Smith saw Peter Howell hovering around the door out onto the patio and motioned him over. “Go ahead,” he told Klein. “I’m all ears.”
“The man you shot was an American, a man named Michael Dolan. He was ex–U.S. Army Special Forces. A decorated combat veteran. He left the service as a captain five years ago.”
“Shit,” Jon said softly.
“Oh, it gets worse, Colonel,” Klein cautioned him. “Once he got out of the Army, Michael Dolan applied for admission to the FBI Academy at Quantico. They turned him down outright.”
“Why?” Smith wondered aloud. Ex–military officers were often in high demand by the FBI, which valued their skills, physical fitness, and disciplined outlook on life.
“He failed the Academy psychological evaluation,” Klein told him quietly. “Apparently, he showed clear traces of sociopathic tendencies and attitudes. The Bureau profilers noted a distinct willingness to kill, without significant compunction or remorse.”
“Not exactly someone you would really want carrying a law-enforcement badge and a weapon, I guess,” Smith said.
“No,” Klein agreed.
“Okay, the FBI didn’t want him,” Smith pressed. “Then who did take him on? How did he wind up involved in the Lazarus Movement?”
“There we begin to come to the heart of our serious problem,” the head of Covert-One said slowly. “It appears that the late and unlamented Mr. Dolan worked for the CIA.”
“Jesus.” Smith shook his head in disbelief. “Langley hired this guy?”
“Not officially,” Klein replied. “The Agency rather wisely seems to have kept him at arm’s length. On paper, Dolan was employed as an independent security consultant. But his paychecks were funneled through a number of CIA fronts. He’s worked for them on and off since leaving the Army, mostly conducting high-risk counterterror operations, usually in Latin America or Africa.”
“Cute. So Langley could always deny that he was one of theirs if an op went sour,” Smith realized, frowning.
“Exactly,” Klein said.
“And was Dolan on the CIA payroll last night?” Smith asked tightly, wondering just how much trouble they were in right now. Was that firefight last night the result of some total foul-up—a horrible incident of friendly fire between two clandestine outfits operating in the same area without adequate communication?
“No, I don’t think so,” the head of Covert-One told him. “My best guess is that his last paid contract from the Agency ended a little more than six months ago.”
Smith felt the rigid muscles of his face relax a tiny bit. He breathed out. “I’m glad to hear that. Damned glad.”
“There is more, Colonel,” Fred Klein warned. He cleared his throat. “The information I’ve just relayed comes from our own Covert-One database—a set of files I’ve built up using highly classified material siphoned from the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and other agencies. Without their knowledge, of course.”
Smith nodded to himself. Klein’s ability to pull together information from the several competing factions in the U.S. intelligence community was one of the reasons President Castilla put such a high value on Covert-One’s work.
“As a cross-check, I ran the pictures and fingerprints you sent me through both the CIA and the FBI databases,” Klein went on. His voice was flat and cold. “But both searches came back empty-handed. So far as Langley and the Bureau are concerned, Michael Dolan never took the FBI exam and never worked for the CIA. In fact, their records do not mention him at all.”
“What?” Smith exclaimed suddenly. He saw Peter raise an eyebrow in surprise and hurriedly lowered his voice. “That’s impossible!”
“Not impossible,” Klein told him quietly. “Merely improbable. And very frightening.”
“You mean the CIA and FBI files have been scrubbed,” Smith realized. He felt a shiver run down his spine. “Which is something that could only be done by people operating at a very high level. People in our own government.”
“I’m afraid so, Colonel,” Klein agreed. “Clearly, someone has taken enormous risks to erase those records. So now the questions we have to ask are, Why? And who?”
Hidden Nanotechnology Production Facility, Inside the Center
The technicians working inside the nanophage production core wore full protective suits, each with its own self-contained air supply. Thick gloves and the heavy suits slowed every movement and robbed them of much of their dexterity. Nevertheless, harsh training and intensive practice helped each man perform the delicate task of loading hundreds of billions of fully formed Stage III nanophages into four small, thick-walled metal cylinders.
