Robert Ludlum's the Lazarus Vendetta

by Robert Ludlum

  Later, once Hideo Nomura had gone, Sam Castilla walked to the door of his private study, knocked once, and went into the dimly lit room.

  A pale, long-nosed man in a rumpled dark gray suit sat calmly in a high-backed chair placed right next to the door. Bright, highly intelligent eyes gleamed behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. “Good morning, Sam,” said Fred Klein, the head of Covert-One.

  “You heard all that?” the president asked.

  Klein nodded. “Most of it.” He held up a sheaf of papers. “And I’ve read through the transcript of last evening’s NSC meeting.”

  “Well?” Castilla asked. “What do you think?”

  Klein sat back in his chair and ran his hands through his rapidly thinning hair while he considered his old friend’s question. Every year it seemed as though his hairline receded another inch. It was the price of the stress involved in running the most secret operation in the whole U.S. government. “David Hanson is no fool,” he said finally. “You know his record as well as I do. He has a nose for trouble and he’s bright and pushy enough to follow that nose wherever it leads him.”

  “I know that, Fred,” said the president. “Hell, that’s why I nominated him as DCI in the first place—over Emily Powell-Hill’s vigorous and often-expressed objections, I might add. But I’m asking you for your opinion of his latest brainstorm: Do you think this mess in Santa Fe is really the work of the Lazarus Movement itself?”

  Klein shrugged. “He makes a fairly strong case. But you don’t need me to tell you that.”

  “No, I don’t.” Castilla walked over heavily and dropped into another chair, this one next to a fireplace. “But how does the CIA’s theory track with what you’ve learned from Colonel Smith?”

  “Not perfectly,” the head of Covert-One admitted. “Smith was very clear. Whoever these attackers were, they were professionals—well-trained, well-equipped, and well-briefed professionals.” He fiddled with the briarwood pipe tucked in his coat pocket and fought off the temptation to light up. The whole White House was a no-smoking area these days. “Frankly, that does not seem to square with what little we know about the Lazarus Movement…”

  “Go on,” the president said.

  “But it’s not impossible,” Klein finished. “The Movement has money. Maybe it hired the pros it needed. God knows that there are enough special ops–trained mercenaries kicking around idle these days. These people could have been ex-Stasi from the old East Germany, or ex-KGB or Spetsnaz-types from Russia. Or they might be from other commando units in the old Warsaw Pact, the Balkans, or the Middle East.”

  He shrugged. “The real kicker is Smith’s claim that none of the nanotechnology being developed at the Institute could have killed those protesters. If he’s right, then Hanson’s theory goes right out the window. Of course, so does every other reasonable alternative.”

  The president sat staring into the empty fireplace for a long moment. Then he shook himself and growled, “It feels a bit too damned convenient, Fred, especially when you consider what Hideo Nomura just told me. I just don’t like the way both the CIA and the FBI are zeroing in on one particular theory of what took place in Santa Fe, to the exclusion of every other possibility.”

  “That’s understandable,” Klein said. He tapped the NSC transcript. “And I’ll admit I have the same qualms. The worst sin in intelligence analysis comes when you start pounding square facts into round holes just to fit a favorite hypothesis. Well, when I read this, I can hear both the Bureau and the Agency banging away on pegs—whatever their shape.”

  The president nodded slowly. “That’s exactly the problem.” He looked across the shadowed room at Klein. “You’re familiar with the A-Team/B-Team approach to analysis, aren’t you?”

  The head of Covert-One shot him a lopsided grin. “I’d better be. After all, that’s one of the justifications for my whole outfit.” He shrugged. “Back in 1976, the then-DCI, George Bush Sr., later one of your illustrious predecessors, wasn’t completely satisfied with the in-house CIA analysis of Soviet intentions he was getting. So he commissioned an outside group—the B-Team—made up of sharp-eyed academics, retired generals, and outside Soviet experts to conduct its own independent study of the same questions.”

  “That’s right,” Castilla said. “Well, starting right now, I want you to form your very own B-Team to sort through this mess, Fred. Don’t get in the way of the CIA or the FBI unless you have to, but I want somebody I can trust implicitly checking the shape of those pegs they’re hammering.”

