The Lazarus Vendetta

Chapter Thirty-Three

The leader of the Center's surveillance team, Willem Linden, flipped quickly from image to image on the large monitor set up in front of him, swiftly checking the TV pictures transmitted by the sensor packages mounted on lampposts around La Courneuve. The images were nearly identical. Each revealed long stretches of pavement and avenues strewn with small, sad heaps of slime-stained clothing and whitened bone. Shots from several cameras, those deployed around the perimeter of the target area, showed wrecked police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances — most with their engines running and their roof lights still flashing. The first emergency crews, rushing to answer frantic calls for help, had driven straight into the invisible nanophage cloud and died with those they had come to aid.

Linden spoke into his mike, reporting to the distant Center. “There appear to be no survivors among those outside.”

“That is excellent news,” the faintly distorted voice of the man named Lazarus said. “And the nanophages themselves?”

“One moment,” Linden said. He entered a series of codes on the keyboard set up before him. The TV pictures disappeared from his screen, replaced by a series of graphs — one for each deployed sensor package. Every gray box included an air scoop and collection kit designed to gather a representative sample of the nanophages falling through the air around them. As the white-haired man watched, lines on each graph suddenly spiked upward. “Their self-destruct sequences have just activated,” he reported.

The spherical semiconductor shell of each Stage III nanophage contained a timed self-destruct mechanism to scramble its working core — the chemical loads that smashed peptide bonds. As these microscopic bomblets detonated, they released a small burst of intense heat. IR detectors inside the collection kits were picking up those bursts of heat.

Linden saw the lines on each graph drop back to zero. “Nanophage self-destruct complete,” he said.

“Good,” Lazarus replied. “Proceed to the final phase of Field Experiment Three.”

“Understood,” Linden said. He entered another series of command sequences on his keyboard. Flashing red letters appeared on his screen. “Charges activated.”

Several miles to the north and east, the demolition charges rigged at the base of each gray sensor box exploded. Fountains of blinding white flame soared high into the air as the white phosphorus filler in each charge ignited. In milliseconds, temperatures at the heart of each towering column of fire reached five thousand degrees Fahrenheit — consuming every separate element of the sensor boxes, inextricably mingling their metals and plastics with the now-molten steel and iron of the lampposts. When the smoke and flames faded away, there were no usable traces left of the instruments, cameras, and communications devices set out to study the slaughter in La Courneuve.

The persistent chirping of his phone roused President Sam Castilla from an uneasy, dream-filled sleep. He fumbled for his glasses, put them on, and saw from the clock on his nightstand that it was nearly four-thirty in the morning. The sky outside the White House family quarters was still pitch-black, untouched by any hint of the approaching dawn. He grabbed the phone. “Castilla here.”

“I'm sorry to wake you, Mr. President,” Emily Powell-Hill said. His national security adviser sounded both weary and depressed. “But there's a situation developing outside Paris that you need to know about. The first news is just hitting the airwaves — CNN, Fox, the BBC, all of them have the same rough details.”

Castilla sat up in bed, automatically glancing apologetically to his left for the early morning interruption before remembering that his wife, Cassie, was away on yet another international goodwill tour, this one through Asia. He felt a sharp pang of loneliness and then fought off the wave of sadness that came with it. The demands of the presidency were inexorable, he thought. You could not dodge them. You could not ignore them. You could only soldier on and try to honor the trust the people had placed in you. Among other things, that meant accepting periodic separations from the woman you loved.

He punched the TV remote, bringing up one of the several competing twenty-four-hour cable news channels. The screen showed the deserted streets of a suburb just outside Paris, filmed from a helicopter orbiting high overhead. Suddenly the picture zoomed in, revealing hundreds of grotesque clumps of melted flesh and bone that had once been living human beings.

"… many thousands of people are feared dead, though the French government steadfastly refuses to speculate on either the cause or the magnitude of this apparent disaster. Outside observers, however, have commented on the striking similarities between the horrible deaths reported here and those blamed on nanophages released from the Teller Institute for Advanced Technology in Santa Fe, New Mexico, only days ago. But so far, it is impossible to confirm their suspicions. Only a few civil defense units equipped with full chemical protective suits have been allowed to enter La Courneuve in a frantic quest for survivors and answers…."

Shaken to his core, Castilla snapped off the television. “My God,” he murmured. “It's happening again.”

“Yes, sir,” Powell-Hill replied grimly. “I'm afraid so.”

Still holding the phone, Castilla levered himself out of bed and threw a bathrobe over his pajamas. “Get everybody in here, Emily,” he said, forcing himself to sound calmer and more in control than he felt. “I want a full NSC meeting in the Situation Room as soon as possible.”

He disconnected and punched in a new number. The phone on the other end rang only once before it was picked up.

“Klein here, Mr. President.”

“Don't you ever sleep, Fred?” Castilla heard himself ask.

“When I can, Sam,” the head of Covert-One replied. “Which is far less often than I would like. One of the hazards of the trade, I fear — just like your job.”

“You've seen the news?”

“Yes, I have,” Klein confirmed. He hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I was just about to call you.”

“Concerning this new horror in Paris?” the president asked.

“Not exactly,” the other man said quietly. “Though I'm afraid that there may well be a connection. One I do not yet fully understand.” He cleared his throat. “I've just received a very troubling report from Colonel Smith. Do you remember what Hideo Nomura said about his father's belief that the CIA was waging a covert war on the Lazarus Movement?”

“Yes, I do,” Castilla said. “As I recall, Hideo first thought it was an indication of Jinjiro's increasingly shaky mental state. And we both agreed with him.”

"So we did. Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you that it seems Jinjiro Nomura was right,“ Klein said somberly. ”And we were both wrong. Dead wrong, Sam. I'm afraid that senior officials in the CIA and the FBI, and possibly other services, have been conducting an illegal campaign of sabotage, murder, and terrorism designed to discredit and destroy the Movement."

“That's an ugly accusation, Fred,” Castilla said tightly. “A real ugly accusation. You'd better tell me exactly what you've got to back it up.”

The nation's chief executive listened in stunned silence while Klein recounted the damning evidence gathered by Jon Smith and Peter Howell — both in New Mexico and outside Hal Burke's country house. “Where are Smith and Howell now?” Castilla asked when the head of Covert-One finished bringing him up to speed.

“In a car on their way back to Washington,” the other man said. “They were able to break contact with the mercenaries who ambushed them roughly an hour ago. I dispatched support and transportation as soon as Jon was able to safely make contact with me.”

“Good,” Castilla said. “Now, what about Burke, Pierson, and their hired guns? We need to arrest them and start getting to the bottom of this mess.”

“I have more bad news there,” Klein said slowly. “My staff has been listening in on the police and fire department frequencies for that part of Virginia. Burke's farmhouse is on fire. Right now, the blaze is still out of control. And the local sheriff's department hasn't been able to find anyone responsible for all the shooting his neighbors reported. Nor have they found any bodies in the fields outside the house.”

“They're running,” Castilla realized.

“Someone is running,” the head of Covert-One agreed. “But who and how far remain to be seen.”

“So exactly how high up does the rot go?” Castilla demanded. “All the way up to David Hanson? Is my Director of Central Intelligence conducting a clandestine war right under my nose?”

“I wish I could answer that, Sam,” Klein said slowly. "But I can't. Nothing Smith found proves his involvement.“ He hesitated. ”I will say that I don't think Burke and Katherine Pierson could have organized an operation like this TOCSIN all on their own. For one thing, it's too expensive. Just taking into account what little we know, the tab has to run into the millions of dollars. And neither of them had the authority to draw covert funds of that magnitude."

“This fellow Burke was one of Hanson's top men, wasn't he?” the president said grimly. “Back when he ran the CIA's Operations Directorate?”

“Yes,” Klein admitted. “But I'm wary of jumping to conclusions. The CIA's financial controls are rock-solid. I don't see how anyone inside the Agency could hope to divert the kind of federal money necessary — not without leaving a trail a mile wide. Tampering with the Agency's computerized personnel system is one thing. Ducking its auditors is quite another.”

“Well, maybe the money came from somewhere else,” Castilla suggested. He frowned. “You heard what else Jinjiro Nomura believed — that corporations and other intelligence services besides the CIA were going after the Lazarus Movement. He might have been right about that, too.”

“Possibly,” Klein agreed. “And there is another piece of the puzzle to consider. I ran a quick check on Burke's most recent assignments. One of them sticks out like a sore thumb. Before taking over the Agency's Lazarus Movement task force, Hal Burke led one of the CIA teams searching for Jinjiro Nomura.”

“Oh, hell,” Castilla muttered. “We put the goddamned fox in charge of the chicken coop without even knowing it….”

“I'm afraid so,” Klein said quietly. “But what I don't understand in any of this is the connection between the nanophage release in Santa Fe — and now possibly in Paris — and this TOCSIN operation. If Burke and Pierson and others are trying to destroy the Lazarus Movement, why orchestrate massacres that will only strengthen it? And where would they get access to this kind of ultra-sophisticated nanotechnology weapon?”

“No kidding,” agreed the president. He ran a hand through his rumpled hair, trying to smooth it down. “This is one hell of a mess. And now I learn that I can't even rely on the CIA or the FBI to help uncover the truth. Damn it, I'm going to have to put Hanson, his top aides, and every senior Bureau official through the wringer before the word of this illegal war against the Movement leaks out. Because it will leak out.” He sighed. “And when it does, the congressional and media firestorm is going to make Iran-Contra look like a tempest in a teapot.”

“You still have Covert-One,” Klein reminded him.

“I know that,” Castilla said heavily. “And I'm counting on you and your people, Fred. You have to get out there and find the answers I need.”

“We'll do our best, Sam,” the other man assured him. “Our very best.”

Early Sunday morning traffic was light on the multi-lane M40 Motorway connecting London and Oxford. Oliver Latham's silver Jaguar sped southeast at high speed, racing through a landscape of green rolling chalk hills, tiny villages with gray stone Norman churches, stretches of unspoiled woodland, and mist-draped valleys. But the wiry, hollow-cheeked Englishman paid no attention to the natural beauty around him. Instead, the head of MI6's Lazarus surveillance section was wholly focused on the news pouring out of his car radio.

“Initial reports from the French government do appear to connect the deaths in La Courneuve with those outside the American research institute in the state of New Mexico,” read the BBC announcer in the calm, cultured tones reserved for serious international developments. “And tens of thousands of residents of the surrounding suburbs of Paris are said to be fleeing in panic, clogging the avenues and motor routes leaving the city. Army units and security forces are being deployed to control the evacuation and maintain the rule of law—”

Latham reached out and snapped the radio off, annoyed to find his hands trembling slightly. He had been fast asleep in his weekend country home outside Oxford when the first frantic call from Ml6 headquarters reached him. Since then, he had experienced a succession of shocks. First came his inability to contact Hal Burke to find out what the devil was really happening in Paris. Just as TOCSIN seemed to be flying apart at the seams, the American had dropped completely out of sight. Next came the horrifying discovery that his superior, Sir Gareth Southgate, had put his own agent, Peter Howell, into the Lazarus Movement without Latham's knowledge. That was bad enough. But now the head of MI6 was asking pointed questions about Ian McRae and the other freelancers Latham sometimes hired for various missions.

The Englishman grimaced, considering his options. How much did Howell know? How much had he reported to Southgate? If TOCSIN was well and truly blown, what kind of cover story could he produce to conceal his involvement with Burke?

Deep in thought, Latham shoved down hard on the Jaguar's accelerator, swerving left to overtake and pass a heavy, lumbering lorry in the blink of an eye. He cut back into the same lane with just a meter to spare. The lorry driver flashed his lights at him in irritation and then leaned on his horn — sending a piercing note blaring across the motorway. The horn blast echoed back from the surrounding slopes.

Latham ignored the angry gestures, concentrating instead on getting to London as quickly as possible. With luck, he could extricate himself unscathed from this mess. If not, he might be able to make some sort of deal — trading information about TOCSIN for the promise that he would not be prosecuted.

Suddenly the Jaguar rattled and banged, shaken by a succession of small explosions. Its right front tire shredded and flew apart. Bits of rubber and metal bounced and rolled away, scattering across the road surface. Sparks flew high in the air, spraying over the bonnet and windscreen. The car swerved sharply to the right.

Swearing loudly, Latham gripped the steering wheel in both hands and spun it right, trying to regain control over the skid. There was no response. The same series of tiny charges that had blown out the Jaguar's front tire had destroyed its steering system. He screamed shrilly, still desperately spinning the now-useless wheel.

Completely out of control now, the car careened across the motorway at high speed and then flipped over — sliding upside down for several hundred meters along the paved surface. The Jaguar came to rest at last in a tangle of torn metal, broken glass, and crumpled plastic. Less than a second later, another tiny explosive charge ignited the fuel seeping from its mangled gas tank, turning the wreckage into a blazing funeral pyre.

The lorry drove past the burning wreck without stopping. It continued on, heading southeast along the M40 toward the crowded streets of London. Inside the cab, the driver, a middle-aged man with high Slavic cheekbones, slid the remote control back into the duffel bag at his feet. He leaned back, satisfied with the results of his morning's work. Lazarus would be pleased.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith looked down at K Street from the window of his eighth-floor room in the Capital Hilton. It was just after dawn and the first rays of sunlight were beginning to chase the shadows from Washington's streets. Newspaper vans and delivery trucks rumbled along the empty avenues, breaking the silence of an early Sunday morning.

There was a knock on his door. He turned away from the window and crossed the room in several long strides. A cautious glance through the peephole showed him Fred Klein's familiar pale, long-nosed face.

“It's good to see you, Colonel,” the head of Covert-One said, once he was inside and the door was safely closed and bolted behind him. He glanced around the room, noting the unused bed and the muted television tuned to an all-news channel. It showed footage shot live from the military and police cordon set up around La Courneuve. Vast throngs of Parisians were gathering just beyond the barricades, screaming and chanting in soundless unison. Placards and protest signs blamed “Les Ameri-caines” and their “armes diaboliques,” their “devil weapons,” for the disaster that had claimed at least twenty thousand lives by the most recent estimates.

Klein raised a single eyebrow. “Still too wound up to sleep?”

Smith smiled thinly. “I can sleep on the plane, Fred.”

“Oh?” Klein said calmly. “Are you planning some travel?”

Smith shrugged his shoulders. “Aren't I?”

The other man relented. He tossed his briefcase onto the bed and perched himself on a corner. “As a matter of fact, you're quite right, Jon,” he admitted. “I do want you to fly out to Paris.”

“When?”

“As soon as I can get you out to Dulles,” Klein told him. “There's a Lufthansa flight leaving for Charles de Gaulle around ten. Your tickets and travel documents are in my case.” He pointed to the bandage wrapped around Smith's left arm. “Will that knife wound give you any trouble?”

“It could use some stitches,” Jon said carefully. “And I should take some antibiotics as a precaution.”

“I'll arrange it,” Klein promised. He checked his watch. “I'll have another medical doctor meet you at the airport before your flight. He's discreet, and he's done some good work for us in the past.”

“What about Peter Howell?” Smith asked. “I could use his help in whatever mission you've got planned for me in Paris.”

Klein frowned. “Howell would have to make his own way there,” he said firmly. “I won't risk compromising Covert-One by making travel arrangements for a known British intelligence agent. Plus, vou'll have to maintain the fiction that you're working for the Pentagon.”

“Fair enough,” Smith said. “And my cover for this jaunt?”

“No cover,” Klein said. “You'll be traveling as yourself, as Dr. Jonathan Smith of USAMRIID. I've arranged your temporary accreditation to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. With all this political hysteria building,” he nodded at the TV screen, where protesters were now burning several American flags, “the French government can't afford to be seen working with any U.S. intelligence service or with the American military. But they are willing to allow medical and scientific experts in to 'observe.' At least so long as they do so with 'maximum discretion.' Of course, if you land in any trouble, the authorities there will deny you were ever extended an official invitation.”

Smith snorted. “Naturally.” He paced back to the window, staring down, still restless. Then he turned back. “Do you have anything specific for me to look into once I get there? Or am I just supposed to sniff around to see what turns up?”

“Something specific,” Klein said quietly. He reached over and pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase. “Take a look at those.”

Smith flipped open the folder. It contained two single sheets — each a copy of a TOP SECRET cable from the CIA's Paris Station to its Langley headquarters. Both had been sent within the past ten hours. The first reported a series of astonishing observations made by a surveillance team trailing a terrorist suspect inside La Courneuve. Smith felt his hackles rise as he read the description of the “sensor boxes” rigged on street lamps around the district. The second cable reported the progress being made in tracing the license plate numbers of the vehicles driven by those involved. He looked up at Klein in amazement. “Jesus! This stuff is red-hot. What are the boys at Langley doing about it?”

“Nothing.”

Smith was bewildered. “Nothing?”

“The CIA,” Klein patiently explained, “is too busy right now investigating itself for gross malfeasance, murder, money laundering, sabotage, and terrorism. So, for that matter, is the FBI.”

“Because of Burke and Pierson,” Smith realized.

“And possibly others,” Klein agreed. "There are indications that at least one senior official in MI6 may also have been involved in TOCSIN. The head of their Lazarus surveillance section was killed in a single-car accident a couple of hours ago… an accident the local police are already labeling suspicious.“ He looked down at his fingertips. ”I should also tell you that the sheriffs department has found both Hal Burke and Kit Pierson."

“And they're dead, too, I suppose,” Smith said grimly.

Klein nodded. “Their bodies were discovered inside the charred remains of Burke's farmhouse. The preliminary forensics work seems to indicate that they shot each other before the fire took hold.” He sniffed. “Frankly, I find that far too convenient. Someone out there is plaving a series of dirty games with us.”

“Swell.”

“It's a bad situation, Jon,” the head of Covert-One agreed somberly. “The collapse of this illegal operation is paralyzing three of the best intelligence services in the world — right at the moment when their skills and efforts are most needed.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch, saw the no-smoking sign prominently displayed on the door, and then stuffed them back with a distracted frown. “Curious, isn't it?”

Smith whistled softly. “You think that was intended all along, don't you? By whoever's really responsible for these mass nanophage attacks?”

Klein shrugged. “Maybe. If not, it's all one hell of a nasty coincidence.”

“I don't put much faith in coincidences myself,” Smith said flatly.

“Nor do I.” The long, lean head of Covert-One stood up. “Which means we're up against a very dangerous opponent here, Jon. One with enormous resources, and with the ruthlessness to make full use of every scrap of power it possesses. Worse yet,” he said softly, “this is an enemy whose identity is still completely unknown to us. Which means we have no way to discern its purposes — or to defend ourselves against them.”

Smith nodded, feeling chilled to the bone by Klein's warning. He paced back to the window, again staring down at the quiet streets of the nation's capital. What was the real aim behind the two separate nanophage releases in Santa Fe and Paris? Sure, both attacks had killed thousands of innocent civilians, but there were easier — and cheaper-ways to commit mass murder on that scale. The nanodevices used in those two places represented an incredibly sophisticated level of bioengi-neering and production technology. Developing them had to have cost tens of millions of dollars — maybe even hundreds of millions.

He shook his head. None of what was happening made much sense, at least on the surface. Terrorist groups with that kind of money would find it far safer and more convenient to buy nukes or poison gas or existing biological weapons on the world black market. Nor would ordinary terrorists find it easy to gain access to the kind of high-tech lab equipment and space needed to produce these killer nanophages.

Smith straightened up, suddenly sure that this unseen enemy had a far deeper and darker goal in mind, a goal it was moving toward with speed and precision. The slaughters in New Mexico and France were only the beginning, he thought coldly, the mere foretaste of acts even more diabolical and destructive.

Chapter Thirty-Five

An endless succession of numbers and graphs passed on by satellite link from Paris scrolled slowly across a large computer screen. In the darkened room, the flowing numbers and graphs were eerily reflected in the thick safety glasses worn by two molecular scientists. These men, the chief architects of the nanophage development program, were studying each piece of new data as it arrived.

“It's clear that releasing the nanophages from altitude was extremely effective,” the senior member of the pair remarked. “The enhanced sensor arrays in our control phages also achieved optimal results. For that matter, so did our new self-destruct system.”

His subordinate nodded. By every practical measure, the remaining engineering problems of their early-design nanophages had been solved. Their Stage III devices no longer needed specific sets of narrowly defined biological signatures to home in on their targets. In one short step, their kill ratio had risen from only around a third of those contaminated to nearly everyone caught inside the nanophage cloud. Plus, the improved chemical loads contained inside each shell had proved their effectiveness by almost entirely consuming all those attacked. The pale, polished bone fragments left on the pavements of La Courneuve were a far cry from the bloated half-eaten corpses littering Kusasa or the unpleasant blood-tinged slime strewn across the grounds outside the Teller Institute.

“I recommend that we declare the weapons fully operational and move immediately to a full production run,” the younger man said confidently. “Any further design modifications suggested by new data can be carried out later.”

“I agree,” the chief scientist said. “Lazarus will be pleased.”

Flanked by two plainclothes bodyguards, Jinjiro Nomura stepped out into the open air for the first time in almost a year. For a moment the small, elderly Japanese man stood rooted to the earth, blinking, briefly dazzled by the sight of the sun high overhead. A cool sea breeze ruffled through the thin wisps of white hair on his head.

“If you please, sir,” one of the guards murmured politely, offering him a pair of sunglasses, “they are ready for us now. The first of the Thanatos prototypes is on final approach.”

Jinjiro Nomura nodded calmly. He took the glasses and put them on.

Behind him, the massive door slid shut, again sealing the main corridor that led to the Center's living quarters, control center, administrative offices, and, ultimately, nanophage production facility hidden deep within the huge building. From the outside and from the air the whole complex appeared to be nothing more than a metal-roofed concrete warehouse — one essentially identical to the thousands of other low-cost industrial storage facilities scattered around the globe. Its intricate systems of chemical storage and piping, air locks, concentric layers of ever more rigidly maintained “clean” rooms, and elaborate banks of networked supercomputers were completely camouflaged by that plain, rusting, weather-beaten exterior.

Paced by his guards, Nomura marched down a gravel path and onto the edge of a tarmac, part of an immensely long concrete runway that stretched north and south for thousands of feet. Large aircraft hangars and aviation fuel tanks were visible at either end, along with several parked cargo and passenger jets. A tall metal fence, topped by coils of razor wire, surrounded the airfield and its associated buildings. The western horizon was an unbroken vista of rolling waves, crashing and foaming all along the coast. Off to the east, flat green fields dotted by grazing sheep and cattle ran for miles, rising toward a distant peak covered with trees.

He stopped near a small knot of white-coated engineers and scientists, all of whom were eagerly scanning the northern horizon.

“Soon,” one of them told the others, consulting his watch. He turned his head, checking the position of the sun through eyes narrowed against the glare. “The craft's solar power system is functioning perfectly. And the onboard fuel cells have finished cycling into standby mode.”

“There it is!” another said excitedly, pointing north. A thin dark line, at first barely visible against the clear blue sky, suddenly appeared there— growing steadily as it slowly descended toward the runway.

Jinjiro Nomura watched intently as the strange aerial vehicle, code-named Thanatos by its designers, drew nearer. It was an enormous flying-wing aircraft, without a fuselage or a tail but with a wingspan larger than that of a Boeing 747. Fourteen small twin-bladed propellers mounted along the length of the huge wing whirred almost noiselessly, pulling it through the air at less than thirty miles an hour. As the aircraft banked slightly, lining up with the runway, the sixty thousand solar cells installed on its gossamer-thin upper surface shimmered brightly in the sun.

