Smith turned his head and saw the slender, ramrod-straight figure of an aged Parisian dowager glaring down at him. He had the overriding impression of a mass of immaculately coiffed gray hair, a deeply lined face, a prominent hawk-like nose, and a fierce, predatory gaze. She raised one finely sculpted eyebrow in apparent disgust at his slowness and stupidity. “You do not speak English, m’sieur? Pardon. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
Before he could recover, she turned away to address her dog, a small, equally elderly poodle who seemed intent on gnawing one of the empty chairs to death. She yanked on his leash. “Heel, Pascal! Let the damned furniture fall to pieces on its own!” she snapped in idiomatic French.
Apparently satisfied that Smith was either deaf, dumb, or an imbecile, the old woman seated herself across the table from him—groaning slightly as she slowly lowered her creaking bones into the chair. He looked away, embarrassed.
“Just what the hell are you doing trespassing on my patch, Jon?” he heard a very familiar and very irritated voice ask quietly. “And please don’t try to sell me some cock-and-bull story that you’re here to see the glories of Paris!”
Smith turned back toward the old woman in amazement. Somewhere behind that mass of gray hair, wrinkles, and lines were the smooth, blond good looks of CIA officer Randi Russell. He felt himself flush. Randi, the sister of his dead fiancée, was a very good friend, someone with whom he shared dinner or drinks whenever they found themselves in Washington at the same time. Despite that, and though he had known that his presence right at her team’s rendezvous point would eventually draw her attention, she had still managed to slip past his guard.
To buy himself some time to recover from his surprise, he took a cautious sip of his coffee. Then he grinned back at her. “Nice disguise, Randi. Now I know what you’ll look like in forty or fifty years. The little dog’s a nifty touch, too. Is he yours? Or standard CIA-issue?”
“Pascal belongs to a friend, a colleague at the embassy,” Randi replied briefly. Her mouth tightened. “And the poodle is almost as much of a pain in the ass as you are, Jon. Almost, but not quite. Now quit stalling and answer my question.”
He shrugged. “Okay. It’s pretty simple, really. I’m here following up on the reports you and your team have been sending to the States for the past twenty-four hours.”
“That’s what you call simple?” Randi said in disbelief. “Our reports are strictly internal CIA product.”
“Not anymore they’re not,” Smith told her. “Langley’s in a hell of a mess right now over this clandestine war against the Lazarus Movement. So is the FBI. Maybe you’ve heard.”
The CIA officer nodded bitterly. “Yeah, I’ve heard. Bad news spreads fast.” She frowned down at the table. “That stupid son of a bitch Burke is going to wind up giving the Agency the biggest black eye we’ve ever had.” Her gaze sharpened. “But that still doesn’t explain who you’re working for this time.” She paused significantly. “Or at least who you’re going to claim you’re working for.”
Inwardly Smith cursed the continuing need to keep Covert-One’s existence a tightly held secret. Like Peter Howell’s, her affiliation with another intelligence outfit meant Smith had to tread carefully around her, concealing whole aspects of his work—even from those who were his closest friends, people to whom he would entrust his life. He and Randi had managed to work together before, in Iraq and Russia, here in Paris, and most recently in China, but it was always awkward dodging her pointed questions.
“It’s no great secret, Randi,” he lied. He felt guilty for lying to her but did his best to hide it. “You know I’ve done some work for Army Intelligence in the past. Well, the Pentagon brass pulled me in again for this mission. Someone is developing a nanotech weapon, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff don’t like the sound of that at all.”
“But why you, exactly?” she demanded.
Smith looked her straight in the eye. “Because I was working at the Teller Institute,” he said quietly. “So I know what this weapon can do to people. I saw it myself.”
Randi’s face softened. “That must have been terrible, Jon.”
He nodded, mentally pushing away the sickening memories that still haunted his sleep. “It was.” He looked across the table. “But I guess it was even worse here—at La Courneuve.”
“There were many more deaths, and no apparent survivors,” Randi agreed. “From the press accounts, what happened to those poor people was absolutely horrible.”
