The café itself occupied much of the Plaza Mercado’s second floor, with large windows looking down onto West San Francisco Street. Walls painted in striking bright reds, burnt orange, and yellows and floors in vivid blue and bleached wood were matched by unusual pieces of artwork—many based on Asian, Hindu, or Zen themes.
Smith headed straight for the table occupied by a woman sitting alone, one of those who had turned to study him. That was Heather Donovan. Fred Klein had included her photo and a brief bio in the packet with Smith’s forged credential from Le Monde. The local spokesperson for the Lazarus Movement was in her mid-thirties, with a slender, boyish figure, an unruly mop of strawberry blond curls, sea green eyes, and a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
She watched him walk toward her with a bemused expression on her face. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“My name is Jon Smith,” he said quietly, politely doffing his black Stetson. “I believe you’re here waiting for me, Ms. Donovan.”
One finely sculpted reddish gold eyebrow went up. “I expected a journalist, not a cowboy,” she murmured in perfect French.
Smith grinned and looked down at his tan corduroy jacket, bolo string tie, jeans, and boots. “I try to adapt myself to local customs,” he replied, in the same language. “After all, when in Rome …”
She smiled and switched to English. “Please sit down, Mr. Smith.”
He set his hat down on the table, pulled a small notepad and a pen out of his jeans, and took the chair opposite hers. “I appreciate your meeting me like this, so late, I mean. I know you’ve already had a long day.”
The Lazarus Movement spokeswoman nodded slowly. “It has been a long day. Several long days, in fact. But before we start this interview, I would like to see some identification—just as a formality, of course.”
“Of course,” Smith said evenly. He handed her the forged press card, watching closely as she held it up to the light. “Are you always so careful around journalists, Ms. Donovan?”
“Not always,” she told him. She shrugged. “But I’m learning to be a bit less trusting these days. Seeing several thousand people murdered by your own government will do that.”
“That’s understandable,” Smith said calmly. According to her Covert-One dossier, Heather Donovan was a relatively recent recruit to the Lazarus Movement. Before joining up with Lazarus, she had worked the state capital lobbying circuit for the more mainstream environmental groups, the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Federation among them. She was rated as tough, smart, and politically savvy.
“Okay, you seem on the level,” she said finally, sliding his press card back.
“What can I get you folks?” a languid voice interrupted. One of the waiters, a willowy young man with pierced eyebrows, had drifted over to their table and now stood patiently hovering over them.
“A cup of gunpowder green tea,” the Lazarus Movement spokeswoman told him.
“And a glass of red wine for me,” Smith said. He saw the pitying look in her eyes. “No wine? Then how about a beer?”
She shook her head apologetically, a gesture repeated by the waiter. “Sorry, they don’t serve alcohol here,” she said. Her lips twitched upward in the hint of another smile. “Maybe you should try one of the Longevity’s elixirs.”
“Elixirs?” he asked dubiously.
“They’re a blend of traditional Chinese herbal recipes and natural fruit juices,” the waiter said, showing some enthusiasm for the first time. “I recommend the Virtual Buddha. It’s quite stimulating.”
Smith shook his head. “Maybe some other time.” He shrugged. “Then I’ll have the same as Ms. Donovan—just a cup of green tea.”
When the waiter sidled off to get their drinks, Smith turned back to the Lazarus Movement spokeswoman. He held up his small notebook. “So, now that we’ve established my status as a bona fide reporter—”
“You can ask your questions,” Heather Donovan finished for him. She eyed him carefully. “Which I understand revolve around the FBI’s grotesque suggestion that the Movement is somehow responsible for destroying the Teller Institute, and for killing so many innocent people.”
Smith nodded. “That’s right. I read the other papers this morning, and what you said about this Andrew Costanzo intrigued me. From the sound of it, I have to admit the guy doesn’t strike me as someone I’d pick as a secret conspirator.”
“He isn’t.”
“That’s pretty definite,” he said. “Care to elaborate?”
