, as the Movement demands, and you will surely hurl the entire planet into a nightmare of death and destruction — a nightmare from which it might never awaken.”

Castilla nodded. The younger man's beliefs paralleled his own. “And what did Jinjiro say to all of that?”

“My father agreed with me at first. At least in part,” Nomura said. “But he thought the pace of technological change was too fast. The rise of cloning, genetic manipulation, and nanotechnology troubled him. He feared the speed of these advances, believing that they offered imperfect men too much power over themselves and over nature. Still, when he helped found Lazarus, he hoped to use the Movement as a means of slowing scientific progress — not of ending it altogether.”

“But that changed?” Castilla asked.

Nomura frowned. “Yes, it did,” he admitted. He picked up his glass, stared into the smoky amber liquid for a moment, and then set it down

again. “The Movement began to change him. His beliefs grew more radical. His words became more strident.”

The president stayed silent, listening intently.

“As the other founders of the Movement died or disappeared, my father's thoughts grew darker still,” Nomura continued. “He began to claim that Lazarus was under attack… that it had become the target of a secret war.”

“A war?” Castilla said sharply. “Who did he say was waging this secret war?”

“Corporations. Certain governments. Or elements of their intelligence services. Perhaps even some of the men in your own CIA,” the younger Japanese said softly.

“Good God.”

Nomura nodded sadly. "At the time, I thought these paranoid fears were only more evidence of my father's failing mental health. I begged him to seek help. He refused. His rhetoric became ever more violent, ever more deranged.

“Then he vanished on the way to Thailand.” His face was somber. “He vanished without any word or trace. I do not know whether he was abducted, or whether he disappeared of his own free will. I do not know whether he is alive or dead.”

Nomura looked up at Castilla. “Now, however, after seeing those peaceful protesters murdered outside the Teller Institute, I have another concern.” He lowered his voice. “My father talked of a covert war being waged against the Lazarus Movement. And I laughed at him. But what if he was right?”

Later, once Hideo Nomura had gone, Sam Castilla walked to the door of his private study, knocked once, and went into the dimly lit room.

A pale, long-nosed man in a rumpled dark gray suit sat calmly in a high-backed chair placed right next to the door. Bright, highly intelligent eyes gleamed behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. “Good morning, Sam,” said Fred Klein, the head of Covert-One.

“You heard all that?” the president asked.

Klein nodded. “Most of it.” He held up a sheaf of papers. “And I've read through the transcript of last evening's NSC meeting.”

“Well?” Castilla asked. “What do you think?”

Klein sat back in his chair and ran his hands through his rapidly thinning hair while he considered his old friend's question. Every year it seemed as though his hairline receded another inch. It was the price of the stress involved in running the most secret operation in the whole U.S. government. “David Hanson is no fool,” he said finally. “You know his record as well as I do. He has a nose for trouble and he's bright and pushy enough to follow that nose wherever it leads him.”

“I know that, Fred,” said the president. “Hell, that's why I nominated him as DCI in the first place — over Emily Powell-Hill's vigorous and often-expressed objections, I might add. But I'm asking you for your opinion of his latest brainstorm: Do you think this mess in Santa Fe is really the work of the Lazarus Movement itself?”

Klein shrugged. “He makes a fairly strong case. But you don't need me to tell you that.”

“No, I don't.” Castilla walked over heavily and dropped into another chair, this one next to a fireplace. “But how does the CIA's theory track with what you've learned from Colonel Smith?”

“Not perfectly,” the head of Covert-One admitted. “Smith was very clear. Whoever these attackers were, they were professionals — well-trained, well-equipped, and well-briefed professionals.” He fiddled with the briarwood pipe tucked in his coat pocket and fought off the temptation to light up. The whole White House was a no-smoking area these days. “Frankly, that does not seem to square with what little we know about the Lazarus Movement…” Go on,“ the president said. But it's not impossible,” Klein finished. "The Movement has money.

Maybe it hired the pros it needed. God knows that there are enough special ops-trained mercenaries kicking around idle these days. These people could have been ex-Stasi from the old East Germany, or ex-KGB or Spetsnaz-types from Russia. Or they might be from other commando units in the old Warsaw Pact, the Balkans, or the Middle East."

He shrugged. “The real kicker is Smith's claim that none of the nan-otechnology being developed at the Institute could have killed those protesters. If he's right, then Hanson's theory goes right out the window. Of course, so does every other reasonable alternative.”

The president sat staring into the empty fireplace for a long moment. Then he shook himself and growled, “It feels a bit too damned convenient, Fred, especially when you consider what Hideo Nomura just told me. I just don't like the way both the CIA and the FBI are zeroing in on one particular theory of what took place in Santa Fe, to the exclusion of every other possibility.”

“That's understandable,” Klein said. He tapped the NSC transcript. “And I'll admit I have the same qualms. The worst sin in intelligence analysis comes when you start pounding square facts into round holes just to fit a favorite hypothesis. Well, when I read this, I can hear both the Bureau and the Agency banging away on pegs — whatever their shape.”

The president nodded slowly. “That's exactly the problem.” He looked across the shadowed room at Klein. “You're familiar with the A-Team/ B-Team approach to analysis, aren't you?”

The head of Covert-One shot him a lopsided grin. “I'd better be. After all, that's one of the justifications for my whole outfit.” He shrugged. “Back in 1976, the then-DCI, George Bush Sr., later one of your illustrious predecessors, wasn't completely satisfied with the in-house CIA analysis of Soviet intentions he was getting. So he commissioned an outside group — the B-Team — made up of sharp-eyed academics, retired generals, and outside Soviet experts to conduct its own independent study of the same questions.”

“That's right,” Castilla said. "Well, starting right now, I want you to form your very own B-Team to sort through this mess, Fred. Don't get in the way of the CIA or the FBI unless you have to, but I want somebody I can trust implicitly checking the shape of those pegs they're hammering."

Klein nodded slowly. “That can be arranged.” He tapped the unlit pipe on his knee for a few seconds, thinking. Then he looked up. “Colonel Smith is the obvious candidate. He's already on the scene and he knows a great deal about nanotechnology.”

“Good.” Castilla nodded. “Brief him now, Fred. Figure out what authorizations he'll need to do this, and I'll make sure they land on the right desks first thing in the morning.”

Chapter Thirteen

An old, often-dented red Honda Civic drove south along County Road 57, trailing a long cloud of dust. Unbroken darkness stretched for miles in every direction. Only a faint glow cast by the sliver of the moon lit the rugged hills and steep-sided gulches and arroyos east of the unpaved dirt-and-gravel road. Inside the cramped, junk-filled car, Andrew Costanzo sat hunched over the steering wheel. He glanced down at the odometer periodically, lips moving as he tried to figure out just how far he had come since leaving Interstate 25. The instructions he had been given were precise.

Few people who knew him would have recognized the strange look of mingled exhilaration and dread on his pallid, fleshy face.

Ordinarily, Costanzo seethed with frustration and accumulated resentments. He was plump, forty-one years old, unmarried, and trapped in a society that did not value either his intellect or his ideals. He had worked hard to earn an advanced degree in environmental law and American consumerism. His doctorate should have opened doors for him into the academic elite. For years he had dreamed of working for a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, single-handedly drafting the blueprints for essential social and environmental reforms. Instead he was just a part-time clerk in a chain bookstore, a crummy dead-end job that barely paid his share of the rent on a shabby, run-down ranch house in one of Albuquerque's poorest neighborhoods.

But Costanzo had other work, secret work, and it was the only part of his otherwise miserable life he found meaningful. He licked his lips nervously. Being asked to join the inner circles of the Lazarus Movement was a great honor, but it also carried serious risks. Watching the news this afternoon had made that even clearer. If his superiors in the Movement had not given him strict orders to stay home, he would have been at the Teller rally. He would have been one of the thousands slaughtered so viciously by the corporate death machines.

For an instant, he felt a deep-seated rage boiling up inside him, overwhelming even the everyday petty grudges he usually savored. His hands tightened on the wheel. The Civic swerved to the right, nearly running off the rough road and into the shoulder of soft sand and dead brush banked up on that side.

Sweating now, Costanzo breathed out. Pay attention to what you're doing now, he told himself sharply. The Movement would take vengeance on its enemies in good time.

The Honda's odometer clicked through another mile. He was close to the rendezvous point. He slowed down and leaned forward, staring through the windshield at the heights looming on his left. There it was!

Setting the Civic's turn signal blinking out of habit, Costanzo swung on the county road and drove cautiously into the mouth of a small canyon snaking deeper into the Cerrillos Hills. The Honda's tires crunched across a wash of small stones carried down by periodic flash floods. Tiny clumps of stunted trees and sagebrush clung precariously to the arroyo's sheer slopes.

A quarter-mile off the road, the canyon twisted north. Narrower gulches fed into the arroyo at this place, winding in from several directions. There were more withered trees here, springing up between weathered boulders and low mounds of loose gravel. Steep rock walls soared high on either side — striped with alternating layers of buff-colored sandstone and red mudstone.

Costanzo turned off the ignition. The air was silent and perfectly still. Was he too early? Or too late? The orders he had been given had stressed the importance of promptness. He drew his shirtsleeve across his forehead, mopping away the droplets of sweat that were stinging his shadowed, bloodshot eyes.

He scrambled out of the Honda, dragging a small suitcase with him. He stood awkwardly, waiting, not sure of what he should do next.

Headlights suddenly speared out from one of the narrow side canyons. Surprised, Costanzo swung toward the lights, shading his eyes in a desperate attempt to see through the blinding glare. He couldn't make out anything but the vague outline of a large vehicle and two or three shapes that might be men standing beside it.

“Put the bag down,” a voice ordered loudly, speaking through a bullhorn. “Then step away from your car. And keep your hands where we can see them!”

Shaking now, Costanzo obeyed. He walked forward stiffly, feeling sick to his stomach. He stuck his hands high in the air, with their palms out. “Who are you?” he asked plaintively.

“Federal agents, Mr. Costanzo,” the voice said more quietly, without the bullhorn now.

“But I haven't done anything wrong! I haven't broken any laws!” he said, hearing the shrill quaver in his voice and hating it for revealing his fear so plainly.

“No?” the voice suggested. “Aiding and abetting a terrorist organization is a crime, Andrew. A serious crime. Didn't you realize that?”

Costanzo licked his lips again. He could feel his heart pounding wildly. The sweat stains under his arms were spreading.

“Three weeks ago, a man fitting your description ordered two Ford Excursions from two separate auto dealers in Albuquerque. Two black Ford SUVs. He paid for them in cash. Cash, Andrew,” the voice said. “Care to tell me how someone like you had nearly one hundred thousand dollars in spare cash lying around?”

“It wasn't me,” he protested.

“The car salesmen involved can identify you, Andrew,” the voice reminded him. “All cash transactions of more than ten thousand dollars have to be reported to the federal government. Didn't you know that?”

Dumbfounded, Costanzo stood with his mouth hanging open. He should have remembered that, he realized dully. The cash-reporting requirement was part of the nation's drug laws, but really it was just another way for Washington to monitor and squelch potential dissent. Somehow, in all the excitement of being given a special mission for the Lazarus Movement, he had forgotten about it. How could he have been so blind? So stupid? His knees shook.

One of the shapes moved forward slowly, taking on the firmer outline of a remarkably tall and powerfully built man. “Face the facts, Mr. Costanzo,” he said patiently. “You were set up.”

The Lazarus Movement activist stood miserably rooted in one place. That was true, he thought bleakly. He had been betrayed. Why should he be so surprised? It had happened to him all of his life — first at home, then in school — and now it was happening again. “I can identify the man who gave me the money,” he said frantically. “I have a very good memory for faces—”

A single 9mm bullet hit him right between the eyes, tore through his brain, and exploded out the back of his head.

Still holding his silenced pistol, the tall auburn-haired member of the Horatii looked down at the dead man. “Yes, Mr. Costanzo,” Terce said quietly. “I am quite sure of that.”

Jon Smith was running, running for his life. He knew that much, though he could not remember why it was so. Others ran beside him. Over their terrified screams he heard a harsh buzzing noise. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a vast swarm of flying insects descending on them, coming on fast and gaining. He turned and ran faster, heart pounding in time with his feet.

The buzzing grew louder, ever more insistent and menacing. He felt something flutter onto his neck and tried frantically to brush it off. Instead, it clung to his palm. He stared down at the winged thing in dismay. It was a large yellow jacket.

Suddenly the wasp changed, transforming itself, altering its shape and structure into an artificial creature made of steel and titanium — a creature equipped with needle-tipped drills and diamond-edged saws. The robot wasp slowly turned its triangular head toward him. Its crystalline multi-faceted eyes gleamed with an eerie hunger. He stood transfixed, watching with mounting horror as the wasp's drills and saws blurred into motion and started boring deep into his flesh —

He jolted awake and sat bolt upright in bed, still panting hard and fast in reaction. Acting on reflex, he slid his hand under the pillow, automatically reaching for his 9mm SIG-Sauer pistol. Then he stopped. A dream, he thought edgily. It was only a dream.

His cell phone buzzed again, sounding from the nightstand where he had placed it before at last dropping off to sleep. Numbers on the digital clock beside the phone faintly glowed red, showing that it was just after three in the morning. Smith grabbed the phone before it could go off again. “Yes. What is it?”

“Sorry to wake you, Colonel,” Fred Klein said, without sounding noticeably apologetic. “But something's come up that I think you need to see… and hear.”

“Oh?” Smith swung his legs off the bed.

“The mysterious Lazarus has surfaced at long last,” the head of Covert-One said. “Or so it appears.”

Smith whistled softly. That was interesting. His briefing on the Lazarus Movement had stressed that no one in the CIA, the FBI, or any other Western intelligence agency knew who really directed its operations. “In person?”

“No,” Klein said. “It'll be easier to show you what we've got. Do you have your laptop handy?”

“Hold on.” Smith put the phone down and flipped on the lights. His portable computer was still in its case near the closet. Moving quickly, he slipped the machine out onto the bed, plugged the modem into a wall jack, and booted it up.

The laptop hummed, clicked, and whirred to life. Smith tapped in the special security code and password needed to connect with the Covert-One network. He picked up the phone. “I'm online.”

“Wait a moment,” Klein told him. “We're downloading the material to your machine now.”

The laptop's screen lit up — showing first a jumble of static, then random shapes and colors, and then finally clearing to show the stern, handsome face of a middle-aged man. He was looking straight into the camera.

Smith leaned forward, closely studying the figure before him. Thai face was somehow strangely familiar. Everything about it, from the faintly curly brown hair with just the right touch of gray at the temples to the open blue eyes, classically straight nose, and firm, cleft chin, conveyed an impression of enormous strength, wisdom, intelligence, and controlled power.

I am Lazarus,“ the figure said calmly. ”I speak for the Lazarus Movement, for the Earth, and for all of humanity. I speak for those who have died and for those as yet unborn. And I am here today to speak truth to corrupt and corruptible power."

Smith listened to the perfectly pitched, sonorous voice as the man who called himself Lazarus delivered a short, powerful speech. In it, he called for justice for those killed outside the Teller Institute. He demanded an immediate ban on all nanotechnology research and development. And he called on all members of the Movement to take whatever actions were necessary to safeguard the world from the dangers posed by this technology.

“Our Movement, a gathering of all peoples, of all races, has warned for years of this growing threat,” Lazarus said solemnly. “Our warnings have been ignored or mocked. Our voices have been silenced. But yesterday the world saw the truth — and it was a terrible and deadly truth….”

The screen faded back to a neutral background once the speech ended. “Pretty damned effective propaganda,” Smith said quietly over the phone.

“Extremely effective,” Klein agreed. “What you just saw was a feed to every major television network in the United States and Canada. The NSA pulled it down off a communications satellite two hours ago. Every agency in Washington has been analyzing it ever since.”

“We can't stop the tape from being broadcast, I suppose,” Smith mused.

“After yesterday?” Klein snorted. “Not in a million years, Colonel. This Lazarus message is going to run as the lead on every morning show and on every newscast for the whole day — maybe longer.”