“Then you should understand why I want a closer look at the men you spotted installing some kind of quote-unquote sensor equipment there the night before the attack,” Smith told her.
“You think the two events are related?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you?”
Randi nodded reluctantly. “Yes, I do.” She sighed. “And we’ve managed to trace most of the vehicles those guys were using.” She saw the next question in his eyes and answered it before he could speak. “Right, you guessed it: They’re all tied to a single address right here in Paris.”
“An address you’ve carefully avoided naming in any of your cables home,” Smith pointed out.
“For some damned good reasons,” Randi snapped back. She grimaced. “I’m sorry to sound so pissed off, Jon. But I can’t fit much of what we’ve learned into any kind of rational, coherent pattern, and frankly, it’s getting on my nerves.”
“Well, maybe I can help sort out some of the anomalies,” he offered.
For the first time, Randi responded with a faint smile. “Possibly. For an amateur spook you do have an uncanny knack for stumbling into answers,” she agreed slowly. “Usually by accident, of course.”
Smith chuckled. “Of course.”
The CIA officer leaned back against the chair, absently studying the people strolling past them on the pavement. Suddenly she stiffened, plainly incredulous. “Jesus,” she muttered in dismay. “What is this … old home week?”
Smith followed her gaze and saw what appeared to be an old, untidy Frenchman in a beret and an often-patched sweater ambling toward them, whistling, with both hands stuck into the pockets of his faded workingman’s trousers. He looked more closely and hid a grin. It was Peter Howell.
The sun-browned Englishman sauntered across the street separating the restaurant from the square, came right up to their table, and politely doffed his beret to Randi. “A pleasure to see you looking so well, madame,” he murmured. His pale blue eyes gleamed with amusement. “And this is your young son, no doubt. A fine, stout-looking lad.”
“Hello, Peter,” Randi said resignedly. “So you’ve joined the Army, too?”
“The American army?” Peter said in mock horror. “Heavens, no, dear girl! Merely a spot of informal collaborating between old friends and allies, you see. Washing the hand that feeds me and all that. No, Jon and I simply popped by to see if you were interested in joining our little pact.”
“Grand. I’m so glad.” She shook her head. “Okay, I surrender. I’ll share my information, but that has to work both ways. I want all of your cards on the table, too. Get it?”
The Englishman smiled gently. “Clear as crystal. Fear not. All will be revealed in due course. You can trust your Uncle Peter.”
“Sure I can.” Randi snorted. “Anyway, it’s not as if I have much real choice, not under the circumstances.” She pushed herself up slowly, carefully maintaining the illusion that she was an elderly woman somewhere in her mid-seventies. She tugged at the small poodle, dragging him firmly out from under the table where he had been futilely gumming one of Smith’s shoes for the past few minutes. She switched back to her raspy, nasal French. “Come, Pascal. We must not intrude further on these gentlemen’s company.”
Then she lowered her voice, making sure that only they could hear her instructions. “Now here’s how we’re going to play this. When I’m gone, wait five minutes and then head over to Number Six—the Victor Hugo house. Pretend you’re tourists or literary critics or something. A white Audi
with a dent on the right rear door will pull up there. Climb in without making a big fuss about it. Understand?”
Jon and Peter nodded obediently.
Still frowning, Randi moved away without looking back at them. She strolled briskly toward the nearest corner of the Place des Vosges—looking for all the world as though she truly were the epitome of a Paris grande dame out for her morning constitutional with her much-pampered poodle.
Ten minutes later, the two men stood outside the Maison de Victor Hugo, staring curiously up at the second floor, where the great writer, the author of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, had spent sixteen years of his long life. “A curious fellow,” Peter Howell remarked meditatively. “Prone to fits of madness in later life, you know. Someone once found him trying to carve furniture with his teeth.”
“Much like Pascal,” Smith suggested.
Peter looked surprised. “The famous philospher and mathematician?”
“No,” Smith said, grinning. “Randi’s dog.”