“Andy is a talker, not a doer,” she told him. “Oh, he never misses a Movement meeting, and he always has plenty to say, or at least to complain about. The thing is, I’ve never seen him actually do anything! He’ll filibuster for hours, but show him envelopes that need to be stuffed or flyers that need to be distributed and suddenly he’s too busy or too sick. He thinks he’s the original philosopher-king, the man whose visions lie beyond the reach of mere mortals like the rest of us.”
“I know the type,” Smith said with a quick grin. “The unappreciated Plato of the bookstore stockroom.”
“That’s Andy Costanzo all over,” Heather agreed. “Which is why the FBI claim is so absurd. We all tolerated him, but nobody in the Movement would ever trust Andy with anything serious—let alone with more than a hundred thousand dollars in cash!”
“Somebody did,” he pointed out. “The identifications by those Albuquerque car dealers are airtight.”
“I know that!” She sounded frustrated. “I believe that someone gave Andy the money to buy those SUVs. And I even believe he was stupid enough, or arrogant enough, to actually go ahead and do what they asked. But the money could not possibly have come from the Movement! We’re not exactly poor, but we’re certainly not rolling in that kind of cash!”
“So you think Costanzo was set up?”
“I’m sure of it,” she said firmly. “As a means of smearing Lazarus and all we stand for. The Movement is completely committed to nonviolent protest. We would never condone murder or terrorism!”
Smith was tempted to point out that smashing up lab equipment automatically crossed the line into violence, but he kept his mouth shut. He was here to learn the answers to certain questions, not to spark a political debate. Besides, he now felt sure this woman was telling the truth—at least about those elements of the Lazarus Movement with which she was familiar. On the other hand, she was only a mid-level activist, the equivalent of an Army captain or a major. How much could she really know about any secret moves made by the higher levels of her organization?
The arrival of their tea gave her time to regain her composure.
She took a cautious sip and then eyed him warily over the rim of her steaming cup. “You’re wondering whether or not the money might have come from somewhere higher up inside the Movement, aren’t you?”
Smith nodded. “No offense, Ms. Donovan. But you folks have drawn a remarkably tight veil of secrecy around the top leadership of the Lazarus Movement. It’s only natural to wonder what’s hidden behind it.”
“This veil of secrecy, as you call it, is purely a defensive measure, Mr. Smith,” she said levelly. “You know what happened to our original founders. They lived open, public lives. And then, one by one, they were killed or kidnapped. Either by corporations they had angered or by governments doing the bidding of those corporations. Well, the Movement will not allow itself to be so easily beheaded again!”
Smith decided to let her wilder claims pass without comment. She was starting to recite preset talking points.
To his surprise, she smiled suddenly, a smile that lit up her vivid green eyes. “Okay, I admit that’s partly rhetoric. Heartfelt rhetoric, to be sure, but I agree it’s not the most persuasive argument I’ve ever made.” She took another sip of her tea and then set the cup down on the table between them. “I’ll try logic instead: Let’s say I’m totally wrong. That I’m a dupe, and that there are people in the Movement who’ve decided to use clandestine violence to ach
ieve our goals. Well, think about that. If you were running a top-secret operation whose disclosure could destroy everything you’ve ever worked for … would you use someone like Andy Costanzo as your agent?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Smith agreed. “Not unless I wanted to get caught.”
And that was what had bothered him from the beginning, from the first moment he read those leaked stories from the FBI. Now, after hearing her, he was even more convinced that the whole SUV angle stank to high heaven. Relying on an overeducated goofball like Costanzo to buy the getaway vehicles for a terrorist attack was asking for big trouble. It was the kind of boneheaded mistake that just did not jibe with the ruthless, calculating professionalism he had witnessed during the attack on the Institute. Which meant that somebody was manipulating this investigation.
One block west of the Plaza Mercado, Malachi MacNamara waited patiently, concealed in the shadows of a covered sidewalk. It was growing late, and the streets of downtown Santa Fe were nearly deserted.