Footsteps crunched softly across the tarmac behind him. Nomura stayed motionless, watching the enormous craft drift lower still as it came in for a landing. For the first time, the engineering specifications and drawings he had studied took shape in his mind.

Modeled on prototypes first flown by NASA, Thanatos was an ultra-light all-wing aircraft constructed of radar-absorbent composite materials — carbon fiber, graphite epoxy, Kevlar and Nomex wraps, and advanced plastics. Even with a full payload, it weighed less than two thousand pounds. But it could reach altitudes of nearly one hundred thousand feet and stay aloft under its own power for weeks and months at a time, spanning whole continents and oceans. Five underwing aerodynamic pods carried its flight control computers, data instrumentation, backup fuel-cell systems for night flying, and attachment points for the multiple cylinders that would contain its sinister payload.

NASA had designated its test aircraft Helios, after the ancient Greek god of the sun. It was an apt name for a vehicle meant to soar through the upper reaches on solar power. Jinjiro frowned. In the same way, Thanatos, the Greek personification of Death, was the perfect appellation for the intended use of this flying wing.

“Beautiful, is it not?” an all-too-familiar voice said quietly in his ear. “So large. And yet, so delicate… so graceful… so featherlight. Surely you can see that Thanatos is more a wisp of cloud blown by the breath of the gods than it is a creation of brutish man.”

Jinjiro nodded gravely. “That is so. In itself, this device is beautiful.” Grimly he turned to face the man standing close behind him. “But vour evil purposes pervert it, as they do all things you touch… Lazarus.”

“You honor me with that name… Father,” Hideo Nomura replied, smiling tightly. “All that I have done, I have done to achieve our common goals, our shared dreams.”

The older man shook his head forcefully. “Our goals are not the same. My fellows and I wanted to restore and redeem the Earth — to save this ravaged world from the perils posed by uncontrolled science. Under our leadership, the Movement was dedicated to life, not to death.”

“But you and your comrades made one fundamental error, Father,” Hideo told him quietly. "You misunderstood the nature of the crisis facing our world. Science and technology' do not threaten the survival of the

Earth. They are only tools, the means to a necessary end. Tools for those like me with the courage and the clarity of vision to make full use of them."

“As weapons of mass slaughter!” Jinjiro snapped. “For all your noble words, you are nothing more than a murderer!”

Hideo replied coldly. “I will do what must be done, Father. In its present state, the human race itself is the enemy — the true threat to the world we both love.” He shrugged. “In your heart, you know that I am right. Imagine seven billion greedy, grasping, violent animals roaming this one small, fragile planet. They are as dangerous to the Earth as any unchecked cancer would be to the body. The world cannot sustain so heavy a burden. That is why, like any mutating cancer, the worst of mankind must be eliminated — no matter how painful and unpleasant the task will be.”

“Using your devil's weapon, these nanophages,” his father said harshly.

The younger Nomura nodded. “Imagine Thanatos and dozens like it. Imagine them gliding high above the surface — silent and almost entirely invisible to radar. From them will fall a gentle rain, drops so small that they, too, will go unnoticed… at least until it is far too late.”

“Where?” Jinjiro asked, ashen-faced.

Hideo showed his teeth. “First? Thanatos and its kin will fly to America, a country that is soulless, powerful, and corrupt. It must be destroyed to make room for the new world order to come. Europe, another source of materialist contagion, will follow. Then my nanophages will cleanse Africa and the Middle East, those cesspools of terror, disease, starvation, cruelty, and religious fanaticism. China, too, bloated and too mindful of its ancient power, must be humbled.”

“And how many people will die before you are finished?” his father whispered.

Hideo shrugged. “Five billion? Six billion?” he suggested. "Who can say exactly? But those who are left alive will soon understand the value of the gift they have been given: A world whose balance has been restored. A world whose resources and infrastructure are left intact, undamaged by the madness of war or all-consuming greed."

For a long moment the older man could only stare at his son, the man who was now Lazarus, in horror. “You shame me,” he said at last. “And you shame our ancestors.” He turned to his guards. “Take me back to my prison cell,” he said softly. “The very presence of this monster in human form sickens me.”

Hideo Nomura nodded tightly to the two poker-faced men. “Do as the old fool asks,” he said icily. Then stepped back and stood in silence, watching his father march away to renewed captivity.

His eyes were hooded. As so often before, Jinjiro had disappointed him — had even betrayed him — with the shallowness of his thoughts and with his lack of courage. Even now his father was too blind to admire the achievements of his only son. Or perhaps, Hideo thought, savoring an old and bitter resentment from his vanished childhood, his father was simply too jealous or coldhearted to offer the praise that was his due.

And praise was due; of that he was sure.

For years the younger head of Nomura PharmaTech had worked almost day-and-night to make his vision of a cleaner, less crowded, and more peaceful world a reality. First, careful planning had made it possible to build, staff, and fund this hidden nanotechnology lab without drawing unwelcome attention from his shareholders or from anyone else. None of his many competitors had ever suspected that Nomura, apparently lagging behind in the nanotech applications race, was, in truth, months or years ahead of them.

Next had come the intricate task of subverting the Lazarus Movement, of bending the loose organization slowly and inexorably to his unseen will. Movement leaders who opposed him had been pushed aside or killed, usually by one of the Horatii, the trio of assassins whose creation and training he had financed. Best of all, every unexplained death had acted as a spur toward further radicalism by those who were left alive.

Arranging the mysterious disappearance of his own father, the last of the original Lazarus Nine, had been comparative child's play. Once that was accomplished, Hideo had been free to secretly gather all of the frightened Movement's reins into his own hands. Best of all, though, the CIA-led search for Jinjiro had brought him into contact with Hal Burke. And with that, the last piece of Hideo's plan had fallen suddenly into place.

Hideo laughed coldly and quietly, remembering the ease with which he had gulled the CIA agent and, through him, others in the American and British intelligence services — playing on their paranoid fears of terrorism. By feeding them ever more damaging information about the Movement, he had manipulated Burke and his associates into launching their foolish and illegal war. From that day forward, all events had been managed according to his will, and his will alone.

The results spoke for themselves: The world's population was increasingly terrified and hunting for scapegoats. His competitors like Harcourt Biosciences were helpless, buried by an avalanche of new government restrictions on their research. The Lazarus Movement was growing stronger and more violent. And now the American and British spy services were rendered helpless by scandal and corrosive suspicion. By the time the first murderous rain of nanophages fell on Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, it would be impossible for anyone to uncover the terrible truth.

Hideo Nomura smiled to himself. After all, he thought savagely, how better to win a game than to play both sides at once?

Chapter Thirty-Six

The new digital video of Lazarus released by the Movement repeated the pattern of his first world broadcast in the wake of the Teller Institute Massacre. Pieces of untraceable footage arrived simultaneously in TV studios around the globe, each one with a different digitally constructed image of Lazarus designed to appeal to a particular audience.

“It is no longer possible to hide from the truth,” Lazarus said sadly. “The horrors we have witnessed testify that a new weapon is being unleashed on humanity — a weapon forged by a cruel and unnatural science. Humankind stands at a crossroads. Down one road, the road charted by our Movement, lies a world of peace and tranquillity. Down the other, a path laid down by greedy men obsessed by power and profit, lies a world wracked by war and genocide — a world of carnage and catastrophe.”

The Lazarus figure stared straight into the camera. “We must choose which of these two futures we will embrace,” he said. "The ruinous advances of nanotechnology, genetic meddling, and cloning must be abandoned or suppressed before they destroy us all. Accordingly, the Movement calls on all governments — especially those in the so-called civilized nations of the West and the United States in particular — to immediately ban the study, development, and use of these sinister, life-destroying technologies.“ The face of Lazarus grew stern. ”Should any government fail to heed this demand, we will take matters into our own hands. We must act. We must save ourselves, our families, our races, and the Earth we all love. This is a struggle for the future of humankind and there is no time for further delay, no more room for neutrality. In this conflict, anyone who will not join us stands against us. Let those who are wise heed this warning!"

Thousands of demonstrators poured onto Berlin's grand central boulevard, Unter den Linden, their numbers swelling fast with every passing minute. Scores of scarlet and green Lazarus Movement banners fluttered near the front of the chanting crowd as it moved east from the chariot-topped Brandenburger Tor. Behind them came a growing array of other flags, placards, and posters. The Greens and Germany's other major environmental and antiglobalization groups were joining the Movement in a major show of force.

Their chants echoed harshly off the stone facades of the enormous public buildings lining the wide avenue. “NO TO NANOTECH! STOP THE MADNESS! BREAK THE AMERICAN WAR MACHINE! LET LAZARUS LEAD!”

The CNN crew covering the protest moved back up the steep steps of the Staatsoper, the state opera house, a still-elegant nineteenth-century building fronted by massive columns, seeking both a better vantage point and shelter from the angry crowd. The reporter, a slender, pretty brunette in her early thirties, had to shout into her microphone to be heard over the tumult spreading through the streets of the German capital. "This demonstration seems to have taken the authorities here almost completely by surprise, John! What began two hours ago as just a small band of protesters inspired by the most recent Lazarus video has now become one of the largest political gatherings seen since the Wall came down! And now we understand that similar mass rallies against nanotechnology and U.S. policy are developing in cities around the world — in Rome, Madrid, Tokyo, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, and many others.“ She looked out over the sea of flags and signs flowing past the opera house. ”So far the crowd here in Berlin has stayed relatively peaceful, but officials fear that anarchists may peel off at any moment to begin smashing stores and office buildings owned by various American corporations — corporations the Lazarus Movement calls 'part of the death machine culture.' As the situation develops, we'll be standing by to bring it to you live!"

Twenty-five kilometers south of Cape Town, thick columns of black smoke billowed high above the Capricorn Business and Technology Park, staining the red-hued evening sky. Nearly a dozen once-gleaming buildings were on fire inside the high-tech industrial and research facility. Thousands of rioters swarmed along the ring road circling a central lake, smashing windows, overturning cars, and setting new blazes wherever they could. At first, the rampaging mob had aimed its efforts at American-owned biotech labs, but now, gripped by hysteria and rage, they were lashing out at every science-based business and firm in sight-destroying property and equipment worth tens of millions of dollars with total abandon.

The police, heavily outnumbered and unwilling to confront the screaming crowd with deadly force, had withdrawn from Capricorn and now manned a perimeter well outside the complex — hoping only to keep the destruction from spilling over into the surrounding suburbs. More pillars of smoke began rising from the ruined technology park as the strengthening wind whipped new fires through the looted buildings.

America's daytime TV viewers, tuning in to watch their favorite game shows or soap operas, instead found themselves watching nonstop news bulletins as the major networks and cable channels raced to keep up with events around the world.

As the violence spread through countries on five continents, not even the veteran CBS anchor could contain his growing excitement. “Hold on to your hats, folks,” he said, in a Southern drawl that deepened with every passing minute. “Because this wild ride is getting even wilder. French television has just dropped a bombshell — charging that the CIA and the FBI, with help from the British, have been conducting a secret campaign of murder and sabotage against the Lazarus Movement. Reporters in Paris say they can prove that former U.S. and British commandos and spies are responsible for the deaths of Lazarus leaders and activists around the world, including here in the United States. They also claim these attacks could only have been authorized at 'the very highest levels of the American and British governments.'”

The anchor looked up, speaking right into the camera with a grave expression on his face. “Now when our reporters asked officials in Washington and London to comment, they were given the royal brush-off. Everyone from the president and prime minister on down is refusing to say anything of substance to the press. No one knows whether that's just the usual reluctance to comment on intelligence operations and on criminal investigations or if it's because there's fire under all this smoke. But one thing is certain. The angry people across the globe burning all those American flags and smashing up American-owned businesses aren't going to wait to find out.”

"Listen very closely, Mr. Hanson. I don't want to hear any more waffling or evasion or bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. I want the truth, and I want it now!" President Sam Castilla growled. He glared down the long table at his uncharacteristically silent CIA director.

Ordinarily trim and dapper under even the most trying circumstances, David Hanson looked a wreck. There were deep shadows under his eyes and his rumpled suit looked as though he had slept in it. He held a pen clutched tightly in the fingers of his right hand in a futile effort to hide the fact that his hands were trembling slightly. “I've told you what little I know, Mr. President,” he said warily. “We're digging as deeply as we can into our files, but so far we haven't found anything even remotely connected to this so-called TOCSIN operation. If Hal Burke was involved in anything illegal, I'm certain that he was running it on his own hook — without authorization or help from anyone else in the CIA.”

Emily Powell-Hill leaned forward in her seat. “Just how stupid do you think people are, David?” the national security adviser asked bitterly. “Do you think anyone's going to believe that Burke and Pierson were paying for a multi-million-dollar covert operation out of their own pockets — all with their personal savings and government salaries?”

“I understand the difficulties!” Hanson snapped in frustration. “But my people and I are working on this as hard and as fast as we can. Right now I've got my security personnel combing through the records and logs of every operation Burke was ever involved in, looking for anything remotely suspicious. Plus, we're setting up polygraph tests for every officer and analyst in Burke's Lazarus Movement section. If anyone else inside the CIA was involved, we'll nail them, but it's going to take time.”

He frowned. “I've also sent orders to every CIA station around the world immediately terminating any operation that involves the Movement. By now there shouldn't be an Agency surveillance team within shouting distance of any Lazarus building or operative.”

“That's not good enough,” Powell-Hill told him. “We're getting killed over this — both domestically and overseas.”

Heads nodded grimly around the Situation Room conference table. Coming as it did right on the heels of the nanophage butchery in La

Courneuve, the press reports of an illegal clandestine operation against the Lazarus Movement had been perfectly timed to inflict the maximum amount of damage on American credibility around the world. It had landed on the world stage like a match tossed into a room full of leaking gasoline drums. And the Movement was perfectly positioned to profit from the resulting explosion of anger and outrage. What had been a relatively minor nuisance for most governments and businesses was rapidly growing into a major force in global politics. More and more countries were aligning themselves with the Movement's demands for an immediate ban on all nanotech research.

“And now every lunatic who claims that we're testing some sort of nanotech-based genocide weapon is being treated respectfully by the international media — by the BBC, the other European networks, al-Jazeera, and the rest,” the national security adviser continued. “The French have already recalled their ambassador for so-called consultations. A lot of other nations are going to do the same thing in a tearing hurry. The longer this drags on, the more damage we're going to suffer to our alliances and our ability to influence events.”

Castilla nodded tightly. The phone call he had received from the French president had been full of ugly accusations and barely concealed contempt.

“We're in almost as much trouble on the Hill,” Charles Ouray added. The White House chief of staff sighed. “Practically every congressman and senator who was screaming at us to go after the Lazarus Movement has already pulled a full 180-degree turn. Now they're falling all over themselves to put together a Watergate-style investigative committee. The wilder talking heads are already discussing a possible impeachment, and even our usual friends are lying low while they wait to see which way the political winds are blowing.”

Castilla grimaced. Too many of the men and women serving in Congress were political opportunists by habit, inclination, and experience. When a president was popular, they crowded in close, hoping to share in the limelight. But at the first sign of trouble or weakness they were only too eager to join the pack baying for his blood.

Estelle Pike, the president's longtime executive secretary, opened the door to the Oval Office. “Mr. Klein is here, sir,” she said waspishly. “He doesn't have an appointment, but he claims that you'll see him anyway.”

Castilla turned away from the windows. His face was lined and weary. He seemed to have aged ten years in the past twenty-four hours. “He's here because I asked him to be here, Estelle. Show him in, please.”

She sniffed, plainly disapproving, but then obeyed.

Klein stepped past her with a murmured “thank you” that went unacknowledged. He stood waiting until the door closed behind him. Then he shrugged. “I don't think your Ms. Pike likes me very much, Sam.”

The president forced a dutiful smile. “Estelle isn't exactly a warm and cuddly people person, Fred. Anyone who bucks her daily calendar gets the same treatment. It's nothing personal.”

“I'm relieved,” Klein said drily. He looked narrowly at his old friend. “I assume from your pained expression that the NSC meeting did not go well?”

Castilla snorted. “That's almost on par with asking Mrs. Lincoln how she liked the play.”

“That bad?”

The president nodded glumly. “That bad.” He motioned Klein toward one of the two chairs set in front of the big table that served him as a desk. “The senior people inside the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other agencies are too goddamned busy trying to dodge the blame for this TOCSIN fiasco. Nobody knows how far up the ladder the conspiracy reached, so nobody knows how far anybody else can be trusted. Everybody's circling one another warily, waiting to see who gets it in the neck.”

Klein nodded quietly, not greatly surprised. Even at the best of times, debilitating turf wars were a fact of life within the American intelligence community. Their long-standing feuds and internecine conflicts were largely why Castilla had asked him to organize Covert-One in the first place. Now, with a major scandal embroiling the two biggest overseas and domestic intelligence agencies, tensions would be rising fast. In the circumstances, no one with a career to protect was going to risk sticking his or her neck out.

“Is Colonel Smith on his way to Paris?” Castilla asked at last, breaking the silence.

“He is,” Klein said. “I expect him there by late tonight, our time.”

“And you honestly believe Smith has a chance to find out what we're really facing here?”

“A chance?” Klein repeated. He hesitated. “I think so.” He frowned. “At least, I hope so.”

“But he is your best?” Castilla asked sharply.

This time Klein did not hesitate. “For this mission? Yes, absolutely. Jon Smith is the right man for the job.”

The president shook his head in exasperation. “It's ridiculous, isn't it?”

“Ridiculous?”

“Here I sit,” Castilla explained, “the commander in chief of the most powerful armed forces in the history of mankind. The people of the United States expect me to use that power to keep them safe. But I can't. Not this time. Not yet at least.” His broad shoulders slumped. “All the bombers, missiles, tanks, and riflemen in the world don't matter worth a damn unless I can give them a target. And that's the one thing I cannot give them.”

Klein stared back at his friend. He had truly never envied the president any of the various perks and privileges of his position. Now he felt only pity for the tired, sad-eyed man in front of him. “Covert-One will do its duty,” he promised. “We'll find you that target.”

“I hope to God you're right,” Castilla said quietly. “Because we're running out of time and options fast.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Jon Smith looked out the windows of the taxi, a black Mercedes, speeding south from Charles de Gaulle International Airport toward the sleeping city. Dawn was still several hours away, and only the hazy glow of lights on both sides of the multi-lane Al Motorway marked the suburban sprawl around the French capital. The highway itself was almost deserted — allowing the cabdriver, a short, sour-faced Parisian with bloodshot eyes, to push the Mercedes up to the legal limit and then well beyond.

Moving at more than 120 kilometers per hour, they flashed past several darkened neighborhoods where flames danced skyward, licking red and orange against the black night. Dilapidated apartment blocks were on fire there, casting a flickering glow across the neighboring buildings. Near those areas, rolls of barbed wire and hurriedly deployed concrete barriers blocked all entrance and exit ramps off the motorway. Each checkpoint

was manned by heavy concentrations of police and soldiers in full combat gear. Armored cars fitted with tear-gas grenade launchers and machine guns, tracked personnel carriers, and even fifty-ton Leclerc main battle tanks were parked at strategic points along the route.

“Les Arabes!” The taxi driver sniffed contemptuously, stubbing his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “They are rioting against what happened in La Courneuve. Burning down their own homes and shops — as usual. Bah!”

He paused to light another unfiltered cigarette with both hands, using his knees to steer the heavy German-made sedan. “They are idiots. Nobody much cares what happens inside those rats' nests. But let them put one foot outside and ppffft.” He drew a line across his throat. “Then the machine guns will begin talking, eh?”

Smith nodded silently. It was no real secret that the overcrowded and crime-ridden housing projects outside Paris had been carefully designed so that they could be swiftly and easily sealed off in the event of serious unrest.

The Mercedes turned off the Al and onto the boulevard Peripherique, swinging south and east around the crowded city's maze of alleys, streets, avenues, and boulevards. Still grumbling about the stupidity of a government that taxed him to pay welfare to thugs, thieves, and “les Arabes,” the taxi driver abandoned this ring road at the Porte de Vincennes. The cab plunged west, circled the Place de la Nation, roared along the rue du Fauborg-St. Antoine, screeched around the Place de la Bastille, and then threaded its way deeper into the narrow one-way streets of the Marais District, in the city's Third Arrondissement.

Once a swamp, this part of Paris was one of the few untouched by the grandiose nineteenth-century demolition and reconstruction projects carried out by Baron Hausmann at the orders of the emperor Napoleon III. Many of its buildings dated back to the Middle Ages. Seedy and run-down in the mid-twentieth century, the Marais had experienced a rebirth. It was now one of the city's most popular residential, tourist, and shopping areas. Elegant stone mansions, museums, and libraries sat beside trendy bars, antique shops, and fashion-conscious clothing salons.

With a final flourish of his tobacco-stained hands, the driver pulled up outside the front door of the Hotel des Chevaliers — a small boutique hotel scarcely a block from the ancient tree-lined elegance of the Place des Vosges. “We arrive, m'sieurl And in record time!” he announced. He grinned sourly. “Perhaps we should thank the rioters, eh? Because I think the flics,” he used the French slang word for policemen, “are too busy cracking their heads to hand out traffic tickets to honest men like me!”

“Maybe so,” Smith agreed, secretly relieved to arrive in one piece. He shoved a handful of euros at the cabdriver, grabbed his small carry-on bag and the travel kit he had picked up before boarding his flight at Dulles, and scrambled out onto the pavement. The Mercedes roared away into the night almost the second he closed the passenger door.

Smith stood quietly for a moment, savoring the restored silence and stillness of the damp street. It had rained here not long ago, and the cool night air carried a clean, crisp scent that was refreshing. He stretched limbs that had grown stiff in a cramped airline seat, then breathed deeply a few times to clear the lingering secondhand traces of the cabdriver's harsh tobacco out of his lungs. Feeling better and more awake, he slung his luggage over his shoulder and turned to the hotel. There was a light on over the door, and the night clerk — alerted by an earlier phone call from the airport to expect him — buzzed him in without trouble.

“Welcome to Paris, Dr. Smith,” the clerk said smoothly, in clear, fluent English. “You will be staying with us long?”

“A few days, perhaps,” Jon said carefully. “Can you accommodate me that long?”

The night clerk, a neatly attired middle-aged man alert despite the early hour, sighed. “In good times, no.” He shrugged his shoulders expressively. “But, alas, this unpleasantness at La Courneuve has caused many cancellations and early departures. So it will be no problem.”

Smith signed the register, automatically checking the names above his for anything suspicious. He saw nothing there to worry him. There were only a few other guests, almost all of them from other European countries or from France itself. Most, like him, seemed to be traveling alone. They were either here on urgent business or else scholars delving into the various nearby historical archives and museums, he judged. Couples bent on romance would have been among the first to abandon Paris in the wake of the nanophage attack and the ensuing riots.

The clerk brought out a small square cardboard box and laid it on top of the desk. “Also, this package came by courier for you an hour ago.” He glanced down at the note on top. “It is from the MacLean Medical Group in Toronto, Canada. You were expecting it, I think?”

Smith nodded, smiling inwardly. Trust Fred Klein to be on the ball, he thought gratefully. MacLean was one of the many shell companies Covert-One used for clandestine shipments to its agents around the world.

Upstairs in the privacy of his small but elegantly furnished room, he broke open the seals on the box and ripped through the packing tape. Inside he found a hard plastic case containing a brand-new 9mm SIG-Sauer pistol, a box of ammunition, and three spare magazines. A leather shoulder holster came wrapped separately.