  Klein nodded slowly. “That can be arranged.” He tapped the unlit pipe on his knee for a few seconds, thinking. Then he looked up. “Colonel Smith is the obvious candidate. He’s already on the scene and he knows a great deal about nanotechnology.”

  “Good.” Castilla nodded. “Brief him now, Fred. Figure out what authorizations he’ll need to do this, and I’ll make sure they land on the right desks first thing in the morning.”

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  In the Cerrillos Hills, Southwest of Santa Fe

  An old, often-dented red Honda Civic drove south along County Road 57, trailing a long cloud of dust. Unbroken darkness stretched for miles in every direction. Only a faint glow cast by the sliver of the moon lit the rugged hills and steep-sided gulches and arroyos east of the unpaved dirt-and-gravel road. Inside the cramped, junk-filled car, Andrew Costanzo sat hunched over the steering wheel. He glanced down at the odometer periodically, lips moving as he tried to figure out just how far he had come since leaving Interstate 25. The instructions he had been given were precise.

  Few people who knew him would have recognized the strange look of mingled exhilaration and dread on his pallid, fleshy face.

  Ordinarily, Costanzo seethed with frustration and accumulated resentments. He was plump, forty-one years old, unmarried, and trapped in a society that did not value either his intellect or his ideals. He had worked hard to earn an advanced degree in environmental law and American consumerism. His doctorate should have opened doors for him into the academic elite. For years he had dreamed of working for a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, single-handedly drafting the blueprints for essential social and environmental reforms. Instead he was just a part-time clerk in a chain bookstore, a crummy dead-end job that barely paid his share of the rent on a shabby, run-down ranch house in one of Albuquerque’s poorest neighborhoods.

  But Costanzo had other work, secret work, and it was the only part of his otherwise miserable life he found meaningful. He licked his lips nervously. Being asked to join the inner circles of the Lazarus Movement was a great honor, but it also carried serious risks. Watching the news this afternoon had made that even clearer. If his superiors in the Movement had not given him strict orders to stay home, he would have been at the Teller rally. He would have been one of the thousands slaughtered so viciously by the corporate death machines.

  For an instant, he felt a deep-seated rage boiling up inside him, overwhelming even the everyday petty grudges he usually savored. His hands tightened on the wheel. The Civic swerved to the right, nearly running off the rough road and into the shoulder of soft sand and dead brush banked up on that side.

  Sweating now, Costanzo breathed out. Pay attention to what you’re doing now, he told himself sharply. The Movement would take vengeance on its enemies in good time.

  The Honda’s odometer clicked through another mile. He was close to the rendezvous point. He slowed down and leaned forward, staring through the windshield at the heights looming on his left. There it was!

  Setting the Civic’s turn signal blinking out of habit, Costanzo swung off the county road and drove cautiously into the mouth of a small canyon snaking deeper into the Cerrillos Hills. The Honda’s tires crunched across a wash of small stones carried down by periodic flash floods. Tiny clumps of stunted trees and sagebrush clung precariously to the arroyo’s sheer slopes.

  A quarter-mile off the road, the canyon twisted north. Narrower gulches fed into the arr
oyo at this place, winding in from several directions. There were more withered trees here, springing up between weathered boulders and low mounds of loose gravel. Steep rock walls soared high on either side—striped with alternating layers of buff-colored sandstone and red mudstone.

  Costanzo turned off the ignition. The air was silent and perfectly still. Was he too early? Or too late? The orders he had been given had stressed the importance of promptness. He drew his shirtsleeve across his forehead, mopping away the droplets of sweat that were stinging his shadowed, bloodshot eyes.

  He scrambled out of the Honda, dragging a small suitcase with him. He stood awkwardly, waiting, not sure of what he should do next.

  Headlights suddenly speared out from one of the narrow side canyons. Surprised, Costanzo swung toward the lights, shading his eyes in a desperate attempt to see through the blinding glare. He couldn’t make out anything but the vague outline of a large vehicle and two or three shapes that might be men standing beside it.

