Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (26 page)

The nanotech labs themselves, however, unoccupied and sealed under Japanese
government supervision, were largely untouched. Casualties, aside from the
suicide-bomb driver and the unfortunate Mitsuhara Noda, were remarkably low.

Thirty minutes later, an e-mail message issued by the Lazarus Movement
arrived at the offices of every major Tokyo
media outlet. In it, the Movement's Japan-based wing took credit for what it
called “a mission of heroic self-sacrifice in defense of the planet and
all humanity.”

Surveillance Team Safe House, on the Outskirts of Santa Fe

Two large panel vans were parked close to the front entrance of the secluded
hilltop house. Their rear doors stood wide open, revealing an assortment of
boxes and equipment cases crammed into the back of each vehicle. Five men were
gathered near the vans, waiting for their leader.

The older, white-haired Dutchman named Linden
was inside, going from room to room to make sure they were leaving nothing
suspicious or incriminating behind. What he saw, or rather didn't see, pleased him. The safe house had been stripped and sanitized.
Apart from a few tiny holes drilled in the walls, there were no longer any
traces of the large array of cameras, radio and microwave receivers, computers,
and communications gear they had installed to eavesdrop on every facet of the
Teller investigation. Every smooth surface and piece of wood or metal furniture
gleamed, scrubbed clean of all fingerprints and other traces of recent human
habitation.

He came out of the house and stood blinking in the dazzling sunshine.

He crooked a finger at one of his men, beckoning him over. “Is
everything packed, Abrantes?”

The younger man nodded. “We're ready.”

“Good, Vitor,” Linden
said. The surveillance team leader checked his watch. “Then let's go. We
have planes to catch.” He showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a quick,
humorless smile. “Center's timetable for this new mission is very tight,
but it will be good to leave this high and arid desert behind and return to Europe.”

Santa Fe

The Santa Fe Municipal Police Department had its headquarters on the Caiuino
Entrada, out on the western edge of the city—not far from the county jail, and
next to the city courthouse. Half an hour after first setting foot in the
building, Jon Smith found himself sitting in the office of the ranking
policeman on duty. Several photographs showing a pretty wife and three young
children were hung on two of the plain white walls. A watercolor depicting one
of the nearby pueblos took up part of another. Case files in manila folders
were neatly organized on one corner of a plain desk, right next to a computer.
A background buzz of ringing phones, conversations, and busy keyboards drifted
in through an open door to the adjoining squad room.

Lieutenant Carl Zarate looked down at Smith's U.S. Army identity card and
then back up with a puzzled frown. “Now what is it exactly that I'm
supposed to do for you, Colonel?”

Smith kept his tone casual. He'd been bucked up to Zarate by a profusely
sweating desk sergeant who had been made very uneasy by his questions.
“I'm looking for some information, Lieutenant,” he said calmly.
“A few facts about the gun battle somebody fought in the Plaza late last
night.”

Zarate's narrow, bony face went blank. “What gun battle was that?”
he asked carefully. His dark brown eyes were wary.

Smith cocked his head to one side. “You know,” he said, at last.
“I was sort of surprised when the press didn't run wild with speculation
about all the shooting going on right in the heart of the city. Then I thought
that maybe someone leaned on the local papers and the TV and radio stations to
keep the lid on —just for a while, just while an investigation was going on.
With things so tense after the Teller disaster, that'd be natural, I guess. But
I'd be very surprised to learn that you folks at the Santa Fe police department were playing the
same game.”

The police officer eyed him for a moment longer. Then he shrugged. “If
there were a gag order in effect, Colonel Smith, I'm damned if I know why I'd break
the rules for you.”

“Maybe because these rules don't apply to me,
Lieutenant Zarate?” Jon suggested easily. He handed the police
officer the sheaf of investigative authorizations Fred Klein had arranged for
him. He nodded toward them. “Those orders require me to observe and report
on every aspect of the Teller investigation. Every aspect.
And if you look at the last page there, you'll see the signature of the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, do you really want to get caught in
a pissing match between the Pentagon and the FBI, especially since we're all
supposed to be on the same side in this mess?”