Smith nodded to himself. No news director in his or her right mind was going to pass up the chance to feature a statement by the leader of the Lazarus Movement, especially since there was so much mystery surrounding him. “Can the NSA track the source of the transmission?”

"They're working on it, but it's not going to be easy. This footage came in as a highly compressed, highly encrypted blip piggybacked somewhere on any one of a host of other signals. Once it was up on the satellite, the signal uncoiled and decoded itself and started feeding down to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago… you name the major city and there it went."

“Interesting,” Smith said slowly. “Doesn't that seem like a strangely sophisticated method of communication for a group that claims it's opposed to advanced technology?”

“Yes, it does,” Klein agreed. “But we know that the Lazarus Movement relies heavily on computers and various Web sites to handle its internal communications. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that it uses the same methods to speak to the world at large.” He sighed. “And even if the NSA does succeed in pinpointing the origin of this transmission, I suspect we will learn that it arrived as an anonymous DVD at a small independent studio somewhere, along with a substantial cash payment for the technicians involved.”

“At least now we can put a face to this guy,” Smith said. “And with that, we can pin down his real identity. Run those pictures through all of our databases — and those of our allies. Somebody, somewhere, will have a file on whoever that is.”

'You're jumping the gun a bit, Colonel,“ Klein said. ”That wasn't the only satellite feed the NSA intercepted this morning. Take a look…."

The screen showed an older Asian man — a man with thin white hair, a high, smooth forehead, and dark, almost ageless eyes. His appearance reminded Smith of paintings he had seen of ancient sages, full of wisdom and knowledge. The older man began speaking, this time in Japanese. A simultaneous translation into English crawled across the screen below. “I am Lazarus. I speak for the Lazarus Movement, for the Earth, and for all of humanity….”

The next image was of an African elder, another man with all the power and force of an ancient king or a shaman of great power. He spoke >n full, resonant Swahili, but they were the same words, conveying the same message. When he finished, the handsome middle-aged Caucasian reappeared, this time speaking in perfect, idiomatic French.

Smith sat back in stunned silence, watching a parade of different Lazarus images — each one delivering the same powerful message fluently, in more than a dozen major languages. When the display at last flickered through static and faded into gray emptiness, he whistled softly again. “Man, now there's a clever trick! So maybe three-quarters of the world population is going to hear this same Lazarus Movement speech? And all from people who look like them and speak languages they understand?”

“That appears to be their plan,” the head of Covert-One agreed. “But the Movement is even cleverer than that. Take another look at that first Lazarus.”

The image came up on Smith's computer and froze just before it began speaking. He stared at the handsome middle-aged face. Why did it seem so damned familiar? “I'm looking, Fred,” he said. “But what I am looking for?”

“That is not a real face, Colonel,” Klein told him flatly. “Nor are any of the other Lazarus images.”

Smith raised a single eyebrow. “Oh? Then what are they?”

“Computer constructs,” the other man told him. “A blend of artificially generated pixels and bits and pieces of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of real people all mixed to create a set of different faces. The voices are all computer-generated, too.”

“So we have no way to identify them,” Smith realized. “And still no way to know whether the Movement is run by one man — or by many.”

“Exactly. But it goes beyond that,” Klein said. “I've seen some of the CIA's analysis. They're convinced those images and voices are very specially crafted — that they represent archetypes, or idealized figures, for the cultures to whom the Lazarus Movement is delivering its message.”

That would certainly explain why he had reacted so favorably to the first image, Smith realized. It was a variation on the ancient Western ideal of the just and noble hero-king. “These people are awfully damned good at what they're trying to do,” he said grimly.

“Indeed.”

“In fact, I'm beginning to think that the CIA and FBI may be right on-target in fingering these guys for what happened yesterday.”

“Perhaps. But skill with propaganda and secrecy doesn't necessarily reveal terrorist intentions. Try to keep an open mind, Colonel,” the other man warned. “Remember that Covert-One is the B-Team on this investigation. Your job is to play devil's advocate, to make sure evidence isn't overlooked just because it doesn't conveniently fit the preconceived theory.”

“Don't worry, Fred,” Smith said reassuringly. “I'll do my best to poke and prod and pry to see what breaks.”

“Discreetly, please,” Klein reminded him.

“Discretion is my middle name,” said Smith with a quick grin.

“Is it?” the head of Covert-One said tartly. “Somehow I never would have guessed.” Then he relented. “Good luck, Jon. If you need anything— access, information, backup, anything — we'll be standing by.”

Still grinning, Smith disconnected his phone and computer and began preparing himself for the long day ahead.

Chapter Fourteen

Once a sleepy little town full of dilapidated warehouses, rusting machine shops, and artists' studios, Emeryville had suddenly blossomed as one of the centers of the Bay Area's booming biotech industry. Multinational pharmaceutical corporations, genetic engineering startups, and venture capital-funded entrepreneurs pursuing new opportunities like nanotech-nology all vied for office and lab space along the busy Interstate 80 corridor between Berkeley and Oakland. Rents, taxes, and living costs were all exorbitant, but most corporate executives seemed to focus instead on Emeryville's proximity to top-notch universities and major airports and, perhaps most important of all, its spectacular views of San Francisco, the Bay, and the Golden Gate.

Telos Corporation's nanoelectronics research facility took up a whole floor of one of the new glass-and-steel high-rises looming just east of the approaches to the Bay Bridge. Interested more in profiting from its multimillion-dollar investment in equipment, materials, and personnel than it was in publicity, Telos maintained a comparatively low profile. No expensive and flashy logo on the building advertised its presence inside. School groups, politicians, and the press were not offered time-consuming tours. A single guard station just inside the main doors provided security.

Pacific Security Corporation deputy Paul Yiu sat behind the marble-topped counter of the security station, skimming through a paperback mystery. He flipped a page, idly noting the death of yet another suspect he had fingered as the killer. Then he yawned and stretched. Midnight had long since come and gone, but he still had two hours to go on his shift. He shifted uncomfortably on his swivel chair, readjusted the butt of the pistol bolstered at his side, and went back to his book. His eyelids drooped. A light tapping on the glass doors roused him. Yiu looked up, fully expecting to see one of the half-crazy homeless bums who sometimes wandered down here from Berkeley by mistake. Instead, he saw a petite redhead with a worried expression on her face. Fog had rolled in from the Bay and she looked cold in her tight blue skirt, white silk blouse, and stylish black wool coat.

The security guard slid off his chair, straightened his own khaki uniform shirt and tie, and went to the door. The young woman smiled in relief when she saw him and tried the door. It rattled but stayed locked. “I'm sorry, ma'am,” he called through the glass. “This building's closed.” Her worried look came back. “Please, I just need to borrow a phone to call Triple A,” she said plaintively. “My car broke down just up the street, and now my cell phone's gone dead, too!”

Yiu thought about that for a moment. The rules were quite clear. No unauthorized visitors after business hours. On the other hand, none of his bosses ever had to know that he had decided to play the Good Samaritan for this frantic young woman. Call it my good deed for the week, he decided. Besides, she was pretty cute, and he had always had an unrequited passion for redheads.

He took the building key card out of his shirt pocket and swiped it through the lock. It buzzed once and clicked open. He pulled the heavy glass door back with a welcoming smile. “Here you go, ma'am. The phone's just—”

The mace blast caught Yiu right in the eyes and open mouth. He doubled over, blinded, gagging, and helpless. Before he could even try to fumble for his weapon, the door slammed wide open — hurling him backward onto the slick tiled floor. Several people burst through the open door and into the lobby. Strong arms grabbed him, pinioned his arms behind his back, and then secured his wrists using his own handcuffs. Someone else yanked a cloth hood over his head.

A woman bent down to whisper in his ear. “Remember this! Lazarus lives!”

By the time Yiu's relief arrived to set him free, the intruders were long gone. But the Telos nanotech lab was a total wreck — full of smashed glassware, burned out electron-scanning microscopes, punctured steel tanks, and spilled chemicals. The Lazarus Movement slogans spray-painted across the walls, doors, and windows left little doubt about the loyalties of those responsible.

As the weak autumn sun climbed toward the zenith, thousands of protesters already clogged the steep tree-lined hill overlooking Zurich's Old Town and the River Limmat. They blockaded every street around the twin campuses of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Zurich. Scarlet and green Lazarus Movement flags waved above the crowds, along with signs demanding a ban on all Swiss-based nanotech-nology research projects.

Squads of riot police holding truncheons and clear Plexiglas shields waited at parade rest some blocks away from the mass of protesters. Armored cars with water cannons and tear gas grenade launchers were parked nearby. But the police did not appear to be in any real hurry to move in and clear the streets.

Dr. Karl Friederich Kaspar, the head of one of the labs now under peaceful siege, stood just behind the police barricades, close to the upper station of the Zurich Polybahn, the funicular railway built more than a century before to serve both the university and the Institute. He checked his watch again and ground his teeth together in frustration. Fuming, he sought out the highest-ranking police official he could find. “Look, why all the delay? Without a permit, this demonstration is illegal. Why don't you put your troops in and break it up?”

The police officer shrugged. “I follow my orders, Herr Professor Direk-tor Kaspar. At the moment, I have no such orders.”

Kaspar hissed in disgust. “This is absurd! I have staff waiting to go to work. We have many very valuable and expensive experiments to conduct.”

“That is a pity,” said the policeman carefully.

“A pity!” Kaspar growled. “It's more than a pity; it's a disgrace.” He eyed the other man angrily. “I might almost think you have sympathy for these ignorant dunderheads.”

The police officer turned to face him, meeting Kaspar's furious gaze without flinching. “I am not a member of the Lazarus Movement, if that is what you are suggesting,” he said quietly. “But I saw what happened in America. I do not wish such a catastrophe to occur here in Zurich.”

The lab director turned bright red. “Such a thing is impossible! Utterly impossible! Our work is completely different from anything the Americans and Japanese were doing at the Teller Institute! There is no comparison!”

That is excellent news,“ the policeman said, with the faint hint of a sardonic smile. He made a show of offering Kaspar a bullhorn. ”Perhaps if you assured the protesters of this truth, they might see the error of their ways and disperse?"

Kaspar could only stare back at him, dismayed to find so much ignorance and insolence in a fellow public servant.

Chapter Fifteen

With the sun rising red behind it, the huge An-124 Condor thundered low over the airport's inner beacon line and dropped heavily onto Runway Eight. Its four large pylon-mounted turbofans howled as the pilot reversed thrust. Decelerating, the Condor bounced and rolled down the nearly thirteen-thousand-foot-long landing strip, chasing its own lengthening shadow. In seconds, it lumbered past the hangars and revetments holding F-16s that belonged to New Mexico's 150th Air National Guard Fighter Wing. Still slowing, it passed camouflaged concrete-and-steel ordnance bunkers, which had been used to store strategic and tactical nuclear weapons during the Cold War.

Near the western end of the tarmac, the enormous Russian-made Antonov cargo aircraft turned off onto a freight apron and rolled ponderously to a complete stop beside a much smaller corporate jet. The shrill noise of its engines died away. Seen up close, the Nomura PharmaTech-owned plane dwarfed the group of reporters and cameramen waiting to record its arrival.

The An-124's sixty-foot-high rear cargo ramp whined open, settling heavily on the oil- and jet fuel-stained concrete. Two crewmen in flight suits walked down the ramp, shading their eyes against the bright sunlight. Once on the ground, they turned and began using hand signals to guide the drivers slowly backing a convoy of vehicles out of the Condor's cavernous cargo bay. The mobile DNA analysis labs promised by Hideo Nomura had arrived.

Nomura himself stood among the journalists, watching his support crews and medical technicians quickly and calmly preparing to make the short drive to Santa Fe. Their efficiency pleased him.

When he judged that the media had all the footage they needed, he signaled for their attention. It took some time for them to refocus their cameras and make sound checks. He waited patiently until they were ready.

“I have one other major decision to announce, ladies and gentlemen,” Nomura began. “It is not one I have made lightly. But I think it is the only sensible decision, especially in view of the terrible tragedy we all witnessed yesterday.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Effective immediately, Nomura PharmaTech will suspend its nanotechnology research programs — both those in our own facilities and those we fund in other institutions around the world. We will invite outside observers into our labs and factories to confirm that we have halted all our activities in this scientific field.”

He listened politely to the frenzied clamor of questions aroused by this sudden announcement, answering those that seemed best suited to his purposes. “Was my decision prompted by the demands made earlier this morning by the Lazarus Movement?” He shook his head. "Absolutely not. Though I respect their motives and ideals, I do not share the Movement's bias against science and technology. This temporary halt is prompted by simple prudence. Until we know exactly what went wrong at the Teller Institute, it would be foolish to put other cities at risk."

“What about your competitors?” one of the reporters asked bluntly. “Other corporations, universities, and governments have already invested billions of dollars in medical nanotech. Should they follow your company's lead and halt their work, too?”

Nomura smiled blandly. “I will not presume to dictate what steps others should take. That is a matter for their best scientific judgment, or perhaps more appropriately, for their consciences. For my part, I can only assure you that Nomura PharmaTech will never put its own profits ahead of innocent human life.”

Big, bullheaded James Severin, the chief executive officer of Harcourt Biosciences, watched the CNN tape of Hideo Nomura's interview come to an end. “That sly, shrewd Japanese son of a bitch,” he murmured, half in grudging admiration and half in outrage. His eyes blinked angrily behind the thick lenses of his black-framed glasses. “He knows his company's nanotech projects are way behind everybody else's work — so far behind that they've got no real chance of catching up!”

His senior aide, just as tall but about one hundred pounds lighter, nodded. “From what we can tell, Nomura's people lag our researchers by at least eighteen months. They're still sorting out basic theory, while our lab teams are developing real-world applications. This is a race PharmaTech can't win.”

“Yeah,” Severin growled. “We know that. And our friend Hideo there knows it. But who else is going to see what he's up to? Not the press, that's for sure.” He frowned. “So he gets to pull the plug on failing projects that have been costing his company an arm and a leg while masquerading as a selfless corporate white knight! Sweet, isn't it?”

The head of Harcourt Biosciences shoved his chair back, pushed himself heavily to his feet, and went over to stare moodily out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office. “And that little stunt by Nomura just revved up the public and political pressure on the rest of us. We're already catching enough hell over that mess out in Santa Fe. Now it's going to get worse.”

“We could buy some relief by going along with PharmaTech's self-imposed moratorium,” his aide suggested cautiously. “Just until we can prove our Teller lab wasn't at fault for the disaster.”

Severin snorted. “How long will that take? Months? A year? Two years? You really think we can afford to keep a bunch of bright-eyed scientists sitting around twiddling their thumbs for that long?” He leaned forward against the thick glass. Far below, the waters of Boston Harbor were a frigid-looking green-gray. “Don't forget that a lot of people in Congress and in the press would claim we were practically admitting fault by suspending our other nanotech projects.”

His aide said nothing.

Severin swung away from the windows. He clasped his hands behind his back. “No. We're not going to play Nomura's game. We're going to tough it out. Get out a press release right away. Say that Harcourt Biosciences flatly rejects the demands made by the Lazarus Movement. We will not give in to threats made by a secretive and extremist organization. And let's arrange some special media tours of our other nanotech labs. We need to show people that we have absolutely nothing to hide — and they have nothing to fear.”

Chapter Sixteen

Wearing a thick plastic protective suit, gloves, a sealed hood with its own oxygen supply, and a blue hard hat, Jon Smith stepped cautiously through the shattered ruins of the Institute's first floor. He ducked sideways under a large charred beam hanging down from the torn ceiling, taking care to avoid ripping his suit on any of the nails protruding from the blackened wood. No one knew if the nanomachines that had butchered thousands of protesters were still active. So far no one had tried to find out the hard way. Small fragments of crumbled adobe and shards of broken glass crunched under his thick-soled boots.