  “Put the bag down,” a voice ordered loudly, speaking through a bullhorn. “Then step away from your car. And keep your hands where we can see them!”

  Shaking now, Costanzo obeyed. He walked forward stiffly, feeling sick to his stomach. He stuck his hands high in the air, with their palms out. “Who are you?” he asked plaintively.

  “Federal agents, Mr. Costanzo,” the voice said more quietly, without the bullhorn now.

  “But I haven’t done anything wrong! I haven’t broken any laws!” he said, hearing the shrill quaver in his voice and hating it for revealing his fear so plainly.

  “No?” the voice suggested. “Aiding and abetting a terrorist organization is a crime, Andrew. A serious crime. Didn’t you realize that?”

  Costanzo licked his lips again. He could feel his heart pounding wildly. The sweat stains under his arms were spreading.

  “Three weeks ago, a man fitting your description ordered two Ford Excursions from two separate auto dealers in Albuquerque. Two black Ford SUVs. He paid for them in cash. Cash, Andrew,” the voice said. “Care to tell me how someone like you had nearly one hundred thousand dollars in spare cash lying around?”

  “It wasn’t me,” he protested.

  “The car salesmen involved can identify you, Andrew,” the voice reminded him. “All cash transactions of more than ten thousand dollars have to be reported to the federal government. Didn’t you know that?”

  Dumbfounded, Costanzo stood with his mouth hanging open. He should have remembered that, he realized dully. The cash-reporting requirement was part of the nation’s drug laws, but really it was just another way for Washington to monitor and squelch potential dissent. Somehow, in all the excitement of being given a special mission for the Lazarus Movement, he had forgotten about it. How could he have been so blind? So stupid? His knees shook.

  One of the shapes moved forward slowly, taking on the firmer outline of a remarkably tall and powerfully built man. “Face the facts, Mr. Costanzo,” he said patiently. “You were set up.”

  The Lazarus Movement activist stood miserably rooted in one place. That was true, he thought bleakly. He had been betrayed. Why should he be so surprised? It had happened to him all of his life—first at home, then in school—and now it was happening again. “I can identify the man who gave me the money,” he said frantically. “I have a very good memory for faces—”

  A single 9mm bullet hit him right between the eyes, tore through his brain, and exploded out the back of his head.

  Still holding his silenced pistol, the tall auburn-haired member of the Horatii looked down at the dead man. “Yes, Mr. Costanzo,” Terce said quietly. “I am quite sure of that.”

  Jon Smith was running, running for his life. He knew that much, though he could not remember why it was so. Others ran beside him. Over their terrified screams he heard a harsh buzzing noise. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a vast swarm of flying insects descending on them, coming on fast and gaining. He turned and ran faster, heart pounding in time with his feet.

  The buzzing grew louder, ever more insistent and menacing. He felt something flutter onto his neck and tried frantically to brush it off. Instead, it clung to his palm. He stared down at the winged thing in dismay. It was a large yellow jacket.

  Suddenly the wasp changed, transforming itself, altering its shape and structure into an artificial creature made of steel and titanium—a creature equipped with needle-tipped drills and diamond-edged saws. The robot wasp slowly turned its triangular head toward him. Its crystalline multi-faceted eyes gleamed with an eerie hunger. He stood transfixed, watching with mounting horror as the wasp’s drills and saws blurred into motion and started boring deep into his flesh—

  He jolted awake and sat bolt upright in bed, still panting hard and fast in reaction. Acting on reflex, he slid his hand under the pillow, automatically reaching for his 9mm SIG-Sauer pistol. Then he stopped. A dream, he thought edgily. It was only a dream.

  His cell phone buzzed again, sounding from the nightstand where he had placed it before at last dropping off to sleep. Numbers on the digital clock beside the phone faintly glowed red, showing that it was just after three in the morning. Smith grabbed the phone before it could go off again. “Yes. What is it?”

  “Sorry to wake you, Colonel,” Fred Klein said, without sounding noticeably apologetic. “But something’s come up that I think you need to see … and hear.”