Smith sat down on the comfortable double bed, stripped the pistol down to its constituent parts, carefully cleaned each component, and then put them back together. Satisfied, he snapped in a loaded magazine and slid the SIG-Sauer into the shoulder holster. He went to the window, which looked out onto the tiny courtyard behind the hotel. Above the dark slate rooftops of the ancient buildings on the other side, the eastern sky was touched by the first faint hint of gray. Lights were beginning to flick on behind some of the other windows facing the little cobblestone enclosure. The city was waking up.

He punched in Klein's number on his cell phone and reported his safe arrival in Paris. “Any new developments?” he asked.

“Nothing here,” the head of Covert-One told him. “But it appears that the CIA team in Paris has traced one of the vehicles it spotted in La Courneuve to an address not far from where you are now.”

Smith heard the uncertainty in Klein's voice. “It appears?” he said, surprised.

“They're being very coy,” the other man explained. “The team's most recent signal to Langley claimed preliminary success but omitted any specific location.”

Smith frowned. “That's odd.”

“Yes,” Klein said flatly. “It is very odd. And I don't have a satisfactory explanation for the omission.”

“Isn't Langley pressing the Paris Station for specifics?”

Klein snorted. “The head of the CIA and his top people are far too busy running emergency audits of the whole Operations Directorate to pay much attention to their officers in the field.”

“So what makes you think this surveillance team is zeroing in on a building in or around the Marais?” Jon asked.

“Because they've set their primary RV in the Place des Vosges,” Klein said.

Smith nodded to himself, understanding the other man's reasoning. The RV — or rendezvous point — for a covert surveillance team operating inside a city was almost always set up within easy walking distance of its intended target. It was usually a fairly public place, one busy enough to camouflage discreet meetings between agents as they exchanged information or relayed new orders. The Place des Vosges, built in 1605, was the oldest square in Paris and was perfect for this purpose. The bustling restaurants, cafes, and shops lining its four sides would provide ideal cover.

“Makes sense,” he agreed. “But knowing that doesn't do me much, good, does it? They could be snooping around any one of several hundred buildings in this neighborhood.”

“It's a problem,” Klein agreed. “Which is why you're going to have to make direct contact with the CIA team.”

Smith raised an eyebrow in amazement. “Oh? And just how do you suggest I go about doing that?” he asked. “Parade up and down the Place des Vosges waving a big sign asking for a meeting?”

“Something rather like that, actually,” Klein said drily.

With growing surprise and amusement, Smith listened to the other man explain what he meant. When they were through, Smith disconnected and entered another number.

“Delights of Paris, LLC,” a rich, resonant English voice answered. “No service too small. No bed left unmade. No reasonable request refused.”

“You thinking of a career move, Peter?” Smith asked, grinning.

Peter Howell chuckled. “Not at all. Merely a possible sideline to supplement my meager retirement pay.” He turned serious. “I assume you have news?”

“I do,” Smith confirmed. “Where are you?”

“A charming little pension on the Left Bank,” Peter replied. “Not far from the boulevard Saint-Germain. I arrived here all of five minutes ago, so your timing is impeccable.”

“How are you fixed for equipment?”

“No problems,” the Englishman assured him. “I paid a little call on an old chum on my way in from the airport.”

Smith nodded to himself. Peter Howell seemed to have reliable contacts across most of Europe — old friends and comrades-in-arms who would provide him with weapons, other gear, and assistance without asking awkward questions.

“So, where and when do we meet?” Peter asked quietly. “And with what purpose precisely?”

Smith filled him in — passing along the information relayed by Klein, though he described it as coming to him only from a “friend” with good contacts inside the CIA. By the time he was finished, he could hear the undisguised astonishment in the other man's voice.

“It's a funny old world, Jon, isn't it?” Peter said at last. “And a damned small one, too.”

“It sure is,” Smith agreed, smiling. Then his smile faded as he thought of the terrors that might lie in store for this small, interconnected world if he and the Englishman were only chasing yet another dead end. Somewhere out there, those who had designed the nanophages were surely busy brewing up an even deadlier batch of their new weapons. Unless they could be found and stopped — and soon — a great many more innocent people were going to die, eaten alive by new waves of murderous machines too small to be seen.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

An autumn breeze ruffled through the leaves of the chestnut trees planted around the neatly landscaped edges of the Place des Vosges. As the wind freshened, small gusts whipped through the spray of one of the burbling fountains. A fine mist of water droplets swirled sideways — staining the broad pavements and glistening like early morning dew on the lush green grass.

Impishly the breeze danced and curled around the weathered gray and pale rose stone facades of the covered galleries, the arcades, lining the square. In the northwest corner of the Place, cloth napkins pinned down by water goblets fluttered on the highly polished wicker tables of the Brasserie Ma Bourgogne.

Jon Smith sat alone at a table on the edge of the arcade, lounging comfortably in one of the restaurant's red leather-backed chairs. He looked out over the fenced-in square, paying careful attention to the many people strolling casually along its sidewalks or occupying park benches, idly tossing bread crumbs to the murmuring pigeons.

“Lin cafe noir, m'sieur,” a glum voice said nearby.

Smith looked up.

One of the waiters, a serious, unsmiling, older man wearing the bow tie and black apron that was a hallmark of Ma Bourgogne, slid a single cup of black coffee onto the table.

Smith nodded politely. “Merci.” He slid a few euros across the table.

Grumbling under his breath, the waiter pocketed the money, turned away, and stalked toward another table, this one occupied by two local businessmen making a deal over what looked like an early lunch. Smith could smell the fragrant odor of the plates piled high with saucisson de Beaujolais and pommes frites. His mouth watered. It had been a long time since breakfast at the Hotel des Chevaliers, and the two cups of strong coffee he had already consumed while waiting here were eating away at his stomach lining.

For a moment he debated calling the waiter back, but then he decided against it. According to Klein, this was the CIA surveillance team's primary rendezvous point. With a bit of luck, he might not have to sit here idle much longer.

Smith went back to watching the people moving through the square and among the surrounding buildings. Even at mid-morning, the Place des Vosges was reasonably crowded, full of students and teachers on break from the nearby schools, young mothers pushing infants in strollers, and squealing tots happily digging in the sandbox set in the shadow of an equestrian statue of Louis XIII. Old men arguing about everything from politics, to sports, to the odds of winning the next national lottery stood around in small groups, slicing the air with wide, vigorous gestures as they made their points.

Before the French Revolution, when it was still called the Place Royal, this beautiful little patch of open ground had been the site of innumerable duels. On every square inch where ordinary Parisians now enjoyed the autumn sun and let their pampered dogs run free, cavaliers and young aristocrats had fought and died — hacking at each other with swords or exchanging pistol shots at close range, all to prove their courage or to defend their honor. Though it was fashionable now to deride these duels as the hallmarks of a savage and bloodthirsty age, Smith wondered whether or not that was especially fair. After all, how might future historians characterize this so-called modern era — a time when some men were determined to slaughter innocents whenever and wherever the}' could?

A plain, plump, dark-haired young woman in a knee-length black coat and blue jeans passed close by his table. She noticed him watching her and flushed red. She walked hurriedly on with her head down. Jon followed her with his eyes, debating with himself. Was she the contact he had been waiting for?

“This seat? It is taken, m'sieur?” rasped a gravelly voice made hoarse by decades of smoking three or four packs of cigarettes a day.

Smith turned his head and saw the slender, ramrod-straight figure of an aged Parisian dowager glaring down at him. He had the overriding impression of a mass of immaculately coiffed gray hair, a deeply lined face, a prominent hawk-like nose, and a fierce, predator}' gaze. She raised one finely sculpted eyebrow in apparent disgust at his slowness and stupidity. “You do not speak English, m'sieur? Pardon. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

Before he could recover, she turned away to address her dog, a small, equally elderly poodle who seemed intent on gnawing one of the empty chairs to death. She yanked on his leash. “Heel, Pascal! Let the damned furniture fall to pieces on its own!” she snapped in idiomatic French.

Apparently satisfied that Smith was either deaf, dumb, or an imbecile, the old woman seated herself across the table from him — groaning slightly as she slowly lowered her creaking bones into the chair. He looked away, embarrassed.

“Just what the hell are you doing trespassing on my patch, Jon?” he heard a very familiar and very irritated voice ask quietly. “And please don't try to sell me some cock-and-bull story that you're here to see the glories of Paris!”

Smith turned back toward the old woman in amazement. Somewhere behind that mass of gray hair, wrinkles, and lines were the smooth, blond good looks of CIA officer Randi Russell. He felt himself flush. Randi, the sister of his dead fiancee, was a very good friend, someone with whom he shared dinner or drinks whenever they found themselves in Washington at the same time. Despite that, and though he had known that his presence right at her team's rendezvous point would eventually draw her attention, she had still managed to slip past his guard.

To buy himself some time to recover from his surprise, he took a cautious sip of his coffee. Then he grinned back at her. “Nice disguise, Randi. Now I know what you'll look like in forty or fifty years. The little dog's a nifty touch, too. Is he yours? Or standard CIA-issue?”

“Pascal belongs to a friend, a colleague at the embassy,” Randi replied briefly. Her mouth tightened. “And the poodle is almost as much of a pain in the ass as you are, Jon. Almost, but not quite. Now quit stalling and answer my question.”

He shrugged. “Okay. It's pretty simple, really. I'm here following up on the reports you and your team have been sending to the States for the past twenty-four hours.”

“That's what you call simple?” Randi said in disbelief. “Our reports are strictly internal CIA product.”

“Not anymore they're not,” Smith told her. “Langley's in a hell of a mess right now over this clandestine war against the Lazarus Movement. So is the FBI. Maybe you've heard.”

The CIA officer nodded bitterly. “Yeah, I've heard. Bad news spreads fast.” She frowned down at the table. “That stupid son of a bitch Burke is going to wind up giving the Agency the biggest black eye we've ever had.” Her gaze sharpened. "But that still doesn't explain who you're working for this time.“ She paused significantly. ”Or at least who you're going to claim you're working for."

Inwardly Smith cursed the continuing need to keep Covert-One's existence a tightly held secret. Like Peter Howell's, her affiliation with another intelligence outfit meant Smith had to tread carefully around her, concealing whole aspects of his work — even from those who were his closest friends, people to whom he would entrust his life. He and Randi had managed to work together before, in Iraq and Russia, here in Paris, and most recently in China, but it was always awkward dodging her pointed questions.

“It's no great secret, Randi,” he lied. He felt guilty for lying to her but did his best to hide it. “You know I've done some work for Army Intelligence in the past. Well, the Pentagon brass pulled me in again for this mission. Someone is developing a nanotech weapon, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff don't like the sound of that at all.”

“But why you, exactly?” she demanded.

Smith looked her straight in the eye. “Because I was working at the Teller Institute,” he said quietly. “So I know what this weapon can do to people. I saw it myself.”

Randi's face softened. “That must have been terrible, Jon.”

He nodded, mentally pushing away the sickening memories that still haunted his sleep. “It was.” He looked across the table. “But I guess it was even worse here — at La Courneuve.”

“There were many more deaths, and no apparent survivors,” Randi agreed. “From the press accounts, what happened to those poor people was absolutely horrible.”

“Then you should understand why I want a closer look at the men you spotted installing some kind of quote-unquote sensor equipment there the night before the attack,” Smith told her.

“You think the two events are related?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Don't you?”

Randi nodded reluctantly. “Yes, I do.” She sighed. “And we've managed to trace most of the vehicles those guys were using.” She saw the next question in his eyes and answered it before he could speak. “Right, you guessed it: They're all tied to a single address right here in Paris.”

“An address you've carefully avoided naming in any of your cables home,” Smith pointed out.

“For some damned good reasons,” Randi snapped back. She grimaced. “I'm sorry to sound so pissed off, Jon. But I can't fit much of what we've learned into any kind of rational, coherent pattern, and frankly, it's getting on my nerves.”

“Well, maybe I can help sort out some of the anomalies,” he offered.

For the first time, Randi responded with a faint smile. “Possibly. For an amateur spook you do have an uncanny knack for stumbling into answers,” she agreed slowly. “Usually by accident, of course.”

Smith chuckled. “Of course.”

The CIA officer leaned back against the chair, absently studying the people strolling past them on the pavement. Suddenly she stiffened, plainly incredulous. “Jesus,” she muttered in dismay. “What is this… old home week?”

Smith followed her gaze and saw what appeared to be an old, untidy Frenchman in a beret and an often-patched sweater ambling toward them, whistling, with both hands stuck into the pockets of his faded work-ingman's trousers. He looked more closely and hid a grin. It was Peter Howell.

The sun-browned Englishman sauntered across the street separating the restaurant from the square, came right up to their table, and politely doffed his beret to Randi. “A pleasure to see you looking so well, madame,” he murmured. His pale blue eyes gleamed with amusement. “And this is your young son, no doubt. A fine, stout-looking lad.”

“Hello, Peter,” Randi said resignedly. “So you've joined the Army, too?”

“The American army?” Peter said in mock horror. "Heavens, no, dear girl! Merely a spot of informal collaborating between old friends and allies, you see. Washing the hand that feeds me and all that. No, Jon and I simply popped by to see if you were interested in joining our little pact."

“Grand. I'm so glad.” She shook her head. “Okay, I surrender. I'll share my information, but that has to work both ways. I want all of your cards on the table, too. Get it?”

The Englishman smiled gently. “Clear as crystal. Fear not. All will be revealed in due course. You can trust your Uncle Peter.”

“Sure I can.” Randi snorted. “Anyway, it's not as if I have much real choice, not under the circumstances.” She pushed herself up slowly, carefully maintaining the illusion that she was an elderly woman somewhere in her mid-seventies. She tugged at the small poodle, dragging him firmly out from under the table where he had been futilely gumming one of Smith's shoes for the past few minutes. She switched back to her raspy, nasal French. “Come, Pascal. We must not intrude further on these gentlemen's company.”

Then she lowered her voice, making sure that only they could hear her instructions. “Now here's how we're going to play this. When I'm gone, wait five minutes and then head over to Number Six — the Victor Hugo house. Pretend you're tourists or literary critics or something. A white Audi with a dent on the right rear door will pull up there. Climb in without making a big fuss about it. Understand?”

Jon and Peter nodded obediently.

Still frowning, Randi moved away without looking back at them. She strolled briskly toward the nearest corner of the Place des Vosges — looking for all the world as though she truly were the epitome of a Paris grande dame out for her morning constitutional with her much-pampered poodle.

Ten minutes later, the two men stood outside the Maison de Victor Hugo, staring curiously up at the second floor, where the great writer, the author of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, had spent sixteen years of his long life. “A curious fellow,” Peter Howell remarked meditatively. “Prone to fits of madness in later life, you know. Someone once found him trying to carve furniture with his teeth.”

“Much like Pascal,” Smith suggested.

Peter looked surprised. “The famous philospher and mathematician?”

“No,” Smith said, grinning. “Randi's dog.”

“Dear me,” Peter replied wryly. “The things one learns in Paris.” He glanced casually over his shoulder. “Ah, our chariot awaits.”

Smith turned around and saw the white Audi, complete with its dented rear door, stopping alongside the curb. He and Peter slid into the backseat. The car pulled away immediately, drove around the Place des Vosges, and swung left back onto the rue de Turenne. From there, the sedan began making a series of seemingly random turns, moving ever deeper into the heart of the maze of one-way streets that made up the Marais District.

Jon watched the sallow-faced driver, a heavyset man wearing a cloth cap, for a few moments. “Hello, Max,” he said at last.

“Morning, Colonel,” the other man said, grinning in the rearview mirror. “Nice to see you again.”

Smith nodded. He and Max had once spent a great many hours in each other's company — trailing a group of Arab terrorists all the way from Paris to the Spanish coast. The CIA operative might not be the brightest star in the Agency's firmament, but he was a very competent field agent.

“Are we being followed?” Smith asked, seeing the way the other man's eyes were always in motion, checking every aspect of the environment around the Audi as he drove through the traffic-choked Paris streets.

Max shook his head confidently. “Nope. This is just a precaution. We're being extra careful, is all. Randi's sort of on-edge right now.”

“Care to tell me why?”

The CIA agent snorted. “You'll find out soon enough, Colonel.” He turned the Audi off into a narrow passageway. Tall stone buildings soared on either side, blotting out any real sight of the sun or sky. He parked right behind a gray Renault van blocking most of the alley. “Last stop,” he said.

Smith and Peter got out.

The back doors of the van popped open, revealing a crowded interior crammed full of TV, audio, and computer equipment. Randi Russell, still wearing her disguise as an old woman, was there — along with another man, one Jon did not recognize. Pascal the poodle was nowhere to be seen.

Jon scrambled up into the Renault, followed closely bv the Englishman. They pulled the doors shut behind them and then stood awkwardly hunched over in the cramped space.

“Glad you could make it,” Randi said. She flashed a quick smile at them and waved a hand at the equipment mounted in racks on both sides of the van interior. “Welcome to our humble abode, the nerve center of our surveillance operation. Besides human watchers, we've been able to rig a number of hidden cameras at key points around the target.”

She nodded to the other man, who was sitting on a stool in front of a computer screen and keyboard. “Let's show them what we've got, Hank. Bring up Camera Two first. I know our guests are dying to find out what we're doing here.”

Her subordinate obediently entered a series of commands on his keyboard. The monitor in front of him flashed on immediately, showing a clear TV picture of a steep gray-blue slate roof. Antennae of every size, shape, and description sprouted from the roof.

Smith whistled softly.

'Yeah.“ Randi nodded flatly. ”These guys are set to send and receive just about every kind of signal you can think of. Radio, microwave, laser pulse, satellite… you name it."

“So what's the problem?” Jon asked her, still puzzled. “Why run so scared about feeding Langley the whole scoop?”

Randi smiled sardonically. She leaned forward and tapped her equipment operator on the shoulder. “Bring up Camera One, Hank.” She glanced back at Smith and Peter. “Here's the street entrance of the same building. Take a good close look.”

The picture on the screen showed a building five stories high. Centuries of pollution and weather had pitted and darkened its plain stone facade. High, narrow windows looked down on the street from every level, rising all the way up to a series of dormer windows that must open into attic chambers just below the roof.

“Now zoom in,” Randi told her assistant.

The image expanded rapidly, centering at last on a small brass plaque beside the front door. In deeply incised lettering it read:

“Oh, bloody hell,” Peter murmured.

Randi nodded grimly. “Exactly. That building just happens to be the Paris headquarters for the Lazarus Movement.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

An hour later, Jon Smith stood outside the door to his room at the Hotel des Chevaliers. He knelt down, checking the telltale — a thick black hair stretched between the door and the jamb, about a foot off the hall carpet. It was still there, completely undisturbed.

Satisfied that the room was secure, he ushered Randi and Peter inside. The CIA team's Renault van was too cramped for a prolonged meeting, and the nearby cafes and restaurants were far too crowded and public. They needed somewhere more private to try to find a solution to the predicament they suddenly faced. And at the moment, the Hotel des Chevaliers was the closest thing they had to a safe house.

Now back in her own likeness with short neat blond hair and wearing a black jumpsuit, Randi moved restlessly around the room. With her long legs and slender five-foot-nine-inch frame, she had often been mistaken for a dancer. No one seeing her now would make that mistake. She drifted back and forth like a caged and dangerous animal seeking a way out. She was deeply frustrated by the self-inflicted paralysis she sensed engulfing the CIA — paralysis that was robbing her of any serious backup or advice just when she needed it most. Her uncertainty over what to do with the stunning discovery her team had made left her feeling uneasy, even with her old friends and allies.

Randi cast a skeptical eye over the room's elegant furnishings and decor and glanced over her shoulder at Smith. “Not bad for someone on a U.S. Army expense account, Jon.”

“Just your tax dollars at work,” he replied with a quick grin.

“Typical Yank soldier,” Peter said, with a quiet chuckle. “Overpaid, overindulged, and overequipped.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Smith told him drily. He dropped into the closest chair and looked across the room at his two friends. “Look, we should stop fencing with each other and start talking seriously about what we're going to do next.”

The other two turned to face him.

“Well, I do admit that the position is a bit difficult,” Peter said slowly, settling himself into an overstuffed armchair.

Randi stared at the Englishman's leathery face in disbelief. “A bit difficult?” she repeated. “For crying out loud, why don't you ditch the stiff upper lip routine, Peter? The position is pretty well impossible, and you know it.”

“'Impossible' is an awfully big word, Randi,” Smith said, forcing a slight smile.

“Not from where I'm standing,” she snapped back. She shook her head in dismay, still pacing back and forth between the two men. "Okay, first you two heroes go and prove that some of our own people have been fighting a very nasty and very illegal secret war against the Lazarus Movement. Which puts everybody, including the president and prime minister, into panic mode, right? So they start piling onto the intelligence agencies— hitting us with immediate cease and desist orders for any covert actions involving Lazarus. Not to mention gearing up for congressional and parliamentary investigations that could easily run for months, maybe even years."

The two men nodded.

Randi frowned deeply. “Mind you, I've got no real problem with that. Anybody dumb enough to fall in with Hal Burke, Kit Pierson, and the others deserves to be crucified. Using blunt nails.” She took a deep breath. “But now, now, with all of this flak raining down around our ears, you both want to turn right around… and do what? Why, break into a Lazarus Movement building, of course! And not just any old building, naturally, but the headquarters for its whole Paris-based operation!”

“Certainly,” Peter told her calmly. “How else do you propose that we learn what they're up to in there?”

“Jesus,” Randi muttered. She swung toward Smith. “And you see it the same way?”

He nodded somberly. “I'm pretty sure that somebody outside the intelligence services was manipulating Burke and the others. Using their undeclared war as a cover for something even worse, something like what happened at the Teller Institute or here in Paris… only magnified a hundred times over,” he said quietly. “I'd like to find out who — and why. Before we learn the hard way.”

Randi bit down on her lip, mulling that over. She crossed the room to stare out the window at the little courtyard behind the hotel.

“Lazarus Movement or not, at least some of the people working inside 18 rue de Vigny knew the nanophage attack that hit La Courneuve was coming,” Smith continued. He leaned forward in his chair. “That's why they were setting up those sensors you saw. That's why they were willing to kill anyone who got in their way.”

'But the movement is anti-technology to its core — especially nano-technology!“ she burst out in frustration. ”Why would Lazarus supporters help anyone commit mass murder, especially using a means they oppose so vehemently? It doesn't make sense!"

“That may well mean that Jon's mysterious somebody — perhaps we should call him Mr. X, for short — is using the Movement as a cover for his real plans,” Peter pointed out. “In much the same way that we believe he used a few fools inside the CIA and the FBI. And MI6, alas.”

“You're giving this Mr. X a hell of a lot of credit,” Randi remarked acidly. She swung away from the window to face them both with her chin held stubbornly high. “Maybe too much.”

“I don't think so,” Smith said, with a grim look settling on his face. “We already know that X, whether it's a person or a group, has enormous resources. You can't design and produce hundreds of billions of nanophages without access to serious money. At least a hundred million dollars and probably a whole lot more. If you spent even a fraction of that on bribes, I'll bet you could buy the loyalty of quite a few people inside the Lazarus Movement.”

He stood up suddenly, unable to bear just sitting still any longer. Then he walked over to Randi. He put his hand gently on her arm. “Can you think of any other way to make the pieces we've got come together?” he demanded quietly.