He came out into a more open area that had once been the employee cafeteria. This room was mostly intact, but there were signs of bomb damage along two of the four walls, and chalked outlines on the broken tile floor showed where bodies had been removed.

The FBI task force investigating the disaster was using the cafeteria as a rallying point and on-site tactical command center. Two portable computers were up and running on tables near the middle of the room, though it was clear that the agents trying to use them were having trouble entering data in their thick gloves.

Smith made his way over to where a man wearing a black hard hat was bent over one of the salvaged dining tables, studying a set of blueprints. The tag on the agent's protective suit read LATIMER, C.

The agent looked up at his approach. “Who are you?” he asked. The protective hood muffled his voice.

“Dr. Jonathan Smith. I'm with the Pentagon.” Smith lightly tapped his blue hard hat for emphasis. Blue was the color assigned to observers and outside consultants. “I have a watching brief — with orders to provide whatever help I can.”

“Special Agent Charles Latimer,” the other man introduced himself. He was slender, fair-haired, and had a strong Southern accent. He was openly curious now. “Just what kind of help can you offer us, Doctor?”

“I have a decent working knowledge of nanotechnology,” Smith said carefully. “And I know the layout of the labs pretty well. I was stationed here on a temporary assignment when the terrorists hit this place.”

Latimer stared hard at him. “That makes you a witness, Doctor — not an observer.”

“Last night and earlier this morning I was a witness,” Smith said with a wry grin. “Since then I've been promoted to independent consultant.” He shrugged. “I know that's not exactly by the book.”

'No, it's not,“ the FBI agent agreed. ”Look, have you cleared this with my boss?"

I'm sure all the necessary authorizations and clearances are somewhere on Deputy Assistant Director Pierson's desk right now," Smith said mildly. The last thing he wanted to do was start out by barging in at the top of the FBI's chain of command. He had not met Kit Pierson before, but he strongly suspected she was not going to be pleased to find someone outside her control hovering around her investigation.

Meaning, no, you haven't talked this over with her," Latimer said. He shook his head in disbelief. Then he shrugged. “Swell. Well, nothing else in this screwy place is running by the book.”

“It's a tough site to work in,” Smith agreed.

“Now there's an understatement,” said the FBI agent with a lopsided smile of his own. “Trying to hunt through all this bomb and fire damage is hard enough. Having to shield ourselves against these nanophages, or whatever they are, makes the job almost impossible.”

He pointed to the protective clothing they both wore. “Between the limited oxygen supply and avoiding heat prostration, we only get three hours of wear out of these moon suits. And we have to waste a whole half hour of that in decontamination. So our work is moving at a crawl, right at a time when Washington is screaming for fast results. Plus, we face a classic catch-22 on every piece of evidence we gather.”

Smith nodded sympathetically. “Let me guess: You can't take anything out of the building for lab analysis until it's been decontaminated. And if you decontaminate it, there's probably nothing left to analyze.”

“Peachy, isn't it?” Latimer said acidly.

“The risk of contamination may not be that high,” Smith pointed out. “Most nanodevices are designed for very specific environments. They should start to break down fairly rapidly after being exposed to atmosphere, pressure, or temperature conditions outside their parameters. We might be perfectly safe right now.”

“Sounds like a nice theory, Doctor,” the FBI agent said. “You volunteering to be the first one to take a good deep breath in here?”

Smith grinned. “I'm a medical man, not a lab rat. But ask me again in about twenty-four hours and I just might try it.”

He looked down at the set of blueprints the other man had been inspecting. They showed the layout of the Institute's first and second floors. Red circles of varying sizes dotted the blueprints. Most were clustered in and around the nanotech lab suites in the North Wing, but others were scattered throughout the building. “Bomb detonation points?” he asked the other man.

Latimer nodded. “Those we've identified so far.”

Smith examined the blueprints carefully. What he saw there confirmed his earlier impressions of the remarkable precision used by the terrorists in making their attack. Several explosive charges had completely smashed the security office, wiping out all the archived images from the external and internal security cameras. Another bomb had disabled the fire suppression system. Other demolition charges had been set in the computer center — destroying everything from personnel files to the records of equipment and materials deliveries made to scientists working at the Institute.

At first glance, the bombs placed inside the nanotech labs seemed to show the same determination to inflict maximum damage. Concentric circles covered the floor plans for the Nomura and Institute complexes. He nodded to himself. Those charges were clearly set to obliterate every single piece of major equipment in both labs, all the way from the biochemical vats in their inner cores to their desktop computers. But something about the detonation patterns he observed in the Harcourt lab bothered him.

Smith bent forward over the table. So what was wrong? He traced the array of circles with one gloved forefinger. The explosives rigged around the lab's inner core were far less likely to have caused as much damage. They seemed set to blow holes in the containment around the Harcourt nanophage-manufacturing tanks — not to completely destroy the tanks themselves. Was that an error? he wondered. Or was it deliberate?

He glanced up to ask Latimer whether he had noticed the same pattern. But the FBI agent was looking away, listening closely to someone talking over his radio headset.

Understood,“ Latimer said crisply into his mike. ”Yes, ma'am. I'll make sure he gets the message and complies. Out.“ The fair-haired man turned back to Smith. ”That was Pierson. It seems your paperwork finally caught her attention. She wants to see you at the primary command center outside."

As in immediately?" Smith guessed.

Latimer nodded. “Even sooner than that, if possible,” he said with a twisted smile. “And I'd be lying if I said you were going to get a warm welcome.”

“How truly wonderful,” Jon said drily.

The FBI agent shrugged his shoulders. “Just watch your step when you talk to her, Dr. Smith. The Winter Queen is damned good at her job, but she's not exactly what you might call a people person. If she thinks you're going to screw up this investigation in any way, she's liable to find a hole somewhere and drop you into it for the duration. Oh, she might call it 'preventive detention' or 'protective custody,' but it still won't be real comfortable… or very easy to get out of.”

Smith studied Latimer's face, sure that he must be exaggerating for effect. To his dismay, the other man seemed perfectly serious.

The safe house sat high on the crest of a rise overlooking the southern reaches of Santa Fe. From the outside, it appeared to be a classic Pueblo-style adobe built around a shaded courtyard. Inside, the decor and furnishings were absolutely modern, a study in gleaming chrome, blacks, and whites. Small satellite dishes were mounted discreetly in one corner of the building's flat roof.

Several of the home's west-facing windows had a direct line of sight to the Teller Institute, about two miles away. The rooms behind these windows were now filled with an array of radio and microwave receivers, video and still cameras fitted with powerful telephoto, infrared (IR), and thermal-imaging lenses, a bank of networked computers, and secure satellite communications gear.

A six-man surveillance team ran all this equipment, monitoring the comings and goings inside the cordoned-off area outside the Institute. One of them, young and olive-skinned with sad brown eyes, sat perched on a chair at one of the computer workstations, humming tunelessly while listening to a pair of headphones plugged into the various receivers.

Suddenly the young man sat up straighter. “I have a signal tone,” he reported calmly while simultaneously entering a series of commands on his keyboard. The monitor in front of him lit up and began filling with scrolling data — a complex and bewildering montage of numbers, graphs, scanned photographs, and text.

His team leader, much older, with short-cropped white hair, studied the monitor for several seconds. He nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent work, Vitor.” He turned to one of his other men. “Contact Terce. Inform him that Field Two appears complete and that we now have access to all of the investigative data being gathered. Report also that we are relaying this information to the Center.”

Sweating inside his protective suit now, Jon Smith submitted himself to the rigorous decontamination procedures required for anyone leaving the cordoned-off area around the Institute. Doing so meant entering one end of a chain of connected trailers and moving through a series of high-pressure chemical showers, electrically charged aerosol sprays, and high-powered vacuum suction systems. The equipment, borrowed from Air Force and Homeland Security WMD defense units, was designed to treat nuclear, chemical, and biological contamination. No one was really sure that it would neutralize the nanomachines that everyone now feared. But it was the best system anyone had been able to come up with in the limited time available. And since no one had died yet, Smith was willing to bet that either the decon procedures worked — or there were no active nanomachines left inside the cordon.

If nothing else, the painstaking process gave him plenty of time to think about what he had seen inside the Teller Institute. And that, in turn, gave him time to formulate a very ugly hypothesis about what had happened — one that might just knock the stuffing out of a lot of the pet theories floating around inside the FBI and the CIA.

I finished at last, Smith stripped off the heavy gear, dumped it in a sealed hazardous materials bin, and put his own clothes back on. He retrieved his shoulder holster and SIG-Sauer pistol from the worried-looking National Guard corporal manning a final checkpoint and stepped outside.

It was the middle of the afternoon. The wind was kicking up a bit, blowing down out of the forested mountains to the east. Jon took a deep breath of the pine-scented air, clearing the last lingering reek of harsh chemicals out of his nose and lungs.

A trim, efficient-looking young man in a conservatively cut charcoal-gray suit came straight up to him. He had the wooden, expressionless demeanor so prized by recent FBI Academy graduates. “Dr. Smith?”

Jon nodded pleasantly. “That's right.”

“Deputy Assistant Director Pierson is waiting for you at the command center,” the young man said. “I'll be happy to escort you there.”

Smith hid a wry grin. Clearly, the woman he had heard called the Winter Queen had decided not to take any chances with him. He was not going to be allowed to bunk off without hearing what the FBI thought of having another government agency, the Pentagon in his case, meddling in its patch.

Remembering Fred Klein's admonition to act discreetly, he followed the other man without kicking up a fuss. They crossed through a growing assembly of trailers and large tents. Power and fiber-optic cables connected the temporary working quarters. Satellite dishes and microwave relays were set up around the outside. Portable generators hummed close by, supplying auxiliary and backup power.

Smith was impressed despite himself. This command center was nearly as big as some of the divisional HQs he had seen in Desert Storm and running a lot more smoothly. Kit Pierson might not score high marks in the warmth and charm department, but she obviously knew how to organize an efficient operation.

She had her own work area in a small tent near the outer rim. It was sparsely furnished with a table and a single chair, power for her personal laptop, a secure phone, an electric lantern, and a folding cot.

Smith hastily suppressed his surprise when he registered that last item. Was she really serious?

“Yes, Dr. Smith,” said Pierson drily, noticing the almost imperceptible flicker of his eyes. “I do plan to sleep here.” A thin, humorless smile crossed a pale face that he might have found appealing if it had a bit more life in it. “It may be Spartan, but it is also absolutely inaccessible to the press — which I count as a blessing of the first magnitude.”

She spoke over his shoulder to the young agent hovering near the open tent flap. “That will be all, Agent Nash. Lieutenant Colonel Smith and I will have our little chat in private.”

Here we go, Jon realized, noting her deliberate shift to his military rank. He decided to try preempting her objections to his presence at the site. “First of all, I want you to know that I'm not here to horn in on your investigation.”

“Really?” Pierson asked. Her gray eyes were ice-cold. “That seems unlikely… unless you're here as some kind of a military tourist. In which case your presence is equally unwelcome.”

So much for the pleasantries, Smith thought, gritting his teeth. This sounded like it was going to be more a duel than a discussion. “You've read my orders, and my clearances, ma'am. I'm here simply to observe and assist.”

“With all due respect, I don't need help from the Joint Chiefs of Staff or Army Intelligence — or whoever really issued your orders,” Pierson told him bluntly. “Frankly, I can't think of anyone more likely to cause trouble I do not need.”

Smith reined in his temper, but only by the narrowest of margins. “Really? In what way?”

“Just by existing,” she said. “Maybe you've missed it, but the Internet and the tabloids are crammed full of rumors that Teller was the center of a secret military program to create nanotech-based weapons.”

“And those rumors are crap,” Smith said forcefully.

“Are they?”

Smith nodded. “I saw all the research here myself. No one at Teller was working on anything that could possibly have had any immediate military application.”

“Your presence at the Institute is precisely my problem, Colonel Smith,” Pierson said coldly. “How do you propose that we explain your assignment to monitor these nanotech projects?”

Smith shrugged. “Easy. I'm a doctor and a molecular biologist. My interests here in New Mexico were purely medical and scientific.”

“Purely medical and scientific? Don't forget that I've read both your witness statement and your Bureau file,” she shot back. “For a doctor, you certainly know how to kill easily and efficiently. Weapons training and unarmed combat skills are a little out of the usual medical school curriculum, aren't they?”

Smith kept his mouth shut, wondering just how much Kit Pierson really knew about his career. Everything he had ever done for Covert-One was buried beyond her reach, but his Army Intelligence work would have left some traces she could sniff out. So had the part he had played in resolving the Hades Factor crisis.

“More to the point,” she continued, “maybe one out of every three people in this country will be bright enough to understand your medical connection. Everybody else, especially the crazies, will only see that nice little Army uniform jacket you keep in the closet — the one with the silver oak leaves on its shoulder straps.”

Pierson tapped him on the chest with one long finger. “And that, Colonel Smith, is why I don't want you anywhere near this investigation. If just one nosy reporter zeroes in on you, we're going to have real trouble on our hands. This case is tricky enough,” she said. “I don't intend to provoke another Lazarus riot on top of everything else.”

“Neither do I,” Smith assured her. “Which is why I plan to keep a* low profile.” He indicated his civilian clothes, a lightweight gray windbreaker, green Polo shirt, and khakis. “While I'm here, I'm just plain Dr. Smith… and I don't talk to journalists. Not ever.”

“That's not good enough,” she replied adamantly.

“It will have to be,” Jon told her quietly. He would bend a bit to placate Kit Pierson's natural irritation at finding an outsider poaching in her province, but he would not shirk his duty. “Look,” he said. “If you want to complain to Washington, that's fine. In the meantime, though, you're stuck with me… so why not take me up on my offer to help?”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. For a second Smith wondered whether he was heading for that “preventive detention” hole Agent Latimer had warned him about. Then she shrugged. The gesture was so slight that he almost missed it. “All right, Dr. Smith,” she said coolly. “We'll play this your way, for the moment. But the instant I get permission to sling you out of here, off you go.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Then, if that's all, I'm sure you can find your own way out,” she suggested, pointedly checking her watch. “I have work to do.”

Smith decided to push her just a bit further. “I need to ask just a couple of questions first.”

“If you must,” Pierson said levelly.

“What do your people think about the odd way the demolition charges were set inside the Harcourt lab?” he asked.

She raised a single perfect eyebrow. “Go on.” She listened carefully to his conjecture that the bombs there were only intended to breach the lab's containment — not to wreck it completely. When he finished, she shook her head in icy amusement. “So you're an explosives expert, too, Doctor?”

“I've seen them used,” he admitted. “But no, I'm not an expert.”

“Well, let's assume your hunch is correct,” Pierson said. “You're suggesting the slaughter outside was deliberate — that the terrorists planned all along to release these Harcourt nanophages on anyone in reach. Which means the Lazarus Movement came here intending to make its own martyrs.”

“Not quite,” Smith corrected her. "I'm suggesting the people who pulled this off wanted to make it seem that way.“ He shook his head. ”But I've been thinking hard about this, and there's no way that the nanode-vices Brinker and Parikh created were responsible for what happened. No way at all. It's completely impossible."

Pierson's face froze. “You'll have to explain that to me,” she said stiffly. “Impossible, how?”

“Each Harcourt nanophage carried biochemical substances intended to eliminate specific cancerous cells, not to break down all living tissues,” Smith said. “Plus, each individual phage was infmitesimally small. It would take millions of them, maybe tens of millions, to inflict the kind of damage I saw on any single human being. Multiply that by the number of people killed, and you're talking about billions of nanophages, possibly even tens of billions. That's far beyond the number the Harcourt folks could possibly have manufactured with their equipment. Don't forget, they were focused entirely on the design, engineering, and testing of what they hoped would be a medical miracle. They were not set up for mass production.”

“Can you prove that?” Pierson asked. Her face was still an unreadable mask.

“Without the computer records?” Smith shook his head. “Maybe not solidly enough to suit a court of law, I guess. But I was in that lab almost every day and I know what I saw — and what I didn't see.” He looked curiously at the pale, dark-haired woman to see whether or not she would arrive at the same damning conclusion he had.

