Robert Ludlum's the Lazarus Vendetta

by Robert Ludlum

  Terce straightened up, hiding his surprise. Uchida, a former Japanese airborne trooper, was one of the five men he had assigned to drive the two intruders into the ambush carefully laid along the north edge of Burke’s farm. Any reports should have come from the ambush party itself. “Go ahead,” he replied.

  He listened to the other man’s tale of utter disaster in silence, keeping a tight rein on his rising anger. Four of his men were dead, including McRae, his best tracker and scout. The ambush he had planned had been rolled up from the flank and wiped out. That was bad enough. Worst of all was the news that the shocked survivors of his security team had completely lost contact with the retreating Americans. Hearing that his forces had found and disabled two automobiles belonging to the intruders was small consolation. By now they were undoubtedly in touch with their headquarters, reporting whatever they had heard and requesting urgent reinforcements.

  “Should we pursue?” Uchida ended by asking.

  “No,” Terce snapped. “Fall back on your vehicles and await my instructions.” He had been overconfident, and his team had paid a high price as a result. In the dark, the odds of regaining contact with the Americans before they received help were too low. And even in this open, unpopulated country the sound of so much gunfire was bound to draw unwelcome attention. It was time to leave this place before the FBI or other law-enforcement agencies could begin throwing a cordon around it.

  “Trouble?” Kit Pierson asked icily. The dark-haired woman had detected the anger and uncertainty in his voice. She sat up straighter in the armchair.

  “A minor setback,” Terce lied smoothly, working hard to conceal and control his growing irritation and impatience. All of his training and psychological conditioning had taught him the uselessness of the weaker emotions. He waved her back down using a small, almost imperceptible, gesture with the Beretta. “Calm yourself, Ms. Pierson. All will be made clear in due time.”

  The second of the Horatii checked the desk clock again, mentally adjusting for the six-hour time difference between Virginia and Paris. The call would come soon, he thought. But would it come soon enough? Should he act without receiving specific orders? He pushed the thought away. His instructions were clear.

  His secure cell phone buzzed abruptly. He answered it. “Yes?”

  A voice on the other end, distorted faintly by encryption software and by multiple satellite relays, spoke calmly, issuing the command he had been waiting to hear. “Field Experiment Three has begun. You may proceed as planned.”

  “Understood,” Terce said. “Out.”

  Smiling slightly now, he looked across the room at the dark-haired FBI agent. “I hope you will accept my apology in advance, Ms. Pierson.”

  She frowned, clearly puzzled. “Your apology? For what?”

  Terce shrugged. “For this.” In one smooth motion, he lifted the pistol he had confiscated from Burke and squeezed the trigger twice. The first shot hit her in the middle of the forehead. The second tore straight through her heart. With a soft sigh, she slumped back against the blood-spattered back of the armchair. Her dead slate-gray eyes stared back at him, eternally fixed in an expression of utter astonishment.

  “Good God!” Hal Burke gripped the arms of his chair. The blood drained from his face, leaving it a sickly hue. He pulled his horrified gaze away from the murdered woman, turning to the big man towering over him. “What … what the hell are you doing?” he stammered.

  “Following my orders,” Terce told him simply.

  “I never asked you to kill her!” the CIA officer shouted. He swallowed convulsively, plainly fighting down the urge to be sick.

  “No, you did not,” the green-eyed man agreed. He placed the Beretta gently on the floor at his feet and pulled Kit Pierson’s Smith & Wesson out of his pocket. He smiled again. “But then, you do not truly understand the situation, Mr. Burke. Your so-called TOCSIN was only a blind for a much larger operation, never a reality. And you are not the master here—only a servant. An expendable servant, alas.”

  Burke’s eyes opened wide in sudden horrified understanding. He scrambled backward, trying desperately to stand up, to do something, anything, to fight back. He failed.

  Terce fired three 9mm rounds into the CIA officer’s stomach at point-blank range. Each bullet tore a huge hole through his back, spraying blood, bone fragments, and bits of internal organs across the swivel chair, desk, and computer screen behind him.

