Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (41 page)

Randi bit down on her lip, mulling that over. She crossed the room to stare
out the window at the little courtyard behind the hotel.

“Lazarus Movement or not, at least some of the people working inside 18
rue de Vigny knew the nanophage attack that hit La Courneuve was coming,”
Smith continued. He leaned forward in his chair. “That's why they were
setting up those sensors you saw. That's why they were willing to kill anyone
who got in their way.”

'But the movement is anti-technology to its core—especially
nano-technology!“ she burst out in frustration. ”Why would Lazarus
supporters help anyone commit mass murder, especially using a means they oppose
so vehemently? It doesn't make sense!"

“That may well mean that Jon's mysterious somebody—perhaps we should
call him Mr. X, for short—is using the Movement as a cover for his real
plans,” Peter pointed out. “In much the same way that we believe he
used a few fools inside the CIA and the FBI. And MI6,
alas.”

“You're giving this Mr. X a hell of a lot of credit,” Randi
remarked acidly. She swung away from the window to face them both with her chin
held stubbornly high. “Maybe too much.”

“I don't think so,” Smith said, with a grim look settling on his
face. “We already know that X, whether it's a person or a group, has
enormous resources. You can't design and produce hundreds of billions of
nanophages without access to serious money. At least a hundred million dollars
and probably a whole lot more. If you spent even a fraction of that on bribes,
I'll bet you could buy the loyalty of quite a few people inside the Lazarus
Movement.”

He stood up suddenly, unable to bear just sitting still any longer. Then he
walked over to Randi. He put his hand gently on her arm. “Can you think of
any other way to make the pieces we've got come together?” he demanded
quietly.

The CIA officer was silent for a long, painful moment. Then, slowly, she
shook her head and sighed. All her pent-up energy and irritation seemed to
drain away.

“Well, neither can I,” Smith said softlv. “That's why we have
to get inside that building. We have to discover what those sensor arrays were
gathering at La Courneuve. Maybe even more important, we have to find out what
happened to the information they collected.” He frowned. “Your
technical people haven't been able to pick up anything being said inside, have
they?”

Reluctantly she shook her head again, admitting defeat. “No. The place
seems to be remarkably bug-proof. Even the windows are set to vibrate slightly
to defeat laser surveillance.”

“Every window?” Peter asked curiously.

She shrugged. “No. Just those on the top floor and in
the attic spaces.”

“Nice of them to hang out a sign for us,” the Englishman murmured,
looking across the room at Jon.

Smith nodded. “Very convenient.”

Randi frowned at the two men. “Maybe too convenient,” she
suggested. “What if it's a setup?”

“Chance we have to take,” Peter said lazily. “Ours is not to
reason why, and so forth.” Before she could snap back at him, he donned a
more suitably serious expression. “But I doubt it. That would mean these
Lazarus chaps deliberately allowed you and your people to spot them setting up
those little gray boxes of theirs. Why go to all that trouble and expense and
risk just to nab a couple of broken-down old soldiers?”

“Plus one top-notch CIA field officer,” she said, after a brief
hesitation. She looked down modestly. “That would be me, of course.”

Smith raised an eyebrow. “You're planning on coming along?”

Randi sighed. “Somebody responsible has to keep an eye on you two
overaged kids.”

“You know what'll happen to your career if we get caught?” Smith
asked quietly.

She shot him a lopsided grin. “Oh, come on, Jon,” she said,
forcing herself to sound cheerful. “If we get caught inside that building,
you know that saving my career will be the least of our worries!”

Now that she had made her decision, Randi busied herself by spreading a set
of still photos of the Lazarus Movement's Paris
headquarters out on the floor in front of them. The pictures showed the old
stone building at 18 rue de Vigny from almost every angle, taken at different
hours of the day and night. She also unfolded a detailed map depicting the
Movement headquarters in relation to its nearest neighbors and the surrounding
streets and alleys.

The three of them knelt down, closely scrutinizing the photos and the map
—each looking for a way in that would not lead to immediate discovery and
certain disaster. After a few moments, Peter sat back on his haunches. He
regarded Randi and Jon with a slight smile. "There's only

one realistic option, I'm afraid,“ he said,
shrugging. ”It may not be particularly elegant or original, but it should
serve."