Instead, she said nothing. Her mouth was a tight, thin line. Her gray eyes seemed fixed on a distant point somewhere far beyond the narrow confines of her tent.

“You understand what that means, don't you?” Smith said urgently. "It means these terrorists came to Teller with their own nanodevices already prepared — nanodevices that were engineered from the start to butcher thousands. Whoever those people were, they sure as hell weren't part of the Lazarus Movement, not unless you think the Movement maintains its own sophisticated nanotech labs!"

At last, Pierson swung her gaze back toward him. A muscle on the right side of her face twitched. She frowned. “If your suppositions are correct, that may well be true, Doctor.” Then she shook her head. “But that is a very big if, and I'm not yet prepared to overlook all the other evidence of Lazarus Movement involvement.”

“What other evidence?” Smith asked sharply. “Do you have solid IDs for those terrorists Sergeant Diaz and I killed yet? They have to be in some agency's files. Those guys were professionals. What's more, they were pros who had access to very high-level Secret Service planning and procedures. People like that don't hang around street corners looking for work.”

Again, Pierson said nothing.

“Okay, what about their vehicles?” Jon pressed her. “Those big black SUVs they drove up in. The ones left parked outside the building. Have your agents been able to trace them yet?”

She smiled icily. “I conduct investigations in an organized fashion, Colonel Smith. That means I do not run around prematurely reporting the results of every separate inquiry. Now, until I persuade the powers-that-be to yank you out of here, you're welcome to attend all relevant briefings. When I have facts to share with you, that is where you will hear them. Until then, I strongly suggest that you exercise the virtue of patience.”

After Smith left her tent, Kit Pierson stood next to her desk, considering the wild claims he had made. Was the self-assured Army officer right? Could Hal Burke's operatives have deliberately released their own plague of killing machines? She shook her head abruptly, pushing the thought away. That was impossible. It had to be impossible. The deaths outside the building were completely unintended. Nothing more.

And the deaths inside the building? her conscience asked. What about them? Casualties of war, she answered herself coldly, trying hard to believe it. There was nothing to be gained by wasting time wrestling with feelings of guilt or regret. She had more immediate problems to deal with, chief among them Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith. He did not strike her as a man who would be content to stand aside, no matter how many warnings she gave him.

Pierson frowned. Everything depended on her ability to maintain sole control over this investigation. Having someone like Smith running around pushing theories that contradicted her official line was unacceptable — and dangerous, to her, to Hal Burke, and to the whole TOCSIN operation.

Nor did Pierson believe for a minute that Smith was working solely as a scientific observer and liaison officer for either USAMRIID or the Joint Chiefs. He had too many unusual skills, too wide a range of experiences. There were also some very odd gaps in the FBI file she had examined. So who were Smith's real bosses? The Defense Intelligence Agency? Army Intelligence? Or one of the half-dozen other government cloak-and-dagger outfits?

She picked up her secure phone and dialed a seven-digit cell number.

“Burke here.”

“This is Kit Pierson,” she said. “We have a problem. I want you to run a detailed background check on a Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith, U.S. Army.”

“That name rings an unpleasant bell,” her CIA counterpart said sourly.

“It should,” she told him. “He's the so-called doctor who managed to kill half your handpicked assault team.”

Chapter Seventeen

Nothing from the outside world was allowed to easily penetrate the secure areas of the Center. While they were working inside, no one could smell the salt tang of the nearby ocean or hear the noise of jets revving up as they prepared for takeoff. Everything was pristine, silent, and utterly sterile.

Even in the outer areas of the huge concealed lab complex, technicians and scientists moved with careful precision — wearing surgical scrubs under sterile coveralls, masks covering the entire nose, mouth, and chin, safety glasses, and polyester head covers that resembled the chain-mail hoods of Frankish knights. They spoke in hushed tones. All written work was handled electronically. No paper notes or reference books were allowed inside any of the clean areas. The risk of airborne particulate contamination was deemed too high.

Each move closer to the Class-10 environment in the production core itself involved ever-stricter gowning and sterilization procedures. Air locks and elaborate filtration systems connected each chamber. Checklists were posted at each outer air lock door, along with armed guards ordered to make sure that each step was followed and in the proper order. No one wanted to risk contaminating the nanophage production tanks. The developing phages were too delicate, too vulnerable to the slightest change in their rigidly controlled environment. Nor was anyone in the secret lab complex willing to risk unprotected exposure to the nanophages in their finished form.

Three men sat at a conference table in one of the outer rooms. They were going over the operational and experimental data gathered so far from the “events” in Zimbabwe and New Mexico. Two were nanotech-nology specialists, among the most brilliant molecular scientists in the world. The third, much taller and broad-shouldered, had a very different set of skills. This man, the third of the Horatii, called himself Nones.

“Preliminary reports from Santa Fe indicate our Stage Two devices activated inside roughly twenty to thirty percent of those exposed,” the first scientist commented. His gloved fingers fluttered over a keypad, pulling up a graph on the plasma screen display before them. “As you can see, that exceeds our initial projections. I think we can safely assume that our control-phage design modification is fundamentally sound.”

“True,” his colleague agreed. “It's also clear that the Stage Two biochemical loads were far better balanced than those used at Kasusa — achieving a significantly higher rate of tissue and bone dissolution.”

“But can you increase the kill ratio?” the tall man named Nones asked harshly. “You know our employer's requirements. They are absolute. A weapon which devours fewer than a third of its intended victims will not meet them.”

Behind their masks, the two scientists frowned in distaste at his inelegant choice of words. They preferred to think of themselves as surgeons engaged in an essential, though admittedly unpleasant, operation. Crude reminders that their work ultimately involved murder on a massive scale were neither necessary nor welcome.

“Well?” Nones demanded. His vivid green eyes glinted behind his acrylic safety glasses. He knew how much these men disliked focusing on the deadly results of their scientific efforts. It amused him from time to time to rub their ivory tower noses in the muck and the mud of their mission.

“We expect our design for the Stage Three phages and their controls to produce much higher efficiencies,” the senior molecular scientist assured him. “The Stage Two sensor arrays were limited in number and type. By adding additional sensors configured for different biochemical signatures, we can greatly expand the number of potential targets.” The green-eyed man nodded his understanding. “We have also been able to boost the yield of each nanophage's internal power source,” the second scientist reported. “We expect a matching increase in their effective life span and operational range.”

“What about the field contamination problem?” Nones asked. “You've seen the safety precautions being taken outside the Teller Institute.”

“The Americans are being overcautious,” the first scientist said dismis-sively. “By now, most of the Stage Two nanophages should have deteriorated beyond usefulness.”

“Their fears are not relevant,” the green-eyed man told him coldly. “Our employer's demands are. You were asked to produce a reliable self-destruct mechanism for the Stage Three phages, were you not?”

The second scientist nodded hastily, hearing the implied threat in the bigger man's voice. “Yes, of course. And we've succeeded.” He began clicking keys, flipping rapidly through different design sketches on the screen. “Finding the necessary space inside the shell was a difficult problem, but in the end, we were able to — ”

“Spare me the technical details,” the third member of the Horatii said drily. “But you may transmit them to our employer if you wish. I concern myself solely with practical matters. If the weapons you are creating for us kill quickly, efficiently, and reliably, I don't feel any need to know exactly how they work.”

Chapter Eighteen

Bright arc lights turned night into imitation day along much of the western edge of the University of Chicago's Hyde Park campus. They were set to illuminate the tan-and-gray stone facade of the newly built Interdivisional Research Building (IRB), a mammoth five-story structure containing 425,000 square feet of lab and research space. Construction trailers still blocked most of the sidewalks and green spaces along the south side of 57th Street and the east side of Drexel Boulevard. Lights were also on throughout the huge building, as electricians, carpenters, ironworkers, and others worked around-the-clock to finish the enormous project.

Scientists from the University of Chicago had played crucial roles in the major scientific and technological advances of the twentieth century — in everything from the development of carbon-14 dating to the advent of controlled nuclear power. Now the university was determined to maintain its competitive edge in the new sciences of the twenty-first century. The IRB was the cornerstone of that effort. When it was fully up and running, biological and physical scientists would share the building's state-of-the-art facilities. The hope was that working side by side would help them transcend the narrow and increasingly artificial boundaries between the two traditional disciplines.

Nearly $1 billion in corporate and individual donations had been raised to pay for construction, purchase the necessary high-tech materials, and guarantee funding for the first wave of new projects. One of the largest corporate grants came from Harcourt Biosciences, to pay for a cutting-edge nanotech complex. Now, in the wake of the destruction of its Teller Institute facility, the company's senior management saw the IRB lab as an urgently needed replacement — and a signal of its continued determination to pursue nanotechnology. Inside the lab suite, technicians and work crews were busy installing computers, scanning microscopes, remote manipulators, filter and air pressure systems, chemical storage, and other equipment.

Jack Rafferty came on-shift with a grin and a spring in his step. The short, skinny electrician had spent the commute from his suburban La Grange home adding up how much the overtime on this project was going to put in his pocket. He figured he could pay off the twins' parochial school tuition and still have enough left over to buy the Harley motorcycle he had been eyeing for more than a year.

The grin faded as soon as he walked inside the lab. Even from the door, he could see that someone had been screwing around with the wiring he had finished putting in just yesterday. Wall panels were left hanging open, exposing disarranged bundles of color-coded cables. Untidy coils and loops of insulated electrical wire dangled from jagged holes cut in the brand-new ceiling tiles.

Rafferty swore under his breath. He stormed over to the shift supervisor, a genial bear of a man named Koslov. "Tommy, what exactly is all this junk? Did someone change the specs on us again?

The supervisor checked his clipboard and shook his head. “Not that I know of, Jack.”

Rafferty frowned. “Then maybe you can tell me why Levy dinked around with my work — and left all this goddamned mess?”

Koslov shrugged. “It wasn't Levy. Someone said he called in sick. A couple of new guys were filling in for him.” He looked around the room. “I saw 'em both maybe fifteen minutes ago. I guess they knocked off early.”

The electrician rolled his eyes. “Nice. Probably nonunion goons. Or maybe they're just connected.” He hitched up his tool belt and settled the hard hat squarely on his narrow head. “It's gonna take me half my shift just to clean this up, Tommy. So I don't want to hear any bitching about being off-schedule.”

“You won't hear any from me,” Koslov promised, conspicuously crossing his heart with one beefy paw.

Satisfied for the moment, Rafferty got to work, trying first to untangle the rat's nest of cabling Levy's substitutes had left behind the walls. He peered into one of the open panels, shining a flashlight into a narrow space filled with bundled wiring, pipes, and conduits of all sizes and types.

One strand of loose green wire caught his eye. What was that supposed to be? He tugged gently on it. There was a weight on the other end. Slowly, he reeled the wire in, maneuvering it through the maze, using his long, thin fingers to guide it past obstructions. One end of the wire came into view. It was plugged into a solid block of what looked like some sort of gray moldable compound.

Puzzled, Rafferty stared down at the block for several seconds, wondering what it could possibly be. Then it clicked in his mind. He turned pale. “Jesus… that's plastic explosive—”

The six bombs planted in and around the lab complex exploded simultaneously. Searing white light ripped through the walls and ceiling. The first terrible shock wave tore Rafferty, Koslov, and the other workers inside the lab to shreds. A wall of flame and superheated air roared through the corridors of the half-finished building — incinerating everything and everyone in its path. The enormous force of the blast rippled outward, shattering steel-and-concrete structural supports, snapping them like matchsticks.

Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, one whole side of the IRB shuddered, folded in on itself in a shrieking cacophony of wrenching, tearing steel, and then collapsed. Masses of broken stone and twisted metal cascaded down into the Science Quad. A thick, choking cloud of smoke, pulverized concrete, and dust billowed skyward, lit eerily from within by the surviving construction lights.

An hour later and ten blocks away, the three leaders of a Chicago-based Lazarus Movement action cell met hurriedly inside the top-floor apartment of a Hyde Park brownstone. Still visibly shaken, the two men and one woman — all in their mid-twenties — stood staring at a television in the living room, watching the frantic reports being broadcast live on every local and national news channel.

Sets of construction company coveralls, hard hats, tool kits, and fake ID cards they had laboriously assembled over four months of intensive planning were heaped on a table in the adjoining dining room behind them. A manila folder sat on top of the pile. It contained IRB floor plans downloaded from the University of Chicago Web site. Tightly capped jars of foul-smelling liquids, cans of spray paint, and folded Movement banners were packed in boxes on the hardwood floor next to the table.

“Who would do that?” Frida McFadden asked out loud in confusion. She chewed nervously on the ends of her straight mop of green-dyed hair. “Who would blow up the IRB? It couldn't have been any of our own people. Our orders came straight from the top, from Lazarus himself.”

“I don't have any idea,” her boyfriend answered grimly. Bill Oakes was busy buttoning up the shirt he had thrown on when their phone first rang with the terrible news. He shook his long fair hair out of his eyes impatiently. "But I do know one thing: We've got to dump all the stuff we were planning to use for our own mission. And soon. Before the cops come pounding on our doors."

“No shit,” muttered their heavyset companion, the third member of their action cell. Rick Avery scratched at his beard. “But where can we get rid of the gear safely? The lake?”

“It would be found there,” said a quiet mocking voice from behind them. “Or you would be seen throwing your materials into the water.”

Startled, the three Lazarus Movement activists spun around. None of them had heard the locked front door open or close. They found themselves staring at a very tall and very powerfully built man gazing back at them from the central hall separating the living and dining rooms. He was wearing a heavy wool coat.

Oakes recovered first. He stepped forward, with his jaw thrust out belligerently. “Who the hell are you?”

“You may call me Terce,” the green-eyed man said calmly. “And I have something to give you — a gift.” His hand came smoothly out of the pocket of his coat. He pointed the silenced 9mm Walther pistol straight at them.

Frida McFadden cried out softly in fear. Avery stood frozen, with his fingers still tangled in his beard. Only Bill Oakes had the presence of mind to speak. “If you're a cop,” he stammered, “show us your warrant.”

The tall man smiled politely. “Alas, I am not a policeman, Mr. Oakes.”

Oakes felt a shiver run through him in the last second before the Walther coughed. The bullet hit him in the forehead and killed him instantly. He fell back against the television.

The second member of the Horatii swung his pistol slightly to the left and fired again. Avery groaned once and went to his knees, clutching fu-tilely at the blood pumping out of his torn throat. The big auburn-haired man squeezed the trigger a third time, putting this round squarely into the bearded young activist's head.

White-faced with horror, Frida McFadden turned and tried to run for the nearest bedroom. The tall man shot her in the back. She stumbled, fell awkwardly across a futon sofa, and lay moaning, writhing in pain. He shoved the pistol back in his coat pocket, stepped forward, cradled her head in two powerful arms — and then yanked hard, twisting sharply at the same time. Her neck snapped.

The green-eyed man named Terce surveyed the three bodies for several seconds, checking them for any signs of life. Satisfied, he went back to the front door and pulled it open. Two of his men were waiting out on the landing. Each carried a pair of heavy suitcases.

“It's done,” the big man told them. He stood back and let them past. Neither wasted any time looking at the corpses. Anyone who worked closely with one of the Horatii soon grew used to the sight of death.

Working fast, they began unpacking, setting out blocks of plastic explosives, detonators, and timers on the dining room table. One of them, a short, stocky man with Slavic features, indicated the clothing, maps, chemicals, and paint stacked on the table or packed in boxes on the hardwood floor. “What about these things, Terce?”

“Pack them up,” ordered the green-eyed man. “But leave the coveralls, helmets, and their false identity cards. Dump those in with the bomb-making materials you're leaving.”

The Slav shrugged. “The ruse will not fool the police for very long, you realize. When the American authorities run tests, they will not find chemical residues on any of those you killed.”

The tall man nodded. “I know.” He smiled coldly. “But then again, time is on our side — not on theirs.”