Zarate flipped rapidly through the papers, with his frown growing even
deeper. He slid them back across the desk with a snort of disgust. “There are
times, Colonel, when I damned well wish the federal government would keep its
big, fumbling paws out of my jurisdiction.”

Smith nodded sympathetically. "There are people in D.C. with all the

grace and tact of a five-hundred-pound gorilla and
the common sense of your average two-year-old."

Zarate grinned suddenly. “Strong words, Colonel. Maybe you'd better
watch your mouth around the red-tape boys and girls. I hear they don't much
care for soldiers who won't toe the line.”

“I'm a doctor and scientist first and foremost and an Army officer
second,” Smith said. He shrugged. “I doubt I'm on anybody's short
list to make general.”

“Uh-huh,” the police lieutenant said skeptically. “That's why
you're running around with personal orders signed by the head of the JCS.”
He spread his hands. “Unfortunately, there's really not much I can tell
you. Yeah, there was some kind of shoot-out in the Plaza last night. One guy
got himself killed. There may have been others who were hit. We were still
checking blood trails when my forensics team was called off.”

Smith pounced on that. “Your team was called off?”

“Yeah,” Zarate said flatly. “The FBI swooped in and took
over. Said it was a matter of national security and that it fell within their
jurisdiction.”

“When was that?” Jon asked.

“Maybe an hour after we first arrived on the scene,” the police
officer told him. “But they didn't just kick us off the ground,
they also confiscated every spent shell casing, every piece of paperwork, and
every crime scene photo. They even took the tapes of dispatcher calls to and
from units responding to the scene!”

Smith whistled softly in surprise. This was more than a simple dispute over
jurisdiction. The FBI had made a clean sweep of every scrap of official
evidence. “On whose authority?” he asked quietly.

“Deputy Assistant Director Katherine Pierson signed the orders,”
Zarate answered. His mouth tightened. “I won't pretend I'm happy about
tucking my tail in and complying, but nobody in the mayor's office or on the
city council wants to rock the boat with the Feds right now.”

Jon nodded his understanding. With a major disaster right on its doorstep, Santa Fe would be
depending heavily on federal aid money and

assistance. And local pride and turf consciousness
would naturally take a backseat to urgent necessity.

“Just one more question,” he promised Zarate. “You said there
was a corpse. Do you know what happened to the body? Or who's handling the
autopsy?”

The police lieutenant shook his head in confusion. “That's where this
whole screwy situation gets very weird.” He scowled. “I made a few
phone calls to the various coroners and hospitals, just checking around for my
own edification. And as far as I can tell nobody did anything at all to try to
identify the stiff. Instead, it looks like the FBI slid the dead guy right into
an ambulance and shipped him off to a mortuary way down in Albuquerque for immediate cremation.” He
looked straight at Smith. “Now what the hell do you make of that,
Colonel?”

Jon fought for control over his face and won, maintaining a stony, impassive
expression. Exactly what was Kit Pierson doing out here in Santa Fe? he
wondered. Who was she covering up for?

■

It was a little before noon when Smith left the Santa Fe police department and walked out
onto the Camino Entrada. His eyes flickered briefly to the left and right,
checking the street in both directions, but otherwise he revealed no great
interest in his surroundings. Instead, still apparently deep in thought, he
climbed into his rented dark gray Mustang coupe and drove away. A few quick
turns on surface streets led him into the crowded parking lot surrounding the
city's indoor shopping center, the Villa
Linda Mall.
Once there, he threaded through several rows of parked cars, acting as though
he was simply looking for an open space. Finally, he drove away from the mall,
crossed the encircling Wagon Road,
and parked under the shade of some trees growing next to a shallow ravine
marked on his map as the Arroyo de las Chamisos.

Two minutes later, another car, this one a white four-door Buick, turned in
right behind him. Peter Howell got out and stretched while

carefully checking the environment. Satisfied that
they were unobserved, he sauntered up, pulled open the Mustang's passenger-side
door, and then slid into the bucket seat next to Smith.