“Please tell me you're not planning a head-on charge through the front
door and straight up four or five flights of stairs,” Randi begged.

“Oh, no. Not my style at all.” He tapped
the map gently with one finger. It came to rest on one of the apartment blocks
adjoining 18 rue de Vigny. “To mangle Hamlet, there are more ways
into a building, dear girl, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Smith looked at the map more closely and saw what the other man intended. He
pursed his lips. “We'll need some specialized gear. Know anyone who can
provide them for us, Peter?”

“I might just have a few bits and pieces of equipment stashed around Paris,” Peter
admitted calmly. “The remnants of my old and wicked life
in the service of Her Majesty. And I'm sure Ms. Russell's friends at the
CIA station here can provide us with anything else we need. If she asks nicely,
that is.”

Frowning, Randi studied the map and the pictures again. Her eyebrows rose.
“Oh, great, let me guess,” she said, sighing under her breath.
“You're planning one of those 'defying the laws of gravity' deals again,
aren't you?”

Peter looked at her in pretended shock. “Defying the laws of
gravity?” he repeated, shaking his head. “Not at
all. In point of fact, we shall be obeying gravity's imperious
demands,” he said with a sly grin. “After all, what goes up must come
down.”

Tuesday, October 19

It was after midnight, but there were still quite a few revelers and
pleasantly sated late-night diners strolling home through the well-lit streets
of Paris. Set
apart from most of the bustling cafes, brasseries, and clubs of the Marais
District, the rue de Vigny was quieter than most, but it, too, had its share of
pedestrians.

One, a wrinkled old woman well bundled up against the
chill of the autumn night, hobbled painfully up the street. Her high
heels echoed on the worn cobblestones. She kept her large cloth handbag
clutched tightly under one arm, clearly determined to defend her property
against any lurking thieves. Footsore and weary, she paused briefly outside
Number 18, resting for a moment to catch her breath. Lights glowed in the
upper-floor windows beneath the old stone building's steeply angled slate roof.
Those facing the street on the lower floors were dark.

Muttering under her breath, the old lady limped on to the adjoining
four-story block of flats at Number 16. She stood in the recessed entryway

outside the front door for a long, painful
moment—first fumbling inside her enormous handbag and then apparently having
trouble fitting her key into the lock. At last, she seemed to manage it. The
lock clicked. With an effort, she pulled the heavy door open and tottered
slowly inside.

The street was quiet again.

Minutes later, two men, one dark-haired, the other
gray-headed, walked up the rue de Vigny. Both men wore dark-colored
overcoats and carried heavy duffel bags slung over their shoulders. They walked
side by side, chatting amiably in colloquial French about the weather and the
absurdities of airport security these days—looking for all
the world like two travelers returning home after a long weekend away.

They turned off the street at Number 16. The younger, dark-haired man pulled
the door open and held it for his older companion. “After you,
Peter,” he said quietly with a wave.

“Age before beauty, eh?” the other man quipped. He moved into the
small, dark foyer beyond, murmuring a polite greeting to the elderly woman who
stood there waiting.

Jon Smith ducked into the apartment building himself, but not before
casually removing a strip of duct tape the “old woman” had stuck
there to prevent the door lock from engaging. He balled it up, shoved it into
his coat pocket, and allowed the door to close gently behind him.

“That was a nice piece of lock picking,” Smith complimented the
bundled-up old lady standing beside Peter Howell.

Randi Russell grinned back at him. Beneath the disguise of wrinkles and
lines that added forty years to her apparent age, her eyes were bright with nervous
energy and excitement. “Well, I did graduate at the head of my class at
the Farm,” she said, referring to Camp
Perry, the CIA training facility near Williamsburg, Virginia.
“It's nice to know my time there wasn't a total waste.”

“Where to now?” Smith asked.

She nodded toward a hallway leading out of the foyer. "Through

there,“ she said. ”A central staircase
runs all the way to the top. There are landings at each floor with doors
leading to the separate flats."

