“Initial reports from the French government do appear to connect the deaths in La Courneuve with those outside the American research institute in the state of New Mexico,” read the BBC announcer in the calm, cultured tones reserved for serious international developments. “And tens of thousands of residents of the surrounding suburbs of Paris are said to be fleeing in panic, clogging the avenues and motor routes leaving the city. Army units and security forces are being deployed to control the evacuation and maintain the rule of law—”
Latham reached out and snapped the radio off, annoyed to find his hands trembling slightly. He had been fast asleep in his weekend country home outside Oxford when the first frantic call from M16 headquarters reached him. Since then, he had experienced a succession of shocks. First came his inability to contact Hal Burke to find out what the devil was really happening in Paris. Just as TOCSIN seemed to be flying apart at the seams, the American had dropped completely out of sight. Next came the horrifying discovery that his superior, Sir Gareth Southgate, had put his own agent, Peter Howell, into the Lazarus Movement without Latham’s knowledge. That was bad enough. But now the head of MI6 was asking pointed questions about Ian McRae and the other freelancers Latham sometimes hired for various missions.
The Englishman grimaced, considering his options. How much did Howell know? How much had he reported to Southgate? If TOCSIN was well and truly blown, what kind of cover story could he produce to conceal his involvement with Burke?
Deep in thought, Latham shoved down hard on the Jaguar’s accelerator, swerving left to overtake and pass a heavy, lumbering lorry in the blink of an eye. He cut back into the same lane with just a meter to spare. The lorry driver flashed his lights at him in irritation and then leaned on his horn—sending a piercing note blaring across the motorway. The horn blast echoed back from the surrounding slopes.
Latham ignored the angry gestures, concentrating instead on getting to London as quickly as possible. With luck, he could extricate himself unscathed from this mess. If not, he might be able to make some sort of deal—trading information about TOCSIN for the promise that he would not be prosecuted.
Suddenly the Jaguar rattled and banged, shaken by a succession of small explosions. Its right front tire shredded and flew apart. Bits of rubber and metal bounced and rolled away, scattering across the road surface. Sparks flew high in the air, spraying over the bonnet and windscreen. The car swerved sharply to the right.
Swearing loudly, Latham gripped the steering wheel in both hands and spun it right, trying to regain control over the skid. There was no response. The same series of tiny charges that had blown out the Jaguar’s front tire had destroyed its steering system. He screamed shrilly, still desperately spinning the now-useless wheel.
Completely out of control now, the car careened across the motorway at high speed and then flipped over—sliding upside down for several hundred meters along the paved surface. The Jaguar came to rest at last in a tangle of torn metal, broken glass, and crumpled plastic. Less than a second later, another tiny explosive charge ignited the fuel seeping from its mangled gas tank, turning the wreckage into a blazing funeral pyre.
The lorry drove past the burning wreck without stopping. It continued on, heading southeast along the M40 toward the crowded streets of London. Inside the cab, the driver, a middle-aged man with high Slavic cheekbones, slid the remote control back into the duffel bag at his feet. He leaned back, satisfied with the results of his morning’s work. Lazarus would be pleased.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
Washington, D.C.
Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith looked down at K Street from the window of his eighth-floor room in the Capital Hilton. It was just after dawn and the first rays of sunlight were beginning to chase the shadows from Washington’s streets. Newspaper vans and delivery trucks rumbled along the empty avenues, breaking the silence of an early Sunday morning.
There was a knock on his door. He turned away from the window and crossed the room in several long strides. A cautious glance through the peephole showed him Fred Klein’s familiar pale, long-nosed face.
“It’s good to see you, Colonel,” the head of Covert-One said, once he was inside and the door was safely closed and bolted behind him. He glanced around the room, noting the unused bed and the muted television tuned to an all-news channel. It showed footage shot live from the military and police cordon set up around La Courneuve. Vast throngs of Parisians were gathering just beyond the barricades, screaming and chanting in soundless unison. Placards and protest signs blamed “Les Américaines” and their “armes diaboliques,” their “devil weapons,” for the disaster that had claimed at least twenty thousand lives by the most recent estimates.
Klein raised a single eyebrow. “Still too wound up to sleep?”
Smith smiled thinly. “I can sleep on the plane, Fred.”
“Oh?” Klein said calmly. “Are you planning some travel?”
Smith shrugged his shoulders. “Aren’t I?”
The other man relented. He tossed his briefcase onto the bed and perched himself on a corner. “As a matter of fact, you’re quite right, Jon,” he admitted. “I do want you to fly out to Paris.”
“When?”
“As soon as I can get you out to Dulles,” Klein told him. “There’s a Lufthansa flight leaving for Charles de Gaulle around ten. Your tickets and travel documents are in my case.” He pointed to the bandage wrapped around Smith’s left arm. “Will that knife wound give you any trouble?”
“It could use some stitches,” Jon said carefully. “And I should take some antibiotics as a precaution.”
“I’ll arrange it,” Klein promised. He checked his watch. “I’ll have another medical doctor meet you at the airport before your flight. He’s discreet, and he’s done some good work for us in the past.”