“Dear me,” Peter replied wryly. “The things one learns in Paris.” He glanced casually over his shoulder. “Ah, our chariot awaits.”
Smith turned around and saw the white Audi, complete with its dented rear door, stopping alongside the curb. He and Peter slid into the backseat. The car pulled away immediately, drove around the Place des Vosges, and swung left back onto the rue de Turenne. From there, the sedan began making a series of seemingly random turns, moving ever deeper into the heart of the maze of one-way streets that made up the Marais District.
Jon watched the sallow-faced driver, a heavyset man wearing a cloth cap, for a few moments. “Hello, Max,” he said at last.
“Morning, Colonel,” the other man said, grinning in the rearview mirror. “Nice to see you again.”
Smith nodded. He and Max had once spent a great many hours in each other’s company—trailing a group of Arab terrorists all the way from Paris to the Spanish coast. The CIA operative might not be the brightest star in the Agency’s firmament, but he was a very competent field agent.
“Are we being followed?” Smith asked, seeing the way the other man’s eyes were always in motion, checking every aspect of the environment around the Audi as he drove through the traffic-choked Paris streets.
Max shook his head confidently. “Nope. This is just a precaution. We’re being extra careful, is all. Randi’s sort of on-edge right now.”
“Care to tell me why?”
The CIA agent snorted. “You’ll find out soon enough, Colonel.” He turned the Audi off into a narrow passageway. Tall stone buildings soared on either side, blotting out any real sight of the sun or sky. He parked right behind a gray Renault van blocking most of the alley. “Last stop,” he said.
Smith and Peter got out.
The back doors of the van popped open, revealing a crowded interior crammed full of TV, audio, and computer equipment. Randi Russell, still wearing her disguise as an old woman, was there—along with another man, one Jon did not recognize. Pascal the poodle was nowhere to be seen.
Jon scrambled up into the Renault, followed closely by the Englishman. They pulled the doors shut behind them and then stood awkwardly hunched over in the cramped space.
“Glad you could make it,” Randi said. She flashed a quick smile at them and waved a hand at the equipment mounted in racks on both sides of the van interior. “Welcome to our humble abode, the nerve center of our surveillance operation. Besides human watchers, we’ve been able to rig a number of hidden cameras at key points around the target.”
She nodded to the other man, who was sitting on a stool in front of a computer screen and keyboard. “Let’s show them what we’ve got, Hank. Bring up Camera Two first. I know our guests are dying to find out what we’re doing here.”
Her subordinate obediently entered a series of commands on his keyboard. The monitor in front of him flashed on immediately, showing a clear TV picture of a steep gray-blue slate roof. Antennae of every size, shape, and description sprouted from the roof.
Smith whistled softly.
“Yeah.” Randi nodded flatly. “These guys are set to send and receive just about every kind of signal you can think of. Radio, microwave, laser pulse, satellite … you name it.”
“So what’s the problem?” Jon asked her, still puzzled. “Why run so scared about feeding Langley the whole scoop?”
Randi smiled sardonically. She leaned forward and tapped her equipment operator on the shoulder. “Bring up Camera One, Hank.” She glanced back at Smith and Peter. “Here’s the street entrance of the same building. Take a good close look.”
The picture on the screen showed a building five stories high. Centuries of pollution and weather had pitted and darkened its plain stone facade. High, narrow windows looked down on the street from every level, rising all the way up to a series of dormer windows that must open into attic chambers just below the roof.
“Now zoom in,” Randi told her assistant.
The image expanded rapidly, centering at last on a small brass plaque beside the front door. In deeply incised lettering it read:
18 RUE DE VIGNY
PARTI LAZARE
“Oh, bloody hell,” Peter murmured.
Randi nodded grimly. “Exactly. That building just happens to be the Paris headquarters for the Lazarus Movement.”
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
An hour later, Jon Smith stood outside the door to his room at the Hôtel des Chevaliers. He knelt down, checking the telltale—a thick black hair stretched between the door and the jamb, about a foot off the hall carpet. It was still there, completely undisturbed.