“Any restless natives?” Peter wondered.

Randi shook her head. “Nope. There are lights
showing under a few doors, but otherwise it's pretty quiet. And let's try to
keep it that way, shall we, guys? I'd rather not spend the next twenty-four
hours answering awkward questions down at the nearest Prefecture of Police.”

With Randi in the lead, the trio made their way carefully up the
stairs—moving quietly past landings cluttered with bicycles, baby strollers,
and small two-wheeled shopping carts. Another locked door, this one at the very
top, yielded quickly to her lock picks. They stepped through the door and out
into a rooftop garden of the kind so beloved by Parisians —a miniature urban
glade created by a maze of large clay pots filled with dwarf trees, shrubs, and
flowering plants. They were at the rear of the apartment building, separated
from the rue de Vigny by a row of tall soot-stained chimneys and a forest of
radio and TV antennae.

This high up, the chill autumn breeze carried the muted sounds of the city
to them—car horns honking on the boulevard Beaumarchais, the shrill whine of
motor scooters racing through narrow streets, and laughter and music drifting
out through the open door of a nightclub somewhere close by. The floodlit white
domes of the Byzantine-inspired Sacre Coeur basilica gleamed to the north, set
high on the crowded slopes of Mont-martre.

Smith moved carefully to the edge and looked down over an ornate
wrought-iron railing. In the darkness far below he could just make out a row of
trash bins crowding a narrow alley. The wall of another old building, also
converted into a block of flats, rose vertically on the other side of that tiny
lane. Patches of warm yellow lamplight showed through the cracks in closed
shutters and drapes. He stepped back a few paces, rejoining Peter and Randi in
the modest cover provided by the roof garden's trees and shrubs.

On their right loomed the shadowy mass of the Lazarus Movement's Paris headquarters. The
two buildings were adjacent, but 18 rue de Vigny was one story higher. A
twenty-foot-high blank wall of stone separated them from the steeply sloping
roof of their goal.

“Right,” Peter whispered, already kneeling down to open the first
of their two duffel bags. He began handing out articles of clothing and gear.
“Let's get started.”

Moving quickly in the cold night air, the three began transforming
themselves from ordinary-appearing civilians to fully equipped special
operators. First, Randi started by tugging off the gray wig confining her own
blond hair. Then she peeled away the specially crafted wrinkles and lines that
had added decades to her appearance.

All of them shed their heavy coats, revealing high-necked black sweaters and
black jeans. Dark-colored watch caps covered their hair. They blackened their
faces and foreheads with camouflage sticks. Their street shoes came off and
were replaced by climbing boots. Heavy leather gloves protected their hands.
All three donned Kevlar body armor and followed that by shrugging into
SAS-style assault vests and belting on holsters for their personal weapons —Smith's
SIG-Sauer pistol, a Browning Hi-Power for Peter, and a 9mm Beretta for Randi.
Next, they struggled into rappelling harnesses and slung bags containing coils
of climbing rope over their shoulders.

Peter handed around an assortment of special equipment. Last of all, he gave
each of them two cylindrical canisters, about the size of a can of shaving
cream. “Flash/bang grenades,” he said coolly. “Very
handy for throwing the enemy into confusion. Quite
popular as a gag at all the best parties, too, or so I'm told.”

“We're supposed to do this covertly,” Randi reminded him tartly.
“Not plunge in shooting and start World War Three.”

“To be sure,” Peter replied. “But better safe than sorry, I
think. After all, those fellows,” he nodded toward the high, dark shape of
the Lazarus Movement headquarters, "may react badly if they spot us
peeping in at

them." He moved around Jon and Randi,
inspecting and tugging at their harnesses and various items of equipment to
make sure everything was secure. Then he submitted patiently while Smith
performed the same last-minute check on him.

“Now for that little bit of wall,” Peter announced. He reached
into his duffel bag and pulled out a small air pistol already rigged with a
titanium-barbed dart attached to a spool of nylon-coated wire. With a slight
bow, he handed the assembly to Randi. “Would you care to do the
honors?”