As the cylinders were filled, they were slowly and carefully disconnected from the stainless steel production vats. Technicians working in pairs clamped the cylinders onto robotic carts designed to ferry them through a narrow tunnel—sealed at both ends by massive air locks—and out into another sealed chamber. There another team of technicians wearing masks, gloves, and coveralls took charge of the deadly cargo.
One by one, the nanophage-filled canisters were loaded into larger hollow metal tanks, which were carefully sealed and then welded shut. Once this work was finished, these larger metal tanks were stacked in a foam-padded heavy-duty shipping crate. As a last step, large white and red labels were stuck all over the crate: APPROVISIONNEMENTS MÉDICAUX DE L’OXYGÈNE. AVERTISSEMENT: CONTENU SOUS PRESSION!
The tall, powerfully built man who called himself Nones stood outside the production core, watching through the multiple layers of a sealed observation window as the loading proceeded. He turned his head toward the much shorter senior scientist beside him. “Will this new delivery system of yours yield the increased effectiveness our employer demands?”
The scientist nodded emphatically. “Absolutely. We have designed the Stage Three nanophages with a longer life span and for a much wider range of external conditions. Our new method takes advantage of those design improvements—allowing us to conduct this next field test from much higher altitudes and in more variable weather. Our computer modeling predicts significantly more efficient dispersion of the nanophages as a result.”
“And substantially higher kill rates?” Nones, the third of the Horatii, asked bluntly.
The scientist nodded reluctantly. “Of course.” He swallowed hard. “I doubt that very many people in the target area will survive.”
“Good.” The green-eyed man smiled coldly. “After all, that is the point of all this new technology of yours, isn’t it?”
PART THREE
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo
As a multinational corporation worth nearly $50 billion, Nomura PharmaTech owned factories, laboratories, and warehouse facilities all around the world, but it still retained a substantial presence in Japan. The company’s Tokyo-based complex occupied a forty-acre campus located in the very heart of the sprawling city’s Shinjuku Ward. Three identical skyscrapers held administrative offices and science labs for Nomura’s thousands of dedicated employees. At night, Tokyo’s vivid, shimmering neon lights were reflected by each tower’s mirrored facade—turning them into jeweled pillars on which the city’s night sky rested. But the rest of the campus was a peaceful rural setting of forested parkland, flowing streams, and restful pools. During his tenure as CEO and chairman, Jinjiro Nomura, Hideo’s father, had insisted on creating an oasis of natural beauty, peace, and tranquillity around his corporate headquarters—no matter how much it cost his company or its shareholders.
Three main gates controlled access to the walled compound. From each gate tree-lined paths and service roads fed pedestrian, auto, and truck traffic to one of the three towers.
Mitushara Noda had worked for Nomura PharmaTech for all of his adult life. Over the course of twenty-five years, the short, spare man with a passion for order and routine had risen steadily, if unspectacularly, from the post of junior nightshift watchman to that of Gate Three security supervisor. The work was equal
ly steady and equally unspectacular. Apart from making sure his guards checked employee badges, Noda’s day consisted largely of making sure that shipments of food, office supplies, and lab chemicals arrived on time and were directed to the proper loading dock. Before beginning any shift, he always arrived early just so he could spend the time he needed to memorize the scheduled arrivals, departures, and loads for every vehicle slated to pass through his gate during the next eight hours.
That was why the unexpected sound of a heavy tractor-trailer truck shifting its gears noisily as it turned off the main road brought Mitsuhara Noda rushing out of his small office at the gatehouse. By his calculations, no shipments of any kind were due to arrive for at least another two hours and twenty-five minutes. The little man’s black brows were furrowed as he watched the huge rig draw nearer, engine roaring as it steadily picked up speed.
Behind him, several of the other security guards whispered nervously to one another, wondering aloud what they should do. One unsnapped the holster at his side, readying his pistol for a quick draw.