  “Oh?” Smith swung his legs off the bed.

  “The mysterious Lazarus has surfaced at long last,” the head of Covert-One said. “Or so it appears.”

  Smith whistled softly. That was interesting. His briefing on the Lazarus Movement had stressed that no one in the CIA, the FBI, or any other Western intelligence agency knew who really directed its operations. “In person?”

  “No,” Klein said. “It’ll be easier to show you what we’ve got. Do you have your laptop handy?”

  “Hold on.” Smith put the phone down and flipped on the lights. His portable computer was still in its case near the closet. Moving quickly, he slipped the machine out onto the bed, plugged the modem into a wall jack, and booted it up.

  The laptop hummed, clicked, and whirred to life. Smith tapped in the special security code and password needed to connect with the Covert-One network. He picked up the phone. “I’m online.”

  “Wait a moment,” Klein told him. “We’re downloading the material to your machine now.”

  The laptop’s screen lit up—showing first a jumble of static, then random shapes and colors, and then finally clearing to show the stern, handsome face of a middle-aged man. He was looking straight into the camera.

  Smith leaned forward, closely studying the figure before him. That face was somehow strangely familiar. Everything about it, from the faintly curly brown hair with just the right touch of gray at the temples to the open blue eyes, classically straight nose, and firm, cleft chin, conveyed an impression of enormous strength, wisdom, intelligence, and controlled power.

  “I am Lazarus,” the figure said calmly. “I speak for the Lazarus Movement, for the Earth, and for all of humanity. I speak for those who have died and for those as yet unborn. And I am here today to speak truth to corrupt and corruptible power.”

  Smith listened to the perfectly pitched, sonorous voice as the man who called himself Lazarus delivered a short, powerful speech. In it, he called for justice for those killed outside the Teller Institute. He demanded an immediate ban on all nanotechnology research and development. And he called on all members of the Movement to take whatever actions were necessary to safeguard the world from the dangers posed by this technology.

  “Our Movement, a gathering of all peoples, of all races, has warned for years of this growing threat,” Lazarus said solemnly. “Our warnings have been ignored or mocked. Our voices have been silenced. But yesterday the world saw the truth—and it was a terrible and deadly truth….”

  The screen faded back to a neutral background once the speech ended. “Pretty damned effecti
ve propaganda,” Smith said quietly over the phone.

  “Extremely effective,” Klein agreed. “What you just saw was a feed to every major television network in the United States and Canada. The NSA pulled it down off a communications satellite two hours ago. Every agency in Washington has been analyzing it ever since.”

  “We can’t stop the tape from being broadcast, I suppose,” Smith mused.

  “After yesterday?” Klein snorted. “Not in a million years, Colonel. This Lazarus message is going to run as the lead on every morning show and on every newscast for the whole day—maybe longer.”

  Smith nodded to himself. No news director in his or her right mind was going to pass up the chance to feature a statement by the leader of the Lazarus Movement, especially since there was so much mystery surrounding him. “Can the NSA track the source of the transmission?”

  “They’re working on it, but it’s not going to be easy. This footage came in as a highly compressed, highly encrypted blip piggybacked somewhere on any one of a host of other signals. Once it was up on the satellite, the signal uncoiled and decoded itself and started feeding down to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago … you name the major city and there it went.”

  “Interesting,” Smith said slowly. “Doesn’t that seem like a strangely sophisticated method of communication for a group that claims it’s opposed to advanced technology?”

  “Yes, it does,” Klein agreed. “But we know that the Lazarus Movement relies heavily on computers and various Web sites to handle its internal communications. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that it uses the same methods to speak to the world at large.” He sighed. “And even if the NSA does succeed in pinpointing the origin of this transmission, I suspect we will learn that it arrived as an anonymous DVD at a small independent studio somewhere, along with a substantial cash payment for the technicians involved.”

  “At least now we can put a face to this guy,” Smith said. “And with that, we can pin down his real identity. Run those pictures through all of our databases—and those of our allies. Somebody, somewhere, will have a file on whoever that is.”