Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (46 page)

“He wasn't,” Jon said. "The guy was dying, Fred. For all he
knew, I was his sainted grandmother come down from heaven to escort him to the
Pearly Gates. No, Vitor Abrantes was telling me the truth. Whoever

Lazarus really is, he's the son of a bitch who's
been behind these attacks from the beginning. Plus, he's been throwing sand in
everyone's eyes by stage-managing both ends of this war between the Movement
and the CIA and FBI."

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “To what end,
Jon?” Klein asked finally.

“Lazarus has been buying time,” Smith told him. “Time to run
these perverted 'field tests' of his. Time to analyze the
results and to reengineer the nanophages—making them more and more powerful and
deadly. Time to develop and evaluate new methods of
delivering them to his chosen targets.” He grimaced. “While
we've all been running around in circles, Lazarus has been out there designing,
developing, and testing a weapon that could wipe out most of the human
race.”

“At Kusasa in Zimbabwe,
the Teller Institute, and now La Courneuve,” Klein realized. “All the
places showing up in those passports and other travel documents Peter Howell
retrieved.”

“Exactly.”

“And you think this weapon is ready for use?” Klein asked quietly.

“I do,” Smith said. “There's no other reason for Lazarus to
destroy the people and equipment he was using to monitor those experiments.
He's clearing the decks—getting ready to strike.”

“What's your recommendation?”

“We pinpoint Lazarus and whatever lab or factory he's using to produce
this stuff. Then we kill him and capture his nanophage stocks before they're
dispersed for any large-scale attack.”

“Short and sweet, Colonel,” Klein said. “But not very
subtle.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Smith demanded.

The head of Covert-One sighed again. “No, I don't. The trick will be
finding Lazarus before it's too late. And that's something no Western
intelligence agency has managed in more than a year of trying.”

'I think Abrantes told me most of what we need,“ Smith argued.
”The trouble is: My Spanish is fair to middling, but my Portuguese is
nonexis-

tent. I need a clear translation of what he said
when I asked him where Lazarus was now."

“I can find someone to handle that,” Klein promised. He faded from
the phone a moment. There was a small click in the background, and then
he came back on the line. “Okay, we're set to record, Colonel. Go
ahead.”

“Here goes,” Smith said. From memory, and trying to make sure he
used the same pronunciation he had heard the dying man use, he repeated Vitor
Abrantes' last words. “Os Agores. O console do sol. Santa Maria.”

“Got it. Anything
else?”

“Yeah.” Smith frowned. “Abrantes
told me he was shot by a man he described as 'one of the Horatii.' If
I'm right, I've already run into two of them —first outside Teller and now here
in Paris. I'd
like a better read on what those big identical bastards were . . . and how many
more of them might be out there!”

Klein said, “I'll see what I can dig up, Jon. But this might take a
while. Can you stay where you are for a bit?”

Smith nodded, looking around at the tall trees dappled in shadow and in
fading moonlight. “Yeah. But make it as quick as
you can, Fred. I have a bad feeling that the clock is running fast on this
situation.”

“Understood, Colonel. Hold tight.”

The line went dead.

■

Smith paced back and forth across the clearing. He could feel the tension
inside mounting. His nerves were stretched almost to the breaking point. More
than an hour had gone by since Klein had promised to get back to him. The gray
light in the east was much stronger now.

The sudden sound of a car engine startled him. He swung around in surprise
and saw the little black Peugeot drive away, bouncing and rolling awkwardly
along the heavily rutted forest track.

“I sent Max and Lewis back to Paris,”
Randi explained. She had been sitting calmly on his tree stump, watching him
pace. “We don't need them here right now, and I'd like to find out more
about anything the French police have dug up inside what's left of the Movement
headquarters.”

Smith nodded. That made sense. “I think—”

His cell phone vibrated. He flipped it open. “Yes?”

“Are you alone?” Klein asked abruptly. His voice sounded strained,
almost unnatural.

Jon checked his surroundings. Randi was perched just a few feet away. And,
operating on some sixth sense honed by years in the field, Peter had woken up
from his catnap. “No, I'm not,” he admitted.