Noda’s eyes narrowed. The access road through Gate Three led directly to the tower dedicated to Nomura PharmaTech’s nanotechnology research efforts. Several security circulars were posted in his office warning all company employees about the threats made by the Lazarus Movement. And there were no corporate markings on either the trailer or the cab of this fast-approaching truck.
He made a decision. “Lower the gate!” he snapped. “Hoshiko, phone the main office and report a possible security incident.”
Noda stepped right out into the road, signaling the driver of the oncoming truck to stop. Behind him, a solid steel pole swung down with a shrill electrical whine and locked in place. The other guards fumbled for their weapons.
But the truck kept coming. Its gears screamed as the big engine revved higher, accelerating to more than forty miles an hour. Unable for a moment to believe what he was seeing, the little gate supervisor stood his ground, still frantically waving his arms as he shouted for the big rig to halt.
Through the tinted windshield he caught a momentary glimpse of the man behind the wheel. There was no expression on the driver’s face, no sign of recognition in his glassy, unseeing eyes. A kamikaze! Noda realized in horror.
Far too late, he turned to run.
The front end of the huge truck slammed into him with lethal force, shattering every bone in his upper body. Unable even to force a scream out of his ruptured lungs, he was hurled backward against the steel pole. The impact snapped his spine in half. Noda was already dead when the truck crashed straight through the gate amid the high-pitched shriek of rending metal.
Two of the shocked security guards reacted fast enough to open fire. But their pistol shots only ricocheted off the big rig’s improvised armor plating and bulletproof windows. The truck kept going, roaring deeper into the wooded Nomura complex, racing straight for the tall mirrored tower containing the company’s Tokyo nanotech research facility.
Scarcely one hundred yards from the skyscraper’s main entrance, the speeding tractor-trailer crashed head-on into a row of massive steel-and-concrete barriers hurriedly deployed by the company after the terrorist attack on the Teller Institute. Huge pieces of broken concrete flew away from the point of impact, but the barriers held.
The big rig jackknifed and then exploded.
An enormous orange and red fireball roared high into the air. The shock wave smashed windows all across the front of the lab complex. Knife-edge shards of glass cascaded onto the pavements and lawns far below. Bomb-mangled pieces of the truck and trailer were blown through a wide arc—tearing jagged holes in the steel fabric of the building and toppling trees in the surrounding groves.
The nanotech labs themselves, however, unoccupied and sealed under Japanese government supervision, were largely untouched. Casualties, aside from the suicide-bomb driver and the unfortunate Mitsuhara Noda, were remarkably low.
Thirty minutes later, an e-mail message issued by the Lazarus Movement arrived at the offices of every major Tokyo media outlet. In it, the Movement’s Japan-based wing took credit for what it called “a mission of heroic self-sacrifice in defense of the planet and all humanity.”
Surveillance Team Safe House, on the Outskirts of Santa Fe
Two large panel vans were parked close to the front entrance of the secluded hilltop house. Their rear doors stood wide open, revealing an assortment of boxes and equipment cases crammed into the back of each vehicle. Five men were gathered near the vans, waiting for their leader.
The older, white-haired Dutchman named Linden was inside, going from room to room to make sure they were leaving nothing suspicious or incriminating behind. What he saw, or rather didn’t see, pleased him. The safe house had been stripped and sanitized. Apart from a few tiny holes drilled in the walls, there were no longer any traces of the large array of cameras, radio and microwave receivers, computers, and communications gear they had installed to eavesdrop on every facet of the Teller investigation. Every smooth surface and piece of wood or metal furniture gleamed, scrubbed clean of all fingerprints and other traces of recent human habitation.
He came out of the house and stood blinking in the dazzling sunshine. He crooked a finger at one of his men, beckoning him over. “Is everything packed, Abrantes?”
The younger man nodded. “We’re ready.”