Satisfied that the room was secure, he ushered Randi and Peter inside. The CIA team’s Renault van was too cramped for a prolonged meeting, and the nearby cafés and restaurants were far too crowded and public. They needed somewhere more private to try to find a solution to the predicament they suddenly faced. And at the moment, the Hôtel des Chevaliers was the closest thing they had to a safe house.
Now back in her own likeness with short neat blond hair and wearing a black jumpsuit, Randi moved restlessly around the room. With her long legs and slender five-foot-nine-inch frame, she had often been mistaken for a dancer. No one seeing her now would make that mistake. She drifted back and forth like a caged and dangerous animal seeking a way out. She was deeply frustrated by the self-inflicted paralysis she sensed engulfing the CIA—paralysis that was robbing her of any serious backup or advice just when she needed it most. Her uncertainty over what to do with the stunning discovery her team had made left her feeling uneasy, even with her old friends and allies.
Randi cast a skeptical eye over the room’s elegant furnishings and decor and glanced over her shoulder at Smith. “Not bad for someone on a U.S. Army expense account, Jon.”
“Just your tax dollars at work,” he replied with a quick grin.
“Typical Yank soldier,” Peter said, with a quiet chuckle. “Overpaid, overindulged, and overequipped.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Smith told him drily. He dropped into the closest chair and looked across the room at his two friends. “Look, we should stop fencing with each other and start talking seriously about what we’re going to do next.”
The other two turned to face him.
“Well, I do admit that the position is a bit difficult,” Peter said slowly, settling himself into an overstuffed armchair.
Randi stared at the Englishman’s leathery face in disbelief. “A bit difficult?” she repeated. “For crying out loud, why don’t you ditch the stiff upper lip routine, Peter? The position is pretty well impossible, and you know it.”
“ ‘Impossible’ is an awfully big word, Randi,” Smith said, forcing a slight smile.
“Not from where I’m standing,” she snapped back. She shook her head in dismay, still pacing back and forth between the two men. “Okay, first you two heroes go and prove that some of our own people have been fighting a very nasty and very illegal s
ecret war against the Lazarus Movement. Which puts everybody, including the president and prime minister, into panic mode, right? So they start piling onto the intelligence agencies—hitting us with immediate cease and desist orders for any covert actions involving Lazarus. Not to mention gearing up for congressional and parliamentary investigations that could easily run for months, maybe even years.”
The two men nodded.
Randi frowned deeply. “Mind you, I’ve got no real problem with that. Anybody dumb enough to fall in with Hal Burke, Kit Pierson, and the others deserves to be crucified. Using blunt nails.” She took a deep breath. “But now, now, with all of this flak raining down around our ears, you both want to turn right around … and do what? Why, break into a Lazarus Movement building, of course! And not just any old building, naturally, but the headquarters for its whole Paris-based operation!”
“Certainly,” Peter told her calmly. “How else do you propose that we learn what they’re up to in there?”
“Jesus,” Randi muttered. She swung toward Smith. “And you see it the same way?”
He nodded somberly. “I’m pretty sure that somebody outside the intelligence services was manipulating Burke and the others. Using their undeclared war as a cover for something even worse, something like what happened at the Teller Institute or here in Paris … only magnified a hundred times over,” he said quietly. “I’d like to find out who—and why. Before we learn the hard way.”
Randi bit down on her lip, mulling that over. She crossed the room to stare out the window at the little courtyard behind the hotel.
“Lazarus Movement or not, at least some of the people working inside 18 rue de Vigny knew the nanophage attack that hit La Courneuve was coming,” Smith continued. He leaned forward in his chair. “That’s why they were setting up those sensors you saw. That’s why they were willing to kill anyone who got in their way.”
“But the movement is anti-technology to its core—especially nanotechnology!” she burst out in frustration. “Why would Lazarus supporters help anyone commit mass murder, especially using a means they oppose so vehemently? It doesn’t make sense!”