“That may well mean that Jon’s mysterious somebody—perhaps we should call him Mr. X, for short—is using the Movement as a cover for his real plans,” Peter pointed out. “In much the same way that we believe he used a few fools inside the CIA and the FBI. And MI6, alas.”
“You’re giving this Mr. X a hell of a lot of credit,” Randi remarked acidly. She swung away from the window to face them both with her chin held stubbornly high. “Maybe too much.”
“I don’t think so,” Smith said, with a grim look settling on his face. “We already know that X, whether it’s a person or a group, has enormous resources. You can’t design and produce hundreds of billions of nanophages without access to serious money. At least a hundred million dollars and probably a whole lot more. If you spent even a fraction of that on bribes, I’ll bet you could buy the loyalty of quite a few people inside the Lazarus Movement.”
He stood up suddenly, unable to bear just sitting still any longer. Then he walked over to Randi. He put his hand gently on her arm. “Can you think of any other way to make the pieces we’ve got come together?” he demanded quietly.
The CIA officer was silent for a long, painful moment. Then, slowly, she shook her head and sighed. All her pent-up energy and irritation seemed to drain away.
“Well, neither can I,” Smith said softly. “That’s why we have to get inside that building. We have to discover what those sensor arrays were gathering at La Courneuve. Maybe even more important, we have to find out what happened to the information they collected.” He frowned. “Your technical people haven’t been able to pick up anything being said inside, have they?”
Reluctantly she shook her head again, admitting defeat. “No. The place seems to be remarkably bug-proof. Even the windows are set to vibrate slightly to defeat laser surveillance.”
“Every window?” Peter asked curiously.
She shrugged. “No. Just those on the top floor and in the attic spaces.”
“Nice of them to hang out a sign for us,” the Englishman murmured, looking across the room at Jon.
Smith nodded. “Very convenient.”
Randi frowned at the two men. “Maybe too convenient,” she suggested. “What if it’s a setup?”
“Chance we have to take,” Peter said lazily. “Ours is not to reason why, and so forth.” Before she could snap back at him, he donned a more suitably serious expression. “But I doubt it. That would mean these Lazarus chaps deliberately allowed you and your people to spot them setting up those little gray boxes of theirs. Why go to all that trouble and expense and risk just to nab a couple of broken-down old soldiers?”
“Plus one top-notch CIA field officer,” she said, after a brief hesitation. She looked down modestly. “That would be me, of course.”
Smith raised an eyebrow. “You’re planning on coming along?”
Randi sighed. “Somebody responsible has to keep an eye on you two overaged kids.”
“You know what’ll happen to your career if we get caught?” Smith asked quietly.
She shot him a lopsided grin. “Oh, come on, Jon,” she said, forcing herself to sound cheerful. “If we get caught inside that building, you know that saving my career will be the least of our worries!”
Now that she had made her decision, Randi busied herself by spreading a set of still photos of the Lazarus Movement’s Paris headquarters out on the floor in front of them. The pictures showed the old stone building at 18 rue de Vigny from almost every angle, taken at different hours of the day and night. She also unfolded a detailed map depicting the Movement headquarters in relation to its nearest neighbors and the surrounding streets and alleys.
The three of them knelt down, closely scrutinizing the photos and the map—each looking for a way in that would not lead to immediate discovery and certain disaster. After a few moments, Peter sat back on his haunches. He regarded Randi and Jon with a slight smile. “There’s only one realistic option, I’m afraid,” he said, shrugging. “It may not be particularly elegant or original, but it should serve.”
“Please tell me you’re not planning a head-on charge through the front door and straight up four or five flights of stairs,” Randi begged.
“Oh, no. Not my style at all.” He tapped the map gently with one finger. It came to rest on one of the apartment blocks adjoining 18 rue de Vigny. “To mangle Hamlet, there are more ways into a building, dear girl, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Smith looked at the map more closely and saw what the other man intended. He pursed his lips. “We’ll need some specialized gear. Know anyone who can provide them for us, Peter?”