“Good, Vitor,” Linden said. The surveillance team leader checked his watch. “Then let’s go. We have planes to catch.” He showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a quick, humorless smile. “Center’s timetable for this new mission is very tight, but it will be good to leave this high and arid desert behind and return to Europe.”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Santa Fe
The Santa Fe Municipal Police Department had its headquarters on the Camino Entrada, out on the western edge of the city—not far from the county jail, and next to the city courthouse. Half an hour after first setting foot in the building, Jon Smith found himself sitting in the office of the ranking policeman on duty. Several photographs showing a pretty wife and three young children were hung on two of the plain white walls. A watercolor depicting one of the nearby pueblos took up part of another. Case files in manila folders were neatly organized on one corner of a plain desk, right next to a computer. A background buzz of ringing phones, conversations, and busy keyboards drifted in through an open door to the adjoining squad room.
Lieutenant Carl Zarate looked down at Smith’s U.S. Army identity card and then back up with a puzzled frown. “Now what is it exactly that I’m supposed to do for you, Colonel?”
Smith kept his tone casual. He’d been bucked up to Zarate by a profusely sweating desk sergeant who had been made very uneasy by his questions. “I’m looking for some information, Lieutenant,” he said calmly. “A few facts about the gun battle somebody fought in the Plaza late last night.”
Zarate’s narrow, bony face went blank. “What gun battle was that?” he asked carefully. His dark brown eyes were wary.
Smith cocked his head to one side. “You know,” he said, at last. “I was sort of surprised when the press didn’t run wild with speculation about all the shooting going on right in the heart of the city. Then I thought that maybe someone leaned on the local papers and the TV and radio stations to keep the lid on—just for a while, just while an investigation was going on. With things so tense after the Teller disaster, that’d be natural, I guess. But I’d be very surprised to learn that you folks at the Santa Fe police department were playing the same game.”
The police officer eyed him for a moment longer. Then he shrugged. “If there were a gag order in effect, Colonel Smith, I’m damned if I know why I’d break the rules for you.”
“Maybe because these rules don’t apply to me, Lieutenant Zarate?” Jon suggested easily. He handed the police officer the sheaf of investigative authorizations Fred Klein had arranged for him. He nodded toward them. “Those orders require me to observe and report o
n every aspect of the Teller investigation. Every aspect. And if you look at the last page there, you’ll see the signature of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, do you really want to get caught in a pissing match between the Pentagon and the FBI, especially since we’re all supposed to be on the same side in this mess?”
Zarate flipped rapidly through the papers, with his frown growing even deeper. He slid them back across the desk with a snort of disgust. “There are times, Colonel, when I damned well wish the federal government would keep its big, fumbling paws out of my jurisdiction.”
Smith nodded sympathetically. “There are people in D.C. with all the grace and tact of a five-hundred-pound gorilla and the common sense of your average two-year-old.”
Zarate grinned suddenly. “Strong words, Colonel. Maybe you’d better watch your mouth around the red-tape boys and girls. I hear they don’t much care for soldiers who won’t toe the line.”
“I’m a doctor and scientist first and foremost and an Army officer second,” Smith said. He shrugged. “I doubt I’m on anybody’s short list to make general.”
“Uh-huh,” the police lieutenant said skeptically. “That’s why you’re running around with personal orders signed by the head of the JCS.” He spread his hands. “Unfortunately, there’s really not much I can tell you. Yeah, there was some kind of shoot-out in the Plaza last night. One guy got himself killed. There may have been others who were hit. We were still checking blood trails when my forensics team was called off.”
Smith pounced on that. “Your team was called off?”
“Yeah,” Zarate said flatly. “The FBI swooped in and took over. Said it was a matter of national security and that it fell within their jurisdiction.”
“When was that?” Jon asked.
“Maybe an hour after we first arrived on the scene,” the police officer told him. “But they didn’t just kick us off the ground, they also confiscated every spent shell casing, every piece of paperwork, and every crime scene photo. They even took the tapes of dispatcher calls to and from units responding to the scene!”