Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta (11 page)

pushing the story were arguing that these pictures
proved that “elements within the American government” had wiped out a
peaceful village as a first test of those nanotech weapons.

Castilla grimaced. In the prevailing hysteria, no one was going to pay any
attention to calm technical rebuttals by leading scientists. Or to reassuring
speeches by politicians like him, the president reminded himself. Pressured by
frightened constituents, many in Congress were already demanding an immediate
federal ban on nanotech research. And God only knew how many other governments
around the world were going to buy into the Movement's wild-eyed claims about America's
secret “nanotech weapons program.”

Castilla turned to David Hanson, sitting at the far end of the table. “Anything to add, David?”

The CIA director shrugged. “Beyond the observation
that what happened at the Teller Institute is almost certainly an act of coldly
calculated terrorism? No, Mr. President, I do not.”

“Aren't you jumping the gun just a bit?” Emily Powell-Hill asked
curtly. There was no love lost between the former Army brigadier general and
the Director of Central Intelligence. She thought Hanson was far too eager to
apply extreme solutions to national security problems.

Privately, the president agreed with her assessment. But the uncomfortable
truth was that Hanson's wilder predictions often hit the mark, and most of the
clandestine operations he pushed forward were successful. And in this case, the
CIA chiefs assertion tied in perfectly with what
Castilla had already heard from Fred Klein at Covert-One.

“Am I speculating in advance of all the facts? Clearly, I am,”
Hanson admitted. He peered condescendingly over the rims of his tortoiseshell
glasses at the national security adviser. “But I don't see that we need to
waste much time on alternate theories, Emily. Not unless you honestly believe
that the intruders who broke into the Teller Institute had nothing to do with
the bombs that exploded less than an hour later. Frankly, that seems a bit
naive to me.”

Emily Powell-Hill flushed bright red.

Castilla intervened before the dispute could get out of hand. “Let's
assume you're right, David. Say this disaster is an act of terrorism. Then who
are the terrorists?”

“The Lazarus Movement,” said the CIA director bluntly. “For
precisely the reasons I outlined when we discussed the Joint Intelligence
Threat Assessment, Mr. President. We wondered then what the 'big event' in
Santa Fc was supposed to be.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders.
“Well, now we know.”

“Are you seriously suggesting the leaders of the Lazarus Movement
arranged the deaths of more than two thousand of their own supporters?”
Ouray asked. The chief of staff was openly skeptical.

“Deliberately?” Hanson shook his head.
“I don't know. And until we get a better sense of exactly what killed
those people, we won't know. But I am quite sure that the Lazarus Movement was
involved in the terrorist attack itself.”

“How so?” Castilla asked.

“Consider the timing, Mr. President,” the CIA director suggested.
He began making his points, ticking them off with the precision of a professor
presenting a much-loved thesis to a particularly slow freshman class.
“One: Who organized a mass demonstration outside the Teller Institute? The Lazarus Movement. Two: Why were the Institute's security
guards outside the building when the counterfeit Secret Service team arrived —
and not able to intervene against them? Because they were
pinned down by that same protest. Three: Who prevented the real Secret
Service agents from entering the building? Those same Lazarus
Movement demonstrators. And finally, four: Why couldn't the Santa Fe police and
sheriffs intercept the intruders as they left the Institute? Because
they were tied down handling the chaos outside the Institute.”

Almost against his will, Castilla nodded. The case the CIA chief made was
not airtight, but it was persuasive.

"Sir, we cannot go public with an unsupported allegation like that

against the Lazarus Movement!“ Ouray broke in.
”It would be political suicide. The press would crucify us for even
suggesting it!"

“Charlie's absolutely right, Mr. President,” Emily Powell-Hill
said. The national security adviser shot a quick glare at the head of the CIA
before continuing. “Blaming the Movement for this would play straight into
the hands of every conspiracy theorist around the world. We can't afford to
give them more ammunition. Not now.”