  Burke fell back into his seat. His fingers scrabbled vainly at the terrible wounds in his abdomen. His mouth opened and closed like a netted fish gasping frantically for breath.

  With contemptuous ease, Terce reached out with his foot and shoved the swivel chair over, spilling the dying CIA officer onto the hardwood floor. Then he strode over and dropped the Smith & Wesson in Kit Pierson’s blood-soaked lap.

  When he turned around, he saw Burke lying motionless, curled inward on himself in his final death agony. The tall green-eyed man reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small plastic-wrapped package with a digital timer attached to the top. Moving swiftly, with practiced ease, he set the timer for twenty seconds, triggered it, and set the package on the desk—just below the racks of Burke’s computer and communications equipment. The digital readout began counting down.

  Terce stepped carefully around the CIA officer’s body and out into the narrow hallway. Behind him, the timer hit zero. With a soft whoosh and a sudden white incandescent flash, the incendiary device he had planted detonated. Satisfied, he walked outside and pulled the front door closed behind him.

  Then he turned. Flames were already visible through the nearly closed drapes of the study window, dancing and growing as they spread rapidly across the furniture, books, equipment, and bodies inside. He punched in a preset number on his cell phone and waited patiently for the reply.

  “Make your report,” ordered the same calm voice he had heard earlier.

  “Your instructions have been carried out,” Terce told him. “The Americans will find only smoke and ashes—and evidence of their own complicity. As ordered, my team and I are returning to the Center at once.”

  Several thousand miles away, sitting in a cool, darkened room, the man called Lazarus smiled. “Very good,” he said gently. Then he swung back to watch the data streaming in from Paris.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  Paris

  The leader of the Center’s surveillance team, Willem Linden, flipped quickly from image to image on the large monitor set up in front of him, swiftly checking the TV pictures transmitted by the sensor packages mounted on lampposts around La Courneuve. The images were nearly identical. Each revealed long stretches of pavement and avenues strewn with small, sad heaps of slime-stained clothing and whitened bone. Shots from several cameras, those deployed around the perimeter of the target area, showed wrecked police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances—most with their engines running and their roof lights still flashing. The first emergency crews, rushing to answer frantic calls for help, had driven straight into the invisible nanophage cloud and died with those they had come to aid.

  Linden spoke into his mike, reporting to the distant Center. “There appear to be no survivors among those outside.”

  “That is excellent news,” the faintly distorted voice of the man named Lazarus said. “And the nanophages themselves?”

  “One moment,” Linden said. He entered a series of codes on the keyboard set up before him. The TV pictures disappeared from his screen, replaced by a series of graphs—one for each deployed sensor package. Every gray box included an air scoop and collection kit designed to gather a representative sample of the nanophages falling through the air around them. As the white-haired man watched, lines on each graph suddenly spiked upward. “Their self-destruct sequences have just activated,” he reported.

  The spherical semiconductor shell of each Stage III nanophage contained a timed self-destruct mechanism to scramble its working core—the chemica
l loads that smashed peptide bonds. As these microscopic bomblets detonated, they released a small burst of intense heat. IR detectors inside the collection kits were picking up those bursts of heat.

  Linden saw the lines on each graph drop back to zero. “Nanophage self-destruct complete,” he said.

  “Good,” Lazarus replied. “Proceed to the final phase of Field Experiment Three.”

  “Understood,” Linden said. He entered another series of command sequences on his keyboard. Flashing red letters appeared on his screen. “Charges activated.”

  Several miles to the north and east, the demolition charges rigged at the base of each gray sensor box exploded. Fountains of blinding white flame soared high into the air as the white phosphorus filler in each charge ignited. In milliseconds, temperatures at the heart of each towering column of fire reached five thousand degrees Fahrenheit—consuming every separate element of the sensor boxes, inextricably mingling their metals and plastics with the now-molten steel and iron of the lampposts. When the smoke and flames faded away, there were no usable traces left of the instruments, cameras, and communications devices set out to study the slaughter in La Courneuve.