The lights in the bar at O'Hare International Airport were turned down very low, in sharp contrast to the blinding fluorescent strips in the corridors and departure lounges just outside. Even this late at night, it was fairly crowded — as jet-lagged and sleep-deprived travelers sought solace in peace, relative quiet, and large doses of alcohol.

Hal Burke sat moodily at a corner table, sipping at the rum-and-Coke he had ordered half an hour before. His flight for Dulles was set to begin

boarding soon. He looked up when Terce slid into the chair across from him. “Well?”

The bigger man showed his teeth, plainly quite pleased with himself. “There were no problems,” he said. “Our information was accurate in every detail. The Chicago Lazarus cell is now leaderless.”

Burke smiled sourly. Their creator's high-level sources inside the Movement had been one of his chief motivations for bringing the eerie, almost inhuman, Horatii into TOCSIN. Though it galled Burke to admit it, those sources were better than any network he had ever been able to develop.

“The Chicago police will see what they expect to see,” Terce went on. “Plastic explosives. Detonators. And false identity papers.”

“Plus three dead bodies,” the CIA officer pointed out. “The cops might wonder a bit about that little detail.”

The other man lifted his shoulders in a quick, dismissive shrug. “Terrorist movements often cannibalize themselves,” he said. “The police may believe the dead were perceived as weak links by their comrades. Or they may suspect that there was a falling-out among different factions within the Movement.”

Burke nodded. Once again, the big auburn-haired man was right. “Hell, it happens,” he agreed. “You put a bunch of radical nutcases with weapons in the same tight space under serious pressure… Well, if some of them snap and go ape-shit on the others, I guess that's not exactly news.”

He took another sip of his drink. “Anyway, at least it will look like the IRB bomb attack was in the works for months,” he muttered. “That should help persuade Castilla that the Teller Massacre was a Lazarus put-up job, from start to finish. That it was a go code for these bastards — a way to radicalize their base of support and tie us down politically at the same time. With luck, the president will finally designate the whole Movement as a terrorist organization.”

The second of the Horatii smiled dubiously. “Perhaps.”

Burke gritted his teeth. The old scar on the side of his neck turned white as his face tightened. “We have another, more immediate problem,” he said. “Out in Santa Fe.”

“A problem?” Terce asked.

“Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith, M.D.,” the CIA officer told him. “He's rattling cages and asking some very inconvenient questions.”

“We still have a security element in New Mexico,” Terce said carefully.

“Good,” Burke downed the last of his rum-and-Coke. He stood up. “Let me know when they're ready to move. And make it soon. I want Smith dead before anyone higher up the chain of command starts paying attention to him.”

Chapter Nineteen

The early-morning sun was slanting through the windows of his hotel suite when Jon Smith's cell phone buzzed. He set his coffee cup down on the kitchen counter. “Yes?”

“Check the news,” Fred Klein suggested.

Smith pushed the plate with his half-eaten breakfast Danish on it out of the way, spun his laptop around, and tapped into the Internet. He read through the headlines scrolling across the screen in growing disbelief. The story was the lead on every major news organization's Web site. FBI MASSACRE PROBE NAILS LAZARUS! blared One. LAZARUS ACTIVIST BOUGHT getaway suvs! shouted another.

Every article was pretty much the same. Top-level sources within the FBI investigation of the Teller Massacre confirmed that a longtime Lazarus Movement activist from Albuquerque had purchased the vehicles used by the phony Secret Service agents — using roughly one hundred thousand dollars in cash. Then, only a few hours after the Institute was attacked, Andrew Costanzo was seen by his neighbors driving away from his home with a suitcase in the back of his car. File pictures of Costanzo and his description were being circulated to every federal, state, and local law-enforcement agency.

“Interesting, isn't it?” the head of Covert-One said in Smith's ear.

“That's one word for it,” Smith told him wryly. “At least yours is printable.”

“I assume then this is the first you've heard about this remarkable break in the case?” Klein murmured.

“You assume correctly,” Smith said, frowning. He thought back to the FBI briefings he had attended. Neither Pierson nor her closest aides had mentioned anything so potentially incendiary. “Is this a real leak or some reporter's fantasy?”

“It appears to be genuine,” Klein told him. “The Bureau isn't even bothering to deny the story.”

“Any word on the source? Was it someone out here in Santa Fe? Or back in D.C.?” Smith asked.

“No idea,” the head of Covert-One said. He hesitated briefly. “I will say that no one here in Washington seems especially sorry to see this development go public.”

“I'll bet.” Judging by Kit Pierson's eagerness to ignore his disquieting questions yesterday, Smith knew how pleased the FBI must be to come up with hard evidence that linked the destruction of the Teller Institute to the Lazarus Movement. That would be even truer after the overnight terrorist attacks in California and Chicago. Finding out about this guy Costanzo must have seemed like manna raining down from heaven.

“What do you think, Colonel?” Klein asked.

“I don't buy it,” Smith said, shaking his head. "At least, not completely. It's just too darned convenient. Besides, nothing in this Costanzo story explains how the Movement could get its hands on nanophages designed to kill — or why it would deliberately release them, especially on its own supporters."

“No, it doesn't,” Klein agreed.

Smith fell silent for a moment, reading through one of the most recent articles. This piece paid more attention to what the Lazarus Movement representative, a woman named Heather Donovan, had to say about Andrew Costanzo. Smith considered her claims carefully. If even half of what she said was true, the FBI could be haring off down a false trail, one deliberately laid as a distraction. He nodded to himself. It was worth checking out.

“I'm going to try talking to this Movement spokeswoman,” he told Klein. "But I'll need a temporary cover of some kind, probably as a journalist. With some fake ID that'll stand up to scrutiny. No one from the Lazarus organization is going to talk freely to an Army officer or a scientist."

“When will you need it by?” Klein asked.

Smith thought about that. His day was already booked solid. Late last night, some members of the FBI investigative team had finally risked working without their heavy protective gear. They were still alive. As a result, medical teams from the local hospitals and Nomura PharmaTech were beginning to retrieve bodies and parts of bodies from the site. He wanted to sit in on some of the pathology work they were planning— hoping he might learn the answers to some of the questions that still troubled him.

“Sometime this evening,” he decided. “I'll try to arrange a meeting at a downtown restaurant or bar. The panic's mostly over out here now and folks are coining back to town.”

“Tell this Ms. Donovan that you're a freelance journalist,” Klein suggested. “An American stringer for he Monde and a few other smaller European papers, most of them shading to the left.”

“Sounds good,” Smith said. He knew Paris very well, and Le Monde and its European counterparts were generally viewed as being sympathetic to the environmental, anti-technology, and anti-globalization line pushed by the Lazarus Movement.

“I'll have a courier deliver a package with a Le Monde press card in your name to the hotel by this afternoon,” Klein promised.

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Kit Pierson sat at the folding table that served as her desk, paging through the “eyes-only” CIA file faxed to her by Hal Burke. Langley had only a little more information on this Jonathan Smith than did the Bureau. But there were occasional and cryptic references to him in mission reports or cables from the Agency's case officers — usually in connection with some developing crisis or existing hot spot.

Her eyes narrowed as she ran through the long and worrying list. Moscow. Paris. Shanghai. And now here he was in Santa Fe. Oh, there was always some plausible excuse for Smith's sudden appearance on the scene, whether it was checking up on an injured friend, attending a routine medical conference, or simply doing the work he was trained for. On the surface, he was just what he claimed to be — a military scientist and doctor who occasionally wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Pierson shook her head. There were entirely too many “coincidental” meetings, too many plausible excuses, for her to swallow. What she saw was a pattern, and it was a pattern she did not like at all. Although USAMRIID cut Smith's paycheck, he seemed to have extraordinary latitude in his duty assignments and in his ability to take personal leaves of absence. She was sure now that he was a clandestine operator, one who worked at a very high level. But what worried her most was that she still could not pin down his real employer. Every serious inquiry about him through official channels vanished into a bureaucratic never-never land. It was as though someone very high up somewhere had stamped a big NO TRESPASSING sign across the full life and career of Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith, M.D.

And that made her nervous — very nervous. That was why she had a two-man team keeping a close eye on him. The minute the good doctor stepped across the lines she had laid out, she planned to run him right out of the investigation, tarred, feathered, and on a rail if necessary.

She slid the CIA file into a portable shredder and watched the tiny crosscut strips of paper rain down into a wastebasket marked Burn Material. The secure phone on her desk beeped before they stopped falling.

“This is Burke,” a voice on the other end growled. “Are your people still tailing Smith?”

“They are,” Pierson confirmed. “He's out at St. Vincent's Hospital, working in their pathology lab.”

“Call them off,” Burke said flatly

She sat bolt upright in her chair, surprised by the request. “What?”

“You heard me,” her CIA counterpart said. “Pull your agents off Smith's back. Right now.”

“Why?”

“Trust me on this, Kit,” Burke told her coldly. "You do not want to

know."

When the phone went dead, Pierson sat in frozen silence, wondering again whether there was any way she could escape the trap she felt closing around her.

Jon Smith came through the swinging doors into the small locker room next to the hospital's pathology lab. It was deserted. Yawning, he sat down on a bench and peeled off his gloves and mask. He tossed them into a receptacle already full to the brim. His set of green surgical scrubs came off next. He had almost finished donning his street clothes when Fred Klein called.

“Is your interview with Ms. Donovan set?” the head of Covert-One asked.

“Yes,” Smith said. He leaned over, putting on his shoes. “I'm meeting her at nine tonight. At a little cafe in the Plaza Mercado.”

“Good,” Klein said. “Now, how are the autopsies going? Any new developments?”

“A few,” Smith told him. “But I'm damned if I know yet what they mean.” He sighed. “Understand that we have very few intact body parts to study. Almost all that's left of most of the dead is a weird sort of organic soup.”

“Go on.”

“Well, there are some odd patterns emerging from the autopsies we've been able to conduct,” Smith reported. “It's too soon and the sample sizes are too small to say anything definite, but I suspect the trends we're seeing will hold up over the long haul.”

“Such as?” Klein prompted.

“Significant indications of systemic drug use or serious chronic illness among those who were killed,” Smith said, standing up from the bench and grabbing his windbreaker. “Not in all cases. But in a very large percentage — far higher than the statistical norm.”

“Do you know yet what killed those people?”

“Precisely? No.”

“Give me your best guess, Colonel,” Klein prodded gently.

“A guess is all I've got,” said Smith wearily. “But I'd say that most of the damage was done by chemicals distributed by these nanophages to break up peptide bonds. Do that enough times to enough different peptides and you wind up with the kind of organic goo we're finding.”

“But these devices don't kill everybody they infest,” Klein commented. “Why not?”

“My bet is that the nanophages are triggered by different biochemical signals — ”

“Like those you'd find in someone who uses drugs. Or who suffers from heart disease. Or perhaps some other illness or chronic condition,”

Klein realized suddenly. “Without those signals, these devices would lie dormant.”

“Bingo.”

“That doesn't explain why that big green-eyed fellow you were fighting suddenly succumbed,” the other man pointed out. “Both of you ran through the cloud of these nanophages without at first being affected.”

“The guy was tagged, Fred,” Smith said grimly. He closed his eyes, willing away the terrible memories of his enemy dissolving in front of him. “I'm pretty sure that somebody hit him with a needle tipped with a substance that triggered the nanophages he'd breathed in earlier.”

“Which means his own side betrayed him to prevent his possible capture,” Klein said.

“That's the way I see it,” Smith agreed. He grimaced, suddenly remembering the sound of that cold, deadly hiss right past his ear. “And I guess they tried to hit me with one of those same damned needles, too.”

“Watch your step, Jon,” Klein said abruptly. “We still don't know precisely who the enemy here is, and we certainly don't understand their plans yet. Until we do, you should consider anyone, including Ms. Donovan, a potential threat.”

Surveillance Team Safe House, on the Outskirts of Santa Fe

Two miles east of the Teller Institute, all was quiet inside the house occupied by the covert surveillance team. Computers softly hummed and clicked and whirred, gathering data from the various sensors focused on the zone around the Institute. The two men assigned to this shift sat silently monitoring radio transmissions while simultaneously keeping an eye on the information streaming in.

One of them listened intently to the voices in his radio headset. He turned toward his team leader, an older white-haired Dutchman named Willem Linden. “The action team is reporting. Smith has just entered the Plaza Mercado.”

“Alone?”

The younger man nodded.

Linden smiled broadly, showing a mouthful of tobacco-stained teeth. “That is excellent news, Abrantes. Signal the team to stand by. Then contact the Center and inform them that everything is going according to plan. Tell them we will report the moment Smith is eliminated.”

Abrantes looked worried. “Are you sure it will be that simple? I've read this American's file. He could be very dangerous.”

“Don't panic, Vitor,” the white-haired man said soothingly. “If you put a bullet or a knife blade in the right place, any man will die.”

Chapter Twenty

Smith paused in the doorway of the Longevity Cafe, briefly surveying the patrons clustered at several of its small round tables. They seemed a somewhat eclectic bunch, he thought with hidden amusement. Most of them, usually those seated as couples, looked ordinary enough — a mix of nicely dressed, health-conscious professionals and earnest college kids. Others sported an eye-catching variety of tattoos and body piercings. A few wore turbans or long blond dreadlocks. Several customers turned toward the door, plainly curious about him as well. The vast majority carried on with their own intense conversations.

The cafe itself occupied much of the Plaza Mercado's second floor, with large windows looking down onto West San Francisco Street. Walls painted in striking bright reds, burnt orange, and yellows and floors in vivid blue and bleached wood were matched by unusual pieces of artwork — many based on Asian, Hindu, or Zen themes.

Smith headed straight for the table occupied by a woman sitting alone, one of those who had turned to study him. That was Heather Donovan. Fred Klein had included her photo and a brief bio in the packet with Smith's forged credential from Le Monde. The local spokesperson for the Lazarus Movement was in her mid-thirties, with a slender, boyish figure, an unruly mop of strawberry blond curls, sea green eyes, and a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

She watched him walk toward her with a bemused expression on her face. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“My name is Jon Smith,” he said quietly, politely doffing his black Stetson. “I believe you're here waiting for me, Ms. Donovan.”

One finely sculpted reddish gold eyebrow went up. “I expected a journalist, not a cowboy,” she murmured in perfect French.

Smith grinned and looked down at his tan corduroy jacket, bolo string tie, jeans, and boots. “I try to adapt myself to local customs,” he replied, in the same language. “After all, when in Rome…”

She smiled and switched to English. “Please sit down, Mr. Smith.”

He set his hat down on the table, pulled a small notepad and a pen out of his jeans, and took the chair opposite hers. “I appreciate your meeting me like this, so late, I mean. I know you've already had a long day.”

The Lazarus Movement spokeswoman nodded slowly. “It has been a long day. Several long days, in fact. But before we start this interview, I would like to see some identification — just as a formality, of course.”

“Of course,” Smith said evenly. He handed her the forged press card, watching closely as she held it up to the light. “Are you always so careful around journalists, Ms. Donovan?”

“Not always,” she told him. She shrugged. “But I'm learning to be a bit less trusting these days. Seeing several thousand people murdered by your own government will do that.”

“That's understandable,” Smith said calmly. According to her Covert-One dossier, Heather Donovan was a relatively recent recruit to the Lazarus Movement. Before joining up with Lazarus, she had worked the state capital lobbying circuit for the more mainstream environmental groups, the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Federation among them. She was rated as tough, smart, and politically savvy.

“Okay, you seem on the level,” she said finally, sliding his press card back.

“What can I get you folks?” a languid voice interrupted. One of the waiters, a willowy young man with pierced eyebrows, had drifted over to their table and now stood patiently hovering over them.

“A cup of gunpowder green tea,” the Lazarus Movement spokeswoman told him.

“And a glass of red wine for me,” Smith said. He saw the pitying look in her eyes. “No wine? Then how about a beer?”

She shook her head apologetically, a gesture repeated by the waiter. “Sorry, they don't serve alcohol here,” she said. Her lips twitched upward in the hint of another smile. “Maybe you should try one of the Longevity's elixirs.”