The lean, weather-beaten man carefully raised his Kite handheld night-vision scope and peered through it with one pale blue eye. Rather a useful gadget, he thought. The British-made monocular was sturdy, very lightweight, and produced a crisp, clear image magnified by four times. He painstakingly scanned the surrounding area, checking the movements of his chosen quarry yet again.
He focused first on the man standing motionless in the recessed doorway of an art gallery about fifty yards away. The shaven-headed fellow wore jeans, heavy work boots, and a surplus U.S. Army field jacket. Whenever a car drove by, his eyes narrowed to preserve his night vision. Otherwise, he stayed put despite the growing cold. A young tough, MacNamara thought critically, but very fit and reasonably well disciplined.
Three more watchers were posted at different points along the street, for a total of four. Two of them were stationed to the west of the Plaza Mercado. Two lurked to the east. All of them were positioned in good cover, well out of sight to anyone but a trained observer with light-intensifier gear.
They were part of the group MacNamara had been hunting since the catastrophe outside the Teller Institute. He had lost them in the immediate aftermath of the nanomachine slaughter, but they had reappeared as soon as the Lazarus Movement regrouped and set up camp outside the National Guard cordon. Earlier tonight, not long after sunset, these four had moved north on foot, making their way deeper into old Santa Fe’s narrow streets.
He had followed them at a safe distance. The short trek had taught him much about his quarry. These men were not mere street thugs or anarchist ruffians lured by the Movement rally, as he had first thought. Their movements were too precise, too well planned, and too well executed. They had slipped right past the FBI and police surveillance around the Lazarus camp. And more than once he had been forced to hurriedly go to ground to avoid being spotted by one of their number hanging back as a rear guard.
Trailing them had been like stalking big game—or tracking a patrol of elite enemy commandos scouting unknown territory. In some ways, MacNamara found the challenge exhilarating. It was a high-stakes game of wits and skill that he had played many times before, in many different parts of the world. At the same time, he was conscious now of an underlying sense of fatigue, a slight dulling of his perceptions and reflexes. Perhaps the strains of the past several months had taken a higher toll on his nerves and endurance than he had first reckoned.
The shaven-headed man he was observing suddenly straightened up, going fully alert. The man whispered a few words into a tiny radio mike fixed to his collar, listened carefully to the reply, and then leaned forward to peer cautiously around the edge of the doorway.
MacNamara rapidly shifted his view to the other watchers, noticing the same unmistakable signs of increased readiness. He shifted his own stance and breathed out gently, tamping down the first surge of adrenaline as his body prepared itself for action. The vague feeling of weariness fell away. Ah, he thought, here we go. The prolonged period of waiting motionless in the cold and dark was almost over.
Still peering through the night-vision scope, he panned across the front of the Plaza Mercado. A man and a woman had just come out of the building. They were standing together on the sidewalk out front, carrying on an animated conversation. He recognized the slender, attractive woman straightaway. He had seen her bustling around the Lazarus camp. Her name was Heather Donovan. She was the local activist who handled press inquiries for the Movement.
But who was the dark-haired man she was talking to? The clothing, boots, and cowboy hat all suggested he was a local, but somehow MacNamara doubted that was really the case. Something about the way the tall, broad-shouldered man moved and held himself was oddly familiar.
The dark-haired man swung around, pointing toward the concrete parking garage off down the street to the west. For that brief instant, his face was plainly visible. Then he turned away again.
Malachi MacNamara slowly lowered his night-vision scope. His pale blue eyes were both amused and surprised. “Bloody hell,” he muttered under his breath. “The good colonel certainly has a talent for popping up wherever and whenever one least expects him.”
Chapter
Twenty-One
Brick paths curved through Santa Fe’s central Plaza, circling the various monuments and winding under a spreading canopy of trees—towering American elms and cottonwoods, firs, maples, honey locusts, and others. Wrought-iron park benches painted white were set out at intervals along the walkways. A thin scattering of fallen leaves lay on patches of grass and hard-packed earth.