  The White House

  The persistent chirping of his phone roused President Sam Castilla from an uneasy, dream-filled sleep. He fumbled for his glasses, put them on, and saw from the clock on his nightstand that it was nearly four-thirty in the morning. The sky outside the White House family quarters was still pitch-black, untouched by any hint of the approaching dawn. He grabbed the phone. “Castilla here.”

  “I’m sorry to wake you, Mr. President,” Emily Powell-Hill said. His national security adviser sounded both weary and depressed. “But there’s a situation developing outside Paris that you need to know about. The first news is just hitting the airwaves—CNN, Fox, the BBC, all of them have the same rough details.”

  Castilla sat up in bed, automatically glancing apologetically to his left for the early morning interruption before remembering that his wife, Cassie, was away on yet another international goodwill tour, this one through Asia. He felt a sharp pang of loneliness and then fought off the wave of sadness that came with it. The demands of the presidency were inexorable, he thought. You could not dodge them. You could not ignore them. You could only soldier on and try to honor the trust the people had placed in you. Among other things, that meant accepting periodic separations from the woman you loved.

  He punched the TV remote, bringing up one of the several competing twenty-four-hour cable news channels. The screen showed the deserted streets of a suburb just outside Paris, filmed from a helicopter orbiting high overhead. Suddenly the picture zoomed in, revealing hundreds of grotesque clumps of melted flesh and bone that had once been living human beings.

  “. . . many thousands of people are feared dead, though the French government steadfastly refuses to speculate on either the cause or the magnitude of this apparent disaster. Outside observers, however, have commented on the striking similarities between the horrible deaths reported here and those blamed on nanophages released from the Teller Institute for Advanced Technology in Santa Fe, New Mexico, only days ago. But so far, it is impossible to confirm their suspicions. Only a few civil defense units equipped with full chemical protective suits have been allowed to enter La Courneuve in a frantic quest for survivors and answers….”

  Shaken to his core, Castilla snapped off the television. “My God,” he murmured. “It’s happening again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Powell-Hill replied grimly. “I’m afraid so.”

  Still holding the phone, Castilla levered himself out of bed and threw a bathrobe over his pajamas. “Get everybody in here, Emily,” he said, forcing himself to sound calmer and more in control than he felt. “I want a full NSC meeting in the Situation Room as soon as possible.”

  He disconnected and punched in a new number. The phone on the other end rang only once before it was picked up.

  “Klein here, Mr. President.”

  “Don’t you ever sleep, Fred?” Castilla heard himself ask.

  “When I can, Sam,” the head of Covert-One replied. “Which is far less often than I would like. One of the hazards of the trade, I fear—just like your job.”

  “You’ve seen the news?”

  “Yes, I have,” Klein confirmed. He hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I was just about to call you.”

  “Concerning this new horror in Paris?” the president asked.

  “Not exactly,” the other man said quietly. “Though I’m afraid that there may well be a connection. One I do not yet fully understand.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve just received a very troubling report from Colonel Smith. Do you remember what Hideo Nomura said about his father’s belief that the CIA was waging a covert war on the Lazarus Movement?”

  “Yes, I do,” Castilla said. “As I recall, Hideo first thought it was an indication of Jinjiro’s increasingly shaky mental state. And we both agreed with him.”

  “So we did. Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you that it seems Jinjiro Nomura was right,” Klein said somberly. “And we were both wrong. Dead wrong, Sam. I’m afraid that senior officials in the CIA and the FBI, and possibly other services, have been conducting an illegal campaign of sabotage, murder, and terrorism designed to discredit and destroy the Movement.”

  “That’s an ugly accusation, Fred,” Castilla said tightly. “A real ugly accusation. You’d better tell me exactly what you’ve got to back it up.”

  The nation’s chief executive listened in stunned silence while Klein recounted the damning evidence gathered by Jon Smith and Peter Howell—both in New Mexico and outside Hal Burke’s country house. “Where are Smith and Howell now?” Castilla asked when the head of Covert-One finished bringing him up to speed.

  “In a car on their way back to Washington,” the other man said. “They were able to break contact with the mercenaries who ambushed them roughly an hour ago. I dispatched support and transportation as soon as Jon was able to safely make contact with me.”