A gloomy silence fell around the Situation Room conference table.

“One thing is certain,” David Hanson said coldly, breaking the hush.
“The Lazarus Movement is already profiting from the public martyrdom of so
many of its followers. Around the world, hundreds of thousands of new
volunteers have added their names to its e-mail lists. Millions more have made
electronic donations to its public bank accounts.”

The CIA chief looked straight at Castilla. “I understand your
reluctance to act against the Lazarus Movement without proof of its terrorist
activities, Mr. President. I know the politics involved. And I earnestly hope
that the FBI probe at the Teller Institute produces the evidence you require.
But it is my duty to warn you that delay could have terrible consequences for
this nation's security. With every passing day, this Movement will grow
stronger. And with every passing day, our ability to confront it successfully
will diminish.”

Lazarus
Mobile Command
Center

The man called Lazarus sat alone in a small but elegantly furnished
compartment. The window shades were pulled down, shutting out any glimpse of
the larger world outside. Images flickered across the computer screen set
before him, televised images of the carnage outside the Teller Institute.

He nodded to himself, coolly satisfied by what he saw. His plans, so
carefully and patiently prepared over the course of several years, were at last
coming to fruition. Much of the work, like that involved in selectively

pruning the Movement's former leadership, had been
difficult and painful and full of risk. The Horatii, physically
powerful, precisely trained in the arts of assassination, and infinitely cruel,
had served him well in that effort.

For a moment a trace of sorrow crossed his face. He genuinely regretted the
need to eliminate so many men and women he had once admired—people whose only
fault had been a reluctance to see the need for sterner measures to accomplish
their shared dreams. But then Lazarus shrugged. Personal regrets aside, events
were proving the correctness of his vision. In the past twelve months, under
his sole leadership, the Movement had accomplished more than in all the prior
years of halfhearted conventional activism combined. Restoring the purity of
the world required bold, decisive action, not dreary oratory and weak-kneed
political protests.

In fact, as the name of the Movement suggested, it meant bringing new life
out of death itself.

His computer chimed softly, signaling the arrival of another encrypted
report relayed to him from the Center itself. Lazarus read through it in
silence. Prime's death was an inconvenience, but the loss of one of his three Horatii
was far outweighed by the results from the attack on the Teller Institute
and the resulting slaughter of his own followers. Gulled by the information he
had fed them, information that confirmed their own worst fears, officials in
the American CIA and FBI and those of other allied intelligence services had
trapped themselves in an act of mass murder. What must seem to those poor fools
to have been a terrible error was, in fact, intended from the beginning. They
were guilty and he would use their guilt against them for his own purposes.

Lazarus smiled coldly. With a single deadly stroke he had made it virtually
impossible for the United
States, or for any other Western government,
to act decisively against the Movement. He had turned their own strength against
them —just as would any master of jujitsu. Though his enemies did not yet
realize it, he controlled the essential levers of power.

Any action they took against the Movement would only strengthen his grip and
weaken them in the same moment.

Now it was time to begin the process of setting once-loyal allies at one
another's throats. The world was already suspicious of America's military and scientific power and of Washington's motives.
With the right prodding and media manipulation, the world would soon believe
that America,
the sole superpower, was tinkering with the building blocks of creation,
creating new weapons on a nanoscale—all in pursuit of its own cruel and selfish
aims. The globe would begin to divide between those who sided with Lazarus and
those who did not. And governments, pressured by their own people, would
increasingly turn against the United
States.

The resulting confusion, chaos, and disorder would serve him well. It would
buy the time he needed to bring his grand design to completion — a design that
would transform the Earth forever.

