The Lazarus Vendetta c-5 Page 15

  “Who would do that?” Frida McFadden asked out loud in confusion. She chewed nervously on the ends of her straight mop of green-dyed hair. “Who would blow up the IRB? It couldn't have been any of our own people. Our orders came straight from the top, from Lazarus himself.”

  “I don't have any idea,” her boyfriend answered grimly. Bill Oakes was busy buttoning up the shirt he had thrown on when their phone first rang with the terrible news. He shook his long fair hair out of his eyes impatiently. "But I do know one thing: We've got to dump all the stuff we were planning to use for our own mission. And soon. Before the cops come pounding on our doors."

  “No shit,” muttered their heavyset companion, the third member of their action cell. Rick Avery scratched at his beard. “But where can we get rid of the gear safely? The lake?”

  “It would be found there,” said a quiet mocking voice from behind them. “Or you would be seen throwing your materials into the water.”

  Startled, the three Lazarus Movement activists spun around. None of them had heard the locked front door open or close. They found themselves staring at a very tall and very powerfully built man gazing back at them from the central hall separating the living and dining rooms. He was wearing a heavy wool coat.

  Oakes recovered first. He stepped forward, with his jaw thrust out belligerently. “Who the hell are you?”

  “You may call me Terce,” the green-eyed man said calmly. “And I have something to give you — a gift.” His hand came smoothly out of the pocket of his coat. He pointed the silenced 9mm Walther pistol straight at them.

  Frida McFadden cried out softly in fear. Avery stood frozen, with his fingers still tangled in his beard. Only Bill Oakes had the presence of mind to speak. “If you're a cop,” he stammered, “show us your warrant.”

  The tall man smiled politely. “Alas, I am not a policeman, Mr. Oakes.”

  Oakes felt a shiver run through him in the last second before the Walther coughed. The bullet hit him in the forehead and killed him instantly. He fell back against the television.

  The second member of the Horatii swung his pistol slightly to the left and fired again. Avery groaned once and went to his knees, clutching fu-tilely at the blood pumping out of his torn throat. The big auburn-haired man squeezed the trigger a third time, putting this round squarely into the bearded young activist's head.

  White-faced with horror, Frida McFadden turned and tried to run for the nearest bedroom. The tall man shot her in the back. She stumbled, fell awkwardly across a futon sofa, and lay moaning, writhing in pain. He shoved the pistol back in his coat pocket, stepped forward, cradled her head in two powerful arms — and then yanked hard, twisting sharply at the same time. Her neck snapped.

  The green-eyed man named Terce surveyed the three bodies for several seconds, checking them for any signs of life. Satisfied, he went back to the front door and pulled it open. Two of his men were waiting out on the landing. Each carried a pair of heavy suitcases.

  “It's done,” the big man told them. He stood back and let them past. Neither wasted any time looking at the corpses. Anyone who worked closely with one of the Horatii soon grew used to the sight of death.

  Working fast, they began unpacking, setting out blocks of plastic explosives, detonators, and timers on the dining room table. One of them, a short, stocky man with Slavic features, indicated the clothing, maps, chemicals, and paint stacked on the table or packed in boxes on the hardwood floor. “What about these things, Terce?”

  “Pack them up,” ordered the green-eyed man. “But leave the coveralls, helmets, and their false identity cards. Dump those in with the bomb-making materials you're leaving.”

  The Slav shrugged. “The ruse will not fool the police for very long, you realize. When the American authorities run tests, they will not find chemical residues on any of those you killed.”

  The tall man nodded. “I know.” He smiled coldly. “But then again, time is on our side — not on theirs.”

  * * *

  The lights in the bar at O'Hare International Airport were turned down very low, in sharp contrast to the blinding fluorescent strips in the corridors and departure lounges just outside. Even this late at night, it was fairly crowded — as jet-lagged and sleep-deprived travelers sought solace in peace, relative quiet, and large doses of alcohol.

