Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (20 page)

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

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

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

■

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A problem?” Terce asked.

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

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

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

Friday, October 15 Santa Fe

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

“Check the news,” Fred Klein suggested.

Smith pushed the plate with his half-eaten breakfast Danish on it out of the
way, spun his laptop around, and tapped into the Internet. He read through the
headlines scrolling across the screen in growing disbelief. The story was the
lead on every major news organization's Web site. FBI

MASSACRE PROBE NAILS LAZARUS! blared One. LAZARUS ACTIVIST BOUGHT

getaway suvs! shouted
another.

Every article was pretty much the same. Top-level sources within the FBI
investigation of the Teller Massacre confirmed that a longtime Lazarus Movement
activist from Albuquerque
had purchased the vehicles

used by the phony Secret Service agents—using
roughly one hundred thousand dollars in cash. Then, only a few hours after the
Institute was attacked, Andrew Costanzo was seen by his neighbors driving away
from his home with a suitcase in the back of his car. File pictures of Costanzo
and his description were being circulated to every federal, state, and local
law-enforcement agency.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don't buy it,” Smith said, shaking his head. "At
least, not completely. It's just too darned convenient. Besides, nothing
in this Costanzo

story explains how the Movement could get its hands
on nanophages designed to kill—or why it would deliberately release them,
especially on its own supporters."

“No, it doesn't,” Klein agreed.

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

checking out.

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

scientist."

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

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

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

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

“Sounds good,” Smith said. He knew Paris very well, and Le
Monde

and its European counterparts were generally viewed
as being sympathetic to the environmental, anti-technology, and
anti-globalization line pushed by the Lazarus Movement.

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

■

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Call them off,” Burke said flatly

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

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

“Why?”

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

know."

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

■

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

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

asked.

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

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

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

“Go on.”

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

“Such as?” Klein prompted.

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

“Do you know yet what killed those people?”

“Precisely? No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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