“I might just have a few bits and pieces of equipment stashed around Paris,” Peter admitted calmly. “The remnants of my old and wicked life in the service of Her Majesty. And I’m sure Ms. Russell’s friends at the CIA station here can provide us with anything else we need. If she asks nicely, that is.”
Frowning, Randi studied the map and the pictures again. Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, great, let me guess,” she said, sighing under her breath. “You’re planning one of those ‘defying the laws of gravity’ deals again, aren’t you?”
Peter looked at her in pretended shock. “Defying the laws of gravity?” he repeated, shaking his head. “Not at all. In point of fact, we shall be obeying gravity’s imperious demands,” he said with a sly grin. “After all, what goes up must come down.”
Chapter
Forty
Tuesday, October 19
It was after midnight, but there were still quite a few revelers and pleasantly sated late-night diners strolling home through the well-lit streets of Paris. Set apart from most of the bustling cafés, brasseries, and clubs of the Marais District, the rue de Vigny was quieter than most, but it, too, had its share of pedestrians.
One, a wrinkled old woman well bundled up against the chill of the autumn night, hobbled painfully up the street. Her high heels echoed on the worn cobblestones. She kept her large cloth handbag clutched tightly under one arm, clearly determined to defend her property against any lurking thieves. Footsore and weary, she paused briefly outside Number 18, resting for a moment to catch her breath. Lights glowed in the upper-floor windows beneath the old stone building’s steeply angled slate roof. Those facing the street on the lower floors were dark.
Muttering under her breath, the old lady limped on to the adjoining four-story block of flats at Number 16. She stood in the recessed entryway outside the front door for a long, painful moment—first fumbling inside her enormous handbag and then apparently having trouble fitting her key into the lock. At last, she seemed to manage it. The lock clicked. With an effort, she pulled the heavy door open and tottered slowly inside.
The street was quiet again.
Minutes later, two men, one dark-haired, the other gray-headed, walked up the rue de Vigny. Both men wore dark-colored overcoats and carried heavy duffel bags slung over their shoulders. They walked side by side, chatting amiably in colloquial French about the weather and the absurdities of airport security these days—looking for all the world like two travelers returning home after a long weekend away.
They turned off the street at Number 16. The younger, dark-haired man pulled the door open and held it for his older companion. “After you, Peter,” he said quietly with a wave.
“Age before beauty, eh?” the other man quipped. He moved into the small, dark foyer beyond, murmuring a polite greeting to the elderly woman who stood there waiting.
Jon Smith ducked into the apartment building himself, but not before casually removing a strip of duct tape the “old woman” had stuck there to prevent the door lock from engaging. He balled it up, shoved it into his coat pocket, and allowed the door to close gently behind him.
“That was a nice piece of lock picking,” Smith complimented the bundled-up old lady standing beside Peter Howell.
Randi Russell grinned back at him. Beneath the disguise of wrinkles and lines that added forty years to her apparent age, her eyes were bright
with nervous energy and excitement. “Well, I did graduate at the head of my class at the Farm,” she said, referring to Camp Perry, the CIA training facility near Williamsburg, Virginia. “It’s nice to know my time there wasn’t a total waste.”
“Where to now?” Smith asked.
She nodded toward a hallway leading out of the foyer. “Through there,” she said. “A central staircase runs all the way to the top. There are landings at each floor with doors leading to the separate flats.”
“Any restless natives?” Peter wondered.
Randi shook her head. “Nope. There are lights showing under a few doors, but otherwise it’s pretty quiet. And let’s try to keep it that way, shall we, guys? I’d rather not spend the next twenty-four hours answering awkward questions down at the nearest Prefecture of Police.”