  Hal Burke sat moodily at a corner table, sipping at the rum-and-Coke he had ordered half an hour before. His flight for Dulles was set to begin

  boarding soon. He looked up when Terce slid into the chair across from him. “Well?”

  The bigger man showed his teeth, plainly quite pleased with himself. “There were no problems,” he said. “Our information was accurate in every detail. The Chicago Lazarus cell is now leaderless.”

  Burke smiled sourly. Their creator's high-level sources inside the Movement had been one of his chief motivations for bringing the eerie, almost inhuman, Horatii into TOCSIN. Though it galled Burke to admit it, those sources were better than any network he had ever been able to develop.

  “The Chicago police will see what they expect to see,” Terce went on. “Plastic explosives. Detonators. And false identity papers.”

  “Plus three dead bodies,” the CIA officer pointed out. “The cops might wonder a bit about that little detail.”

  The other man lifted his shoulders in a quick, dismissive shrug. “Terrorist movements often cannibalize themselves,” he said. “The police may believe the dead were perceived as weak links by their comrades. Or they may suspect that there was a falling-out among different factions within the Movement.”

  Burke nodded. Once again, the big auburn-haired man was right. “Hell, it happens,” he agreed. “You put a bunch of radical nutcases with weapons in the same tight space under serious pressure… Well, if some of them snap and go ape-shit on the others, I guess that's not exactly news.”

  He took another sip of his drink. “Anyway, at least it will look like the IRB bomb attack was in the works for months,” he muttered. “That should help persuade Castilla that the Teller Massacre was a Lazarus put-up job, from start to finish. That it was a go code for these bastards — a way to radicalize their base of support and tie us down politically at the same time. With luck, the president will finally designate the whole Movement as a terrorist organization.”

  The second of the Horatii smiled dubiously. “Perhaps.”

  Burke gritted his teeth. The old scar on the side of his neck turned white as his face tightened. “We have another, more immediate problem,” he said. “Out in Santa Fe.”

  “A problem?” Terce asked.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith, M.D.,” the CIA officer told him. “He's rattling cages and asking some very inconvenient questions.”

  “We still have a security element in New Mexico,” Terce said carefully.

  “Good,” Burke downed the last of his rum-and-Coke. He stood up. “Let me know when they're ready to move. And make it soon. I want Smith dead before anyone higher up the chain of command starts paying attention to him.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Friday, October 15 Santa Fe

  The early-morning sun was slanting through the windows of his hotel suite when Jon Smith's cell phone buzzed. He set his coffee cup down on the kitchen counter. “Yes?”

  “Check the news,” Fred Klein suggested.

  Smith pushed the plate with his half-eaten breakfast Danish on it out of the way, spun his laptop around, and tapped into the Internet. He read through the headlines scrolling across the screen in growing disbelief. The story was the lead on every major news organization's Web site. FBI MASSACRE PROBE NAILS LAZARUS! blared One. LAZARUS ACTIVIST BOUGHT getaway suvs! shouted another.

  Every article was pretty much the same. Top-level sources within the FBI investigation of the Teller Massacre confirmed that a longtime Lazarus Movement activist from Albuquerque had purchased the vehicles used by the phony Secret Service agents — using roughly one hundred thousand dollars in cash. Then,
only a few hours after the Institute was attacked, Andrew Costanzo was seen by his neighbors driving away from his home with a suitcase in the back of his car. File pictures of Costanzo and his description were being circulated to every federal, state, and local law-enforcement agency.

  “Interesting, isn't it?” the head of Covert-One said in Smith's ear.

  “That's one word for it,” Smith told him wryly. “At least yours is printable.”

  “I assume then this is the first you've heard about this remarkable break in the case?” Klein murmured.

  “You assume correctly,” Smith said, frowning. He thought back to the FBI briefings he had attended. Neither Pierson nor her closest aides had mentioned anything so potentially incendiary. “Is this a real leak or some reporter's fantasy?”