“Elixirs?” he asked dubiously.

“They're a blend of traditional Chinese herbal recipes and natural fruit juices,” the waiter said, showing some enthusiasm for the first time. “I recommend the Virtual Buddha. It's quite stimulating.”

Smith shook his head. “Maybe some other time.” He shrugged. “Then I'll have the same as Ms. Donovan — just a cup of green tea.”

When the waiter sidled off to get their drinks, Smith turned back to the Lazarus Movement spokeswoman. He held up his small notebook. “So, now that we've established my status as a bona fide reporter—”

“You can ask your questions,” Heather Donovan finished for him. She eyed him carefully. “Which I understand revolve around the FBI's grotesque suggestion that the Movement is somehow responsible for destroying the Teller Institute, and for killing so many innocent people.”

Smith nodded. "That's right. I read the other papers this morning, and what you said about this Andrew Costanzo intrigued me. From the sound of it, I have to admit the guy doesn't strike me as someone I'd pick as a secret conspirator."

“He isn't.”

“That's pretty definite,” he said. “Care to elaborate?”

“Andy is a talker, not a doer,” she told him. “Oh, he never misses a Movement meeting, and he always has plenty to say, or at least to complain about. The thing is, I've never seen him actually do anything! He'll filibuster for hours, but show him envelopes that need to be stuffed or flyers that need to be distributed and suddenly he's too busy or too sick. He thinks he's the original philosopher-king, the man whose visions lie beyond the reach of mere mortals like the rest of us.”

“I know the type,” Smith said with a quick grin. “The unappreciated Plato of the bookstore stockroom.”

“That's Andy Costanzo all over,” Heather agreed. “Which is why the FBI claim is so absurd. We all tolerated him, but nobody in the Movement would ever trust Andy with anything serious — let alone with more than a hundred thousand dollars in cash!”

“Somebody did,” he pointed out. “The identifications by those Albuquerque car dealers are airtight.”

“I know that!” She sounded frustrated. “I believe that someone gave Andy the money to buy those SUVs. And I even believe he was stupid enough, or arrogant enough, to actually go ahead and do what they asked. But the money could not possibly have come from the Movement! We're not exactly poor, but we're certainly not rolling in that kind of cash!”

“So you think Costanzo was set up?”

“I'm sure of it,” she said firmly. “As a means of smearing Lazarus and all we stand for. The Movement is completely committed to nonviolent protest. We would never condone murder or terrorism!”

Smith was tempted to point out that smashing up lab equipment automatically crossed the line into violence, but he kept his mouth shut. He was here to learn the answers to certain questions, not to spark a political debate. Besides, he now felt sure this woman was telling the truth — at least about those elements of the Lazarus Movement with which she was familiar. On the other hand, she was only a mid-level activist, the equivalent of an Army captain or a major. How much could she really know about any secret moves made by the higher levels of her organization?

The arrival of their tea gave her time to regain her composure.

She took a cautious sip and then eyed him warily over the rim of her steaming cup. “You're wondering whether or not the money might have come from somewhere higher up inside the Movement, aren't you?”

Smith nodded. “No offense, Ms. Donovan. But you folks have drawn a remarkably tight veil of secrecy around the top leadership of the Lazarus Movement. It's only natural to wonder what's hidden behind it.”

“This veil of secrecy, as you call it, is purely a defensive measure, Mr. Smith,” she said levelly. “You know what happened to our original founders. They lived open, public lives. And then, one by one, they were killed or kidnapped. Either by corporations they had angered or by governments doing the bidding of those corporations. Well, the Movement will not allow itself to be so easily beheaded again!”

Smith decided to let her wilder claims pass without comment. She was starting to recite preset talking points.

To his surprise, she smiled suddenly, a smile that lit up her vivid green eyes. “Okay, I admit that's partly rhetoric. Heartfelt rhetoric, to be sure, but I agree it's not the most persuasive argument I've ever made.” She took another sip of her tea and then set the cup down on the table between them. “I'll try logic instead: Let's say I'm totally wrong. That I'm a dupe, and that there are people in the Movement who've decided to use clandestine violence to achieve our goals. Well, think about that. If you were running a top-secret operation whose disclosure could destroy everything you've ever worked for… would you use someone like Andy Costanzo as your agent?”

“No, I wouldn't,” Smith agreed. “Not unless I wanted to get caught.”

And that was what had bothered him from the beginning, from the first moment he read those leaked stories from the FBI. Now, after hearing her, he was even more convinced that the whole SUV angle stank to high heaven. Relying on an overeducated goofball like Costanzo to buy the getaway vehicles for a terrorist attack was asking for big trouble. It was the kind of boneheaded mistake that just did not jibe with the ruthless, calculating professionalism he had witnessed during the attack on the Institute. Which meant that somebody was manipulating this investigation.

One block west of the Plaza Mercado, Malachi MacNamara waited patiently, concealed in the shadows of a covered sidewalk. It was growing late, and the streets of downtown Santa Fe were nearly deserted.

The lean, weather-beaten man carefully raised his Kite handheld night-vision scope and peered through it with one pale blue eye. Rather a useful gadget, he thought. The British-made monocular was sturdy, very lightweight, and produced a crisp, clear image magnified by four times. He painstakingly scanned the surrounding area, checking the movements of his chosen quarry yet again.

He focused first on the man standing motionless in the recessed doorway of an art gallery about fifty yards away. The shaven-headed fellow wore jeans, heavy work boots, and a surplus U.S. Army field jacket. Whenever a car drove by, his eyes narrowed to preserve his night vision. Otherwise, he stayed put despite the growing cold. A young tough, MacNamara thought critically, but very fit and reasonably well disciplined.

Three more watchers were posted at different points along the street, for a total of four. Two of them were stationed to the west of the Plaza Mercado. Two lurked to the east. All of them were positioned in good cover, well out of sight to anyone but a trained observer with light-intensifier gear.

They were part of the group MacNamara had been hunting since the catastrophe outside the Teller Institute. He had lost them in the immediate aftermath of the nanomachine slaughter, but they had reappeared as soon as the Lazarus Movement regrouped and set up camp outside the National Guard cordon. Earlier tonight, not long after sunset, these four had moved north on foot, making their way deeper into old Santa Fe's narrow streets.

He had followed them at a safe distance. The short trek had taught him much about his quarry. These men were not mere street thugs or anarchist ruffians lured by the Movement rally, as he had first thought. Their movements were too precise, too well planned, and too well executed. They had slipped right past the FBI and police surveillance around the Lazarus camp. And more than once he had been forced to hurriedly go to ground to avoid being spotted by one of their number hanging back as a rear guard.

Trailing them had been like stalking big game — or tracking a patrol of elite enemy commandos scouting unknown territory. In some ways, Mac-Namara found the challenge exhilarating. It was a high-stakes game of wits and skill that he had played many times before, in many different parts of the world. At the same time, he was conscious now of an underlying sense of fatigue, a slight dulling of his perceptions and reflexes. Perhaps the strains of the past several months had taken a higher toll on his nerves and endurance than he had first reckoned.

The shaven-headed man he was observing suddenly straightened up, going fully alert. The man whispered a few words into a tiny radio mike fixed to his collar, listened carefully to the reply, and then leaned forward to peer cautiously around the edge of the doorway.

MacNamara rapidly shifted his view to the other watchers, noticing the same unmistakable signs of increased readiness. He shifted his own stance and breathed out gently, tamping down the first surge of adrenaline as his body prepared itself for action. The vague feeling of weariness fell away. Ah, he thought, here we go. The prolonged period of waiting motionless in the cold and dark was almost over.

Still peering through the night-vision scope, he panned across the front of the Plaza Mercado. A man and a woman had just come out of the building. They were standing together on the sidewalk out front, carrying on an animated conversation. He recognized the slender, attractive woman straightaway. He had seen her bustling around the Lazarus camp. Her name was Heather Donovan. She was the local activist who handled press inquiries for the Movement.

But who was the dark-haired man she was talking to? The clothing, boots, and cowboy hat all suggested he was a local, but somehow MacNamara doubted that was really the case. Something about the way the tall, broad-shouldered man moved and held himself was oddly familiar.

The dark-haired man swung around, pointing toward the concrete parking garage off down the street to the west. For that brief instant, his face was plainly visible. Then he turned away again.

Malachi MacNamara slowly lowered his night-vision scope. His pale blue eyes were both amused and surprised. “Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath. “The good colonel certainly has a talent for popping up wherever and whenever one least expects him.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Brick paths curved through Santa Fe's central Plaza, circling the various monuments and winding under a spreading canopy of trees — towering American elms and cottonwoods, firs, maples, honey locusts, and others. Wrought-iron park benches painted white were set out at intervals along the walkways. A thin scattering of fallen leaves lay on patches of grass and hard-packed earth.

Surrounded by a low iron railing, an obelisk commemorating the Civil War battles in New Mexico stood in the very center of the square. Few people remembered that the bloody war between the North and South had spread this far to the west. In some spots, thin rays of light filtered through the trees, cast by the street lamps surrounding the Plaza, but otherwise this centuries-old expanse was a place of darkness and dignified silence.

Jon Smith glanced at the slender, pretty woman walking beside him. Shivering, Heather Donovan hugged her black cloth coat tightly around herself. Whenever they crossed the broken streaks of pale light between the shadows he saw her breath steaming in the chilly night air. With the sun long gone, the temperature was dropping fast. It was not uncommon for Santa Fe's daytime highs and nighttime lows to vary by as much as thirty or forty degrees.

After they finished their tea at the Longevity Cafe, he had volunteered to escort her to her car, which was parked on a side street not far from the Palace of the Governors. Though plainly surprised by this old-fashioned act of chivalry, she had also accepted his offer with evident relief. Santa Fe was ordinarily a very safe city, she had explained, but she was still feeling a little jittery after seeing the horrors outside the Teller Institute.

They were just a few yards away from the Civil War obelisk when Smith stopped abruptly. Something was wrong, he thought. His senses were sending him a warning signal. And now that they had stopped walking, he heard others — two or three men, he judged — moving quietly up the path at their backs. He could just make out the faint crunch of heavy boots on the brick pavement. In the same moment, he noticed two more vague shapes slipping through the shadows under the trees ahead, drawing steadily nearer.

The Lazarus Movement spokeswoman noticed the figures closing on them in that same instant. “Who are those men?” she asked, clearly startled.

For a split second Smith stood still, hesitating. Were these guys FBI agents sent by Kit Pierson? He had been sure that he was under surveillance earlier that afternoon. But when he had checked for tags before heading to the Longevity Cafe he had come up empty-handed. Had he missed them earlier?

Just then one of the men moving in from the front strayed into a small pool of light. He had a shaved head and wore an Army fatigue jacket. Smith's eyes narrowed at the sight of the silenced pistol the man held out and ready. So much for the FBI, he thought coldly.

They were being surrounded — boxed in on the open ground in the middle of the Plaza. His instincts kicked into gear. They had to break out of this trap before it was too late.

Reacting quickly, Smith grabbed Heather Donovan's arm and tugged her with him to the right, around the curve of the obelisk. At the same time, he drew his own pistol from the shoulder holster concealed by his corduroy jacket. “This way!” he muttered. “Come on!”

“What are you doing?” she protested loudly, too shocked by his sudden action to pull away. “Let go of me!”

“If you want to live, come with me!” Smith snapped, still drawing her away from the open space around the Civil War monument and toward the darkness under the surrounding trees.

One of the two men who had been coming up behind them stopped, aimed quickly, and opened fire. Phut. The silencer on his pistol reduced the sound of the shot to that of a muffled cough. The bullet tore past Smith's head and smacked into the trunk of a tall cottonwood tree not far away. Phut. Another round shattered a low-hanging branch. Splinters and falling leaves rained down on them.

He pushed the Movement spokeswoman to the ground. “Stay down!”

Smith dropped to one knee, swung his SIG-Sauer pistol toward the shooter, and squeezed the trigger. The weapon barked once, a loud crack that echoed back from the buildings surrounding the Plaza.

His shot, fired hurriedly and on the move, missed. But the sound of gunfire drove three of the four attackers he could see to the ground. They went prone and began shooting back at him, firing rapidly.

Heather Donovan screamed piercingly, pressing herself flat against the hard, unyielding earth.

Pistol rounds whined close by, either thudding into the trees on either side or spanging off a nearby park bench in showers of sparks, torn bits of metal, and pulverized white paint. Smith ignored the near misses, concentrating instead on the one gunman who was still moving.

It was the shaven-headed man he had first spotted. Hunched over in a crouch, the gunman was sidling off to the right, trying to make it back into the shelter of the trees and then come up on his flank.

Jon squeezed off three shots in rapid succession.

The bald man stumbled. His silenced pistol tumbled to the ground. Slowly he fell forward onto his hands and knees. Blood poured out of his mouth. Black in the dim light, it spilled across the brick pavement in a widening pool.

More bullets ripped past Smith as the wounded man's comrades kept shooting. One round punched through the broad felt brim of his brand-new Stetson and tore it right off his head. The hat sailed off into the shadows. They were getting way too close, he thought grimly — starting to zero in on him.

He threw himself prone and fired three more shots with his SIG-Sauer, trying to keep their heads down or at least shake their aim. Then he rolled quickly over to where Heather Donovan lay with her face pressed to the earth. She had stopped screaming, but he could see her shoulders shaking as terrified sobs wracked her whole body.

The three unhurt gunmen had spotted his movement. They were shooting lower now, taking the time to aim. Nine-millimeter pistol rounds tore at the earth all around Jon and the Movement spokeswoman. Others, slightly wider off the mark, sent shattered bits of brick flying.

Smith grimaced. They needed to get out of here, and fast. He put his hand gently on the back of the frightened woman's head. She quivered but stayed down. “We've got to keep moving,” he said urgently. “Come on! Crawl, damn it! Head for that big cottonwood tree over there. It's onlv a few yards away.”

She turned her head toward him. Her eyes were wide in the darkness. He wasn't sure she had even heard him.

“Let's go!” he told her again, louder this time. “If you stay low, you can make it.”

She shook her head desperately, smudging her cheek against the ground. She was frozen, he realized, paralyzed with fear.

Smith grimaced. If he left her and scrambled into cover behind that tree, she was dead. If he stayed with her out here in the open, they were probably both dead. The smart move was to leave her. But if he ran for it, he doubted the gunmen would leave her alone. They did not seem like the kind who believed in letting potential witnesses live. There were limits to what he could stomach — and abandoning this woman to save his own skin would blow right through them.

Instead, he raised his pistol and began firing back at the barely visible gunmen. The SIG-Sauer's slide locked open. Thirteen rounds expended. He hit the release catch, dumped the empty magazine out, and slapped in his second and last clip.

Smith saw that two of the gunmen were in motion, edging rapidly to the left and right while staying low. They were trying to outflank him. Once they were in position, they could nail him with a murderous crossfire. The trees here were too widely spaced to provide cover from all angles. Meanwhile, the third man was still shooting steadily to keep Jon's head down — covering the pincers movement by his teammates.

Smith swore silently. He had waited too long. Now he was pinned down.

Well then, he would just have to fight it out here and see how many of the enemy he could take with him. Another bullet slammed into the ground within inches of his head. Jon spat out bits of torn grass and dirt and took aim, trying to draw a bead on the attacker swinging around his right flank.

More shots suddenly rang out, echoing across the Plaza. The gunman moving to his right screamed in agony. He went down, moaning loudly and clutching at his mangled shoulder. His comrades stared at him in shock for a moment and then whirled around — frantically looking toward the shadowy mass of trees along the square's southern edge.

Smith's eyes opened wide in astonishment. He had not fired those shots. And the bad guys were using silenced weapons. So who else had just joined this fight?

The new gunfire continued, hammering the ground and trees around the two unwounded gunmen. This unexpected counterattack must have been too much for them. They fell back rapidly, retreating north toward the street fronting the Palace of the Governors. One of them dragged the wounded man to his feet and helped him hobble away. The other made a sudden dash toward the man Jon had hit, but more bullets lashed the pavement at his feet — driving him back into the concealing shadows.