With Randi in the lead, the trio made their way carefully up the stairs—moving quietly past landings cluttered with bicycles, baby strollers, and small two-wheeled shopping carts. Another locked door, this one at the very top, yielded quickly to her lock picks. They stepped through the door and out into a rooftop garden of the kind so beloved by Parisians—a miniature urban glade created by a maze of large clay pots filled with dwarf trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. They were at the rear of the apartment building, separated from the rue de Vigny by a row of tall soot-stained chimneys and a forest of radio and TV antennae.
This high up, the chill autumn breeze carried the muted sounds of the city to them—car horns honking on the boulevard Beaumarchais, the shrill whine of motor scooters racing through narrow streets, and laughter and music drifting out through the open door of a nightclub somewhere close by. The floodlit white domes of the Byzantine-inspired Sacré Coeur basilica gleamed to the north, set high on the crowded slopes of Montmartre.
Smith moved carefully to the edge and looked down over an ornate wrought-iron railing. In the darkness far below he could just make out a row of trash bins crowding a narrow alley. The wall of another old building, also converted into a block of flats, rose vertically on the other side of that tiny lane. Patches of warm yellow lamplight showed through the cracks in closed shutters and drapes. He stepped back a few paces, rejoining Peter and Randi in the modest cover provided by the roof garden’s trees and shrubs.
On their right loomed the shadowy mass of the Lazarus Movement’s Paris headquarters. The two buildings were adjacent, but 18 rue de Vigny was one story higher. A twenty-foot-high blank wall of stone separated them from the steeply sloping roof of their goal.
“Right,” Peter whispered, already kneeling down to open the first of their two duffel bags. He began handing out articles of clothing and gear. “Let’s get started.”
Moving quickly in the cold night air, the three began transforming themselves from ordinary-appearing civilians to fully equipped special operators. First, Randi started by tugging off the gray wig confining her own blond hair. Then she peeled away the specially crafted wrinkles and lines that had added decades to her appearance.
All of them shed their heavy coats, revealing high-necked black sweaters and black jeans. Dark-colored watch caps covered their hair. They blackened their faces and foreheads with camouflage sticks. Their street shoes came off and were replaced by climbing boots. Heavy leather gloves protected their hands. All three donned Kevlar body armor and followed that by shrugging into SAS-style assault vests and belting on holsters for their personal weapons—Smith’s SIG-Sauer pistol, a Browning Hi-Power for Peter, and a 9mm Beretta for Randi. Next, they struggled into rappelling harnesses and slung bags containing coils of climbing rope over their shoulders.
Peter handed around an assortment of special equipment. Last of all, he gave each of them two cylindrical canisters, about the size of a can of shaving cream. “Flash/bang grenades,” he said coolly. “Very handy for throwing the enemy into confusion. Quite popular as a gag at all the best parties, too, or so I’m told.”
“We’re supposed to do this covertly,” Randi reminded him tartly. “Not plunge in shooting and start World War Three.”
“To be sure,” Peter replied. “But better safe than sorry, I think. After all, those fellows,” he nodded toward the high, dark shape of the Lazarus Movement headquarters, “may react badly if they spot us peeping in at them.” He moved around Jon and Randi, inspecting and tugging at their harnesses and various items of equipment to make sure everything was secure. Then he submitted patiently while Smith performed the same last-minute check on him.
“Now for that little bit of wall,” Peter announced. He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a small air pistol already rigged with a titanium-barbed dart attached to a spool of nylon-coated wire. With a slight bow, he handed the assembly to Randi. “Would you care to do the honors?”
Randi stepped back a few feet. She peered up at the shadow-cloaked stretch of wall in front of them, scanning for what looked like a good anchor point. A narrow crack caught her eye. She sighted along the barrel of the air pistol, aiming carefully. She squeezed the trigger. The pistol coughed quietly and the tiny titanium dart shot out, trailing the wire behind it. With a soft clang, the barbs of the small grappling hook bit deep into the stonework and held fast.
Smith reached up and tugged firmly on the dangling nylon-coated wire. It stayed put. He turned to the others. “All set?”