The CIA officer was silent for a long, painful moment. Then, slowly, she shook her head and sighed. All her pent-up energy and irritation seemed to drain away.

“Well, neither can I,” Smith said softlv. “That's why we have to get inside that building. We have to discover what those sensor arrays were gathering at La Courneuve. Maybe even more important, we have to find out what happened to the information they collected.” He frowned. “Your technical people haven't been able to pick up anything being said inside, have they?”

Reluctantly she shook her head again, admitting defeat. “No. The place seems to be remarkably bug-proof. Even the windows are set to vibrate slightly to defeat laser surveillance.”

“Every window?” Peter asked curiously.

She shrugged. “No. Just those on the top floor and in the attic spaces.”

“Nice of them to hang out a sign for us,” the Englishman murmured, looking across the room at Jon.

Smith nodded. “Very convenient.”

Randi frowned at the two men. “Maybe too convenient,” she suggested. “What if it's a setup?”

“Chance we have to take,” Peter said lazily. “Ours is not to reason why, and so forth.” Before she could snap back at him, he donned a more suitably serious expression. “But I doubt it. That would mean these Lazarus chaps deliberately allowed you and your people to spot them setting up those little gray boxes of theirs. Why go to all that trouble and expense and risk just to nab a couple of broken-down old soldiers?”

“Plus one top-notch CIA field officer,” she said, after a brief hesitation. She looked down modestly. “That would be me, of course.”

Smith raised an eyebrow. “You're planning on coming along?”

Randi sighed. “Somebody responsible has to keep an eye on you two overaged kids.”

“You know what'll happen to your career if we get caught?” Smith asked quietly.

She shot him a lopsided grin. “Oh, come on, Jon,” she said, forcing herself to sound cheerful. “If we get caught inside that building, you know that saving my career will be the least of our worries!”

Now that she had made her decision, Randi busied herself by spreading a set of still photos of the Lazarus Movement's Paris headquarters out on the floor in front of them. The pictures showed the old stone building at 18 rue de Vigny from almost every angle, taken at different hours of the day and night. She also unfolded a detailed map depicting the Movement headquarters in relation to its nearest neighbors and the surrounding streets and alleys.

The three of them knelt down, closely scrutinizing the photos and the map — each looking for a way in that would not lead to immediate discovery and certain disaster. After a few moments, Peter sat back on his haunches. He regarded Randi and Jon with a slight smile. "There's only one realistic option, I'm afraid,“ he said, shrugging. ”It may not be particularly elegant or original, but it should serve."

“Please tell me you're not planning a head-on charge through the front door and straight up four or five flights of stairs,” Randi begged.

“Oh, no. Not my style at all.” He tapped the map gently with one finger. It came to rest on one of the apartment blocks adjoining 18 rue de Vigny. “To mangle Hamlet, there are more ways into a building, dear girl, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Smith looked at the map more closely and saw what the other man intended. He pursed his lips. “We'll need some specialized gear. Know anyone who can provide them for us, Peter?”

“I might just have a few bits and pieces of equipment stashed around Paris,” Peter admitted calmly. “The remnants of my old and wicked life in the service of Her Majesty. And I'm sure Ms. Russell's friends at the CIA station here can provide us with anything else we need. If she asks nicely, that is.”

Frowning, Randi studied the map and the pictures again. Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, great, let me guess,” she said, sighing under her breath. “You're planning one of those 'defying the laws of gravity' deals again, aren't you?”

Peter looked at her in pretended shock. “Defying the laws of gravity?” he repeated, shaking his head. “Not at all. In point of fact, we shall be obeying gravity's imperious demands,” he said with a sly grin. “After all, what goes up must come down.”

Chapter Forty

It was after midnight, but there were still quite a few revelers and pleasantly sated late-night diners strolling home through the well-lit streets of Paris. Set apart from most of the bustling cafes, brasseries, and clubs of the Marais District, the rue de Vigny was quieter than most, but it, too, had its share of pedestrians.

One, a wrinkled old woman well bundled up against the chill of the autumn night, hobbled painfully up the street. Her high heels echoed on the worn cobblestones. She kept her large cloth handbag clutched tightly under one arm, clearly determined to defend her property against any lurking thieves. Footsore and weary, she paused briefly outside Number 18, resting for a moment to catch her breath. Lights glowed in the upper-floor windows beneath the old stone building's steeply angled slate roof. Those facing the street on the lower floors were dark.

Muttering under her breath, the old lady limped on to the adjoining four-story block of flats at Number 16. She stood in the recessed entryway outside the front door for a long, painful moment — first fumbling inside her enormous handbag and then apparently having trouble fitting her key into the lock. At last, she seemed to manage it. The lock clicked. With an effort, she pulled the heavy door open and tottered slowly inside.

The street was quiet again.

Minutes later, two men, one dark-haired, the other gray-headed, walked up the rue de Vigny. Both men wore dark-colored overcoats and carried heavy duffel bags slung over their shoulders. They walked side by side, chatting amiably in colloquial French about the weather and the absurdities of airport security these days — looking for all the world like two travelers returning home after a long weekend away.

They turned off the street at Number 16. The younger, dark-haired man pulled the door open and held it for his older companion. “After you, Peter,” he said quietly with a wave.

“Age before beauty, eh?” the other man quipped. He moved into the small, dark foyer beyond, murmuring a polite greeting to the elderly woman who stood there waiting.

Jon Smith ducked into the apartment building himself, but not before casually removing a strip of duct tape the “old woman” had stuck there to prevent the door lock from engaging. He balled it up, shoved it into his coat pocket, and allowed the door to close gently behind him.

“That was a nice piece of lock picking,” Smith complimented the bundled-up old lady standing beside Peter Howell.

Randi Russell grinned back at him. Beneath the disguise of wrinkles and lines that added forty years to her apparent age, her eyes were bright with nervous energy and excitement. “Well, I did graduate at the head of my class at the Farm,” she said, referring to Camp Perry, the CIA training facility near Williamsburg, Virginia. “It's nice to know my time there wasn't a total waste.”

“Where to now?” Smith asked.

She nodded toward a hallway leading out of the foyer. "Through there,“ she said. ”A central staircase runs all the way to the top. There are landings at each floor with doors leading to the separate flats."

“Any restless natives?” Peter wondered.

Randi shook her head. “Nope. There are lights showing under a few doors, but otherwise it's pretty quiet. And let's try to keep it that way, shall we, guys? I'd rather not spend the next twenty-four hours answering awkward questions down at the nearest Prefecture of Police.”

With Randi in the lead, the trio made their way carefully up the stairs — moving quietly past landings cluttered with bicycles, baby strollers, and small two-wheeled shopping carts. Another locked door, this one at the very top, yielded quickly to her lock picks. They stepped through the door and out into a rooftop garden of the kind so beloved by Parisians — a miniature urban glade created by a maze of large clay pots filled with dwarf trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. They were at the rear of the apartment building, separated from the rue de Vigny by a row of tall soot-stained chimneys and a forest of radio and TV antennae.

This high up, the chill autumn breeze carried the muted sounds of the city to them — car horns honking on the boulevard Beaumarchais, the shrill whine of motor scooters racing through narrow streets, and laughter and music drifting out through the open door of a nightclub somewhere close by. The floodlit white domes of the Byzantine-inspired Sacre Coeur basilica gleamed to the north, set high on the crowded slopes of Mont-martre.

Smith moved carefully to the edge and looked down over an ornate wrought-iron railing. In the darkness far below he could just make out a row of trash bins crowding a narrow alley. The wall of another old building, also converted into a block of flats, rose vertically on the other side of that tiny lane. Patches of warm yellow lamplight showed through the cracks in closed shutters and drapes. He stepped back a few paces, rejoining Peter and Randi in the modest cover provided by the roof garden's trees and shrubs.

On their right loomed the shadowy mass of the Lazarus Movement's Paris headquarters. The two buildings were adjacent, but 18 rue de Vigny was one story higher. A twenty-foot-high blank wall of stone separated them from the steeply sloping roof of their goal.

“Right,” Peter whispered, already kneeling down to open the first of their two duffel bags. He began handing out articles of clothing and gear. “Let's get started.”

Moving quickly in the cold night air, the three began transforming themselves from ordinary-appearing civilians to fully equipped special operators. First, Randi started by tugging off the gray wig confining her own blond hair. Then she peeled away the specially crafted wrinkles and lines that had added decades to her appearance.

All of them shed their heavy coats, revealing high-necked black sweaters and black jeans. Dark-colored watch caps covered their hair. They blackened their faces and foreheads with camouflage sticks. Their street shoes came off and were replaced by climbing boots. Heavy leather gloves protected their hands. All three donned Kevlar body armor and followed that by shrugging into SAS-style assault vests and belting on holsters for their personal weapons — Smith's SIG-Sauer pistol, a Browning Hi-Power for Peter, and a 9mm Beretta for Randi. Next, they struggled into rappelling harnesses and slung bags containing coils of climbing rope over their shoulders.

Peter handed around an assortment of special equipment. Last of all, he gave each of them two cylindrical canisters, about the size of a can of shaving cream. “Flash/bang grenades,” he said coolly. “Very handy for throwing the enemy into confusion. Quite popular as a gag at all the best parties, too, or so I'm told.”

“We're supposed to do this covertly,” Randi reminded him tartly. “Not plunge in shooting and start World War Three.”

“To be sure,” Peter replied. “But better safe than sorry, I think. After all, those fellows,” he nodded toward the high, dark shape of the Lazarus Movement headquarters, "may react badly if they spot us peeping in at them." He moved around Jon and Randi, inspecting and tugging at their harnesses and various items of equipment to make sure everything was secure. Then he submitted patiently while Smith performed the same last-minute check on him.

“Now for that little bit of wall,” Peter announced. He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a small air pistol already rigged with a titanium-barbed dart attached to a spool of nylon-coated wire. With a slight bow, he handed the assembly to Randi. “Would you care to do the honors?”

Randi stepped back a few feet. She peered up at the shadow-cloaked stretch of wall in front of them, scanning for what looked like a good anchor point. A narrow crack caught her eye. She sighted along the barrel of the air pistol, aiming carefully. She squeezed the trigger. The pistol coughed quietly and the tiny titanium dart shot out, trailing the wire behind it. With a soft clang, the barbs of the small grappling hook bit deep into the stonework and held fast.

Smith reached up and tugged firmly on the dangling nylon-coated wire. It stayed put. He turned to the others. “All set?”

They nodded.

One by one, they swarmed up the wall and hauled themselves cautiously onto the peak of the steep slate roof of the building at 18 rue de Vigny.

Seated behind the plain teak desk in his private office, Hideo Nomura observed the compressed-time computer simulation of the first Thanatos sorties with growing pleasure. A large screen showed him a digitized map of the Western Hemisphere. Icons indicated the constantly updated position of each Thanatos aircraft dispatched from his base here in the Azores — roughly twenty-five hundred miles off the American coast.

As each blinking dot crossed the Atlantic and soared above the continental United States, whole swathes of territory on the digital map began changing color — indicating areas struck by the windblown clouds of Stage IV nanophages his stealthly high-altitude aircraft would release. Different hues showed the predicted casualty rates for each pass. Bright red indicated near-total annihilation for anyone caught inside the indicated zone.

While Nomura watched, the metropolitan areas of New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Boston glowed scarlet, signaling the calculated deaths of more than 35 million American men, women, and children. He nodded, smiling to himself. In and of themselves, those deaths would be meaningless, merely the first taste of the necessary carnage he planned to inflict. But this first onslaught would serve a much larger purpose. The rapid destruction of so many of its most populous centers of governmental and economic power was sure to plunge the United States into crisis — rendering its surviving leaders completely unable to detect the origin of the devastating attacks being carried out against their helpless nation.

His internal phone chimed once, demanding his attention.

Reluctantly Nomura drew his eyes away from the computer-generated glory unfolding before him. He tapped the speaker button. “Yes? What is it?”

“We have received all the necessary data from the Paris relay point, Lazarus,” the dry, academic tones of his chief molecular scientist informed him. “Based on the results of Field Experiment Three, we see no need for further design modifications at this time.”

“That is excellent news,” Nomura said. He glanced back at the simulation. The dead zones it showed were spreading inland fast, reaching deep into the American heartland. “And when will the first Stage Four production run be complete?”

“In approximately twelve hours,” the scientist promised cautiously.

“Very good. Keep me informed.” Nomura switched off the attack simulation and called up another — this one constantly updating the work being carried out inside the huge aircraft hangars at both ends of his airfield.

It showed him that the crews assembling the components of his fleet of Thanatos drones were on schedule. By the time the first cylinders of the new nanophages rolled out of his hidden production facility, he would have three aircraft ready to receive them.

Nomura picked up his secure satellite phone and punched in a preset code.

Nones, the third of the Horatii he had created, answered immediately. “What are your orders, Lazarus?”

“Your work in Paris is finished,” Nomura told him. “Return here to the Center as soon as possible. Tickets and the necessary documents for you and your security unit will be waiting at the Air France desk at Orly Sud.”

“What about Linden and his surveillance team?” Nones asked quietly. “What arrangements do you wish made for them?”

Nomura shrugged. “Linden and the others have completed their appointed tasks efficiently. But I see no need for their sendees in the future. None whatsoever. Do you understand my meaning?” he asked coldly.

“I understand,” the other man confirmed. “And the equipment at 18 rue de Vigny?”

“Destroy it all,” Nomura ordered. He smiled cruelly. “Let us prove to a horrified world that American and British spies are still waging their illegal war against the noble Lazarus Movement!”

Chapter Forty-One

Smith crawled out along the high, sharp peak of the roof at 18 rue de Vigny. He used his hands and arms to pull himself along, preferring not to risk the noise his rubber-soled boots would make scraping and scrabbling across the roof's cracked slate tiles. He moved slowly, seeking whatever handholds he could find along the slick, slippery surface.

The Lazarus Movement headquarters was among the highest buildings in this part of the Marais, so there was nothing to block the cold east wind rushing across Paris. The frigid breeze keened through the array of antennae and satellite dishes clustered on the roof. A stronger gust swirled suddenly along the sheer slopes, tugging hard at his clothing and equipment.

Buffeted by this gust, Jon felt himself starting to slide off the ridge of the roof. He gritted his teeth and desperately tightened his grip. A hundred-foot drop beckoned, with nothing below to break his fall but iron-spiked railings, parked cars, and cobblestones. He could feel his pulse hammering in his ears, drowning out the faint sounds drifting up from the city streets far below. Sweating despite the cold, he pressed closer to the roof, waiting until the force of the wind eased just a bit. Then, still shaking slightly, he pushed himself back up and crawled on.

A minute later, Smith reached the modest shelter afforded by a large brick chimney. Randi and Peter were there ahead of him. They had already rigged an anchor line around the base of the chimney. He clipped on to it with a quiet, grateful sigh and then sat up, breathing heavily— uneasily perched like the others on the sharp ridge of the roof.

Peter chuckled, looking along the row at his two companions. “So here we sit,” he said quietly. “Looking for all the world like a rather sad and bedraggled band of crows.”

“Make that two ugly crows and one graceful swan,” Randi corrected him with a slight smile of her own. She clicked the transmit button on her tactical radio. “Anything stirring, Max?” she asked.

From his concealed post some distance down the rue de Vigny, her subordinate radioed back. “Negative, boss. It's all real quiet. One light came on a few minutes ago, up on the third floor, but otherwise there's no sign of anyone coming or going.”

Satisfied, she nodded to the others. “We're clear.”

“Right,” Smith said flatly. “Let's get this done.”

One by one, they edged closer to the chimney and prepared their rap-pelling gear — taking special care to ensure that their ropes, harnesses, and snap and descending links were correctly rigged.

“Who wants to go first?” Randi asked.

“I will,” Smith volunteered, looking down at the roof stretching away in front of him. “Tackling this was my bright idea, remember?”

She nodded. “Sure. Though 'bright' isn't exactly the adjective I would have used.” But then she laid a gloved hand gently on his shoulder. “Just watch yourself, Jon,” she said softly. Her eyes were troubled.

He flashed her a quick, reassuring grin. 'Til do my best," he promised.

Smith took a couple of deep breaths, steadying his jangled nerves. Then he swung around and slid slowly backward down the slope, carefully controlling his descent with one hand on the rope as it uncoiled. Tiny pieces of broken slate pitter-pattered ahead of him and then fell away into the darkness below.

Inside Number 18 rue de Vigny, the tall auburn-haired giant called Nones strode out of the third-floor office he had commandeered immediately upon arriving in Paris. Ordinarily reserved for the head of the Movement's African aid and education programs, it was the largest and the most beautifully furnished in the whole building. But the local activists had known better than to protest his curt decisions or to ask inconvenient questions. After all, Nones carried authorizations from Lazarus himself. For the time being, his word was law. He smiled coldly. Very soon, the Movement's followers would have cause to regret their unhesitating obedience, but by then it would be far too late.

Five men from his security detail waited patiently for him on the landing outside the office. Their packs and personal weapons were ready at their feet. They stood up silently at his approach.

“We have our orders,” he told them. “From Lazarus himself.”

“The orders you expected?” the short Asian man called Shiro asked calmly.

The third member of the Horatii nodded. “Down to the last detail.” He drew his pistol, checked it over, and then slid it back into his shoulder holster. His men did the same with their own weapons and then bent down to pick up their packs.

They split up. Two headed down the main staircase toward the small garage at the rear of the building's ground floor. The rest followed Nones up the stairs, moving determinedly toward the fifth-floor rooms occupied by the field experiment surveillance team.

Smith stopped his descent and balanced himself precariously right on the very edge of the roof. Holding the rope tight, he forced himself to lean far back into thin air, taking a good long look at the dormer windows raised above the slope on either side. These windows opened into small attic rooms just below the roof and just as the pictures they had studied earlier had shown — they were securely shuttered.

Smith nodded to himself. They weren't going to be able to break through those heavy wooden shutters, at least not without making a hell of a lot of noise. They were going to have to find another way into this building.

He leaned out farther, now peering down the side of the building below him. Lights glowed in the windows on the fifth floor, and their shutters were open. Moving in short, cautious bounds, he rappelled down the wall. There was very little noise — just the quiet creak of the rope as it slid through the metal descending link on his harness and the soft thud of his boots as he hit the wall and then pushed off again. Twenty feet down, he tightened his grip on the rope, braking himself to a stop right next to one of those lighted windows.

He glanced up.

Randi and Peter were there at the edge of the roof, two dark shapes outlined against the black, star-filled sky. They were looking down over their shoulders at him — waiting for his signal that it was safe to come ahead.

Smith motioned for them to hold where they were. Then he craned his neck, trying to take a good look through the closest window. He had the fleeting impression of a long, narrow room — one that ran at least half the length of this side of the building. Several of the other windows on this floor opened into this large chamber.

Inside, an assortment of computers, video monitors, radio receivers, and satellite relay systems were stacked on a row of tables pushed up against the opposite wall. Other tables and more equipment were set at right angles, breaking the room up into a series of improvised computer workstations or bays, and power and data transfer cables snaked across a bare hardwood floor. The walls themselves were dingy, stained by centuries of use and roughly daubed with cracked and peeling paint.

Off in one dark corner Smith could make out a row of six cots. Four of them were occupied. He could see stocking feet protruding out from under coarse woolen blankets.

But at least two men were awake and hard at work. One, an older man with white hair and a scruffy beard, sat at a computer console, entering keyboard commands with lightning-fast fingers. Images flashed on and off the monitor in front of him at a dizzying pace. The second man wore a headset and sat in a chair next to one of the satellite communications systems. He leaned forward, listening closely to the signals coming through his earphones and occasionally making small adjustments to its controls. He was younger and clean-shaven, and his dark brown eyes and olive-toned skin somehow suggested the sun-drenched lands of southern Europe. Was he a Spaniard? An Italian?

Jon shrugged. Spaniard, Italian, or someone from the South Bronx. What did it really matter? The Lazarus Movement recruited its activists from around the world. At the moment, only one thing was important. They were not going to be able to enter 18 rue de Vigny unobserved — at least not on this floor. He glanced down, examining the rows of darkened windows below.

Suddenly, on the very edge of his vision, he caught a flicker of movement inside the room. Smith saw the bearded white-haired man swivel away from his keyboard and stand up. He seemed surprised but not unduly alarmed as four more men filed into the room through a narrow arched doorway.

Smith watched carefully. These newcomers were hard-faced men dressed in dark clothing, with bulging satchels slung over their shoulders. Two carried drawn pistols. A third held a shotgun cradled in his arms. The fourth man, much taller than the others and evidently the leader, snapped an order to his men. They split up immediately — each moving purposefully toward a different part of the room. The big auburn-haired giant glanced briefly toward the row of windows and then turned away. With a sinister fluid grace he drew a pistol out of his shoulder holster.

Jon felt his eyes widen in stunned disbelief. A shiver of superstitious dread ran down his spine. He had seen that same face and those same startling green eyes before — just six days ago. They belonged to the terrorist leader who had nearly killed him in personal combat outside the Teller Institute. This was impossible, he thought desperately. Absolutely impossible. How could a man wholly consumed by nanophages rise from the grave?

Chapter Forty-Two

Nones turned away from the windows toward Willem Linden. Slowly, he brought his pistol on-target. He flipped the safety off with one huge thumb.

The white-haired Dutchman stared at the weapon aimed straight at his forehead. He turned pale. “What are you doing?” he stammered.

“This is your severance package. Your services are no longer required,” Nones told him drily. “But Lazarus thanks you for your efforts on his behalf. Farewell, Herr Linden.”

The third of the Horatii waited just long enough to watch the horrified understanding enter the other man's eyes. Then Nones pulled the trigger twice — firing two rounds into Linden's head at point-blank range. Blood, shards of bone, and bits of brain flew out the back of the Dutchman's shattered skull and spattered against the wall. The dead man fell away and crumpled to the floor in a heap.

In that same moment, a shotgun blast echoed from the darkened corner of the room — followed immediately by a second and then a third blast. Nones glanced in that direction. One of his three men had just finished slaughtering the four surveillance team members who had been sleeping. Trapped in their cots, they were easy prey. Fired at a range of less than ten feet, three twelve-gauge rounds filled with buckshot tore them into pitiful shreds of torn flesh and broken bone.

The big man heard a sudden choked-off cry of fear off to his left. He swiveled that way fast, seeing the youngest member of Linden's team, the Portuguese signals expert named Vitor Abrantes, staggering to his feet. Abrantes yanked frantically at his headset, but he was still tethered to the satellite transmitter by a twisted length of audio cable.

Nones fired twice more while moving. The first 9mm round hit the young man high up in the chest. The second tore into his left shoulder and spun him around in a complete circle. White-faced with shock, Abrantes toppled backward against the transmitter. Moaning, he slid to the floor and sat clutching his smashed shoulder.

Frowning at his own sloppiness, Nones took a step closer to the wounded man, raising his pistol again. This time he would aim with more care and precision. He sighted along the barrel. His finger tightened on the trigger, starting to squeeze it…

But then the window beside him exploded inward — flying apart in a tinkling cloud of sharp-edged glass shards.

Still hanging in his rappelling harness just outside the room, Jon Smith saw the wave of cold-blooded butchery begin inside. These bastards were killing their own people, he realized abruptly — clearing away loose ends, evidence, and potential witnesses. Witnesses and evidence he urgently needed. Gripped by a wave of white-hot fury, he reacted instantly, tugging his SIG-Sauer pistol out of the holster on his hip. He aimed at the glass.