“What about Peter Howell?” Smith asked. “I could use his help in whatever mission you’ve got planned for me in Paris.”
Klein frowned. “Howell would have to make his own way there,” he said firmly. “I won’t risk compromising Covert-One by making travel arrangements for a known British intelligence agent. Plus, you’ll have to maintain the fiction that you’re working for the Pentagon.”
“Fair enough,” Smith said. “And my cover for this jaunt?”
“No cover,” Klein said. “You’ll be traveling as yourself, as Dr. Jonathan Smith of USAMRIID. I’ve arranged your temporary accreditation to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. With all this political hysteria building,” he nodded at the TV screen, where protesters were now burning several American flags, “the French government can’t afford to be seen working with any U.S. intelligence service or with the American military. But they are willing to allow medical and scientific experts in to ‘observe.’ At least so long as they do so with ‘maximum discretion.’ Of course, if you land in any trouble, the authorities there will deny you were ever extended an official invitation.”
Smith snorted. “Naturally.” He paced back to the window, staring down, still restless. Then he turned back. “Do you have anything specific for me to look into once I get there? Or am I just supposed to sniff around to see what turns up?”
“Something specific,” Klein said quietly. He reached over and pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase. “Take a look at those.”
Smith flipped open the folder. It contained two single sheets—each a copy of a TOP SECRET cable from the CIA’s Paris Station to its Langley headquarters. Both had been sent within the past ten hours. The first reported a series of astonishing observations made by a surveillance team trailing a terrorist suspect inside La Courneuve. Smith felt his hackles rise as he read the description of the “sensor boxes” rigged on street lamps around the district. The second cable reported the progress being made in tracing the license plate numbers of the vehicles driven by those involved. He looked up at Klein in amazement. “Jesus! This stuff is red-hot. What are the boys at Langley doing about it?”
“Nothi
ng.”
Smith was bewildered. “Nothing?”
“The CIA,” Klein patiently explained, “is too busy right now investigating itself for gross malfeasance, murder, money laundering, sabotage, and terrorism. So, for that matter, is the FBI.”
“Because of Burke and Pierson,” Smith realized.
“And possibly others,” Klein agreed. “There are indications that at least one senior official in MI6 may also have been involved in TOCSIN. The head of their Lazarus surveillance section was killed in a single-car accident a couple of hours ago … an accident the local police are already labeling suspicious.” He looked down at his fingertips. “I should also tell you that the sheriff’s department has found both Hal Burke and Kit Pierson.”
“And they’re dead, too, I suppose,” Smith said grimly.
Klein nodded. “Their bodies were discovered inside the charred remains of Burke’s farmhouse. The preliminary forensics work seems to indicate that they shot each other before the fire took hold.” He sniffed. “Frankly, I find that far too convenient. Someone out there is playing a series of dirty games with us.”
“Swell.”
“It’s a bad situation, Jon,” the head of Covert-One agreed somberly. “The collapse of this illegal operation is paralyzing three of the best intelligence services in the world—right at the moment when their skills and efforts are most needed.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch, saw the no-smoking sign prominently displayed on the door, and then stuffed them back with a distracted frown. “Curious, isn’t it?”
Smith whistled softly. “You think that was intended all along, don’t you? By whoever’s really responsible for these mass nanophage attacks?”
Klein shrugged. “Maybe. If not, it’s all one hell of a nasty coincidence.”
“I don’t put much faith in coincidences myself,” Smith said flatly.
“Nor do I.” The long, lean head of Covert-One stood up. “Which means we’re up against a very dangerous opponent here, Jon. One with enormous resources, and with the ruthlessness to make full use of every scrap of power it possesses. Worse yet,” he said softly, “this is an enemy whose identity is still completely unknown to us. Which means we have no way to discern its purposes—or to defend ourselves against them.”
Smith nodded, feeling chilled to the bone by Klein’s warning. He paced back to the window, again staring down at the quiet streets of the nation’s capital. What was the real aim behind the two separate nanophage releases in Santa Fe and Paris? Sure, both attacks had killed thousands of innocent civilians, but there were easier—and cheaper—ways to commit mass murder on that scale. The nanodevices used in those two places represented an incredibly sophisticated level of bioengineering and production technology. Developing them had to have cost tens of millions of dollars—maybe even hundreds of millions.
He shook his head. None of what was happening made much sense, at least on the surface. Terrorist groups with that kind of money would find it far safer and more convenient to buy nukes or poison gas or existing biological weapons on the world black market. Nor would ordinary terrorists find it easy to gain access to the kind of high-tech lab equipment and space needed to produce these killer nanophages.
Smith straightened up, suddenly sure that this unseen enemy had a far deeper and darker goal in mind, a goal it was moving toward with speed and precision. The slaughters in New Mexico and France were only the beginning, he thought coldly, the mere foretaste of acts even more diabolical and destructive.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Nanophage Production Facility, Inside the Center
An endless succession of numbers and graphs passed on by satellite link from Paris scrolled slowly across a large computer screen. In the darkened room, the flowing numbers and graphs were eerily reflected in the thick safety glasses worn by two molecular scientists. These men, the chief architects of the nanophage development program, were studying each piece of new data as it arrived.