Night was falling fast across the high desert country around Santa Fe. To the
northwest, the highest peaks of the Jemez
Mountains shone crimson,
lit by the last rays of the setting sun. The lower lands to the east were
already immersed in the gathering darkness. Just south of the city itself,
tongues of fire still danced eerily amid the twisted and broken ruins of the
Teller Institute, flickering orange and red and yellow as the flames fed on
broken furniture and supporting beams, spilled chemicals, bomb-mangled
equipment, and the bodies of those trapped inside. The rank, acrid smell of
smoke hung heavy in the cool evening air.

Several fire engine companies were on the scene, but they were being held outside
the area cordoned off by local police and the National Guard. There was no
longer any real hope of finding any survivors inside the burning building, so
no one wanted to risk exposing more men to the runaway nanomachines that had
killed so many Lazarus Movement activists.

Jon Smith stood stiffly near the outside edge of the cordon, watching the
fires burn out of control. His lean face was haggard and his shoulders

were slumped. Like many soldiers, he often
experienced a feeling of melancholy in the aftermath of intense action. This
time it was worse. He was not accustomed to losing. Between them, he and Frank
Diaz must have killed or wounded half of the terrorists who had attacked the
Teller Institute, but the bombs they had planted had still gone off. Nor could
Smith forget the horror of seeing thousands of people reduced to slime and bone
fragments.

The encrypted cell phone in his inner jacket pocket vibrated suddenly. He
pulled the phone out and answered. “Smith.”

“1 need you to brief me in more detail,
Colonel,” Fred Klein said abruptly. “The president is still meeting
with his national security team, but I expect another call from him in the
not-too-distant future. I've already passed your preliminary report to him, but
he'll want more. I need you to tell me exactly what you saw and exactly what
you think happened there today.”

Smith closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted. “Understood,” he said
dully.

“Were you injured, Jon?” the head of Covert-One asked, sounding
concerned. “You didn't say anything earlier and I assumed — ”

Smith shook his head. The abrupt movement set every bruise and torn muscle
on fire. “It's nothing serious,” he said, wincing. “A few cuts
and scrapes, that's all.”

“I see.” Klein paused, plainly doubtful. “I suspect that
means you are not actively bleeding at this moment.”

“Really, Fred, I'm all right,” Smith told him, irritated now.
“I'm a doctor, remember?”

“Very well,” Klein said carefully. “We'll proceed. First, are
you still convinced that the terrorists who hit the Institute were
professionals?”

“No question about it,” Smith said. “These guys were smooth,
Fred. They had Secret Service procedures, weapons, and ID all down cold. If the
real Secret Service team hadn't shown up early, the bad guys could have been in
and out without anyone batting an eye.”

“Right up to the moment the bombs went off,” Klein suggested.

“Until then,” Smith agreed grimly.

“Which brings us to the protesters who died,” the head of
Covert-One said. “The common assumption seems to be that the explosions
released something from one of the labs—either a toxic chemical substance or
more likely a nanotech creation that went wild. You were assigned out there to
review the labs and their research. What do you think happened?”

Smith frowned. Ever since the shooting and screaming had stopped, he had
been racking his brains, trying to piece together a plausible answer to that
question. What could possibly have killed so many demonstrators outside the
Institute so quickly and so cruelly? He sighed. “Only one lab was working
on anything directly connected to human tissues and organs.”

“Which one?”

“Harcourt Biosciences,” Smith said. Speaking rapidly, he sketched
in the work Brinker and Parikh had been doing with their Mark II
nanophages—including their last experiment, the one that had killed a perfectly
healthy mouse. “And one of the major bomb blasts went off inside in the
Harcourt lab,” he concluded. “Both Phil and Ravi
are missing, and presumed dead.”

“That's it, then,” Klein said, sounding faintly relieved.
“The bombs were set deliberately. But the deaths outside must have been
unintended, basically a kind of high-tech industrial accident.”

“I don't buy it,” Smith said bluntly.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, the mouse I saw die showed no signs of cellular
degeneration,” Smith answered, thinking it through. “There was
nothing remotely resembling the wholesale disintegration I watched this
afternoon.”