  “It appears to be genuine,” Klein told him. “The Bureau isn't even bothering to deny the story.”

  “Any word on the source? Was it someone out here in Santa Fe? Or back in D.C.?” Smith asked.

  “No idea,” the head of Covert-One said. He hesitated briefly. “I will say that no one here in Washington seems especially sorry to see this development go public.”

  “I'll bet.” Judging by Kit Pierson's eagerness to ignore his disquieting questions yesterday, Smith knew how pleased the FBI must be to come up with hard evidence that linked the destruction of the Teller Institute to the Lazarus Movement. That would be even truer after the overnight terrorist attacks in California and Chicago. Finding out about this guy Costanzo must have seemed like manna raining down from heaven.

  “What do you think, Colonel?” Klein asked.

  “I don't buy it,” Smith said, shaking his head. "At least, not completely. It's just too darned convenient. Besides, nothing in this Costanzo story explains how the Movement could get its hands on nanophages designed to kill — or why it would deliberately release them, especially on its own supporters."

  “No, it doesn't,” Klein agreed.

  Smith fell silent for a moment, reading through one of the most recent articles. This piece paid more attention to what the Lazarus Movement representative, a woman named Heather Donovan, had to say about Andrew Costanzo. Smith considered her claims carefully. If even half of what she said was true, the FBI could be haring off down a false trail, one deliberately laid as a distraction. He nodded to himself. It was worth checking out.

  “I'm going to try talking to this Movement spokeswoman,” he told Klein. "But I'll need a temporary cover of some kind, probably as a journalist. With some fake ID that'll stand up to scrutiny. No one from the Lazarus organization is going to talk freely to an Army officer or a scientist."

  “When will you need it by?” Klein asked.

  Smith thought about that. His day was already booked solid. Late last night, some members of the FBI investigative team had finally risked working without their heavy protective gear. They were still alive. As a result, medical teams from the local hospitals and Nomura PharmaTech were beginning to retrieve bodies and parts of bodies from the site. He wanted to sit in on some of the pathology work they were planning— hoping he might learn the answers to some of the questions that still troubled him.

  “Sometime this evening,” he decided. “I'll try to arrange a meeting at a downtown restaurant or bar. The panic's mostly over out here now and folks are coining back to town.”

  “Tell this Ms. Donovan that you're a freelance journalist,” Klein suggested. “An American stringer for he Monde and a few other smaller European papers, most of them shading to the left.”

  “Sounds good,” Smith said. He knew Paris very well, and Le Monde and its European counterparts were generally viewed as being sympathetic to the environmental, anti-technology, and anti-globalization line pushed by the Lazarus Movement.

  “I'll have a courier deliver a package with a Le Monde press card in your name to the hotel by this afternoon,” Klein promised.

  * * *

  FBI Deputy Assistant Director Kit Pierson sat at the folding table that served as her desk, paging through the “eyes-only” CIA file faxed to her by Hal Burke. Langley had only a little more information on this Jonathan Smith than did the Bureau. But there were occasional and cryptic references to him in mission reports or cables from the Agency's case officers — usually in connection with some developing crisis or existing hot spot.

  Her eyes narrowed as she ran through the long and worrying list. Moscow. Paris. Shanghai. And now here he was in Santa Fe. Oh, there was always some plausible excuse for Smith's sudden appearance on the scene, whether it was checking up on an injured friend, attending a routine medical conference, or simply doing the work he was trained for. On the surface, he was just what he claimed to be — a military scientist and doctor who occasionally wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Pierson shook her head. There were entirely too many “coincidental” meetings, too many plausible excuses, for her to swallow. What she saw was a pattern, and it was a pattern she did not like at all. Although USAMRIID cut Smith's paycheck, he seemed to have extraordinary latitude in his duty assignments and in his ability to take personal leaves of absence. She was sure now that he was a clandestine operator, one who worked at a very high level. But what worried her most was that she still could not pin down his real employer. Every serious inquiry about him through official channels vanished into a bureaucratic never-never land. It was as though someone very high up somewhere had stamped a big NO TRESPASSING sign across the full life and career of Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith, M.D.