In the hours since they had met for breakfast, the Englishman had found time
to have his hair cut fashionably short. He had also changed his clothes,
abandoning the faded denims and heavy flannel shirt he had worn as Malachi
MacNamara in favor of a pair of khaki slacks, a solid blue button-down shirt,
and a herringbone sports coat. The fiery Lazarus Movement fanatic was gone,
replaced by a lean, sun-browned British expatriate apparently out for an
afternoon's shopping.

“Spot anything?” Jon asked him.

Peter shook his head. “Not so much as a
suspiciously turned head. You're clean.”

Smith relaxed slightly. The other man had been operating as his distant
cover, hanging back while he went into the police headquarters and then keeping
an eye on his tail to spot anyone following him when he came out.

“Were you able to learn anything yourself?” Peter asked. “Or
did your pointed questions fall on stony ground?”

“Oh, I learned a fair amount,” Jon said grimly. “Maybe even
more than I bargained for.”

Peter raised an inquiring eyebrow but otherwise stayed quiet, listening
carefully while Smith filled him in on what he had learned. When he heard that
Dolan's body had been cremated, he shook his head, sourly amused. “Well,
well, well . . . ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And no fingerprints or
inconvenient dental impressions left for anyone to match up with any embarrassing
personnel files. I suppose no matter how thoroughly the CIA and FBI databases
were scrubbed, somebody, somewhere, would have been bound to recognize the
fellow.”

“Yep.” Jon's fingers drummed on the
steering wheel of his car. “Nifty, isn't it?”

“It does raise a number of intriguing questions,” Peter agreed. He

ticked them off on his own fingers. “Who are
these secret operations lads like the late and unlamented Michael Dolan really
working for? The Lazarus Movement, as they seem to be on the surface? Or some
other organization, sub rosa?
Perhaps even your very own CIA? All very confusing, wouldn't you say?”

“One thing's certain,” Smith told him. “Kit Pierson must be
in this mess up to her neck. She probably has the authority to take over the
Plaza crime scene. But there's no way she can justify cremating Dolan's body,
not under standard FBI practice and procedure.”

“Could she be doubling for Lazarus?” Peter asked quietly.
“Working to sabotage the FBI's investigation from within?”

“Kit Pierson as a Lazarus mole?” Jon
shook his head firmly. “I can't see it. If anything, she's been pushing
far too hard to blame everything that happened at the Institute on the
Movement.”

Peter nodded. “True. So if she's not working for Lazarus, she must be
working against them—which suggests she's covering for
an off-the-books anti-Movement operation run by the FBI, or the CIA, or
both.”

Smith looked at him. “You think they're really running an operation
that sensitive without the president's approval?”

Peter shrugged. “It happens, Jon, as you well know.” He smiled
drilv. “Remember poor old Henry the Second? He gets a bit pissed one night
and roars out, 'Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?' Then, practically
before he can sober up, there's blood spilled all over the floor of Canterbury
Cathedral. Thomas Becket's suddenly a sainted martyr. And the sad, sorry,
hung-over king is down for a round of scourging, hair shirts, and public
penitence.”

Smith nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know. Intelligence outfits sometimes
exceed their authority. But it's a damned dangerous game to be playing.”

“Of course it is,” Peter said. “Careers can be wrecked. And
even high-ranking officials can be sent to prison. That's precisely why they
might have decided to kill you.”

Jon frowned. "I can understand a CIA/FBI covert operation de-

signed to wreck the Lazarus Movement from within.
It would be stupid and completely illegal, but I can understand it. And I can
see a Movement attempt to sabotage the Institute labs. But what I can't make
fit into either scenario is the nanophage release that slaughtered all those
protesters."

“Yes,” Peter said slowly, with his eyes full of remembered horror.
“That is the one piece which remains stubbornly outside the puzzle. And a
bloody awful piece it is, too.”

Nodding, Smith sat back from the steering wheel and pulled out his phone.
“Maybe it's time we stopped pissing around on the outside.” He
punched in a number. It was answered on the first ring. “This is Colonel
Jonathan Smith, Agent Latimer,” he said sharply. “I want to speak to
Deputy Assistant Director Pierson. Right now.”