Three rapid shots fired from top to bottom blew open the window, spraying broken glass and bullets through an arc inside the room. Before the last shards stopped falling, he shoved the pistol back into its holster and yanked one of his two flash/bang grenades out of a leg pouch strapped to his left thigh. His gloved right thumb pulled the ring. The grenade's safety spoon flipped up.

Smith lobbed the black cylinder in through the shattered window and shoved off hard from the wall with his boots, moving directly away from the opening. He reached the end of his pendulum arc, pushed away again even harder, and began swinging back toward the window, flying even faster now.

And then the grenade went off — detonating in a rapid-fire burst of blinding flashes and earsplitting explosions intended to stun and disorient anyone caught within its burst radius. A dense cloud of smoke rolled outward, swirling madly in air roiled by the continuing staccato series of bangs.

Jon came soaring through the window feetfirst. He landed heavily on the floor, folded up, and then rolled prone. Small pieces of glass crunched beneath him. He pulled his SIG-Sauer out again, already searching for targets through the haze and smoke.

Smith looked first for the big green-eyed man. There were smeared streaks of blood on the hardwood floor where he had been standing when the window exploded in on him, but nothing else. The auburn-haired giant must have dived for cover when the flash/bang grenade went off. The blood trail he had left behind disappeared out through the arched doorway.

Stumbling footsteps sounded nearby, on the other side of a heavy table.

Smith reared up and saw one of the other gunmen come reeling out of the rapidly thinning smoke cloud. Though dazed by the grenade's nerve-shattering burst of noise and dazzling light, the gunman still held his pistol in a two-handed shooting grip. Blinking rapidly to clear his eyes, he caught sight of Jon's head poking above the table and swung around, trying to draw a bead on him.

Smith shot him twice, hitting him once in the heart and once in the neck.

The gunman folded over and fell forward, plainly dead before he hit the floor.

Jon dropped back behind the table and rolled frantically the other way, rapidly hitting the release on his rappelling harness to detach the climbing rope still trailing in through the window. While he was still hooked to it, the rope would hamper his movements. It would also act as a giant arrow pointing straight at him wherever he went. At last, he managed to tug the length of rope clear and crawled away across the scarred floor, staying low.

One down. Counting the big man, that left three to go, he thought grimly. Where exactly had the other enemy gunmen been when his grenade came sailing through the window? More important, where were they now?

He wriggled around the corner of a table and saw the white-haired man sprawled in front of him. Smith grimaced at the sight of the ugly mess seeping out from under the dead man's shattered skull. That bullet-riddled brain had held information they needed.

He crawled past the corpse, heading toward the darker corner of the room he had seen being used as makeshift sleeping quarters.

From somewhere behind him, a pistol barked three times in rapid succession. One round ripped low over his head. Another tore jagged splinters off the solid oak table leg next to his face. The third 9mm round slammed into his back and then tumbled away, deflected by his Kevlar body armor. It was like being kicked by a mule between the shoulder blades.

Gasping through a searing wave of white-hot pain, trying to suck air into lungs that felt as though they had been hammered flat, Smith threw himself onto his side. Two more shots tore into the floor, right where he had been lying a second before — gouging out huge chunks of wood before they ricocheted away. He curled around, frantically seeking a glimpse of the gunman firing at him.

There!

A shape wavered in his pain-filled vision. One of the gunmen knelt behind a table just about twenty feet away, coolly taking aim. Jon shot back wildly with the SIG-Sauer, squeezing the trigger as rapidly as he could. The pistol bucked upward in his hands. Rounds crashed through the table and hammered into the computer equipment piled on top of it. A hail of wood splinters, sparks, and broken pieces of plastic and metal went flying away through the air. Startled, the gunman ducked out of sight.

Smith rolled away across the floor, trying to find better cover. He stopped about midway down one of the U-shaped bays formed by three joined tables and risked a cautious glance back the way he had come. Nothing.

Then he looked up at the TV monitor on the table in front of him. He froze suddenly, seeing his own death reflected in its darkened screen.

The third enemy gunman rose up from the next bay over — already aiming a combat shotgun right at the back of his head.

Poised on the edge of the roof, Peter and Randi heard the sudden burst of gunfire, saw the blinding flash of a grenade, and then watched Jon abruptly hurl himself into the building below them. They exchanged appalled glances.

“Dear me. So much for subtlety and discretion,” Peter murmured. He pulled his Browning Hi-Power clear of his holster and held it ready.

More gunshots rang out in a rising crescendo, echoing back from the brickwork and stone of the surrounding buildings.

“Come on!” Randi snarled, already rappelling down the wall in short, fast bounds. Peter came flying down after her, moving with equal speed and longer jumps.

Knowing it was far too late, knowing that the gunman's finger was already starting to squeeze the shotgun's trigger, Smith twisted around desperately, trying to bring his own weapon on-target. The adrenaline pulsing through his system seemed to slow time itself — stretching out the nightmare moment before a hail of twelve-gauge buckshot blasted his head into bloody ruin…

And then another window exploded inward — torn apart by multiple 9mm rounds fired through it at close range. Hit several times in the chest and neck and head, the enemy gunman staggered to the side and then sagged across one of the tables. The shotgun fell from his lifeless fingers and clattered to the floor.

First Randi and then Peter swung in through the shattered window and dropped to the floor. Quickly they detached their ropes and took up positions on either side of Jon, scanning the long, narrow room around them for signs of movement.

Smith smiled weakly, still shaken by his narrow escape. “Glad you could make it,” he whispered. “Thought I'd have to handle this all on my own.”

“Idiot,” Randi murmured back, but her eyes were warm.

“Never miss a party,” Peter said softly. “How many have you left us?”

“One for sure,” Smith replied. He nodded toward the far side of the room. “He's in cover somewhere off that way. Another guy, their leader, I think, already hightailed it out through the door.”

Peter looked at Randi. “Shall we show our medical friend here how professionals flush game?” Peter turned to Smith. “You cover the door, Jon.” Then he took a flash/bang grenade out of the pouch on his thigh, pulled the ring, and held the safety spoon closed. “On five. Four. Three. Two…”

Peter popped up briefly and lobbed the grenade over the table. It sailed through a long, low arc, dropped out of sight, and exploded. A new cloud of smoke boiled across the room, lit from within by blinding, strobe-like flashes.

Randi was already in motion, running fast and bent low. She caught a glimpse of a darker shape moving in the smoke and dived for the floor. The surviving gunman staggered toward her. She fired her Beretta twice and watched him go down. He shuddered once and then lay still, staring back at her with lifeless eyes.

For a moment longer Randi stayed prone, waiting for the smoke and haze to dissipate. “All clear on this end!” she called out when she could see well enough to be sure.

“Check around to see if you can find anyone else still alive,” Smith suggested, rising painfull}' to his feet. He glanced at Peter. “Meanwhile, I think we should go after that other big bastard I saw.”

“The one you say scarpered out the door?”

Smith nodded grimly. “That's right.” He explained the uncanny resemblance between the tall green-eyed man he had seen here and the terrorist leader he had watched die in New Mexico.

Peter whistled softly. “Now, there's a nasty coincidence.”

“That's just it,” Smith said slowly. “I don't think it is a coincidence at all.”

“Probably not,” Peter agreed. He looked troubled. “But we'll have to be quick, Jon. The French may have most of their police deployed outside Paris at the moment, but all this racket is bound to attract their attention.”

Weapons drawn and ready, the two men moved cautiously toward the narrow arched doorway. Smith pointed silently at the smeared bloodstains on the floor. The large red drops led straight toward the open door. Peter nodded his understanding. They were tracking a wounded man.

Smith stopped just inside the room. He stared out through the doorway, seeing part of a black-and-white-tiled landing enclosed by a waist-high wrought-iron railing.

The spatters of blood continued on, heading right for the wide marble staircase that led down to the building's lower floors. The big man they were hunting might be getting away! Determined not to lose him, Jon impulsively darted forward through the arch, ignoring Peter's startled warning.

Too late Jon realized that the blood trail ended abruptly just two steps down. His eyes opened wide. Unless he had somehow learned to fly, the green-eyed man must have doubled back….

Smith felt himself hurled violently to the side. Knocked completely off his feet, he slid across the landing and slammed shoulder-first into the iron railing. His SIG-Sauer skittered away across the tile floor. For a moment he stared through the bottom of the railing out into a dizzying void.

Sickened and dazed by the impact, he heard a sudden muffled cry and then saw Peter thrown past him. The Englishman tumbled head over heels over the wide lip of the staircase. He disappeared out of sight in a diminishing clatter and rattle of loose equipment.

Smiling cruelly, the auburn-haired giant swung back toward Smith. His face, flayed by razor-sharp shards of glass, was a mask of bright red blood. One ravaged socket was empty, but a single green eye gleamed fiercely out of the other.

Jon scrambled to his feet, coldly aware of the enormous drop right at his back. Quickly he drew the combat knife sheathed at his waist. He crouched lower, holding the blade at his side.

Undeterred by the sight of the knife, the big man stalked toward him. His huge hands moved in small, deceptively lazy circles as he came forward, ready to strike out, to maim, and then to kill. His smile grew wider.

Through narrowed eyes, Smith watched him come closer. Just a bit nearer, you son of a bitch, he thought. He swallowed hard — fighting down a growing sense of fear at the other man's implacable approach. He did not have any real illusions about the likely outcome of sustained close-quarters combat against this man. Even half-blinded, this foe was much taller, stronger, and undoubtedly far more skilled in hand-to-hand fighting than he was.

The big auburn-haired man saw the fear on his face. He laughed and shook more blood away before it dripped in his one good eye. “What? No stomach for battle without a gun in your hand?” he asked softly in a cynical, mocking tone.

Refusing to be goaded into premature action, Jon stayed still, ready to react fast to any opening. He kept his own gaze fixed on the other man's single eye — knowing that it would telegraph any real move.

The bright green eye flickered suddenly. There it was!

Smith came on-guard.

Moving with terrifying speed, the big man spun through a tight arc, aiming a dazzlinglv fast elbow strike at Jon's face. He yanked his head to the side just in time. The killing blow missed by a fraction of an inch.

Smith blocked another powerful strike with his own left forearm. The world blurred red around him and he felt the stitches there rip loose. The massive impact knocked him backward against the railing. Panting, he crouched lower still.

Grinning hugely now, the green-eyed man closed in again. One of his hands stayed ready to block any knife thrust. The other powerful fist drew back, preparing yet another hammer blow — one that would either drive Smith back over the railing to his death or crush his skull.

Instead, Jon threw himself forward, diving right under the taller man's legs. He whirled around and scrambled upright just in time to meet another series of attacks — rapid-fire blows that he narrowly parried with his own left hand and both forearms. The force in them slammed him back against the wall, driving the air out of his lungs. Desperately he slashed out with the knife, forcing the other man back — not far, just a few short steps, just far enough to put his back against the iron railing.

It was now or never, Smith told himself.

With a wild yell, he yanked the last flash/bang grenade out of his leg pouch and hurled it with all his remaining strength straight into his foe's face. Reacting instinctively, the big man batted the harmless grenade aside with both hands, laying himself wide open for the first time.

In that single frozen moment of time, Jon lunged — striking with the point of his combat knife. Only the very tip of the blade plunged into the middle of the big man's remaining green eye. But that was enough. Blood and fluid poured out of the new and terrible wound.

Blinded, the auburn-haired giant roared in mingled fury and agony. He lashed out violently, knocking the knife from Smith's hand. He stumbled forward with his arms spread wide in one last bid to trap his unseen opponent and crush him.

Moving fast, Jon ducked under those massive outstretched arms and punched the bigger man hard in the throat — crushing his larynx. Immediately Jon jumped back again, determined to stay safely out of reach.

Gasping, panting, straining frantically for the oxygen he desperately needed but could no longer draw in, the giant slid slowly to his knees. Beneath the dripping blood, his skin was turning blue. Despairingly he reached out one last time — still trying to seize the man who had killed him. Then his arm dropped. He slumped to the floor and rolled over onto his back, lying there with his empty eye sockets staring blindly up at the ceiling.

Exhausted, Smith fell to his own knees.

From somewhere down below a new fusillade of gunfire thundered suddenly, echoing noisily up the central staircase. Smith staggered upright, scooped up his pistol from the floor where it had fallen, and ran toward the head of the stairs.

He saw Peter trudging slowly up the staircase, limping painfully. “Took a damned long, hard spill, Jon,” the other man explained, seeing his concerned face. “Managed to hang on to my Browning, though.” He smiled thinly. “That was just as well. You see, I tumbled right into two more of those fellows coming up the other way.”

“I guess the}- won't be bothering us any longer?” Smith suggested.

“Not in this life, at least,” Peter agreed drily.

“Jon! Peter! Come here! Quick!”

Both men turned at the sound of Randi's voice, urgently summoning them. They ran back into the room.

The CIA officer was kneeling beside one of the bodies. She looked up at them in amazement. “This guy is still alive!”

Chapter Forty-Three

With Peter right on his heels, Smith hurried to Ranch's side and knelt down to examine the lone survivor. It was the younger man he had seen through the window, the one who had been listening to signals sent over a satellite communications relay. He had been shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the chest.

“See what you can do for the poor fellow,” Peter suggested. “Find out what he knows. Meanwhile I'll take a quick prowl around to see what else I can uncover in this shambles.”

Peter moved off to begin a systematic search of the bodies and any equipment and electronics that might be left undamaged in the bullet-riddled room. Meanwhile, Smith stripped off one of his gloves and felt for a pulse in the wounded man's neck. The pulse was still there, but it was very weak, fast, and fading. The young man's skin was also pale and cold and wet to the touch. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing in shallow, labored gasps.

Smith glanced at Randi. “Elevate his feet a few inches,” he said quietly. “He's pretty deep in shock.”

She nodded and lifted the injured man's feet slightly. To hold them in place, she grabbed a thick computer manual from the nearest table and slid it carefully under his calves.

Working swiftly, with gentle fingers, Smith carefully probed the young man's wounds, pulling away clothing to get a good look at the various bullet entry and exit points. He frowned. The shattered left shoulder was bad enough. Most surgeons would urge the immediate amputation of that arm. The other injury was far worse. His face darkened as he traced the extent of the massive exit wound high up on the young man's back. Moving at the speed of sound, the 9mm round had inflicted enormous damage as it tore through his chest — shattering bone, shredding blood vessels, and pulverizing vital tissue across an ever-wider area.

Jon did what little he could. First, he shook out a field dressing kit from one of the pouches on his assault vest. Among other things, it contained two rolled-up sheets of plastic in a sealed bag. He tore the bag open with his teeth, unrolled the pieces of plastic, and then firmly pressed them into place over the two holes in the wounded man's chest — making the injury airtight. With that done, he taped sterile gauze dressings over the plastic in an effort to control the bleeding.

He looked up to find Randi watching him. She raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question.

Smith shook his head slightly. The wounded man was dying. His efforts would only slow the process, not prevent it. There was simply too much damage, too much internal hemorrhaging. Even if they could get him to an emergency room in the next few minutes, the effort would be wasted.

Randi sighed. She stood up. “Then I'll go take another look around myself,” she said. She tapped her watch. "Don't wait too long, Jon. By now someone in the neighborhood will have called the cops about all the noise. Max will give us a heads-up if he hears anything definite on the scanner, but we need to be long gone before they get here."

He nodded. Coming right on the heels of Burke and Pierson's secret war against the Lazarus Movement, the arrest of a serving U.S. Army officer and a CIA agent inside the Movement's shot-up Paris headquarters building would only confirm every paranoid conspiracy theorist's worst fears and suspicions.

Randi tossed him a bloodstained wallet. “I found this in one of his pockets,” she said. “The ID could be a fake, I suppose. But if so, it's a top-notch job.”

Smith flipped it open. It contained an international driver's license made out in the name of Vitor Abrantes, with a permanent address shown in Lisbon. Abrantes. He spoke the name out loud.

The dying man's eyes fluttered open. His skin was ashen.

“You're Portuguese?” Smith said.

“Sim. Yes. Eu sou Portuguese.” Abrantes nodded faintly.

“Do you know who shot you?” Smith asked quietly.

The young Portuguese shivered. “Nones,” he whispered. “One of the Horatii.”

The Horatii? Smith puzzled over that. The word, which sounded Latin, rang a bell somewhere in the back of his mind. He thought it was something he had seen or heard here in Paris in the past, but he couldn't pin it down — at least right away.

“Jon!” Randi called in excitement. “Take a look at this!”

He glanced up. She was standing at the computer where he had seen the older white-haired man working. She swung the monitor toward him. Caught in some kind of programming loop, the computer was playing the same piece of digital imagery over and over again — footage of pedestrian-filled streets, apparently captured and transmitted by an aircraft flying low overhead. Three words blinked in red in the lower right-hand corner of the imagery: NANOPHAGE RELEASE INITIATED

“My God!” Smith realized suddenly. “They hit La Courneuve from the air.”

“Looks that way,” Randi agreed grimly. “I suppose that's easier and more effective than setting these horrible weapons loose on the ground.”

“A lot more effective,” Smith said, thinking it through fast. “Deploying the nanophages at altitude avoids relying solely on the wind or internal pressurization to spread the cloud. You get more control that way, and you can blanket a much larger area with the same number of devices.”

He turned back to Abrantes. The wounded man was drifting on the edge of death, barely aware of his surroundings. With luck, he might now answer questions that he would certainly have refused earlier. “Why don't you tell me about the nanophages, Vitor?” he suggested carefully. “What is their real purpose?”

“Once our tests are complete, they will cleanse the world,” the dying man said, coughing. Bubbles of blood flecked the side of his mouth. But his eyes held a fanatical gleam. With an effort, he spoke again. “They will make all things new again. They will rid the Earth of a contagion. They will save it from the plague of untamed humanity.”

Smith felt a shiver of horror run through him as the full impact of just what Abrantes was talking about hit home. The massacres at Teller and La Courneuve had only been trial runs. And that, in turn, meant the deaths of tens of thousands had been planned right from the start as field experiments — as tests to evaluate and further refine the effectiveness of these murderous nanophages outside the sterile confines of a laboratory.

He stared blindly at the images repeating over and over on the screen. The nanophages were more than just another weapon of war or terrorism. I hey had been designed as instruments of genocide — genocide planned on a scale unmatched in history.

Jon felt enormous anger welling up inside him. The thought of anyone rejoicing in the kind of cruel, inhuman butchery he had seen outside the Teller Institute triggered a feeling of fury beyond anything he had felt

in years. But to extract the information they needed it was vital that this young Portuguese hear the voice of a friend — of someone who shared his warped beliefs. With that in mind, Jon fought to regain control over his rampaging emotions.

“Who will control this cleansing, Vitor?” he heard himself ask gently. “Who will remake the world?”

“Lazarus,” Abrantes said simply. “Lazarus will bring life out of death.”

Smith sat back. A terrible and frightening image was taking shape in his mind. It was an image of a faceless puppeteer coolly staging a drama of his own maniacal creation. In one moment, Lazarus denounced nan-otechnology as a danger to mankind. In the next, he perverted that same technology for his own vicious purposes — using it to slaughter even his own most devoted followers as though they were laboratory mice. With one hand, he manipulated officials of the CIA, FBI, and MI6 into conducting a covert war against the Movement he controlled. With the other, he turned that same illegal war against them, rendering his enemies blind, deaf, and dumb at the critical moment.

“And where is this man you call Lazarus?” he asked.

Abrantes said nothing. He drew in a single short breath and then began coughing uncontrollably, retching, unable to clear his lungs. He was literally drowning in his own blood, Smith knew.

Quickly he turned the young man's head to the side, momentarily clearing a passage for the air he needed. Scarlet rivulets of blood spattered from Abrantes' twitching mouth. The coughing fit eased.

“Vitor! Where is Lazarus?” Smith repeated urgently. Randi left the computer she had been examining and came back to his side. She stood listening closely.

“Os Agores,” Abrantes whispered. He coughed once more and spat more blood onto the floor. He drew in another short, shallow breath. “O console do sol. Santa Maria.” This time the effort was too great. He jerked and spasmed suddenly, convulsed by another long, wracking paroxysm. When it passed, he was dead.

“Was that a prayer?” Randi asked.

Smith frowned. “If it was, I doubt he'll get any credit for it.” He looked down at the twisted body on the floor and then shook his head. “But I think he was trying to answer the question I asked him.”

Forty feet away, Peter stooped beside the corpse of the gunman Randi had shot. He rifled through the dead man's pockets, collecting a wallet and a passport. Quickly he flipped through the passport, mentally noting the most recent entry stamps — Zimbabwe, the United States, and France, in that order, and all within the last four weeks. His pale blue eyes narrowed in calculation. Most revealing, he thought coldly.

He pocketed the documents and moved on to inspect a bulky pack he had noticed earlier. The plain green cloth satchel stood off on its own in the nearest corner. And now that he thought back, it was identical in appearance to two other packs he had seen dumped in other parts of the room.

Peter drew aside the flap and peered inside.

He sucked in his breath, staring down at two foot-long blocks of plastic explosive wrapped together. They were wired to a detonator and a digital watch. Czech-made Semtex or American-manufactured C4, he decided, with an improvised timer. Either way, he knew that was enough plastic explosive to make one devil of a bang when it went off. And now he saw that the numbers on the watch were blinking rhythmically, steadily falling toward zero.

Chapter Forty-Four

“Ambassador Nichols is on the phone, sir,” the White House waiter said deferentially. “The secure line.”

“Thank you, John,” said President Sam Castilla, pushing away his plate of untouched food. With his wife away and the Lazarus crisis growing worse with every passing hour, he was taking his meals alone, usually, like tonight, on a tray in the Oval Office. He picked up the phone. “What's up, Owen?”

Owen Nichols, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, was one of Castilla's closest political allies. They had been friends since college. Neither man felt any need to stand on ceremony with the other. And neither believed in sugarcoating bad news. “The Security Council is moving toward a final vote on the nanotech resolution, Sam,” he said. “I expect it within the hour.”

“That fast?” Castilla asked in surprise. The UN almost never acted quickly. The organization preferred consensus and lengthy, almost interminable discussion. He had thought it would take the Council another day or two to bring the nanotech resolution up for a vote.

“That fast,” Nichols confirmed. “The debate's been strictly pro forma. Everybody knows the votes are there to pass this damned thing unanimously — unless we veto it.”

“What about the UK?” Castilla asked, shocked.

“Their ambassador, Martin Rees, says they can't afford to buck the international consensus on this issue, not after the revelations that MI6 was tied into this secret war against Lazarus. They have to go against us on this one. He says the PM's job is hanging by a thread as it is.”

“Damn,” Castilla muttered.

“I only wish that were the worst news I had,” Nichols said quietly.

The president tightened his grip on the phone. “Go on.”

“Rees wanted me to pass on something else he picked up from the British Foreign Office. France and Germany and some of the other European countries have been working on another nasty surprise for us, behind the scenes. After we veto the Security Council resolution, they plan to demand our immediate suspension from all NATO military and political roles — on the grounds that we might otherwise use NATO resources as part of our illegal war on Lazarus.”

Castilla breathed out, trying to control the anger he felt boiling up inside. “The vultures are circling, I guess.”

“Yes, they are, Sam,” Nichols said tiredly. “Between the massacres in Zimbabwe, Santa Fe, and Paris and now these stories about CIA-sponsored murders, our good name overseas is completely shot. So this is the perfect time for our so-called friends to cut us down to size.”