“That's extremely unfortunate,” Klein said. He hesitated.
“Then you'll have to be very careful of what you say on your end.
Clear?”

“Yes,” Smith said quietly. “What have you got for me?”

“Let's start with the Horatii,” Klein said slowly.
“The name comes from an old Roman legend—a set of identical triplets sent
into single combat against warriors from a rival city. They were renowned for
their courage, strength, agility, and loyalty.”

“That sure fits,” Smith said, thinking back over his deadly
encounters with the two tall green-eyed men. Both times, he had been very lucky
to emerge alive. He winced. The thought of a third man with the same strength
and skills still lurking out there was disconcerting.

“There's a famous painting done by the French neoclassical artist
Jacques-Louis David,” Klein went on. “Called The
Oath of the Horatii.”

“And it's hanging in the Louvre,” Smith said, suddenly realizing
why the name had conjured up old memories.

“That's right,” Klein confirmed.

Smith shook his head grimly. “Swell. So our friend Lazarus has a love
for the classics and a nasty sense of humor. But I guess that doesn't bring us
any closer to finding him.” He took a deep breath. “Were you able to
secure a translation of Abrantes' last words?”

'Yes," Klein said quietly.

“Well?” Smith asked impatiently. “What was he trying to tell
me?”

“He said, 'The Azores. The island of the sun. Santa Maria,'” the
head of Covert-One reported.

“The Azores?”
Smith shook his head, surprised. The Azores were a group of small
Portuguese-settled islands far out in the Atlantic Ocean, close to the line of
latitude linking Lisbon and New York. Centuries ago, the archipelago had
been a strategic outpost of the now-vanished Portuguese empire, but today it
survived largely on beef and dairy exports and on tourism.

“Santa Maria is one of the nine islands
of the Azores,” Klein explained. He
sighed. “Apparently, the locals sometimes refer to it as 'the island of
the sun.'”

“So what the hell is on Santa
Maria?” Smith asked, barely controlling the
irritation in his voice. Fred Klein was not usually so slow to get to the
point.

“Not much on the eastern half of the island. Just a
few tiny villages, really.”

“And in the west?”

“Well, that's where things get tricky,” Klein admitted. “It
seems that the western end of Santa
Maria is leased by Nomura PharmaTech for its global
medical charity work—complete with a very long hard-surfaced runway, enormous
hangar facilities, and a huge medical supply storage complex.”

“Nomura,” Jon said softly, at last understanding why his superior
sounded so strained. “Hideo Nomura is Lazarus. He's got the money, the
scientific know-how, the facilities, and the political connections to pull
something like that off.”

“So it appears,” Klein agreed. “But I'm afraid it's not
enough. No one's going to be persuaded by the purported last words of an
unknown dying man. Without hard evidence, the kind of evidence we can show to
wavering friends and allies, I don't see how the president can possibly approve
an open attack on Nomura's Azores
facility.”

The head of Covert-One continued. “The situation here is worse than you
can imagine, Jon. Our military and political alliances are shredding like wet
tissue paper. NATO is up in arms. The UN General Assembly is planning to
designate us as a terrorist nation. And a sizable bloc in Congress is arguing
seriously for the impeachment of the president. In these circumstances, an
apparently unprovoked air or cruise missile attack on a world-renowned medical
charity would be the last straw.”

Smith knew that Klein was right. But knowing that didn't make the situation
they faced any more acceptable. “We may be damned if we do. But we'll die
if we don't,” he argued.

“I know that, Jon,” Klein said emphatically. “But we need
evidence to back our claims before we can send in the bombers and
missiles.”

“There's only one way to get that kind of proof,” Smith pointed
out grimly. “Someone has to go in on the ground in the Azores
and get right up close.”

“Yes,” Klein agreed slowly. “When can you head to the
airport?”

Smith looked up from the phone at Randi and Peter. They looked equally grim,
equally determined. They had heard enough of his side of the conversation to
know what was going on. “Now,” he said simply. “We're going
now.”