Smith saw movement at the edge of the trees to his right. A lean gray-haired man came out into the open, advancing steadily while firing the pistol he held in a two-handed shooting grip. He slipped into the cover provided by the Civil War obelisk and reloaded his weapon, a 9mm Browning Hi-Power

Silence again fell across the Plaza.

The newcomer looked across toward Smith. He shrugged apologetically. “Very sorry about the delay, Jon,” he called softly. “It took longer to work my way around behind those fellows than I anticipated.”

It was Peter Howell. Smith stared in utter amazement at his old friend. The former British Special Air Service officer and MI6 agent wore a heavy sheepskin coat over a faded red-and-green flannel shirt and a pair of denims. His thick gray hair, normally cropped short, was now a long, curling mane that framed a pair of pale blue eyes and a deeply lined face weathered by years of exposure to the wind, sun, and other elements.

Both men heard the sound of a car suddenly racing along the north edge of the square. Brakes squealed as it stopped briefly and then roared off into the night — heading east along Palace Avenue toward the ring road of the Paseo de Peralta.

“Damnation!” Peter growled. “I should have realized those lads would have backup and a quick way out if things went pear-shaped for them. As they have.” He hefted his Browning. “Keep watch here, Jon, while I conduct a quick recce.”

Before Smith could say anything, the older man loped forward and vanished into the shadows.

The Lazarus Movement spokeswoman raised her head warily. Tears ran down her face, trickling through the dirt streaking her pale skin. “Is it over?” she whispered.

Smith nodded. “I certainly hope so,” he told her, still scanning the darkness around them — making sure no one else was out there.

Slowly, shakily, the slender woman sat up. She stared at Jon and at the pistol in his hand. “You aren't really a reporter, are you?”

“No,” he said softly. “I'm afraid not.”

“Then who—”

Peter Howell's return cut short her question. “They've done a bunk,” he said irritably. His gaze fell on the shaven-headed man Smith had shot. He nodded in satisfaction. “But at least they had to leave this one behind.”

He knelt down and rolled the body over. Then he shook his head. “Poor fellow's deader than Judas Iscariot,” Peter announced coolly. “You hit him twice. Fairly good marksmanship for a simple country doctor, I'd say.”

He rummaged through the dead man's pockets, looking for a wallet or papers that might help identify him.

“Anything?” Smith asked.

Peter shook his head. “Not so much as a matchbook.” He looked up at the American. “Whoever hired this poor sod made sure he was clean before sending him off to kill you.”

Jon nodded. The would-be assassin had been stripped of anything that could link him to those who had issued his orders. “That's too bad,” he said, frowning.

“It is a pity when the opposition thinks ahead,” Peter agreed. “But all is not yet lost.”

The former SAS officer pulled a small camera out of one of his coat pockets and snapped several close-up photos of the dead man's face. He was using super-high-speed film, so there was no flash. Then he tucked the camera away and tugged out another small gadget — this one about the size of a paperback book. It had a flat clear screen and several control buttons on the side. He noticed Smith staring at it in fascination.

“It's a digital fingerprint scanner,” Peter explained. “Does the trick with nice clean electrons, instead of all that messy old ink.” His teeth gleamed white in the darkness. “Whatever will the boffins dream up next, eh?”

Working quickly, he pressed the dead man's hands to the surface of the scanner, first the right and then the left. It flashed, hummed, and whirred — storing the images of all ten fingerprints in its memory card.

“Collecting mementos for your old age, are you?” Smith asked pointedly, knowing full well that his friend must be working for London again. Ostensibly retired, Peter was periodically pressed back into service, usually by MI6, the British secret intelligence service. He was a maverick who preferred working alone, a throwback to the eccentric, sometimes piratical, English adventurers who had long ago helped build an empire.

Peter only smiled.

“I don't mean to rush you,” Smith said. “But shouldn't we be making tracks ourselves? Unless you really want to try explaining all this to the Santa Fe police, that is.” He waved a hand at the body on the ground and the bullet-pocked trees.

The Englishman eyed him carefully. “Curious thing, that,” he said, rising to his feet. He tapped the tiny radio receiver in his ear. “This is set to the police frequency. And I can tell you that the local constabulary has been very busy over these past several minutes — responding to emergency calls in all directions… and always on the very farthest outskirts of the city. The nearest patrol car is still at least ten minutes away.”

Smith shook his head in disbelief. “Good grief! These people don't mess around, do they?”

“No, Jon,” Peter said quietly. “They do not. Which is why I strongly suggest you find a new place to stay tonight. Somewhere discreet and unobserved.”

“Oh, my God,” said a small voice from behind them.

Both men turned. Heather Donovan was standing there, staring down in horror at the dead man at their feet.

“Do you know him?” Smith asked gently.

She nodded unwillingly. “Not personally. I don't even know his name. But I've seen him around the Movement camp and at the rally.”

“And in the Lazarus command tent,” Peter said sternly. “As you well know.”

The slender woman blushed. “Yes,” she admitted. “He was part of a band of activists our top organizers brought in… for what they said were 'special tasks.'”

“Like cutting through the Teller Institute's fence when the rally turned ugly,” Peter reminded her.

“Yes, that's true.” Her shoulders slumped. “But I never imagined they were carrying guns. Or that they would try to kill anyone.” She looked at them with eyes that were haunted and full of shame. “Nothing was supposed to happen this way!”

“I rather suspect there are a number of things about the Lazarus Movement you never imagined, Ms. Donovan,” the gray-haired Englishman told her. “And I think you've had a very narrow and very lucky escape.”

“She can't go back to the Movement camp, Peter,” Smith realized. “It would be too dangerous.”

“Perhaps it might,” the older man agreed. “Our gun-toting friends have run off for now, but there may well be others who would not be happy to see Ms. Donovan looking so hale and hearty.”

Her face whitened.

“Do you have somewhere you can stay out of sight for a while, with family or friends? With people who aren't in the Lazarus Movement?” Smith asked. “Preferably somewhere far away?”

She nodded slowly. “I have an aunt in Baltimore.”

“Good,” said Smith. “I think you should fly out there straightaway. Tonight, if possible.”

“Leave this to me, Jon,” Peter told him. “Your face and name are rather too well known to these people now. If you arrive at the airport with Ms. Donovan, you might as well paint a target on her back.”

Smith nodded.

“You were at the rally, too!” she suddenly said, looking more closely at Peter Howell's face. “But you said your name was Malachi. Malachi MacNamara!”

He nodded with a slight smile creasing his deeply lined face. “A nom de guerre, Ms. Donovan. A regrettable deception, perhaps, but a necessary one.”

“Then who are you people really?” she asked. She looked from the lean, weather-beaten Englishman to Smith and then back again. “CIA? FBI? Someone else?”

“Ask us no more questions and we'll tell you no more lies,” Peter said. His pale blue eyes twinkled. “But we are your friends. Of that you may be sure.” His expression darkened. “Which is far more than I can say for some of your former comrades in the Movement.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Shortly after midnight, Director of Central Intelligence David Hanson walked briskly into his gray-carpeted seventh-floor office suite. Despite the rigors of what had become an eighteen-hour workday, he was still immaculately dressed in a well-tailored suit, with a crisp, clean shirt and a perfectly knotted bow tie. He turned his careful gaze on the rumpled, tired-looking man waiting for him.

“We need to talk, Hal,” he said tightly. “Privately.”

Hal Burke, head of the CIA's Lazarus Movement task force, nodded. “Yes, we do.”

The CIA director led the way into his inner office and tossed his briefcase onto one of the two comfortably upholstered chairs in front of his desk. He waved Burke into the other. Then Hanson folded his hands together and rested his elbows on the bare surface of his large desk. He studied his subordinate over the tips of his fingers. "I've just come from the

White House. As you can imagine, the president is not especially happy with us or with the FBI right now."

“We warned him about what would happen if the Lazarus Movement ran wild,” Burke said bluntly. “The Teller Institute, the Telos lab out in California, and this bomb blast in Chicago were just the opening rounds. We've got to stop pussyfooting around. We have to hit the Movement hard now, before it digs in any deeper. Some of its mid-level activists are still out in the open. If we can haul those people in and break them open, we still have a shot at penetrating to the inner core. That's our best hope for pulling Lazarus apart from the inside out.”

“I've made that point very strongly,” Hanson told him. “And I'm not the only one. Castilla is getting an earful from senior Senate and House leaders — from both parties.”

Burke nodded. The word inside the CIA was that Hanson had been making the rounds on Capitol Hill for most of the day, privately meeting with the heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees and with the majority and minority leaders in both chambers. As a result, his powerful congressional allies were demanding that President Castilla officially designate the Lazarus Movement as a terrorist organization. Once that happened, the gloves could come off and federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies would be free to act forcefully against the Movement — going after its leaders, bank accounts, and public communications channels.

By making an end run around the president to Congress, however, Hanson was playing with fire. CIA directors were not supposed to use politics to manipulate the policies of the president they served. But Hanson had always been willing to take chances when the stakes were high, and he obviously thought his support in the House and Senate was strong enough to protect him from Castilla's anger.

“Any luck?” Burke asked.

Hanson shook his head. “Not so far.”

Burke scowled. “Why the hell not?”

“Ever since the Teller Massacre, Lazarus and his followers have been riding a huge wave of public sympathy and support. Especially in Europe and Asia,” the CIA director reminded him. He shrugged. “These latest acts of violence might dent that a bit, but too many people are going to buy the Lazarus line that the Telos and Chicago attacks were faked to discredit their cause. So governments around the world are putting serious diplomatic pressure on us to back off the Movement. They're telling the president that aggressive action against Lazarus could trigger violent anti-American unrest in their own countries.”

Burke snorted in disgust. “Are you telling me that Castilla is willing to let Paris or Berlin or some other two-bit foreign power hold a veto over our counterterrorism policy?”

“Not a veto precisely,” Hanson said. “But he won't move openly — not until we produce rock-solid evidence that the Lazarus Movement is pulling the strings on these terrorist acts.”

For several seconds Burke sat silently staring back at his superior. Then he nodded. “That can be arranged.”

“Genuine evidence, Hal,” the head of the CIA warned. “Facts that will stand up to the closest scrutiny. Do you understand me?”

Again, Burke nodded. Oh, I understand you, David, he thought — and maybe better than you do yourself. Inside his mind he was working furiously on new ways to retrieve the situation that had begun spiraling out of his control at the Teller Institute.

Rural Virginia, Outside the Beltway

Three hours before dawn, bands of cold rain swept in succession across the Virginia countryside, drenching the already-sodden fields and woods below. Autumn was usually a time of drier weather, especially after the humid, tropical thunderstorms of the summer months, but the weather patterns were off-kilter this year.

Roughly forty miles southwest of Washington, D.C., a small farmhouse sat on a low rise overlooking a few sparse stands of trees, a stagnant pond, and forty acres of patchy grassland now mostly choked with weeds and dense thickets of brambles. The roofless, blackened ruins of an old barn stood close to the house. The remnants of a fence surrounded the farm's empty, overgrown fields, but most of the wooden fence rails and posts either were split or lay rotting in the tall grass, briars, and weeds. A rutted gravel track ran up the rise from the paved county road paralleling the fence. It ended at an oil-stained concrete slab just outside the front door of the farmhouse.

At first glance, the small satellite dish on the roof and a microwave relay tower on a nearby hill were the only pieces of evidence that this tumbledown farm had any ties whatever to the modern age. In reality, a state-of-the-art alarm system secured the farmhouse, which was furnished inside with the latest in CIA high-tech computer and electronics gear.

Hal Burke sat at the desk in his study, listening to the rain beat down on the roof of what he sardonically termed his “occasional weekend country retreat.” One of his great-uncles had farmed this piss-poor patch of land for decades before the constant toil and frustration finally killed him. After his death, it had passed through the hands of several slow-witted cousins before it landed in the CIA officer's lap ten years ago as partial repayment of an old family debt.

He had neither the money nor the time to put in any crops, but he valued the seclusion the farm offered. No uninvited guests ever came knocking on his door out here — not even the local Jehovah's Witnesses. It was so far off the beaten track that even the fast-growing tentacles of the northern Virginia suburbs had passed it bv. When the weather was clear, Burke could walk outside at night and see the sickly orange glow made by the lights of Washington, D.C., and its sprawling bedroom communities. They stained the sky in a vast arc to the north, northeast, and east, a constant reminder of the hive culture and the bogged-down bureaucracy he so despised.

Over the poor backcountry roads and traffic-clogged highways, travel

to and from Langley was often long and torturous, but an array of secure communications equipment — installed at federal expense — allowed him to work from the farm should any sudden crisis arise. The gear functioned well enough for official CIA use. More advanced pieces of hardware and software, supplied by others, made it possible for him to control the far-flung elements of TOCSIN in greater security. He had come straight here after his midnight meeting with Hanson. Events were moving fast now and he needed to stay in close touch with his agents.

His computer chimed, signaling the arrival of an encrypted situation report from the security unit working in New Mexico. He frowned. They were late.

Burke rubbed at his eyes and typed in his password. The jumble of seemingly random characters, letters, and numbers instantly changed shape, forming coherent words and then whole sentences as the decoding program did its job. He read through the message with increasing alarm.

“Damn it,” he muttered. “Who the hell is this bastard?” Then he picked up the secure phone next to his computer and dialed his FBI counterpart. “Kit, listen up,” he said urgently. “There's a situation I need you to handle. A corpse has to disappear. Permanently and pronto.”

“Colonel Smith?” Pierson asked levelly.

Burke scowled. “I wish.”

“Fill me in,” she said. He could hear rustling in the background as she threw on her clothes. “And no evasions this time. Just the facts.”

The CIA officer briefed her rapidly on the failed ambush. Pierson listened in icy silence. “I'm growing rather tired of cleaning up the messes left by your private army, Hal,” she said bitterly after he finished.

“Smith had backup,” Burke snapped. “That was something we didn't anticipate. We all thought he was operating as a lone wolf.”

“Any description of this other man?” she asked.

“No,” the CIA officer admitted. “It was too dark for my people to get a good look at him.”

“Wonderful,” Pierson said coldly. "This just gets better and better, Hal.

Now Smith will be sure there's something fishy about the terrorist SUV buy I've linked to the Movement. Why don't you just go ahead and paint a big, fat bull's-eye on my forehead?"

Burke resisted the urge to slam the phone down. “Constructive suggestions would be more welcome, Kit,” he said finally.

“Shut TOCSIN down,” she told him. “This whole operation has been a disaster right from the start. And with Smith still alive and sniffing around my heels, I don't have the maneuvering room I need to push this investigation toward Lazarus.”

He shook his head. “I can't do that. Our people already have their next orders. We're in more danger if we try to abort now than we are if we go ahead.”

There was a long silence.

“Let's be clear about one thing, Hal,” Pierson said tightly. “If TOCSIN comes apart at the seams, I'm not going to be the only one taking the fall, understand?”

“Is that a threat?” Burke asked slowly.

“Call it a statement of fact,” she replied. The phone went dead.

Hal Burke sat staring at his screen for several minutes, considering his next move. Was Kit Pierson losing her nerve? He hoped not. He had never really liked the dark-haired woman, but he had always respected her courage and her will to win at all costs. Without them, she would be only a liability — a liability TOCSIN could not afford.

He made a decision and began typing fast, composing a new set of instructions to the remnants of the unit in New Mexico.

Around the world, small groups of men and women of every color and race gathered in secret. They met in front of satellite-linked monitors and video cameras. They were the elite of the Lazarus Movement, the leaders of its most important action cells. All of them appeared on-edge, straining at the leash — eager to launch the operations they had been planning for many months.

The man called Lazarus stood at ease in front of a huge display, one that showed him the pictures relayed from each assembled group. He knew that none of them would see his real face or hear his real voice. As always, his advanced computer systems and software were busy constructing the different, idealized images fed to each Movement cell. Equally sophisticated software provided simultaneous language translation.