  And that made her nervous — very nervous. That was why she had a two-man team keeping a close eye on him. The minute the good doctor stepped across the lines she had laid out, she planned to run him right out of the investigation, tarred, feathered, and on a rail if necessary.

  She slid the CIA file into a portable shredder and watched the tiny crosscut strips of paper rain down into a wastebasket marked Burn Material. The secure phone on her desk beeped before they stopped falling.

  “This is Burke,” a voice on the other end growled. “Are your people still tailing Smith?”

  “They are,” Pierson confirmed. “He's out at St. Vincent's Hospital, working in their pathology lab.”

  “Call them off,” Burke said flatly

  She sat bolt upright in her chair, surprised by the request. “What?”

  “You heard me,” her CIA counterpart said. “Pull your agents off Smith's back. Right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me on this, Kit,” Burke told her coldly. "You do not want to

  know."

  When the phone went dead, Pierson sat in frozen silence, wondering again whether there was any way she could escape the trap she felt closing around her.

  * * *

  Jon Smith came through the swinging doors into the small locker room next to the hospital's pathology lab. It was deserted. Yawning, he sat down on a bench and peeled off his gloves and mask. He tossed them into a receptacle already full to the brim. His set of green surgical scrubs came off next. He had almost finished donning his street clothes when Fred Klein called.

  “Is your interview with Ms. Donovan set?” the head of Covert-One asked.

  “Yes,” Smith said. He leaned over, putting on his shoes. “I'm meeting her at nine tonight. At a little cafe in the Plaza Mercado.”

  “Good,” Klein said. “Now, how are the autopsies going? Any new developments?”

  “A few,” Smith told him. “But I'm damned if I know yet what they mean.” He sighed. “Understand that we have very few intact body parts to study. Almost all that's left of most of the dead is a weird sort of organic soup.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, there are some odd patterns emerging from the autopsies we've been able to conduct,” Smith reported. “It's too soon and the sample sizes are too small to say anything definite, but I suspect the trends we're seeing will hold up over the long haul.”

  “Such as?” Klein prompted.

  “Significant ind
ications of systemic drug use or serious chronic illness among those who were killed,” Smith said, standing up from the bench and grabbing his windbreaker. “Not in all cases. But in a very large percentage — far higher than the statistical norm.”

  “Do you know yet what killed those people?”

  “Precisely? No.”

  “Give me your best guess, Colonel,” Klein prodded gently.

  “A guess is all I've got,” said Smith wearily. “But I'd say that most of the damage was done by chemicals distributed by these nanophages to break up peptide bonds. Do that enough times to enough different peptides and you wind up with the kind of organic goo we're finding.”

  “But these devices don't kill everybody they infest,” Klein commented. “Why not?”

  “My bet is that the nanophages are triggered by different biochemical signals — ”

  “Like those you'd find in someone who uses drugs. Or who suffers from heart disease. Or perhaps some other illness or chronic condition,”

  Klein realized suddenly. “Without those signals, these devices would lie dormant.”

  “Bingo.”

  “That doesn't explain why that big green-eyed fellow you were fighting suddenly succumbed,” the other man pointed out. “Both of you ran through the cloud of these nanophages without at first being affected.”

  “The guy was tagged, Fred,” Smith said grimly. He closed his eyes, willing away the terrible memories of his enemy dissolving in front of him. “I'm pretty sure that somebody hit him with a needle tipped with a substance that triggered the nanophages he'd breathed in earlier.”

  “Which means his own side betrayed him to prevent his possible capture,” Klein said.

  “That's the way I see it,” Smith agreed. He grimaced, suddenly remembering the sound of that cold, deadly hiss right past his ear. “And I guess they tried to hit me with one of those same damned needles, too.”