  “Good,” Castilla said. “Now, what about Burke, Pierson, and their hired guns? We need to arrest them and start getting to the bottom of this mess.”

  “I have more bad news there,” Klein said slowly. “My staff has been listening in on the police and fire department frequencies for that part of Virginia. Burke’s farmhouse is on fire. Right now, the blaze is still out of control. And the local sheriff’s department hasn’t been able to find anyone responsible for all the shooting his neighbors reported. Nor have they found any bodies in the fields outside the house.”

  “They’re running,” Castilla realized.

  “Someone is running,” the head of Covert-One agreed. “But who and how far remain to be seen.”

  “So exactly how high up does the rot go?” Castilla demanded. “All the way up to David Hanson? Is my Director of Central Intelligence conducting a clandestine war right under my nose?”

  “I wish I could answer that, Sam,” Klein said slowly. “But I can’t. Nothing Smith found proves his involvement.” He hesitated. “I will say that I don’t think Burke and Katherine Pierson could have organized an operation like this TOCSIN all on their own. For one thing, it’s too expensive. Just taking into account what little we know, the tab has to run into the millions of dollars. And neither of them had the authority to draw covert funds of that magnitude.”

  “This fellow Burke was one of Hanson’s top men, wasn’t he?” the president said grimly. “Back when he ran the CIA’s Operations Directorate?”

  “Yes,” Klein admitted. “But I’m wary of jumping to conclusions. The CIA’s financial controls are rock-solid. I don’t see how anyone inside the Agency could hope to divert the kind of federal money necessary—not without leaving a trail a mile wide. Tampering with the Agency’s computerized personnel system is one thing. Ducking its auditors is quite another.”

  “Well, maybe the money came from somewhere else,” Castilla suggested. He frowned. “You heard what else Jinjiro Nomu
ra believed—that corporations and other intelligence services besides the CIA were going after the Lazarus Movement. He might have been right about that, too.”

  “Possibly,” Klein agreed. “And there is another piece of the puzzle to consider. I ran a quick check on Burke’s most recent assignments. One of them sticks out like a sore thumb. Before taking over the Agency’s Lazarus Movement task force, Hal Burke led one of the CIA teams searching for Jinjiro Nomura.”

  “Oh, hell,” Castilla muttered. “We put the goddamned fox in charge of the chicken coop without even knowing it. …”

  “I’m afraid so,” Klein said quietly. “But what I don’t understand in any of this is the connection between the nanophage release in Santa Fe—and now possibly in Paris—and this TOCSIN operation. If Burke and Pierson and others are trying to destroy the Lazarus Movement, why orchestrate massacres that will only strengthen it? And where would they get access to this kind of ultra-sophisticated nanotechnology weapon?”

  “No kidding,” agreed the president. He ran a hand through his rumpled hair, trying to smooth it down. “This is one hell of a mess. And now I learn that I can’t even rely on the CIA or the FBI to help uncover the truth. Damn it, I’m going to have to put Hanson, his top aides, and every senior Bureau official through the wringer before the word of this illegal war against the Movement leaks out. Because it will leak out.” He sighed. “And when it does, the congressional and media firestorm is going to make Iran-Contra look like a tempest in a teapot.”

  “You still have Covert-One,” Klein reminded him.

  “I know that,” Castilla said heavily. “And I’m counting on you and your people, Fred. You have to get out there and find the answers I need.”

  “We’ll do our best, Sam,” the other man assured him. “Our very best.”

  The Chiltern Hills, England

  Early Sunday morning traffic was light on the multi-lane M40 Motorway connecting London and Oxford. Oliver Latham’s silver Jaguar sped southeast at high speed, racing through a landscape of green rolling chalk hills, tiny villages with gray stone Norman churches, stretches of unspoiled woodland, and mist-draped valleys. But the wiry, hollow-cheeked Englishman paid no attention to the natural beauty around him. Instead, the head of MI6’s Lazarus surveillance section was wholly focused on the news pouring out of his car radio.