Surrounded by a low iron railing, an obelisk commemorating the Civil War battles in New Mexico stood in the very center of the square. Few people remembered that the bloody war between the North and South had spread this far to the west. In some spots, thin rays of light filtered through the trees, cast by the street lamps surrounding the Plaza, but otherwise this centuries-old expanse was a place of darkness and dignified silence.
Jon Smith glanced at the slender, pretty woman walking beside him. Shivering, Heather Donovan hugged her black cloth coat tightly around herself. Whenever they crossed the broken streaks of pale light between the shadows he saw her breath steaming in the chilly night air. With the sun long gone, the temperature was dropping fast. It was not uncommon for Santa Fe’s daytime highs and nighttime lows to vary by as much as thirty or forty degrees.
After they finished their tea at the Longevity Café, he had volunteered to escort her to her car, which was parked on a side street not far from the Palace of the Governors. Though plainly surprised by this old-fashioned act of chivalry, she had also accepted his offer with evident relief. Santa Fe was ordinarily a very safe city, she had explained, but she was still feeling a little jittery after seeing the horrors outside the Teller Institute.
They were just a few yards away from the Civil War obelisk when Smith stopped abruptly. Something was wrong, he thought. His senses were sending him a warning signal. And now that they had stopped walking, he heard others—two or three men, he judged—moving quietly up the path at their backs. He could just make out the faint crunch of heavy boots on the brick pavement. In the same moment, he noticed two more vague shapes slipping through the shadows under the trees ahead, drawing steadily nearer.
The Lazarus Movement spokeswoman noticed the figures closing on them in that same instant. “Who are those men?” she asked, clearly startled.
For a split second Smith stood still, hesitating. Were these guys FBI agents sent by Kit Pierson? He had been sure that he was under surveillance earlier that afternoon. But when he had checked for tags before heading to the Longevity Café he had come up empty-handed. Had he missed them earlier?
Just then one of the men moving in from the front strayed into a small pool of light. He had a shaved head and wore an Army fatigue jacket. Smith’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the silenced pistol the man held out and ready. So much for the FBI, he thought coldly.
They were being surrounded—boxed in on
the open ground in the middle of the Plaza. His instincts kicked into gear. They had to break out of this trap before it was too late.
Reacting quickly, Smith grabbed Heather Donovan’s arm and tugged her with him to the right, around the curve of the obelisk. At the same time, he drew his own pistol from the shoulder holster concealed by his corduroy jacket. “This way!” he muttered. “Come on!”
“What are you doing?” she protested loudly, too shocked by his sudden action to pull away. “Let go of me!”
“If you want to live, come with me!” Smith snapped, still drawing her away from the open space around the Civil War monument and toward the darkness under the surrounding trees.
One of the two men who had been coming up behind them stopped, aimed quickly, and opened fire. Phut. The silencer on his pistol reduced the sound of the shot to that of a muffled cough. The bullet tore past Smith’s head and smacked into the trunk of a tall cottonwood tree not far away. Phut. Another round shattered a low-hanging branch. Splinters and falling leaves rained down on them.
He pushed the Movement spokeswoman to the ground. “Stay down!”
Smith dropped to one knee, swung his SIG-Sauer pistol toward the shooter, and squeezed the trigger. The weapon barked once, a loud crack that echoed back from the buildings surrounding the Plaza.
His shot, fired hurriedly and on the move, missed. But the sound of gunfire drove three of the four attackers he could see to the ground. They went prone and began shooting back at him, firing rapidly.
Heather Donovan screamed piercingly, pressing herself flat against the hard, unyielding earth.
Pistol rounds whined close by, either thudding into the trees on either side or spanging off a nearby park bench in showers of sparks, torn bits of metal, and pulverized white paint. Smith ignored the near misses, concentrating instead on the one gunman who was still moving.
Robert Ludlum's the Lazarus Vendetta Page 16
