Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (36 page)

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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.

Washington, D.C.

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 chant-

ing 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 nod-

ded 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.

Nanophage Production Facility, Inside the Center

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.”

Outside the Center

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 su-

percomputers 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.