“The time has come,” Lazarus said. He smiled slightly, seeing the shiver of anticipation ripple through each of his distant audiences. “Millions of people in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas are flocking to our cause. The political and financial strength of our Movement is increasing by leaps and bounds. In short order, whole governments and corporations will tremble before our growing power.”

His confident statement drew nods of approval and murmurs of excitement from the watching Movement leaders.

Lazarus held up a hand in warning. “But do not forget that our enemies are also on the move. Their secret war against us has failed. So now the open war I have long predicted has begun. The slaughters in Santa Fe and in Chicago are surely only the first of many atrocities they plan.”

He stared directly into the cameras, knowing that it would appear to each of the widely dispersed cells that his eyes were focused solely on them. “The war has begun,” he repeated. “We have no choice. We must strike back, swiftly and surely and without remorse. Wherever possible, your operations should avoid taking innocent life, but we must destroy these nanotech laboratories — the breeding vats of death — before our enemies can unleash more horrors on the world, and on us.”

“What about the facilities of Nomura PharmaTech?” the head of the Tokyo cell asked. “After all, this corporation, alone among all the others, has already agreed to our demands. Their research work is at an end.”

“Spare Nomura PharmaTech?” Lazarus said coldly. "I think not. Hideo Nomura is a shrewd young man — too shrewd. He bends when the wind is strong, but does not break. When he smiles, it is the smile of a shark. Do not be taken in by Nomura. I know him far too well."

The leader of the Tokyo cell bowed his head, accepting the reproof. “It shall be as you command, Lazarus.”

When at last the conference screens went dark, the man called Lazarus stood alone, savoring his moment of triumph. Years of planning and preparation were coming to fruition. Soon the hard and dangerous work of reclaiming the world would begin. And soon the harsh, but necessary, sacrifices he had made would be redeemed.

His eyes clouded over briefly, full of remembered pain. Softly he recited the poem, a haiku, that often lingered close to the edge of his waking mind:

“Sorrow, like mist, falls On a father forsaken By his faithless son.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The morning sun, rising ever higher in a cloud-streaked azure sky, seemed to set the big, flat-topped hill looming above the Rancho de Chimayo aflame. Pifion pines and junipers along its crest stood starkly outlined against the dazzling golden light. Sunshine spread down steep slopes and threw long shadows across the old hacienda's sprawling apple orchards and terraced patios.

Still wearing his jeans, boots, and corduroy jacket, Jon Smith walked through the crowded dining rooms of the ancient adobe house and out onto a stone-flagged patio. Set in the foothills roughly twenty-five miles north of Santa Fe, the Rancho de Chimayo was one of the oldest restaurants in New Mexico. Its owners traced their lineage back to the original wave of Spanish colonists in the Southwest. Their family had first settled at Chimayo in 1680, during the long and bloody Pueblo Indian revolt against Spanish rule.

Peter Howell was seated there already, waiting for him at one of the patio tables. He waved his old friend into the empty chair across from him. “Take a pew, Jon,” he said kindly. “Damned if you don't look all in.”

Smith shrugged, resisting the temptation to yawn. “I had a long night.”

“Any serious trouble?”

Jon shook his head. Collecting his laptop and other gear from the Fort Marcy suites had proved unexpectedly easy. Wary at first of FBI or terrorist surveillance, he had used every trick he knew to flush any tail_

without spotting anyone. But doing that right took time, and lots of it. Which meant he had not checked into his new digs, a cheap fleabag motor lodge on the outskirts of Santa Fe, until close to dawn. Then he had phoned Fred Klein and told him about the unsuccessful attempt on his life. All in all, he had scarcely had time to close his eyes before Peter called to set this clandestine rendezvous.

“And no one followed you? Then or now?” the Englishman asked after listening intently to Smith's account of his actions.

“Not a soul.”

“Most curious,” Peter said, arching a shaggy gray eyebrow. He frowned. “And more than a little worrying.”

Smith nodded. Try as he might, he could not understand why the FBI had been so eager to track his movements all yesterday — and then seemingly called off its team only hours before four gunmen tried to kill him. Maybe Kit Pierson's agents had simply assumed he was in his suite to stay and packed it in for the night, but that seemed uncharacteristically sloppy.

“What about you and Heather Donovan?” he asked. “Did you have any trouble getting her away safely?”

“Not a bit,” Peter said easily. He checked his watch. “By now the lovely Ms. Donovan is winging her way across America — bound for her aunt's home on the shores of the Chesapeake.”

“You never thought she was in serious danger, did you?” Smith asked quietly.

“Once the shooting stopped, you mean?” the older man said. He shrugged. “No, not really, Jon. You were the primary target, not her. Ms. Donovan is just what she seems — a somewhat naive young woman with a good heart and a decent brain. Since she has no real knowledge of whatever it is that the upper echelons of the Lazarus Movement are planning, I doubt very much that they will view her as a serious threat. So long as the young lady stays well away from you, she ought to be perfectly safe.”

“And there you have the story of my love life,” Smith said with a twisted smile.

“Occupational hazard, I'm afraid,” Peter said lightly. He grinned. “I mean, of the medical life, naturally. Perhaps you should try intelligence work instead. I understand spies are all the rage this season.”

Smith ignored the gentle tweak. He knew the Englishman was sure he worked for one of the various U.S. intelligence agencies, but Peter made it a point of professional courtesy never to pry too deeply. Just as he tried to avoid asking too many inconvenient questions about the older man's occasional work for Her Majesty's government.

Peter looked up as a smiling waitress in a frilled white blouse and long flowing skirt approached, bearing a large tray crowded with plates and a pot of hot, fresh coffee. “Ah, the grub,” he said happily. “Hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of ordering for both of us.”

“Not at all,” Smith said, suddenly aware that he was desperately hungry.

For several minutes the two men ate rapidly — feasting on eggs cooked with slices of chorizo sausage, black beans, and spicy pico de gallo, a salsa made with red and green chilies, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and small dollops of sour cream. To help tame the fiery taste of the salsa, the restaurant provided a basket of homemade sopaipillas, light pillows of puffy fried bread best served warm with drizzled honey and melted butter poked through a hole on top.

When they finished, Peter sat back with a contented look on his craggy-face. "In some parts of the world, a prodigious belch right now would be

considered a compliment to the chef,“ he said. His eyes twinkled. ”But for the moment, I'll refrain."

“Believe me, I'm grateful,” Smith told him drily. “I'd actually like to be able to eat here again sometime.”

“To business, then,” Peter said. He pointed to the mass of long gray hair on his head. “No doubt you've been wondering about my changed appearance.”

“Just a bit,” Smith admitted. “You look sort of like an Old Testament prophet.”

“I do rather,” the Englishman agreed complacently. “Well, look your last upon this hoary mane of mine and weep, for like Samson I shall soon be shorn.” He chuckled. “But it was all in a good cause. Some months ago, an old acquaintance asked me to poke my long nose into the inner workings of the Lazarus Movement.”

For “old acquaintance” read MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, Smith thought.

“Well, that sounded like a bit of fun, so I grew the old locks somewhat shaggy, changed my name to something appropriately biblical and impressive-sounding, and drifted into the outer ranks of the Movement-posing as a retired Canadian forestry official with a radical grudge against science and technology.”

“Did you have any luck?” Smith asked.

“In penetrating the Movement's inner core? No, alas,” Peter said. His expression turned more serious. “The leadership is damned fanatical about its security. I never quite managed to break through its safeguards. Still, I learned enough to worry me. Most of these Lazarus followers are decent enough, but there are some very hard-edged types manipulating them from behind the scenes.”

“Like the guys who tried to nail me last night?”

“Perhaps,” Peter said reflectively. "Though I would characterize them as more brawn than brains. I had my eye on them for several days before they attacked you — ever since they first arrived at the Lazarus rally, in fact."

“Any particular reason?”

“At first, simply the way they moved,” Peter explained. “Those fellows were like a pack of wolves gliding through a flock of grazing sheep. You know what I mean. Too careful, too controlled… too aware of their surroundings at all times.”

“Kind of like us?” Smith suggested with a thin smile. Peter nodded. “Precisely.”

“And were your 'friends' in London able to make anything out of the material you sent them?” Jon asked, remembering the digital photos and fingerprints Howell had taken of the shaven-headed gunman he had killed.

“I'm afraid not,” Peter said regretfully. “So far my inquiries have drawn a complete blank.” He reached into the pocket of his sheepskin coat and then slid a computer disk across the table toward Smith. “Which is why I thought you might care to take your own stab at identifying the fellow you so efficiently put down last night.”

Smith looked steadily back at him. “Oh?”

“There's no need to play coy, Jon,” Peter told him with a hint of amusement. “I'm quite sure you have your own friends — or friends of friends — who can run those pictures and prints through their databases… as a personal favor to you, of course.”

“It may be possible,” Smith admitted slowly. He took the disk. “But I'll have to find a connection for my computer first.”

The older man smiled openly now. “Then you'll be pleased to hear that our hosts have access to a wireless Internet node. This charming hacienda may date back to the seventeenth century, but its owners' business sense is very firmly rooted in our modern age.” Peter pushed his chair back and stood up. “And now I'm sure you'd like some privacy, so like a good little guard dog I'll go and prowl around the rest of the grounds.” Jon watched him go, shaking his head in hopeless admiration at the

Englishman's ability to get what he wanted from almost anybody. “Peter Howell could con a tribe of cannibals into turning vegetarian,” CIA officer Randi Russell, a mutual friend of theirs, had once told him. “And probably persuade them to pay him for the privilege.”

Still amused, Smith dialed Fred Klein's number on his encrypted cell phone.

“Yes, Colonel,” the head of Covert-One said.

Smith relayed Peter's request for help in identifying the dead gunman. “I've got the disk with the photos and fingerprints right here,” he finished.

“What does Howell know?” Klein asked.

“About me? He hasn't asked,” Smith said forcefully. “Peter is sure that I'm working for Army Intelligence, or one of the other Pentagon outfits, but he's not pushing for specifics.”

“Good,” Klein said. He cleared his throat. “All right, Jon, send me the files, and I'll see what we can dig up. Can you stay on where you are? This could take a while.”

Smith looked around the quiet, restful terrace. The sun was high enough now to provide some real warmth. And the sweet scent of flowers hung in the fresh air. He signaled the waitress for another pot of coffee. “No sweat, Fred,” he said into the phone with an easy, relaxed drawl. “I'll just sit here and suffer.”

The head of Covert-One called back within the hour. He didn't waste time in pleasantries. “We have a serious problem, Colonel,” he said grimly.

Smith saw Peter Howell hovering around the door out onto the patio and motioned him over. “Go ahead,” he told Klein. “I'm all ears.”

“The man you shot was an American, a man named Michael Dolan. He was ex-U.S. Army Special Forces. A decorated combat veteran. He left the service as a captain five years ago.”

“Shit,” Jon said softly.

“Oh, it gets worse, Colonel,” Klein cautioned him. “Once he got out of the Army, Michael Dolan applied for admission to the FBI Academy at Quantico. They turned him down outright.”

“Why?” Smith wondered aloud. Ex-military officers were often in high demand by the FBI, which valued their skills, physical fitness, and disciplined outlook on life.

“He failed the Academy psychological evaluation,” Klein told him quietly. “Apparently, he showed clear traces of sociopathic tendencies and attitudes. The Bureau profilers noted a distinct willingness to kill, without significant compunction or remorse.”

“Not exactly someone you would really want carrying a law-enforcement badge and a weapon, I guess,” Smith said. “No,” Klein agreed.

“Okay, the FBI didn't want him,” Smith pressed. “Then who did take him on? How did he wind up involved in the Lazarus Movement?”

“There we begin to come to the heart of our serious problem,” the head of Covert-One said slowly. “It appears that the late and unlamented Mr. Dolan worked for the CIA.”

“Jesus.” Smith shook his head in disbelief. “Langley hired this guy?” “Not officially,” Klein replied. “The Agency rather wisely seems to have kept him at arm's length. On paper, Dolan was employed as an independent security consultant. But his paychecks were funneled through a number of CIA fronts. He's worked for them on and off since leaving the Army, mostly conducting high-risk counterterror operations, usually in Latin America or Africa.”

“Cute. So Langley could always deny that he was one of theirs if an op went sour,” Smith realized, frowning. “Exactly,” Klein said.

“And was Dolan on the CIA payroll last night?” Smith asked tightly, wondering just how much trouble they were in right now. Was that fire-fight last night the result of some total foul-up — a horrible incident of friendly fire between two clandestine outfits operating in the same area without adequate communication?

“No, I don't think so,” the head of Covert-One told him. “My best guess is that his last paid contract from the Agency ended a little more than six months ago.”

Smith felt the rigid muscles of his face relax a tiny bit. He breathed out. “I'm glad to hear that. Damned glad.”

“There is more, Colonel,” Fred Klein warned. He cleared his throat. “The information I've just relayed comes from our own Covert-One database — a set of files I've built up using highly classified material siphoned from the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and other agencies. Without their knowledge, of course.”

Smith nodded to himself. Klein's ability to pull together information from the several competing factions in the U.S. intelligence community was one of the reasons President Castilla put such a high value on Covert-One's work.

“As a cross-check, I ran the pictures and fingerprints you sent me through both the CIA and the FBI databases,” Klein went on. His voice was flat and cold. “But both searches came back empty-handed. So far as Langley and the Bureau are concerned, Michael Dolan never took the FBI exam and never worked for the CIA. In fact, their records do not mention him at all.”

“What?” Smith exclaimed suddenly. He saw Peter raise an eyebrow in surprise and hurriedly lowered his voice. “That's impossible!”

“Not impossible,” Klein told him quietly. “Merely improbable. And very frightening.”

'Tou mean the CIA and FBI files have been scrubbed,“ Smith realized. He felt a shiver run down his spine. ”Which is something that could only be done by people operating at a very high level. People in our own government."

“I'm afraid so, Colonel,” Klein agreed. "Clearly, someone has taken enormous risks to erase those records. So now the questions we have to ask are, Why? And who?"

The technicians working inside the nanophage production core wore full protective suits, each with its own self-contained air supply. Thick gloves and the heavy suits slowed every movement and robbed them of much of their dexterity. Nevertheless, harsh training and intensive practice helped each man perform the delicate task of loading hundreds of billions of fully formed Stage III nanophages into four small, thick-walled metal cylinders.

As the cylinders were filled, they were slowly and carefully disconnected from the stainless steel production vats. Technicians working in pairs clamped the cylinders onto robotic carts designed to ferry them through a narrow tunnel — sealed at both ends by massive air locks — and out into another sealed chamber. There another team of technicians wearing masks, gloves, and coveralls took charge of the deadly cargo.

One by one, the nanophage-filled canisters were loaded into larger hollow metal tanks, which were carefully sealed and then welded shut. Once this work was finished, these larger metal tanks were stacked in a foam-padded heavy-duty shipping crate. As a last step, large white and red labels were stuck all over the crate: APPROVISIONNEMENTS MEDICAUX DE L'OXYGENE. AVERTISSEMENT: CONTENU SOUS PRESSION!

The tall, powerfully built man who called himself Nones stood outside the production core, watching through the multiple layers of a sealed observation window as the loading proceeded. He turned his head toward the much shorter senior scientist beside him. “Will this new delivery system of yours yield the increased effectiveness our employer demands?”

The scientist nodded emphatically. 'Absolutely. We have designed the Stage Three nanophages with a longer life span and for a much wider range of external conditions. Our new method takes advantage of those design improvements — allowing us to conduct this next field test from much higher altitudes and in more variable weather. Our computer modeling predicts significantly more efficient dispersion of the nanophages as a result."

“And substantially higher kill rates?” Nones, the third of the Horatii, asked bluntly.

The scientist nodded reluctantly. “Of course.” He swallowed hard. “I doubt that very many people in the target area will survive.”

“Good.” The green-eyed man smiled coldly. “After all, that is the point of all this new technology of yours, isn't it?”