After he finished speaking with Nichols and hung up, Castilla sat for a moment longer, his head bowed under the weight of events that were moving beyond his ability to control. He glanced tiredly at the elegant grandfather clock along one curved wall. Fred Klein had said he thought

Colonel Smith was on the trail of something significant in Paris. The corners of his month turned down. Whatever Smith was chasing had better pan out — and quickly.

For a fraction of a second longer, Peter stared down at the activated demolition charge, unwillingly admiring the sheer thoroughness of the opposition. When it came to covering their tracks, he thought, these fellows never stopped at half-measures. After all, why be satisfied with killing a few potential witnesses when you could blow apart the whole building as well? The timer flickered through another second, still inexorably counting down toward its predetermined end.

He jumped to his feet and ran toward Jon and Randi, dodging around the worktables and bullet-smashed electronics gear. “Out!” he yelled, pointing to the windows. “Get out now!”

They stared at him, plainly mystified by the sudden urgency in his voice.

Peter skidded to a stop beside the two perplexed Americans. “There's at least one ruddy great bomb set to go off in this building — and probably more!” he explained fast, the words tumbling out of his mouth. Then he grabbed each of them by a shoulder and shoved them toward the two windows they had smashed open to get inside. “Go on! If we're lucky, we might have thirty seconds!”

Horrified understanding at last dawned on Jon's and Randi's faces.

They each grabbed one of the three ropes still dangling in through the windows. “No time to waste trying to clip into a harness,” Peter told them. “Just use the bloody rope!”

Smith nodded. He jumped up onto the stone window ledge, whipped a length of the rappel rope around behind his hip, brought it diagonally up and over the opposite shoulder, back across to the same hip, and then along his arm down to the hand he would use as a brake. He saw Peter and Randi doing the same thing with their own ropes.

“Ready?” Peter asked.

“Set!” Jon confirmed. Randi nodded.

“Then go! Go! Go!”

Smith leaned out, turned sideways toward the ground, and simply let gravity do most of the work, plunging down the side of the building in huge bounds. The ground rushed up at him at a dizzying pace. He could smell the nylon rope scorching through his leather gloves and feel it burning across his shoulder and hip.

He was aware of Peter and Randi keeping pace with him. All three of them came hurtling down the wall at high speed.

When he judged he was just twenty feet or so above the little cobblestone alley running behind the Movement headquarters, Smith tightened the grip of his braking hand and pulled that same arm sharply across his chest in a hard, fast movement. He did not want to risk hitting the ground at that speed, and going that fast there was no way he could brake gently or slowly. He slammed to a stop, dangling only ten or twelve feet above the ground.

In that instant, a series of enormous explosions tore through the upper floors of the building soaring above him — rippling from one end of Number 18 rue de Vigny to the other in a growing fury of flame and glowing superheated air. Hellish tongues of fire burst through every window, scorching the night and turning the darkness as bright as da}' in one blinding, awful moment. Broken pieces of stone and slate and other debris tumbled high into the air, lit from beneath by the inferno consuming the Lazarus Movement headquarters.

Smith felt his rope give way — ripped apart by the blast. He dropped, hit the ground hard, and rolled. Randi and Peter thudded down beside him. They scrabbled to their feet and ran for it, streaking down the darkened alley as fast as they could go, slipping and skidding on the dank, smooth cobblestones. Huge chunks of rubble were falling all around them — smashing onto nearby roofs or crashing down into the tight confines of the alley with killing force.

The trio burst out of the mouth of the alley and turned onto a wider cross street. Still running at full speed, they ducked into the recessed door of a small tobacco shop, seeking cover. A new wave of white-hot debris cascaded down across the surrounding streets and buildings, punching craters in roofs and pavements and setting new fires in its wake. The shrill anti-theft alarms going off in parked cars pummeled by the falling wreckage only added to the unholy din rising on all sides.

“Anyone have any brilliant ideas?” Randi said quickly. They could all hear sirens in the distance, drawing nearer with every passing second.

“We need to get clear of this area and drop out of sight,” Smith said grimly. “And fast.” He looked at her. “Can you call for help on that radio of yours?”

She shook her head. “My radio's kaput.” She yanked off the headset with a disgusted look. “I must have landed right on the damned thing when those bombs cut my rope. It sure feels like I did, anyway!”

A blue Volvo sedan came screeching around the corner from the rue de Vigny. It swung sharply in their direction and came roaring ahead. They were caught in its glaring twin headlights, silhouetted against the locked and barred door of the little tobacco shop. They were trapped, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Wearily Smith turned, fumbling for his SIG-Sauer, but Randi caught his arm and shook her head. “Believe it or not, Jon,” she said in amazement, “that's actually one of ours.”

The sedan braked hard, skidding to a stop just a few feet away. A window rolled down. They saw Max's astonished face peering up at them from behind the wheel. He grinned weakly. “Man! When that building blew up, I never thought I'd see you folks again — not in one piece anyway.”

“I guess it's just your lucky day, Max,” Randi told him. She scrambled into the front seat while Jon and Peter piled into the back.

“Where to?” the CIA agent asked her.

“Anywhere for now,” Randi said tersely. “Just put some distance between us… and that!” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the blazing pillar of fire roaring high into the night sky.

“Sure thing, boss,” Max replied quietly. He spun the steering wheel through a half-circle and pulled back onto the street. Then, keeping a wary eye on his rearview mirror, he drove away at a sedate but steady pace.

By the time the first fire trucks and police cars pulled up outside the blazing, bomb-gutted ruins of Number 18 rue de Vigny, they were already more than a mile away and heading for the outskirts of Paris.

The Forest of Rambouillet lay roughly thirty-five miles southwest of the city. It was a lovely expanse of woods, lakes, and ancient stone abbeys tucked away amid the tall trees. The elegant mansion and beautiful grounds of the chateau of Rambouillet stood in the heart of this rolling woodland. The chateau itself, more than six centuries old, had once been a weekend country retreat for several French kings. Now it served the same purpose for presidents of the French Republic.

The northern fringes of the woods, however, were miles removed from the glories of the chateau and mostly deserted — a haven for herds of skittish deer and a few wild boars. Narrow roads wandered here and there under the trees, providing access for hikers and for the occasional government forester.

In a small clearing just off one of those rough woodland tracks, Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith sat on a tree stump, bandaging the reopened knife wound on his left forearm. Finished, he put aside the tape and unused gauze. Then he tested his new field dressing, rotating his arm back and forth to make sure it would stand the strain of sudden movement.

Smith realized that at some point, the wound would need new stitches, but at least this bandage should stop the worst of the bleeding. With that accomplished, he pulled on a fresh shirt, wincing slightly as the cotton knit slid over fresh cuts, bruises, and knotted muscles.

He stood up, stretching and twisting as he did so in an effort to clear away some of the fatigue crowding in on his exhausted mind. A half-moon hung low in the west, barely visible above the canopy of the surrounding forest. But a small hint of pale gray light on the eastern horizon signaled the slow approach of dawn. The sun would be up in a couple of hours.

He glanced across at his companions. Peter was sleeping on the front seat of the Volvo, snatching whatever rest he could with the practiced ease of a veteran soldier. Randi stood next to a small black Peugeot parked at the far end of the clearing, quietly conferring with Max and another CIA agent — a junior officer named Lewis who had just driven out from Paris to deliver the new civilian clothes they needed. She was undoubtedly arranging for the immediate disappearance of their assault gear, weapons, and old clothing — of anything that might tie them to the carnage inside 18 rue de Vigny.

No one was in earshot.

Smith took out his encrypted cell phone, took a deep breath, and punched in the code for Covert-One headquarters.

Fred Klein listened to Smith's report of the night's events in silence. When he finished, Klein sighed heavily. “You're riding an awfully narrow rail between disaster and utter catastrophe, Colonel, but I suppose I can't argue much with success.”

“I sure hope not,” Smith said drily. “That would smack of rank ingratitude.”

“You're satisfied that this Abrantes was telling you the truth?” Klein asked. “About the relationship between Lazarus and the nanophages, I mean? What if he was only trying to lay another false trail — trying to send us rushing off in the wrong direction?”

“He wasn't,” Jon said. "The guy was dying, Fred. For all he knew, I was his sainted grandmother come down from heaven to escort him to the Pearly Gates. No, Vitor Abrantes was telling me the truth. Whoever

Lazarus really is, he's the son of a bitch who's been behind these attacks from the beginning. Plus, he's been throwing sand in everyone's eyes by stage-managing both ends of this war between the Movement and the CIA and FBI."

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “To what end, Jon?” Klein asked finally.

“Lazarus has been buying time,” Smith told him. “Time to run these perverted 'field tests' of his. Time to analyze the results and to reengineer the nanophages — making them more and more powerful and deadly. Time to develop and evaluate new methods of delivering them to his chosen targets.” He grimaced. “While we've all been running around in circles, Lazarus has been out there designing, developing, and testing a weapon that could wipe out most of the human race.”

“At Kusasa in Zimbabwe, the Teller Institute, and now La Courneuve,” Klein realized. “All the places showing up in those passports and other travel documents Peter Howell retrieved.”

“Exactly.”

“And you think this weapon is ready for use?” Klein asked quietly.

“I do,” Smith said. “There's no other reason for Lazarus to destroy the people and equipment he was using to monitor those experiments. He's clearing the decks — getting ready to strike.”

“What's your recommendation?”

“We pinpoint Lazarus and whatever lab or factory he's using to produce this stuff. Then we kill him and capture his nanophage stocks before they're dispersed for any large-scale attack.”

“Short and sweet, Colonel,” Klein said. “But not very subtle.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Smith demanded.

The head of Covert-One sighed again. “No, I don't. The trick will be finding Lazarus before it's too late. And that's something no Western intelligence agency has managed in more than a year of trying.”

'I think Abrantes told me most of what we need,“ Smith argued. ”The trouble is: My Spanish is fair to middling, but my Portuguese is nonexistent. I need a clear translation of what he said when I asked him where Lazarus was now."

“I can find someone to handle that,” Klein promised. He faded from the phone a moment. There was a small click in the background, and then he came back on the line. “Okay, we're set to record, Colonel. Go ahead.”

“Here goes,” Smith said. From memory, and trying to make sure he used the same pronunciation he had heard the dying man use, he repeated Vitor Abrantes' last words. “Os Agores. O console do sol. Santa Maria.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“Yeah.” Smith frowned. “Abrantes told me he was shot by a man he described as 'one of the Horatii.' If I'm right, I've already run into two of them — first outside Teller and now here in Paris. I'd like a better read on what those big identical bastards were… and how many more of them might be out there!”

Klein said, “I'll see what I can dig up, Jon. But this might take a while. Can you stay where you are for a bit?”

Smith nodded, looking around at the tall trees dappled in shadow and in fading moonlight. “Yeah. But make it as quick as you can, Fred. I have a bad feeling that the clock is running fast on this situation.”

“Understood, Colonel. Hold tight.”

The line went dead.

Smith paced back and forth across the clearing. He could feel the tension inside mounting. His nerves were stretched almost to the breaking point. More than an hour had gone by since Klein had promised to get back to him. The gray light in the east was much stronger now.

The sudden sound of a car engine startled him. He swung around in surprise and saw the little black Peugeot drive away, bouncing and rolling awkwardly along the heavily rutted forest track.

“I sent Max and Lewis back to Paris,” Randi explained. She had been sitting calmly on his tree stump, watching him pace. “We don't need them here right now, and I'd like to find out more about anything the French police have dug up inside what's left of the Movement headquarters.”

Smith nodded. That made sense. “I think—”

His cell phone vibrated. He flipped it open. “Yes?”

“Are you alone?” Klein asked abruptly. His voice sounded strained, almost unnatural.

Jon checked his surroundings. Randi was perched just a few feet away. And, operating on some sixth sense honed by years in the field, Peter had woken up from his catnap. “No, I'm not,” he admitted.

“That's extremely unfortunate,” Klein said. He hesitated. “Then you'll have to be very careful of what you say on your end. Clear?”

“Yes,” Smith said quietly. “What have you got for me?”

“Let's start with the Horatii,” Klein said slowly. “The name comes from an old Roman legend — a set of identical triplets sent into single combat against warriors from a rival city. They were renowned for their courage, strength, agility, and loyalty.”

“That sure fits,” Smith said, thinking back over his deadly encounters with the two tall green-eyed men. Both times, he had been very lucky to emerge alive. He winced. The thought of a third man with the same strength and skills still lurking out there was disconcerting.

“There's a famous painting done by the French neoclassical artist Jacques-Louis David,” Klein went on. “Called The Oath of the Horatii.”

“And it's hanging in the Louvre,” Smith said, suddenly realizing why the name had conjured up old memories.

“That's right,” Klein confirmed.

Smith shook his head grimly. “Swell. So our friend Lazarus has a love for the classics and a nasty sense of humor. But I guess that doesn't bring us any closer to finding him.” He took a deep breath. “Were you able to secure a translation of Abrantes' last words?”

'Yes," Klein said quietly.

“Well?” Smith asked impatiently. “What was he trying to tell me?”

“He said, 'The Azores. The island of the sun. Santa Maria,'” the head of Covert-One reported.

“The Azores?” Smith shook his head, surprised. The Azores were a group of small Portuguese-settled islands far out in the Atlantic Ocean, close to the line of latitude linking Lisbon and New York. Centuries ago, the archipelago had been a strategic outpost of the now-vanished Portuguese empire, but today it survived largely on beef and dairy exports and on tourism.

“Santa Maria is one of the nine islands of the Azores,” Klein explained. He sighed. “Apparently, the locals sometimes refer to it as 'the island of the sun.'”

“So what the hell is on Santa Maria?” Smith asked, barely controlling the irritation in his voice. Fred Klein was not usually so slow to get to the point.

“Not much on the eastern half of the island. Just a few tiny villages, really.”

“And in the west?”

“Well, that's where things get tricky,” Klein admitted. “It seems that the western end of Santa Maria is leased by Nomura PharmaTech for its global medical charity work — complete with a very long hard-surfaced runway, enormous hangar facilities, and a huge medical supply storage complex.”

“Nomura,” Jon said softly, at last understanding why his superior sounded so strained. “Hideo Nomura is Lazarus. He's got the money, the scientific know-how, the facilities, and the political connections to pull something like that off.”

“So it appears,” Klein agreed. “But I'm afraid it's not enough. No one's going to be persuaded by the purported last words of an unknown dying man. Without hard evidence, the kind of evidence we can show to wavering friends and allies, I don't see how the president can possibly approve an open attack on Nomura's Azores facility.”

The head of Covert-One continued. “The situation here is worse than you can imagine, Jon. Our military and political alliances are shredding like wet tissue paper. NATO is up in arms. The UN General Assembly is planning to designate us as a terrorist nation. And a sizable bloc in Congress is arguing seriously for the impeachment of the president. In these circumstances, an apparently unprovoked air or cruise missile attack on a world-renowned medical charity would be the last straw.”

Smith knew that Klein was right. But knowing that didn't make the situation they faced any more acceptable. “We may be damned if we do. But we'll die if we don't,” he argued.

“I know that, Jon,” Klein said emphatically. “But we need evidence to back our claims before we can send in the bombers and missiles.”

“There's only one way to get that kind of proof,” Smith pointed out grimly. “Someone has to go in on the ground in the Azores and get right up close.”

“Yes,” Klein agreed slowly. “When can you head to the airport?”

Smith looked up from the phone at Randi and Peter. They looked equally grim, equally determined. They had heard enough of his side of the conversation to know what was going on. “Now,” he said simply. “We're going now.”

Chapter Forty-Five

Outside the windowless confines of the Lazarus Movement nerve center, the sun was just rising, climbing higher above the embrace of the Atlantic. Its first dazzling rays touched the sheer cliffs of Sao Laurenco Bay with fire and lit the steep stone-terraced vineyards of Maia. From there, the growing daylight rolled westward across verdant forests and pastures, gleamed off the white sand beach at Praia Formosa, and at last chased the night's lingering shadows away from the treeless limestone plain surrounding the Nomura PharmaTech airfield.

Inside the Center, secure in neon-lit silence, Hideo Nomura read through the most recent messages from his surviving agents in Paris. Based on details supplied by paid informants on the police force, it was clear that Nones and his men were dead — killed along with all the others inside the bomb-ravaged building at 18 rue de Vigny.

He furrowed his brow, both puzzled and worried by this news. Nones and his team should have been well away before their demolition charges exploded. Something had gone badly wrong, but what?

Several witnesses reported seeing “men in black” running away from the building right after the first explosions occurred. The French police, though dubious at first, were now treating these reports seriously-blaming the mysterious forces opposing the Lazarus Movement for what looked like a major terrorist attack on its Paris headquarters.

Nomura shook his head. That was impossible, of course. The only terrorists targeting the Movement were men under his command. But then he stopped, considering the matter more carefully.

What if someone else had been snooping around inside 18 rue de Vign}? True, his intricately laid plans had succeeded in throwing the CIA, FBI, and MI6 into confusion. But there were other intelligence organizations in the world, and any number of them might be trying to pry into the activities of the Lazarus Movement. Could they have found anything there that might tie the La Courneuve surveillance operation to him? He bit his lower lip, wondering if he had been overconfident, entirely too sure that his many elaborate ruses would escape detection.

Nomura pondered that possibility for a while. Though it was likely that his cover was intact, it might be best to take certain precautions. His original plan envisioned a simultaneous strike on the continental United States by at least a dozen Thanatos aircraft — but assembling the required number of the giant flying-wing drones would take his work crews another three days. More important, he lacked the hangar space here to conceal so many planes from any unexpected aerial or space surveillance.

No, he thought coldly, he should act now, while he was certain that he still could, instead of waiting for a perfect moment that might never arrive. Once the first millions were dead, the Americans and their allies would be leaderless and too horror-stricken to hunt effectively for their hidden foes. When fighting for control over the fate of the world, he reminded himself, flexibility was a virtue, not a vice. He tapped a button on his internal phone. “Send Terce to me. At once.”

The last of the Horatii arrived moments later. His massive shoulders filled the doorway and his head seemed almost to brush against the ceiling. He bowed obediently and then stood motionless in front of Nomura's teak desk, patiently waiting for orders from the man who had made him so powerful and efficient a killer.

'Tou know that both of your companions have failed me?" Nomura said.

The tall green-eyed man nodded. “So I understand,” he said coolly. “But / have never failed in my duty.”

“That is true,” Nomura agreed. “And in consequence, the rewards promised to them now fall to you. When the time comes, you will stand at my right hand — exercising dominion in my name, in the name of Lazarus.”

Terce's eyes gleamed. Nomura planned to reorder the world to create a paradise for those few he believed worthy of continued life. Most nations and peoples would die, consumed over months and years by waves of unseen nanophages. Those allowed to live would be forced to obey his commands — reshaping their lives, cultures, and beliefs to fit his idyllic vision. Nomura and those who served him would wield almost unimaginable power over the frightened remnants of humanity.

“What are your orders?” the surviving member of the Horatii asked.

“We are going to attack earlier than first planned,” Nomura told him. “Three Thanatos aircraft should be ready for launch in six to eight hours. Inform the nanophage production team that I want enough full canisters to load those planes as soon as their preflight checks are finished. The first targets will be Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston.”

Lajes Field, Terceira Island, the Azores

Three people, two men and a woman, stood out among the small crowd of passengers deplaning from Air Portugal's Lisbon flight. Unencumbered by luggage, they moved swiftly through the slower currents of locals and bargain-hunting tourists and made their way from the tarmac into the airport terminal.

Once inside, Randi Russell stopped dead in her tracks. She stared up at a large clock showing the local time as noon and then back to the board showing flight arrivals and departures. “Damn!” she muttered in frustration. “There's only one connecting flight to Santa Maria a day — and we've already missed it.”

Walking on, Jon shook his head. “We're not taking a commercial flight.” He led them toward the outer doors. A short line of taxis and private cars stood at the curb, waiting to pick up arriving passengers.

She raised an eyebrow. “Santa Maria must be close to two hundred miles away. You planning to swim?”

Smith grinned back over his shoulder. “Not unless Peter really fouls up.”

Randi glanced at the pale-eyed Englishman walking beside her. “Do you know what he's talking about?”

“Haven't a clue,” Peter told her breezily. “But I noticed our friend there making a few sotto voce phone calls in Paris while we were waiting for the Lisbon flight. So I rather suspect he has something up his sleeve.”

Still smiling slightly, Smith pushed through the doors out into the open air. He raised his hand, signaling a green, brown, and tan camouflaged Humvee idling just down the road. It pulled forward to meet them.

“Colonel Smith and company?” the U.S. Air Force staff sergeant behind the wheel asked.

'That's us," Smith said, already tugging open the rear doors and motioning Randi and Peter inside. He hopped in after them.

The Humvee pulled away from the curb and drove on down the road. A quarter mile farther on, it swung toward a gate in the perimeter fence. I here a pair of stern-faced guards carrying loaded M16s checked their identity cards, carefully comparing faces and pictures. Satisfied, the soldiers waved them through onto the U.S. Air Force base at Lajes.

The vehicle turned left and raced down the flight line. Gray-camouflaged C-17 transports and giant KC-10 tanker planes lined the long runway. On one side of the tarmac, the ground fell away, eventually plunging almost straight down toward the Atlantic. On the other, bright green slopes rose high above the airfield, broken up into innumerable small fields by low walls of dark volcanic rock. The sweet scents of wild-flowers and the fresh salt smell of the ocean mixed oddly with the sharp, acrid tang of half-burnt jet fuel.

“Your bird arrived from the States an hour ago,” the Air Force sergeant told them. “It's being prepped now.”

Randi turned toward Smith. “Our bird?” she asked pointedly.

Jon shrugged. “A U.S. Army UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter,” he said. “Dispatched here by C-17 about the same time we flew from Paris to Lisbon. I thought it might come in handy.”

“Good thinking,” Randi said with barely contained sarcasm. “Let me get this straight: You just snapped your fingers and had the Army and the Air Force ship you a multimillion-dollar helicopter for our personal use? Is that about right, Jon?”

“Actually, I asked a couple of friends in the Pentagon to pull a string or two,” Smith said modestly. “Everybody's so worried about this nanophage threat that they were willing to bend some of the rules for us.”

Randi rounded on the leathery-faced Englishman. “And I suppose you think you can fly a Black Hawk?”

“Well, if I can't, we'll soon find out the hard way,” Peter told her cheerfully.

Chapter Forty-Six

Hideo Nomura paced slowly along the edge of the long concrete runway. The wind, blowing from the east, whispered through his short black hair. The light breeze carried the rich, sun-warmed smell of tall grass growing on the plateau beyond the fence. He looked up. The sun was still high overhead, just beginning its long slide toward the western horizon. Far to the north, a few clouds drifted slowly past, solitary puffs of white in a clear blue sky.

Nomura smiled. The weather was perfect in every respect. He turned, seeing his father standing behind him between two of Terce's hard-faced guards. The older man's hands were handcuffed behind his back.

He smiled at his father. “It's wonderfully ironic, isn't it?”

Jinjiro eyed him with a stony, cold reserve. “There are many ironies here, Lazarus,” he said coldly, refusing even to call his treacherous son by his own name. “To which do you refer?”

Ignoring the gibe, the younger man nodded toward the runway in front of them. “This airfield,” he explained. “The Americans built it in 1944, during their war against Germany and our beloved homeland. Their bombers used this island as a refueling point during their long transatlantic flights to England. But today, I will turn their own work against them. This airfield is about to become the staging area for America's annihilation!”