The Lazarus Center, Santa Maria
Island, the Azores

Outside the windowless confines of the Lazarus Movement nerve center, the
sun was just rising, climbing higher above the embrace of the Atlantic.
Its first dazzling rays touched the sheer cliffs of Sao Laurenco
Bay with fire and lit the
steep stone-terraced vineyards of Maia. From there, the growing daylight rolled
westward across verdant forests and pastures, gleamed off the white sand beach
at Praia Formosa, and at last chased the night's lingering shadows away from
the treeless limestone plain surrounding the Nomura PharmaTech airfield.

Inside the Center, secure in neon-lit silence, Hideo Nomura read through the
most recent messages from his surviving agents in Paris. Based on details supplied by paid
informants on the police force, it was clear that Nones and his men were
dead—killed along with all the others inside the bomb-ravaged building at 18
rue de Vigny.

He furrowed his brow, both puzzled and worried by this news. Nones

and his team should have been well away before
their demolition charges exploded. Something had gone badly wrong, but what?

Several witnesses reported seeing “men in black” running away from
the building right after the first explosions occurred. The French police,
though dubious at first, were now treating these reports seriously-blaming the
mysterious forces opposing the Lazarus Movement for what looked like a major
terrorist attack on its Paris
headquarters.

Nomura shook his head. That was impossible, of course. The only terrorists
targeting the Movement were men under his command. But then he stopped,
considering the matter more carefully.

What if someone else had been snooping around inside 18 rue de Vign}?
True, his intricately laid plans had succeeded in throwing the CIA, FBI, and
MI6 into confusion. But there were other intelligence organizations in the
world, and any number of them might be trying to pry into the activities of the
Lazarus Movement. Could they have found anything there that might tie the La
Courneuve surveillance operation to him? He bit his lower lip, wondering if he
had been overconfident, entirely too sure that his many elaborate ruses would
escape detection.

Nomura pondered that possibility for a while. Though it was likely that his
cover was intact, it might be best to take certain precautions. His original
plan envisioned a simultaneous strike on the continental United States
by at least a dozen Thanatos aircraft—but assembling the required number
of the giant flying-wing drones would take his work crews another three days.
More important, he lacked the hangar space here to conceal so many planes from
any unexpected aerial or space surveillance.

No, he thought coldly, he should act now, while he was certain that
he still could, instead of waiting for a perfect moment that might never
arrive. Once the first millions were dead, the Americans and their allies would
be leaderless and too horror-stricken to hunt effectively for their hidden
foes. When fighting for control over the fate of the world, he re-

minded himself, flexibility was a virtue, not a
vice. He tapped a button on his internal phone. “Send
Terce to me. At once.”

The last of the Horatii arrived moments later. His massive shoulders
filled the doorway and his head seemed almost to brush against the ceiling. He
bowed obediently and then stood motionless in front of Nomura's teak desk,
patiently waiting for orders from the man who had made him so powerful and
efficient a killer.

'Tou know that both of your companions have failed me?" Nomura said.

The tall green-eyed man nodded. “So I understand,” he said coolly.
“But / have never failed in my duty.”

“That is true,” Nomura agreed. “And in consequence, the
rewards promised to them now fall to you. When the time comes, you will stand
at my right hand—exercising dominion in my name, in the name of Lazarus.”

Terce's eyes gleamed. Nomura planned to reorder the world to create a
paradise for those few he believed worthy of continued life. Most nations and
peoples would die, consumed over months and years by waves of unseen
nanophages. Those allowed to live would be forced to obey his
commands—reshaping their lives, cultures, and beliefs to fit his idyllic vision.
Nomura and those who served him would wield almost unimaginable power over the
frightened remnants of humanity.

“What are your orders?” the surviving member of the Horatii asked.

“We are going to attack earlier than first planned,” Nomura told
him. “Three Thanatos aircraft should be ready for launch in six to
eight hours. Inform the nanophage production team that I want enough full
canisters to load those planes as soon as their preflight checks are finished.
The first targets will be Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston.”