Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (18 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are they?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

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

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

“If you must,” Pierson said levelly.

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

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

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

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

“Not quite,” Smith corrected her. "I'm suggesting the people
who

pulled this off wanted to make it seem that
way.“ He shook his head. ”But I've been thinking hard about this, and
there's no way that the nanode-vices Brinker and Parikh created were
responsible for what happened. No way at all. It's completely impossible."

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

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

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

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

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

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

the Lazarus Movement, not unless you think the
Movement maintains its own sophisticated nanotech labs!"

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

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

Again, Pierson said nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Burke here.”

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

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

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

Hidden Nanotechnology Production Facility, Inside the Center

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

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

Each move closer to the Class-10 environment in the production core itself
involved ever-stricter gowning and sterilization procedures. Air locks and
elaborate filtration systems connected each chamber. Checklists

were posted at each outer air lock door, along with
armed guards ordered to make sure that each step was followed and in the proper
order. No one wanted to risk contaminating the nanophage production tanks. The
developing phages were too delicate, too vulnerable to the slightest change in
their rigidly controlled environment. Nor was anyone in the secret lab complex
willing to risk unprotected exposure to the nanophages in their finished form.