“It’s clear that releasing the nanophages from altitude was extremely effective,” the senior member of the pair remarked. “The enhanced sensor arrays in our control phages also achieved optimal results. For that matter, so did our new self-destruct system.”
His subordinate nodded. By every practical measure, the remaining engineering problems of their early-design nanophages had been solved. Their Stage III devices no longer needed specific sets of narrowly defined biological signatures to home in on their targets. In one short step, their kill ratio had risen from only around a third of those contaminated to nearly everyone caught inside the nanophage cloud. Plus, the improved chemical loads contained inside each shell had proved their effectiveness by almost entirely consuming all those attacked. The pale, polished bone fragments left on the pavements of La Courneuve were a far cry from the bloated half-eaten corpses littering Kusasa or the unpleasant blood-tinged slime strewn across the grounds outside the Teller Institute.
“I recommend that we declare the weapons fully operational and move immediately to a full production run,” the younger man said confidently. “Any further design modifications suggested by new data can be carried out later.”
“I agree,” the chief scientist said. “Lazarus will be pleased.”
Outside the Center
Flanked by two plainclothes bodyguards, Jinjiro Nomura stepped out into the open air for the first time in almost a year. For a moment the small, elderly Japanese man stood rooted to the earth, blinking, briefly dazzled by the sight of the sun high overhead. A cool sea breeze ruffled through the thin wisps of white hair on his head.
“If you please, sir,” one of the guards murmured politely, offering him a pair of sunglasses, “they are ready for us now. The first of the Thanatos prototypes is on final approach.”
Jinjiro Nomura nodded calmly. He took the glasses and put them on.
Behind him, the massive door slid shut, again sealing the main corridor that led to the Center’s living quarters, control center, administrative offices, and, ultimately, nanophage production facility hidden deep within the huge building. From the outside and from the air the whole complex appeared to be nothing more than a metal-roofed concrete warehouse—one essentially identical to the thousands of other low-cost industrial storage facilities scattered around the globe. Its intricate systems of chemical storage and piping, air locks, concentric layers of ever more rigidly maintained “clean” rooms, and elaborate banks of networked supercomputers were completely camouflaged by that plain, rusting, weather-beaten exterior.
Paced by his guards, Nomura marched down a gravel path and onto the edge of a tarmac, part of an immensely long concrete runway that stretched north and south for thousands of feet. Large aircraft hangars and aviation fuel tanks were visible at either end, along with several parked cargo and passenger jets. A tall metal fence, topped by coils of razor wire, surrounded the airfield and its associated buildings. The western horizon was an unbroken vista of rolling waves, crashing and foaming all along the coast. Off to the east, flat green fields dotted by grazing sheep and cattle ran for miles, rising toward a distant peak covered with trees.
He stopped near a small knot of white-coated engineers and scientists, all of whom were eagerly scanning the northern horizon.
“Soon,” one of them told the others, consulting his watch. He turned his head, checking the position of the sun through eyes narrowed against the glare. “The craft’s solar power system is functioning perfectly. And the onboard fuel cells have finished cycling into standby mode.”
“There it is!” another said excitedly, pointing north. A thin dark line, at first barely visible against the clear blue sky, suddenly appeared there—growing steadily as it slowly descended toward the runway.
Jinjiro Nomura watched intently as the strange aerial vehicle, code-named Thanatos by its designers, drew nearer. It was an enormous flying-wing aircraft, without a fuselage or a tail but with a wingspan larger than that of a Boeing 747. Fourteen sm
all twin-bladed propellers mounted along the length of the huge wing whirred almost noiselessly, pulling it through the air at less than thirty miles an hour. As the aircraft banked slightly, lining up with the runway, the sixty thousand solar cells installed on its gossamer-thin upper surface shimmered brightly in the sun.
Footsteps crunched softly across the tarmac behind him. Nomura stayed motionless, watching the enormous craft drift lower still as it came in for a landing. For the first time, the engineering specifications and drawings he had studied took shape in his mind.
Modeled on prototypes first flown by NASA, Thanatos was an ultra-light all-wing aircraft constructed of radar-absorbent composite materials—carbon fiber, graphite epoxy, Kevlar and Nomex wraps, and advanced plastics. Even with a full payload, it weighed less than two thousand pounds. But it could reach altitudes of nearly one hundred thousand feet and stay aloft under its own power for weeks and months at a time, spanning whole continents and oceans. Five underwing aerodynamic pods carried its flight control computers, data instrumentation, backup fuel-cell systems for night flying, and attachment points for the multiple cylinders that would contain its sinister payload.
NASA had designated its test aircraft Helios, after the ancient Greek god of the sun. It was an apt name for a vehicle meant to soar through the upper reaches on solar power. Jinjiro frowned. In the same way, Thanatos, the Greek personification of Death, was the perfect appellation for the intended use of this flying wing.