Jinjiro said nothing.

Hideo shrugged and turned away. It was clear now that he had kept his father alive out of a misguided sense of filial piety. Once the first Thanatos drones were airborne, there would be time to arrange a fitting end for the old fool. Some of his scientists were already working on different variations of the Stage IV nanophages. They might find it useful to test their new designs on a live human subject.

He strode toward a small knot of flight engineers and ground controllers waiting beside the runway. They wore headsets and short-range radios for communications between the aircraft hangars and the tower. “Is everything ready?” he asked sharply.

The senior ground controller nodded. “The main hangar crew reports they are ready for rollout. All canisters are onboard.”

“Good.” Nomura looked at his ranking flight engineer. “And the three aircraft?”

“All of their systems are functioning within the expected norms,” the man told him confidently. “Their solar power cells, fuel-cell auxiliaries, flight controls, and attack programs have all been checked and rechecked.”

“Excellent,” Nomura said. He glanced again at the ground controller. “Are there any unidentified air contacts we need to worry about?”

“Negative,” the controller said. “Radar reports nothing airborne within one hundred kilometers. We're in the clear.”

Hideo took a deep breath. This was the moment he had spent years planning, scheming, and killing to make a reality. This was why he had tricked, trapped, and betrayed his own father — all for this single glorious instant of sure and certain triumph. He breathed out slowly, savoring the delightful sensation. Then he spoke. “Commence Thanatos operations.”

The ground controller repeated his order over the radio.

“Open hangar doors.”

In response, at the southern end of the airfield huge metal doors on the nearest hangar began groaning apart, revealing a vast interior crowded with men and machines. Sunshine streamed inside through the rapidly expanding opening. It fell on the solar cells of the first Thanatos flying wing. They gleamed like golden fire.

“The first aircraft is taxiing,” the senior flight engineer reported.

Slowly, the enormous drone, with a wingspan wider than that of a 747, lumbered forward, clearing the doors with only feet to spare. Fourteen twin-bladed propellers whirred silently, pulling it out onto the runway. Clusters of thin-walled plastic cylinders were visible on each of the aircraft's five underwing pods.

“Don masks and gloves,” Nomura ordered. The controllers and engineers hurriedly obeyed, shrugging into the heavy gear that would give them limited protection if anything went wrong during takeoff.

Terce moved to his side, offering him a gas mask, respirator, and thick gloves. Hideo took them with a curt nod.

“And the prisoner?” the tall green-eyed man asked, in a voice muffled by his respirator. “What about him?”

“My father?” Hideo glanced back at Jinjiro, who was still standing bareheaded in the sun, rigid and unbending between his two gas-masked guards. He smiled coldly and shook his head. “No mask for him. Let the old man take his chances.”

“The second aircraft is taxiing,” the flight engineer reported, speaking loudly enough to be heard through his mask and breathing apparatus.

Nomura looked back at the runway. The first Thanatos drone was already two hundred meters away, slowly accelerating as it rolled north on its takeoff run. The second flying wing was emerging from inside the mammoth hangar — with a third just visible behind it. He pushed his father's impending death to the back of his mind and focused instead on watching his cruel dreams take flight.

Terce moved away, unslinging a German-made Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle from his shoulder as he went. His head swiveled from side to side, checking the armed guards he had posted at intervals along the runway. All of them appeared alert.

A slight frown crossed the big man's face. Counting the two men watching Jinjiro, there were ten sentries stationed at the airfield. There should have been twice as many — but the unexpectedly heavy losses he had sustained in New Mexico and then again in Virginia could not be made up in time. The deaths of Nones and his Paris-based security detail only made the manpower shortage worse.

Terce shrugged, looking westward out to sea. In the end, it would not matter. Nomura was right. Stealth outweighed firepower. No matter how-many soldiers, missiles, and bombs they possessed, the Americans could not attack a target they could not find.

He froze. Something was moving out there above the Atlantic, right near the edge of his vision. He stared harder. Whatever it was, the object was drawing closer at high speed. But it was difficult to make out through the thick, distorting lenses of his gas mask.

With a snarl, Terce tore off the mask and attached respirator and tossed them aside. At least now he could see clearly! A small dark green dot, racing low just above the ocean waves. It curved toward him, tilting slightly — growing larger fast. Sunlight flashed off spinning rotor blades.

Aboard the UH-60L Black Hawk, Smith leaned forward in the copilot's seat, peering at the airfield ahead of them through a pair of high-powered binoculars. “Okay,” he said loudly, shouting to be heard above the howl of the troop carrier's two powerful engines and its large, clattering rotors. "I count two An-124 Condor cargo planes near the north end of the runway, parked next to a big hangar. Also what looks like a much smaller executive jet, maybe a Gulfstream."

“What's that moving down near the south end of the runway?” Randi yelled in his ear. She crouched behind the forward cabin's two seats, holding on tight with whitened knuckles. The Black Hawk was shuddering and bouncing wildly as Peter fought to hold the helicopter just fifty feet above the rolling crests of the ocean waves — all the while flying at more than one hundred knots. He had brought them in at very low altitude to avoid being picked up by the airfield's radar.

Smith swung his binoculars to the right. For the first time, he saw the three huge flying wings lined up one after another on the long concrete strip. The lead aircraft was already moving faster and faster, rolling smoothly toward takeoff. At first, his exhausted mind refused to accept that anything so big and, at the same time, so fragile-looking could possibly be airworthy.

Then, in a flood of understanding, the facts and images fell into place, pulled from memory. Several years ago he had read up on NASA's scientific experiments with high-altitude solar-powered long-endurance robot planes. Nomura must have stolen the same technology for his own vicious ends. “Good lord!” he said, rocked by the sudden realization. “Those are Nomura's attack aircraft!”

Quickly he briefed the others on what he remembered of their flight profile and capabilities.

“Can't our fighter planes shoot them down?” Randi asked somberly.

“If they're flying at close to a hundred thousand feet?” Smith shook his head. “That's beyond the maximum ceiling for any fighter in our inventory. There's not an F-16 or F-l 5 or anything else we own that can fly and fight that high up!”

“What about your Patriot missiles?” Peter suggested.

“One hundred thousand feet is above their effective ceiling, too,” Smith replied grimly. "Plus, I'll bet those damned drones out there are built to avoid most radar.“ He gritted his teeth. ”If they're at high altitude, they'll be invulnerable and probably undetectable. So once those planes are operational, Nomura will be able to hit us at will — unleashing nanophage clouds over any city he chooses!"

Horrified by the danger he saw looming before the United States, Jon focused his binoculars on a small group of men standing together just off the runway. He drew in a short, sharp breath. They were wearing gas masks.

The world around him seemed to blur, slowing while his mind raced. Why were they wearing masks? And then, suddenly, the answer — the only possible answer — leaped out at him.

“Take us in, Peter!” Smith snapped. He jabbed a finger at the airfield. “Straight in!”

The Englishman glanced at him in surprise. “This isn't an attack mission, Jon. We're supposed to be scouting — not riding in with sabers drawn like the bloody cavalry.”

“The mission just changed,” Smith told him tightly. “Those planes are armed. That son of a bitch Nomura is launching his attack now!”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Frowning, Peter banked the Black Hawk tightly, turning in toward the airfield. Santa Maria's coastline loomed larger, rapidly taking on shape and definition as they flew toward it at one hundred knots. The Englishman turned his head for just a moment, looking at Randi. “You'd better break out the weapons.”

She nodded. The three of them were already wearing Kevlar body armor, and the helicopter had come equipped with three M4 carbines, cut-down versions of the U.S. military's M16 assault rifle. She moved back into the troop compartment, careful to keep a tight grip with at least one hand on anything bolted down.

Abruptly Peter banked the Black Hawk through another tight turn— this time swinging the helicopter north to fly parallel to the runway. “Half a tick,” he said. “Why do this the hard way? Why not just hover above these damned drones and shoot them down over the sea?”

Smith thought the suggestion through. It made perfect sense. He reddened. “I should have thought of that,” he admitted reluctantly.

Peter grinned. “Studying medicine when you should have been studying tactics, eh?” He pulled back on the controls. The UH-60 rose steadily, climbing several hundred feet above the sea in a matter of seconds. “Keep an eye on that first drone, Jon. Let me know when it's aloft.”

Smith nodded. He leaned back in his seat to stare out the cabin's right-side window, over Peter's shoulder. A sudden bright white flash and a puff of dust near the airfield caught his eye. A small dart sped toward them, riding fast on a pillar of fire. For a fraction of a second he stared in disbelief. Then his survival instincts kicked in. “SAM! SAM!” he roared. “At three o'clock!”

“Hell's teeth!” Peter exclaimed. He yanked hard on the controls, adroitly handling the foot pedals, collective, and cyclic stick to throw the Black Hawk into a tight descending turn toward the oncoming missile. At the same time, he stabbed a switch on the control panel, activating the helicopter's IR flare dispenser.

Incandescent flares spewed through a wide arc behind the diving UH-60. Looking up, Smith saw the incoming surface-to-air missile streak right overhead and then curve away sharply, following one of the decoy flares as it tumbled slowly toward the ocean. He breathed out. “Must have been a heat seeker,” he commented, irked to hear a tremor in his voice.

Peter nodded. His lips were pressed tight together. “Man-portable SAMs usually are.” He sighed. “Back to square one, I'm afraid. We daren't mess about at altitude — not with a missile threat like that sitting right behind us.”

“So in we go?” Smith suggested.

“Too right,” Peter said, baring his teeth in a fierce fighting grin. He brought the Black Hawk down so low that its main landing gear seemed to be skimming right over the curling waves. The airfield, now dead ahead, grew rapidly through the forward canopy. “We go in hard and fast, Jon. You clear the left. I'll clear the right. And Randi, God bless her, will do whatever else needs doing!”

“Sounds like a plan!” Randi agreed from behind them. She handed Smith one of the M4 carbines and three thirty-round magazines. With a shortened barrel and a telescoping stock, the M4 was a somewhat lighter and handier weapon than its parent, the M16. He snapped one magazine into the rifle and tucked the spare clips away in his pockets. The third carbine went to Peter, who wedged it beside him on the pilot's seat.

“Thanks! Now, buckle in,” Peter yelled back at her. “The landing will be just a tad bumpy!”

There were more flashes rippling along the runway ahead of them. Several men were standing out in the open, steadily firing at the oncoming helicopter with assault rifles. Five-point-fifty-six mm rounds smacked into the Black Hawk — pinging off the main rotor, ricocheting off its armored canopy and cockpit, and punching through the thin alloy sides of the fuselage.

Smith saw Nomura's first flying wing lift off the ground and begin climbing. He slammed his fist onto the side of his seat in frustration. “Damn!”

“There are still two more on the ground! We'll deal with that one later,” Peter assured him. “Assuming there is a later, that is,” he added under his breath.

The Black Hawk clattered low over the tarmac and spun rapidly through a half-circle, flaring out to thump heavily into the long grass growing beside the runway. More rifle bullets spanged off the canopy and went whirring away in showers of sparks. Smith hammered the seat belt buckle hard, opening it, grabbed his M4 carbine, and forced his way back into the troop compartment. Peter followed closely, pausing only to set a couple of switches on the control panel. Overhead, the rotor blades slowed dramatically — but they kept turning.

Randi already had the left-side door open. She crouched in the opening, sighting down the barrel of her carbine. She glanced over her shoulder. “All set?”

Jon nodded. “Let's go!”

With Randi right behind him, he leaped out of the helicopter and dashed south along the fringe of the runway. Rifle rounds cracked low overhead, coming from a pair of guards running toward them across the concrete. Smith threw himself down in the tall grass and opened fire-squeezing off three-round bursts in an arc from left to right.

One of the guards screamed shrilly and flopped forward, cut almost in half by two high-velocity bullets. The other dropped flat on the concrete and kept shooting.

From her position on Smith's right, Randi coolly took aim. She waited until the sights settled on the goggles of the guard's gas mask and then gently pulled the trigger. His head exploded.

Jon swallowed hard, looking away. He checked their surroundings. They were about a third of the way along the runway — just a few hundred meters from the massive hangar at the southern end. An enormous tin-roofed warehouse stretched east not far behind them. There appeared to be only one entrance on this side, a solid-looking steel door with a keypad lock. His eyes narrowed as suspicion hardened into certainty. No one put that kind of fortress-like door on a run-of-the-mill storage facility. Nomura's secret nanophage lab must be somewhere inside. You could hide a dozen biochemical factories inside that vast, cavernous space and still have plenty of room left over.

The second of the huge flying-wing planes was rolling down the runway in their direction, slowly gathering speed as its propellers spun faster and faster. Jon could see the deadly canisters clustered beneath its single enormous wing. The third drone aircraft was stopped just outside the hangar, waiting for its turn in the takeoff pattern.

Gunfire erupted to the north, on the other side of the Black Hawk. Another guard screamed and fell back — riddled with bullets fired by Peter. As he toppled, the dying man triggered the Russian-made SA-16 SAM he had been trying to aim. The missile ignited. Trailing a dense cloud of gray and white smoke, it soared straight up, turned east, and then plummeted harmlessly to explode in the empty pastures beyond the perimeter fence.

Smith spotted more movement to the south, not far from the second aircraft. Three more gunmen, led by a much taller man, were advancing along the western edge of the runway — generally keeping pace with the oncoming drone plane. They were bounding in pairs, taking turns covering each other as they came forward.

He winced. Great, he thought. These guys were professionals. And they were being led the third of the superhuman Horatii.

“Watch your front, Jon!” Randi called. She gestured toward the open ground on the other side of the runway. A little knot of men in gas masks and respirators was falling back there, retreating from the battle raging around the tarmac. Most appeared to be unarmed. But two carried submachine guns slung over their shoulders, and they were dragging an older white-haired man between them. A man who was not wearing a gas mask. A man in handcuffs.

“I'll deal with the planes,” Smith said. He pointed toward the retreating men. “You take care of them!”

Randi nodded, seeing Jon already moving along the edge of the runway — heading toward the giant flying wing lumbering north. Smoke from the errant SAM launch wafted across the tarmac, cutting off her view of him.

Left alone, she jumped to her feet and sprinted across the wide bare stretch of oil- and jet fuel-stained concrete. One of the fleeing men saw her coming. He yelled a frantic warning to his companions. They threw themselves prone in the grass. The two guards tossed the old man down beside them and turned toward her. Their submachine guns came up.

Randi fired from the hip, squeezing off three-round bursts on the run. One of the guards spun away and fell heavily, bleeding from several wounds. The other shot back, firing off a full twenty-round clip from his Uzi.

The air around Randi was suddenly full of bullets and fragments of shattered concrete. She dived to the side. Something smashed into her left arm — hurling her backward. A ricochet tumbling off the concrete had hit hard enough to break her arm just above the elbow. White-hot agony sleeted up from the injury. She rolled away, desperately trying to get clear before the gunman could zero in and nail her.

Stunned to see her still alive, the guard yanked out his empty clip and fumbled for another.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Randi brought her carbine up again. She fired another burst. Two copper-jacketed rounds slammed home, hurling the gunman onto his back in bloodred ruin.

She forced herself back to her feet and ran on across the runway. The unarmed men jumped up and scattered in front of her, running wildly in all directions. They all looked alike in their hooded gas masks. Suddenly the old man in handcuffs kicked out, tripping one of the fleeing men. Snarling, the old man rolled over onto the man he had knocked down — pressing him facedown into the tall, tangled grass.

Randi moved closer, aiming the carbine with her good hand. “Who the hell are you?” she snapped.

The old man smiled beatifically up at her. “I am Jinjiro Nomura,” he said quietly. “And this,” he nodded toward the figure squirming beneath him, “is Lazarus — the traitor who was once my son, Hideo.”

Scarcely able to believe her luck, Randi grinned back at the old man. “Delighted to meet you, Mr. Nomura.” She kept the M4 aimed at the man writhing on the ground while Jinjiro climbed awkwardly to his feet.

“Now stand up and take off that gas mask,” she ordered. “But do it slowly. Otherwise I might just twitch and blow your head off.”

The younger man obeyed. Slowly, with exaggerated caution, he tugged off the mask and respirator — revealing the gray, shocked features of Hideo Nomura.

“What will you do with him?” Jinjiro asked curiously.

Randi shrugged her good shoulder. "Take him back to the United

States for trial, I guess." She heard a new burst of firing, this time from the north.

“Speaking of which, I suggest the three of us head back to the helicopter right this minute. This neighborhood seems to be getting distinctly unhealthy.”

Peter ghosted through the drifting haze of smoke, with his carbine cradled against his shoulder. He heard a metallic click close by and dropped quietly to one knee, searching ahead of him for the source of the sound.

A guard loomed up out of the slowly clearing pall. His hand was still on the firing selector for his German-made assault rifle, switching it from single-shot to fire three-round bursts. His mouth dropped open when he saw the Englishman aiming at him.

“Very careless,” Peter told him softly. He squeezed the trigger.

Hit by all three shots fired at close range, the guard crumpled into the blood-soaked grass.

Peter waited a few moments longer, allowing the smoke to clear. It rolled west toward the ocean, slowly shredding in the light wind. He scanned the open ground stretching before him. Nothing moved.

Satisfied, he turned and trotted back toward the helicopter.

White-faced with pain from her broken arm, Randi prodded her prisoner toward the waiting Black Hawk. She stumbled once and Hideo Nomura glanced swiftly back at her, with hatred written all over his face. She shook her head and lifted the M4, aiming right at his chest. “I wouldn't try that. Not unless you really believe you can rise from the dead. Even one-handed, I'm a very good shot. Now hop in!”

Walking behind her, Jinjiro chuckled — plainly enjoying his treacherous son's discomfiture.

The man who had called himself Lazarus turned and scrambled inside the helicopter. Standing by the door, Randi motioned him into one of the forward-facing rear seats. Scowling, he obeyed.

Peter loomed up beside her. He peered into the troop compartment at her prisoner. His eyebrows rose. “Nicely done, Randi. Very nicely done indeed.”

Then he looked around in growing unease. “But where on earth is Jon?”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Smith sprinted toward the four gunmen advancing alongside the rolling drone aircraft. They were still moving in pairs. At any given moment, two of them were prone — ready to provide covering fire for their comrades. Most of their attention was focused on the battle raging around the grounded Black Hawk, but they were sure to spot him soon enough.

The back of his mind yammered that this headlong charge was a particularly stupid form of suicide, but he furiously shoved those doubts away. He did not have any other options. He had to hit this enemy team quickly, before they spotted him, pinned him down with suppressive fire, and then came in for the kill.

His only real chance against these men was to seize the initiative and hold it. Their tactics showed that they were professionals, probably more of the veteran mercenary soldiers recruited to do the dirty work for Nomura's Lazarus operation. In a set-piece skirmish Smith might be able to take out one of them, possibly even two — but trying to fight all four of them at once would only be a good way to die quickly. Still, he knew that it was the presence among them of the third of the Horatii that tipped the scales toward this seeming recklessness.

Twice before Smith had gone up against one of those powerful and deadly killers. In both fights he had been lucky to limp away alive and he was not going to be able to rely on stumbling into good fortune again. This time he needed to make his own luck — and that meant taking chances.

He ran on, with his feet flying through the tall grass lining the eastern edge of the runway. The range to the oncoming drone and the four enemy gunmen was closing fast — falling rapidly as they moved toward each other with increasing speed.

Two hundred and fifty meters. Two hundred. One hundred and fifty meters. Jon felt his lungs laboring under the strain. He brought the M4 up to his shoulder and sprinted on.

One hundred meters.

The flying wing came whirring along the runway toward him. All fourteen of its propellers were spinning now, carving bright flashing circles in the air.

Now!

Smith squeezed the trigger on the M4, firing short bursts on the move — walking his rounds across the tarmac toward the startled enemy gunmen. Pieces of concrete and then tufts of grass flew skyward.

They dropped prone and began shooting back.

Jon swerved left, zigzagging away from the tarmac. Bullets tore through the grass behind him and cracked past his head. He dived forward, hit the ground, shoulder-rolled back onto his feet, and kept running. He fired again, then swerved right.

More rifle rounds screamed past, reaching out to tear him apart. One tore through the air close to his face. The superheated gases trailing in its wake slapped his head back. Another clipped his side, glanced off his body armor, and knocked him down into the grass. Frantic now, Smith rolled away — hearing bullets rending the earth right behind him.

In the midst of all the shooting, he heard a deep, bull-like voice shouting angry orders somewhere on the other side of the runway. The last of the Horatii was issuing new commands to his troops.

And then, suddenly, astonishingly, the firing stopped.

In the silence, Jon cautiously raised his head. He grinned weakly in relief. As he had intended, the second drone flying wing, still serenely taxiing toward its programmed takeoff, had come rolling between him and the men who were trying to kill him. For a brief moment they could not shoot at him, at least without the risk of hitting one of their own precious aircraft.

But he knew their self-imposed cease-fire would not last long.

Smith pushed himself up, and crouching low, he moved backward-trying to keep pace with the huge slowly accelerating solar-powered plane. He peered beneath the enormous wing, looking for any sign of movement on the concrete runway.

He caught a quick glimpse of running combat boots through the narrow gaps between the flying wing's five sets of landing gear and its aerody-namicallv shaped avionics and payload pods. Two of the gunmen were sprinting across the wide tarmac, cutting behind the drone in an effort to gain a clear field of fire.

Jon kept backing up, waiting with the M4 tucked against his shoulder and his finger ready on the trigger. He breathed out, feeling his pulse pounding in his ears. Come on, he urged the running men silently. Make a mistake.

They did.

Impatient or overconfident or spurred on by the wrath of the auburn-haired giant who commanded them, both gunmen crossed into the open in the same instant.

Smith opened fire — pouring rounds downrange into the suddenly appalled pair. The carbine hammered back against his shoulder. Spent cartridges flew away from the weapon, tinkling onto the concrete. Fifty meters away, the two gunmen screamed and fell away into the grass. Multiple 5.56mm hits ripped them apart.

And then Smith felt a series of hammer blows punching across his own chest and right flank — a cascade of agonizing impacts on his Kevlar body armor that spun him around in a half circle and threw him to his knees. Somehow he held on to the M4.

Through vision blurred by pain, he looked up.

There, only forty meters away across the tarmac, a tall green-eyed man stared back at him, smiling coldly down the barrel of an assault rifle. In that instant, Jon understood the mistake he had made. The last of the Ho-ratii had expended two of his own men — throwing them forward to draw fire in the same way a chess player sacrifices pawns to gain an advantage in position. While }on killed them, the big man had slipped quickly around the front of the taxiing drone aircraft to strike at him from the flank.

And now there was nothing Smith could do to save himself.

Still smiling, the green-eyed man raised his rifle slightly, this time aiming at Smith's unprotected head. Beside him, just at the edge of Jon's wavering, unfocused vision, the leading edge of the huge flying wing came into view, liberally studded with the plastic cylinders containing its murderous payload.

The fear-ridden primitive part of Jon's brain screamed in silent terror, raging futilely against its approaching death. He did his best to ignore that part of himself, straining instead to hear what it was that the colder, more clinical, more rational side of his mind was trying to tell him.

The wind, it said.

The wind is from the east.

Without thinking further, Smith threw himself sideways. He fired the carbine in that same moment, pulling the trigger as fast as he could. The M4 barked repeatedly, kicking higher with every shot as he emptied what was left of his thirty-round magazine. Bullets lashed the huge flying wing — punching holes in carbon fiber and plastic surfaces, slicing flight control cables, smashing onboard computers, and shattering propellers.

