Chapter Eight
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Katherine (“Kit”) Pierson stood at the window of her fifth-floor office, frowning down at the rain-slick surface of Pennsylvania Avenue. There were just a few cars waiting at the nearest traffic lights and only a small scattering of tourists scurrying along the avenue's broad sidewalks beneath bobbing umbrellas. The usual evening mass exodus of the city's federal workforce was still a couple of hours away.
She resisted the urge to check the time again. Waiting for others to act had never been one of her strengths.
Kit Pierson glanced up from the street and caught a faint glimpse of her reflection in the tinted glass. For a brief instant she studied herself dispassionately, wondering again why the slate gray eyes gazing back at her so often seemed those of a stranger. Even at forty-five, her ivory white skin was still smooth, and her short dark brown hair framed a face that she knew most men considered attractive.
Not that she gave them many chances to tell her so, she thought coolly.
A failed early marriage and a bitter divorce had proved to her that she could not successfully mix romance with her career in the FBI. The national interests of the Bureau and the United States always came first-even those interests her superiors were sometimes too afraid to recognize.
Pierson was aware that the agents and analysts under her command called her the Winter Queen behind her back. She shrugged that off. She drove herself much harder than she ever drove them. And it was better to be thought a bit cold and distant than to be seen as weak or inefficient. The FBI's Counter-Terrorism Division was no place for clock-punching nine-to-fivers whose eyes were fixed on their pensions rather than on the nation's ever- more dangerous enemies.
Enemies like the Lazarus Movement.
For several months now she and Hal Burke over at the CIA had warned their superiors that the Lazarus Movement was becoming a direct threat to the vital interests of the United States and those of its allies. They had zeroed in on all the signs that the Movement was escalating its rhetoric and moving toward violent action. They had presented policy papers and analysis and every scrap of evidence they could lay their hands on.
But no one higher up the ladder had been willing to act forcefully enough against the growing threat. Burke's boss, CIA Director David Hanson, talked a good game, but even he fell short in the end. Many of the politicians were worse. They looked at Lazarus and saw only the surface camouflage, the do-gooder environmental organization. It was what lay beneath that camouflage that Kit Pierson feared.
“Imagine a terrorist group like al-Qaeda, but run instead by Americans and Europeans and Asians — by people who look just like you or me or those nice neighbors down Maple Lane,” she often reminded her staff. “What kind of profiling can we run against a threat like that?”
Hanson, for one, understood that the Lazarus Movement was a clear and present danger. But the CIA director insisted on fighting this battle within the law and within the bounds set down by politics. In contrast, Pierson and Burke and others around the world knew that it was too late to play by “the rules.” They were committed to destroying the Movement by aggressive action — using whatever means were necessary.
The phone on her desk rang. She turned away from the window and crossed her office in four long, graceful strides to pick it up on the second ring. “Pierson.”
“Burke here.” It was the call she had been expecting, but her stocky, square-jawed CIA counterpart sounded uncharacteristically edgy. “Is your line secure?” he asked.
She toggled a switch on the phone, running a quick check for any sign of electronic surveillance. The FBI spent a lot of time and taxpayer money making sure its communications networks were untapped. An indicator light glowed green. She nodded. “We're clear.”
“Good,” Burke said, in a flat, clipped tone. There were sounds of traffic in the background. He must be calling on his car phone. “Because something's fouled up in New Mexico, Kit. It's bad, real bad. Worse than we expected. Turn on any one of the cable news stations. They practically have the pictures on continuous loop.”
Puzzled, Pierson leaned over her desk and hit the keys that would display TV signals on her computer monitor. For a long moment she stared in shocked silence as the live footage shot earlier outside the Teller Institute flickered across her high-resolution screen. Even as she watched, new explosions erupted inside the burning building. Thick columns of smoke stained the clear blue New Mexico sky. Outside the Institute itself, thousands of Lazarus Movement demonstrators fled in terror, trampling one another in their frenzy to escape. The camera zoomed in, showing nightmarish images of human beings melting like bloodstained wax.
She drew a short, sharp breath, fighting for composure. Then she gripped the phone tighter. “Good God, Hal. What happened?”
“It's not clear, yet,” Burke told her. “First reports say the demonstrators broke through the fence and they were swarming the building when all hell broke loose inside — explosions, fires, you name it.”
“And the cause?”
“There's speculation about some kind of toxic release from the nano-tech labs,” Burke said. “A few sources are calling it a tragic accident. Others are blaming sabotage by as-yet-unidentified perps. The smart money is on sabotage.”
“But no confirmation either way?” she asked sharply. “No one's been taken into custody?”
“No one so far. I don't have contact with our people yet, but I expect to hear something soon. I'm heading out there myself, pronto. There's an Air Force emergency flight taking off from Andrews in thirty minutes — and Langley wangled me a seat on the plane.”
Pierson shook her head in frustration. “This was not the plan, Hal. I thought we had this situation locked down tight.”
“Yeah, so did I,” Burke said. She could almost hear him shrug. “Something always goes wrong at some point in every operation, Kit. You know that.”
She frowned. “Not this wrong.”
“No,” agreed Burke coldly. “Not usually.” He cleared his throat. “But now we have to play the cards we're dealt. Right?”
“Yes.” Pierson reached out and shut down the TV link on her computer. She did not need to see any more. Not now. She suspected those images would haunt her dreams for a very long time.
“Kit?”
“I'm here,” she said softly.
“You know what has to happen next?”
She nodded, forcing herself to focus on the immediate future. “Yes, I do. I have to lead the investigative team in Santa Fe.”
“Will that be a problem?” the CIA officer asked. “Arranging it with Zeller, I mean.”
“No, I don't think so. I'm sure he'll jump at the chance to assign the job to me,” Pierson said carefully, thinking it through out loud. 'I'm the Bureau expert on the Lazarus Movement. The acting director understands that. And one thing is going to be very clear to everyone, from the
White House all the way on down the chain of command. Somehow, somewhere, in some way, this atrocity must be linked to the Movement.'
“Right,” Burke said. “And in the meantime, I'll keep pushing TOCSIN from my end.”
“Is that wise?” Pierson asked sharply. “Maybe we should pull the plug now.”
“It's too late for that,” Burke told her bluntly. “Everything is already in motion, Kit. We either ride the wave, or we get pulled under.”
Chapter Nine
The members of the president's national security team who were gathered around the crowded conference
