Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (15 page)

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

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

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

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

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

clumps of stunted trees and sagebrush clung
precariously to the arroyo's sheer slopes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It wasn't me,” he protested.

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

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

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

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

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

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

■

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 am Lazarus,“ the figure said calmly. ”I speak for the Lazarus
Move-

ment, for the Earth, and for all of humanity. I
speak for those who have died and for those as yet unborn. And I am here today
to speak truth to corrupt and corruptible power."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They're working on it, but it's not going to be easy. This footage
came in as a highly compressed, highly encrypted blip piggybacked somewhere

on any one of a host of other signals. Once it was
up on the satellite, the signal uncoiled and decoded itself and started feeding
down to New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago . . . you name the major
city and there it went."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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