The drone plane rocked under the force of the high-velocity impacts. It began slewing west, slowly turning off the runway.

Terce watched the dark-haired American's last desperate move without pity or concern. One side of his mouth curved up in a wry, predatory grin. This was like seeing a wounded animal thrashing in a trap. That was something to savor. He stood motionless, choosing only to follow his target with the rifle barrel — waiting for his sights to settle on the other man's head. He ignored the bullets shrieking off to his right. At this range, the American could not possibly hope to hit him with unaimed fire.

But then he heard the smooth hum made by the drone aircraft's fourteen electric motors change pitch — roughening in fits and starts as they shorted out or lost power. Bits and pieces of shattered plastic and carbon fiber spun away across the tarmac.

Terce saw the huge plane swinging toward him, veering wildly off-course. He scowled. The American's last gamble would not save his life, but the damage to one of his three irreplaceable attack aircraft would infuriate Nomura.

Suddenly Terce stared in disbelief at the thin-walled plastic cylinders slung under the huge wing, noticing for the first time the rough-edged star-shaped punctures torn through so many of them.

It was only then that he felt the murdering east wind gently kiss his face. His green eyes widened in horror.

Terror-stricken, Terce stumbled backward. The assault rifle fell from his shaking hands and clattered onto the concrete.

The auburn-haired man groaned aloud. Already he could feel the Stage IV nanophages at work inside his body. Billions of the horrid devices were clawing their way outward from deep inside his heaving lungs — spreading their poisons wider with every fatal breath. The flesh inside his thick transparent gloves turned red, sloughing off his muscles and tendons and bones as they disintegrated.

His two surviving men, temporarily secure in their gas masks, looked up at him from their firing positions. Eyes wide in fear, they scrambled to their feet and began backing away.

Desperately he raised his haggard melting face in mute appeal. “Kill me,” he whispered, choking out the words past a tongue that was falling to pieces. “Kill me! Please!”

Instead, panicked by the horror they saw before them, they threw their rifles aside and fled toward the ocean.

Screaming again and again, the last of the Horatii doubled over, wracked by incomprehensible and unending pain as the teeming nanophages ate him alive from within.

Smith ran north along the runway, moving fast despite his fatigue and the terrible punishment he had taken. His jaw was set, held tight against the pain from several cracked ribs grinding under his body armor. He stumbled once, swore under his breath, and pushed himself onward.

Keep going, Jon, he told himself savagely. Keep going or die.

He did not look back. He knew the horror he would see there. He knew the horror he had deliberately set in motion. By now the nanophage cloud was spreading west across the whole southern end of the airfield-drifting on the wind toward the Atlantic.

Smith came pounding up to the grounded Black Hawk. The rotors were still spinning slowly. Torn blades of grass and lingering traces of missile exhaust swirled lazily in the air around the waiting helicopter. Peter and Randi saw him coming. Their worried looks vanished and they moved toward him, smiling and laughing with relief.

“Get aboard!” Jon roared, waving them back to the Black Hawk. “Get that thing spooled up!”

Peter nodded tightly, seeing the shot-up drone careening off the runway out of control. He knew what that meant. “Give me thirty seconds, Jon!” he called.

The Englishman swung himself back aboard the helicopter and scrambled into the pilot's seat. His hands danced across the control panel, flicking switches and watching indicators lighting up. Satisfied, he rotated the throttle, pushing the engines toward full power. The rotors began spinning faster.

Smith skidded to a stop beside the troop carrier's open door. He noticed Randi's left arm dangling at her side. Her face was still pale, drawn with pain. “How bad is it?” he asked.

She smiled wryly. “It hurts like hell, but I'll live. You can play doctor some other time.”

Before he could react, she glared at him. “And you will not make any smart-ass comments. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” Smith told her quietly. Hiding the pain from his own injuries, he helped her climb up into the Black Hawk. Then he swung himself aboard. His eyes took note of the two other passengers — recognizing both Hideo and Jinjiro Nomura from their pictures in the files Fred Klein had made him study so long ago in Santa Fe. So long ago, he thought coldly. Six days ago. A lifetime ago.

Randi dropped into a rear-facing seat across from Hideo. Wincing, she cradled the M4 carbine in her lap, making sure its deadly black muzzle was pointing straight at his heart. Jon settled in beside her.

“Hold tight!” Peter called from the control cabin. “Here we go!”

Engines howling, the Black Hawk slid forward across the runway and then lifted off — already turning as it climbed away from the airfield.

Chapter Forty-Nine

At three hundred feet, Peter leveled out. They were high enough now to be safe from the nanophage cloud blowing across the Nomura Pharma-Tech airfield and complex. Or so he hoped. He frowned, reminding himself that hope ran a very poor second to absolute certainty. With a twitch of the controls, he took them up another hundred feet.

Happier now, Peter pulled the Black Hawk into a gentle turn, beginning a slow orbit over the corpse-strewn runway. Then he glanced back over his shoulder into the troop compartment. “Where to now, Jon?” he asked. “After our friend Lazarus' first drone? The one that got away?”

Smith shook his head. “Not quite yet.” He stripped the empty magazine out of his carbine and inserted a fresh clip. “We still have a couple of things to finish up here first.”

He slid out of his seat and lay prone on the floor of the helicopter, sighting along the M4 out through the open door. “Give me a shot at that third drone, Peter,” he called. “It's still trying to take off on autopilot.”

In response, the Black Hawk tilted, swinging back to the south. Smith leaned a bit farther out, watching the huge flying wing grow even larger in his sights. He squeezed the trigger — firing a series of aimed bursts down into the drone rolling determinedly down the runway. The carbine hammered back against his shoulder.

The UH-60 roared past the aircraft and pulled up sharply, already curving back through a full circle.

The carbine's bolt locked open at the rear. Jon pulled out the empty clip and slapped in another — his last. He hit the catch. The M4 was loaded and ready to fire again.

The helicopter finished its turn and flew north, heading back for another pass.

Smith stared down. Battered by thirty rounds of 5.56mm ammunition, the third drone now sat motionless on the tarmac. Whole sections of the single long wing sagged, shattered by multiple hits. Fragments of engine pods and nanophage cylinders littered the concrete paving behind the wrecked aircraft. “Scratch one drone,” he announced in a matter-of-fact voice. “That's two down and one to go.”

Hideo Nomura stiffened in his seat.

“Not a move,” Randi warned him. She hefted the weapon on her lap.

“You will not shoot me inside this machine,” the younger Nomura snarled. Every trace of the amiable cosmopolitan facade he had cultivated for so many long years of deception had vanished. Now his face was a rigid, hate-filled mask that revealed the raw malice and egomania that truly drove him. “You would all die, too. You Americans are too soft. You do not have the true warrior spirit.”

Randi smiled mockingly back at him. “Maybe not. But the fuel tanks behind you are self-sealing. And I'm willing to bet that you're not. Shall we find out which one of us is right?”

Hideo fell silent, glaring at her.

Jinjiro Nomura looked out through the door, smiling calmly as he watched the rapid destruction of his son's twisted dreams. All that Jinjiro had suffered in twelve months of cruel confinement was now being dealt out in full to Hideo.

Guided by Jon, Peter flew the Black Hawk to the north end of the runway and passed low over the two large cargo planes and the much smaller executive jet parked there.

Again leaning out through the open door, Smith fired another series of bursts right into their cockpits — smashing windows and flight controls. “I don't want any survivors leaving this island until we can get Special Forces units and decontamination teams here,” he explained. Randi handed him her spare ammunition.

Now Peter took the helicopter higher, climbing steadily in a tight, spi-raling circle while they searched for signs of Nomura's first drone. For long minutes they anxiously hunted through the skies around them. Randi saw it first — catching a tiny glint of gold-flecked light high above. “There it is!” she cried, pointing out through the side door. “At our three o'clock now. And it's heading due west!”

“Toward the States,” Smith realized.

Hideo smiled thinly. “For Washington, D.C., and its surrounding suburbs, to be precise.”

The helicopter clattered through another turn as Peter swung onto a parallel course. He stared up through the forward windshield with a worried expression on his face. “That damned thing is already devilishly high,” he called. “It's probably flying at ten or twelve thousand feet and climbing fast.”

“What's the service ceiling on this bird?” Smith asked, buckling back into his seat.

“It tops out somewhere around nineteen thousand feet,” Peter replied, frowning. “But the air will be very thin at that altitude. Perhaps too thin.”

“You're too late,” Hideo told them gleefully. His eyes gleamed in triumph. "You cannot stop my Thanatos aircraft now! And there are enough nanophages aboard that plane to kill millions. You may hold me captive, but I have already struck a blow against your greedy, materialistic country that will live down through the centuries!"

The others ignored his ranting, entirely intent on catching the Thanatos flying wing before it escaped above their reach.

Peter pulled the Black Hawk's nose up as steeply as he could, chasing that distant fleeing speck. The helicopter soared higher, climbing fifteen hundred feet higher with every passing minute. Everyone inside could feel the air growing steadily colder and thinner.

By the time the UH-60 reached twelve thousand feet, their teeth were chattering and it was becoming markedly more difficult to catch their breath. The density of the air around them was now only a little over half the norm at sea level. People could live and work and even ski at this altitude, but usually with a much longer time to acclimate. Hypoxia, altitude sickness, was now a serious danger.

The Thanatos drone was much closer now, but it was still above them and climbing steadily. Its single enormous wing tilted occasionally as the onboard flight controls adjusted for small changes in wind speed, direction, and barometric pressure. Otherwise the aircraft held its course, flying doggedly on toward its preordained target — the capital city of the United States.

Peter pushed the Black Hawk higher. His head and lungs ached, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what he was doing. His vision blurred slightly around the edges. He blinked hard, trying to get a clearer view.

The altimeter crawled slowly through fourteen thousand feet. This far above the Earth's surface, the helicopter's rotors provided far less lift. Their rate of climb and airspeed were both rapidly diminishing. Fifteen thousand feet. And still the giant aircraft hung above them, tantalizingly close, but well out of reach.

Another minute passed, a minute of increasing cold and exhaustion.

Again Peter glanced up through the forward windshield. Nothing. The

Thanatos drone was gone. “Come on, you devil,” he growled. “Stop playing silly buggers with me! Where have you got to now?”

And suddenly sunlight blazed on a huge wing surface below him, reflected back by tens of thousands of mirror-bright solar cells.

“We've done it! We're above the beast!” Peter crowed. He coughed, trying to draw more air into his straining lungs without hyperventilating. “But you'll have to be quick, Jon. Very quick. I can't hold us up here much longer!”

Nodding, Smith unbuckled his seat belt and again dropped onto his stomach by the open door. Every piece of metal he touched was chilled so far below the freezing point that it burned like fire. The outside air temperature was now well below zero.

Frantically Jon blew on his hands, knowing that they were all in real danger of losing fingers and other exposed patches of skin to frostbite. Then, cradling the M4, he leaned out into the slipstream, feeling the wind tearing at his hair and clothes.

He could make out the drone now. It was roughly two hundred feet below them. The Black Hawk slowed, matching its speed to that of its prey.

Smith's eyes teared up in the frigid wind. He squeezed them shut and roughly brushed away the tears before they froze. He peered through his sights. The upper surface of the flying wing wavered slightly and then steadied up.

He squeezed the trigger.

Rounds slammed into the Thanatos drone, shattering hundreds of solar cells. Fragments of glass and plastic swirled away and vanished astern. For a moment the wing flexed alarmingly. It slid lower.

Jon held his breath. But then the giant machine's onboard flight computers corrected for the sudden loss of power, revving its propellers higher. The drone steadied up and began climbing again.

Smith swore quietly, already fumbling for a new magazine.

Amid the noise and cold and thin, scarcely breathable air, Randi fought to remain conscious. The sharp, stabbing pain from her broken arm was merging now with a terrible throbbing ache behind her temples. She gritted her teeth, feeling nauseated. The pain in her head was now so intense that it seemed to send little pulses of red light flashing into her eyes with every beat of her heart.

Her head fell forward.

And in that brief moment, Hideo Nomura attacked.

One hand batted aside her carbine. The other chopped down hard on Randi's collarbone. It snapped like a dry twig.

With a muffled groan, she fell back against the seat and then flopped forward again. Only the safety belt buckled at her waist kept her from sliding onto the floor of the troop compartment.

Nomura snatched the M4 and held it to her head.

Smith glanced over his shoulder in surprise. He rolled over and sat up — and then froze, taking in the changed situation in one appalled glance.

“Throw your weapon out the door,” Nomura ordered. His eyes glittered, as hard as ice and just as cold. “Or I will blow this woman's brains across this compartment.”

Jon swallowed hard, staring at Randi. He could not see her face. “She's dead already,” he said, desperately trying to buy time.

Nomura laughed. “Not yet,” he said. “Observe.” He wrapped one hand in Randi's short blond hair and yanked her head back. She moaned softly. Her eyes fluttered open briefly and then closed. The man who was Lazarus released his grip contemptuously, allowing her head to flop forward again. “You see?” he said. “Now do as I say!”

Defeated, Smith let the carbine fall out of his hands. The weapon whirled away and disappeared.

“Very good,” Nomura told him cheerfully. "You learn obedience quickly.“ He moved back, keeping Randi's weapon carefully aimed at Jon's chest. His face grew harder. ”Now order your pilot to fly away from my Thanatos drone."

Smith raised his voice. “Did you hear what the man wants you to do, Peter?”

The Englishman looked back over his shoulder. His pale blue eyes were expressionless. “I heard him,” he replied coolly. “It seems we have no choice, Jon. At least not with the situation as it stands.”

“No,” Smith agreed. “Not as it stands,” he said, putting the emphasis on the last word. He tilted his head slightly.

An almost imperceptible wink fluttered in Peter's left eye. He turned back to the Black Hawk's controls.

Nomura laughed again. “You see, Father,” he said to Jinjiro. “These Westerners are soft. They value their own lives above all else.”

The old man said nothing. He sat stone-faced, cast again into despair by the sudden reversal of fortune.

Smith sat near the helicopter's open door, waiting tensely for Peter to make his move.

Abruptly the Englishman banked the helicopter hard right — almost tipping the Black Hawk over on its side. Nomura toppled backward, thrown completely off his feet. He crashed into the back wall of the troop compartment and then slid to the floor. His finger, curled around the trigger of Randi's M4, tightened involuntarily. Three rounds tore through the roof and ricocheted off the spinning rotors.

As soon as the helicopter tilted, Smith threw himself forward, away from the open door. He dived across the floor and slammed headlong into Nomura. He tore the carbine out of Nomura's hands and tossed it away across the cabin. It clattered somewhere among the seats, well out of reach.

The Black Hawk leveled out and began climbing again.

Snarling, Nomura kicked out at Jon, shoving him back. Both men scrambled to their feet. Hideo attacked first — striking out with his hands and feet in a maddened frenzy.

Jon parried two blows with his forearms, shrugged a kick off his hip, ducked under a third strike, and then closed in. He grabbed Nomura by one arm, punched him hard in the face, and then hurled him across the row of seats.

The other man landed in a heap — right next to the open door. Though dazed, with blood streaming from a broken nose, he struggled to get back up.

Smith grabbed hold of a seat and roared, “Peter! Now! Reverse! Reverse!”

The Englishman complied, again throwing the Black Hawk into a steep bank, but this time sharply left. The helicopter tilted on its side, for a moment seeming to hang in space, high above the Atlantic Ocean, as it spun through a tight turn. The Thanatos drone came into view not more than fifty feet below them, still heading west on its programmed mission of mass murder.

Hideo Nomura made a desperate lunge and grabbed a seat strut. His legs dangled in mid-air, flailing, trying to find a foothold that did not exist.

Arms straining, he began to pull himself back inside the helicopter. With his teeth bared in a rictus grin, he looked up and saw his father staring down at him.

Jinjiro Nomura looked deep into the maddened eyes of the man who had once been his beloved son. “You misjudged these Americans,” he said softly. He sighed in sorrow. “Just as you have misjudged me.”

And with that, the old man leaned forward and kicked Hideo's hands away from the seat strut.

Face fixed in horror, the younger Nomura slid out the door, his fingernails clawing wildly, seeking a hold anywhere on the smooth metal. Then, with a despairing wail, he fell away into thin air, tumbling toward the Thanatos drone as it flew past under the turning Black Hawk.

Still kicking and flailing with his arms and legs, the man who was Lazarus crashed onto the fragile surface of the enormous flying wing. The drone shuddered, rocked by the sudden impact. And then, overloaded and already damaged, the Thanatos aircraft simply snapped in half-folding up like the closing pages of a book. Propeller blades, avionics pods, and clusters of nanophage cylinders ripped loose in a growing cloud of debris.

Slowly at first, and then faster, the tangled wreckage spun around and around, plunging all the way down to the hungry and waiting waters of the vast and merciless sea.

Epilogue

Although it was still early in the afternoon, President Samuel Adams Castilla had abandoned the excited hustle and bustle around the Oval Office — preferring instead the quiet comfort and privacy of his den upstairs in the East Wing. This room was all his own, exempt from the whims of the fashionable designers who had redecorated the rest of the White House under orders from his wife. There were shelves full of well-read books, a large Navajo rug covering the polished hardwood floor, a big black leather sofa, a couple of recliners, and a big-screen television. Hung on the walls were prints of works by Fredric Remington and Georgia O'Keeffe together with photographs of the rugged mountains around Santa Fe.

Castilla glanced over his shoulder with a smile. His hand was poised over a bottle and a pair of glasses on the sideboard. “Care for a Scotch, Fred?”

Fred Klein grinned back at him from his place on the long sofa. “I certainly would, Mr. President.”

Castilla poured the drinks and carried them over. “This is the Caol Ila, Jinjiro's favorite.”

“Very appropriate, Sam,” Klein said quietly. The head of Covert-One nodded toward the television. “He should be on any second now.”

“Yep. And I wouldn't miss this for the world,” Castilla said. He set down his Scotch and tapped a key on the TV remote. The screen lit up, showing the vast chamber of the UN General Assembly in New York. Jin-jiro Nomura stood alone on the dais, looking out over the sea of delegates and cameras with perfect poise — although he knew his words and his image were being beamed around the world to more than a billion people watching this live broadcast. His face was solemn, still bearing the deep marks of sorrow left by betrayal, a year's imprisonment, and the death of his son.

“I stand before you today on behalf of the Lazarus Movement,” Jinjiro began. “A movement whose noble ideals and dedicated followers were betrayed by the malice of one man. This man, my own son Hideo, murdered my friends and colleagues and imprisoned me — destroying those of us who founded the Movement so that he could seize power in secret. Then, masquerading as Lazarus, he used our organization to conceal his own cruel and genocidal aims, aims utterly at odds with everything for which our Movement truly stands…”

Castilla and Klein listened in satisfied silence while the older Nomura carefully and precisely recounted the details of Hideo's treachery, revealing both his secret creation of the nanophages and his plans to use them to destroy most of humanity so that he could make himself absolute master over the frightened survivors. Briefed earlier by Jinjiro, America's allies had already begun returning to the fold — all expressing profound relief that their earlier suspicions had proved unfounded and anxious to repair their damaged relations with the U.S. before the truth became widely known. This UN speech was only the first part of a determined campaign to unveil the subversion of the Lazarus Movement and salvage America's reputation.

Both men knew it would take time and a great deal of effort, but they were also sure the wounds left by Hideo Nomura's vicious deceptions would heal. A few isolated fanatics might cling to their belief in America's guilt, but most would accept the truth — swayed by the calm conviction and powerful presence of the last surviving founder of the Lazarus Movement and by the release of documents captured inside Nomura's secret Azores labs. The Movement itself was already crumbling, rocked by the first revelations of its leader's lies and murderous plans. Whatever survived would only do so by returning to Jinjiro's original vision of a force for peaceful change and environmental reform.

Castilla felt himself beginning to relax for the first time in weeks. America and the whole world had had an incredibly narrow escape. He sighed and saw Fred Klein looking at him.

“It's over, Sam,” the other man told him quietly.

Castilla nodded. “I know.” He raised his glass. “To Colonel Smith and the others.”

“To them all,” Klein echoed, raising his own glass. “Slainte.”

A crisp, rain-washed autumn breeze rustled through the leaves still clinging to the trees lining the Mall. Sunlight slanted through branches, dappling the grass with moving patterns of red- and gold-tinged shadows.

Jon Smith walked through the shadows toward a woman standing pensively near a bench. Her short golden hair gleamed in the afternoon light. Despite the thick cast encasing her left arm and shoulder, she still appeared slender and graceful.

“Waiting for me?” he called softly.

Randi Russell turned toward him. A slight smile creased her lips. “If you're the guy who left a message on my answering machine suggesting dinner, I guess so,” she said tartly. “Otherwise, I'll be eating alone.”

Smith grinned. Some things would never change. “How's the arm?” he asked.

“Not bad,” she told him. “The doctors tell me this hunk of plaster can come off in a few more weeks. Once that's done, and the collarbone heals, a little more rehab should clear me for field duty. Frankly, I can't wait. I'm not cut out for sitting behind a desk.”

He nodded. “Are things at Langley still in a mess?”

Randi shrugged carefully. “The situation seems to be calming down. The files our people snagged in the Azores have pretty well nailed everyone involved in TOCSIN. You heard that Hanson is resigning?”

Smith nodded again. The director of the CIA had not been directly involved in Burke and Pierson's illegal operation. But no one could doubt that his failures of judgment and his willingness to turn a blind eye were partly responsible. David Hanson's resignation “for personal reasons” was purely a face-saving alternative to being fired.

“Have you heard anything from Peter?” Randi asked in turn.

“I had a call from him last week,” Smith told her. “He's back in retirement at his place in the Sierras. For good this time, he claims.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you believe him?”

He laughed. “Not really. I can't imagine Peter Howell sitting idle on his front porch for very long.”

She looked across at Jon through slightly narrowed eyes. “What about you? Still playing spook for the Joint Chiefs? Or was it Army Intelligence this time?”

“I'm back at Fort Derrick, in my old post at USAMRIID,” Smith told her.

“Back to the infectious diseases grind?” Randi asked.

He shook his head. “Not exactly. We're developing a program to monitor potentially hazardous nanotech R&D around the world.”

She stared at him.

“We stopped Nomura,” Smith told her quietly. “But now the genie's out of the bottle. Someone else out there may try something similar — or equally destructive — someday.”

Randi shivered. “I'd hate to imagine that.”

He nodded somberly. “At least this time we know what to look for. Manufacturing biologically active nanodevices requires biochemical substances in large quantities — and those are substances we can track.”

She sighed. “Maybe we should just do what the Lazarus Movement wanted in the first place. Ban nanotech completely.”

Smith shook his head. “And lose out on all the potential benefits? Like curing cancer? Or wiping out pollution?” He shrugged. “It's like any other advanced technology, Randi. Nothing more. How we use it — for good or ill — is up to us.”

“Now there's the scientist in you talking,” she said drily.

“It's what I am,” Smith said quietly. “Most of the time, anyway.”

“Right,” Randi replied with a wry grin. She relented. “Okay, Dr. Smith, you promised me dinner. Are you going to honor your promise?”

He sketched a bow and offered her his arm. “Never let it be said that I'm not a man of my word, Ms. Russell. Dinner is on me.”

Together, Jon and Randi turned and walked back toward his waiting car. Above them, the last clouds were drifting away, leaving behind a clear blue sky.