They nodded.
One by one, they swarmed up the wall and hauled themselves cautiously onto the peak of the steep slate roof of the building at 18 rue de Vigny.
The Lazarus Center, the Azores
Seated behind the plain teak desk in his private office, Hideo Nomura observed the compressed-time computer simulation of the first Thanatos sorties with growing pleasure. A large screen showed him a digitized map of the Western Hemisphere. Icons indicated the constantly updated position of each Thanatos aircraft dispatched from his base here in the Azores—roughly twenty-five hundred miles off the American coast.
As each blinking dot crossed the Atlantic and soared above the continental United States, whole swathes of territory on the digital map began changing color—indicating areas struck by the windblown clouds of Stage IV nanophages his stealthly high-altitude aircraft would release. Different hues showed the predicted casualty rates for each pass. Bright red indicated near-total annihilation for anyone caught inside the indicated zone.
While Nomura watched, the metropolitan areas of New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Boston glowed scarlet, signaling the calculated deaths of more than 35 million American men, women, and children. He nodded, smiling to himself. In and of themselves, those deaths would be meaningless, merely the first taste of the necessary carnage he planned to inflict. But this first onslaught would serve a much larger purpose. The rapid destruction of so many of its most populous centers of governmental and economic power was sure to plunge the United States into crisis—rendering its surviving leaders completely unable to detect the origin of the devastating attacks being carried out against their helpless nation.
His internal phone chimed once, demanding his attention.
Reluctantly Nomura drew his eyes away from the computer-generated glory unfolding before him. He tapped the speaker button. “Yes? What is it?”
“We have received all the necessary data from the Paris relay point, Lazarus,” the dry, academic tones of his chief molecular scientist informed him. “Based on the results of Field Experiment Three, we see no need for further design modifications at this time.”
“That is excellent news,” Nomura said. He glanced back at the simulation. The dead zones it showed were spreading inland fast, reaching deep into the American heartland. “And when will the first Stage Four production run be complete?”
“In approximately twelve hours,” the scientist promised cautiously.
“Very good. Keep me informed.” Nomura switched off the attack simulation and called up another—this one constantly updating the work being carried out inside the huge aircraft hangars at both ends of his airfield. It showed h
im that the crews assembling the components of his fleet of Thanatos drones were on schedule. By the time the first cylinders of the new nanophages rolled out of his hidden production facility, he would have three aircraft ready to receive them.
Nomura picked up his secure satellite phone and punched in a preset code.
Nones, the third of the Horatii he had created, answered immediately. “What are your orders, Lazarus?”
“Your work in Paris is finished,” Nomura told him. “Return here to the Center as soon as possible. Tickets and the necessary documents for you and your security unit will be waiting at the Air France desk at Orly Sud.”
“What about Linden and his surveillance team?” Nones asked quietly. “What arrangements do you wish made for them?”
Nomura shrugged. “Linden and the others have completed their appointed tasks efficiently. But I see no need for their services in the future. None whatsoever. Do you understand my meaning?” he asked coldly.
“I understand,” the other man confirmed. “And the equipment at 18 rue de Vigny?”
“Destroy it all,” Nomura ordered. He smiled cruelly. “Let us prove to a horrified world that American and British spies are still waging their illegal war against the noble Lazarus Movement!”
Chapter
Forty-One
Paris
Smith crawled out along the high, sharp peak of the roof at 18 rue de Vigny. He used his hands and arms to pull himself along, preferring not to risk the noise his rubber-soled boots would make scraping and scrabbling across the roof’s cracked slate tiles. He moved slowly, seeking whatever handholds he could find along the slick, slippery surface.
The Lazarus Movement headquarters was among the highest buildings in this part of the Marais, so there was nothing to block the cold east wind rushing across Paris. The frigid breeze keened through the array of antennae and satellite dishes clustered on the roof. A stronger gust swirled suddenly along the sheer slopes, tugging hard at his clothing and equipment.