“Yeah,” Smith agreed heavily. “If I'm right and nothing inside the Institute could have killed all those people, then whatever did came in with the terrorists and was set deliberately — as part of some cold-blooded plan to massacre thousands of Lazarus Movement activists. And that doesn't seem to make any sense.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. He swayed, feeling the fatigue he had been holding at bay gaining the upper hand.
“Jon?”
With an effort, Smith forced himself back upright. “I'm still here,” he said.
“Wounded or not, you sound all in,” Klein told him. “You need a chance to rest and recover. What's your situation there?”
Despite his exhaustion, Smith could not help smiling wryly. “Not great. I'm not going anywhere soon. I've already given my statement, but the local Feds are holding every single Institute survivor who can still walk and talk right here, pending the arrival of their great white chief from D.C. And she's not due in until sometime early tomorrow morning.”
“Not surprising,” Klein said. “But not good, either. Let me see what I can do. Hold on.” His voice faded.
Smith looked out into the darkness, watching rifle-armed men in camouflage fatigues, Kevlar helmets, and body armor patrolling the cordon between him and the burning building. The National Guard had deployed a full company to seal off the area around the Teller Institute. The troops had been issued shoot-to-kill orders to stop anyone trying to break through their perimeter.
From what Smith heard, more National Guard units were tied up in Santa Fe itself, protecting state and federal offices and trying to keep the
highways open for emergency traffic. One of the local sheriffs had told him that several thousand people from the city were evacuating, fleeing to Albuquerque or even up into the mountains around Taos in search of safety.
The police also had their hands full keeping tabs on survivors from the Lazarus Movement rally. Many had already fled the area, but a few hundred dazed activists were wandering aimlessly through the streets of Santa Fe. Nobody was sure if they were really in shock or if they were only waiting to cause more trouble.
Fred Klein came back on the line. “It's all arranged, Colonel,” he said calmly. “You have clearance to leave the security zone — and a ride back to your hotel.”
Smith was deeply grateful. He understood why the Bureau wanted to secure the area and maintain control over its only dependable witnesses. But he had not been looking forward to spending a long, cold night on a cot in a Red Cross tent or huddled in the back of some police squad car. As so often before, he wondered briefly just how Klein — a man who operated only in the shadows — could pull so many strings without blowing his cover. But then, as always, he filed those questions away in the back of his mind. To Smith, the important thing was that it worked.
Twenty minutes later, Smith was riding in the back of a State Police patrol car heading north on Highway 84 through the center of Santa Fe. There were still long lines of civilian autos, pickups, minivans, and SUVs inching slowly south toward the junction with Interstate 25, the main road to Albuquerque. The message was clear. Many locals were not buying the official line that any danger was limited to a relatively small zone around the Institute.
Smith frowned at the sight, but he could not blame people for being scared to death. For years they had been assured that nanotechnology was absolutely, positively safe — and then they turned on their TV sets and watched screaming Lazarus Movement protesters being torn to shreds by tiny machines too small to be seen or heard.
The patrol car turned east off Highway 84 onto the Paseo de Peralta, the relatively wide avenue ringing Santa Fe's historic center. Smith spotted a National Guard Humvee blocking an intersection to the right. More vehicles, troops, and police were in position along every road heading into the downtown area.
He nodded to himself. Those responsible for law and order were making the best use of their limited resources. If you had to pick just one place to defend against looting or lawlessness, that area was it. There were other beautiful museums, galleries, shops, and homes scattered around the rest of the city, but the heart and soul of Santa Fe was its historic center — a maze of narrow one-way streets surrounding the beautiful tree-lined Plaza and the four-centuries-old Palace of the Governors.
The streets of the old city followed the winding trace of old wagon roads like the Santa Fe and Pecos Trails, not an antiseptic ultra-modern grid. Many of the buildings lining those roads were a blend of old and new in the Spanish-Pueblo revival style, with earth-toned adobe walls, flat roofs, small, deep-set windows, and protruding log beams. Others, like the federal courthouse, displayed the brick facades and slender white columns of the Territorial style — dating back to 1846 and the U.S. conquest during the Mexican-American War. Much of the history, art, and architecture that made Santa Fe so unique an American city lay within that relatively small district.
Smith frowned as they drove past the darkened, deserted streets. On most days, the Plaza was bustling with tourists taking photos and browsing through the wares of local artists and craftsmen. Native Americans sat in the shade of the portal, the covered walkway, outside the Palace, selling distinctive pottery and silver and turquoise jewelry. He suspected that those places would be eerily abandoned in the coming morning, and possibly for many days to come.
He was staying just five blocks from the Plaza, at the Port Marcy Hotel
Suites. Back when he was first assigned as an observer at the Teller Institute, it had amused him to check into a hotel with a military-sounding name. But there was nothing Army-issue or drab about the Fort Marcy suites themselves. Eighty separate units occupied a series of one- and two-story buildings set on a gentle hillside with views of the city or the nearby mountains. All of them were quiet, comfortable, and elegantly furnished in a mix of modern and traditional Southwestern styles.
The state trooper dropped him off at the front of the hotel. Smith thanked him and limped along the walkway to his room, a one-bedroom suite nestled in among shade trees and landscaped gardens. Few lights were on in any of the neighboring buildings. He suspected that many of his fellow guests were long gone — heading for home as fast as they could.
Jon fumbled through his wallet for the room card key, found it, and let himself in. With the door firmly closed, he felt himself starting to relax for the first time in hours. He carefully shrugged out of his bullet-ripped leather jacket and made his way into the bathroom. He splashed some cold water on his face and then looked in the mirror.
The eyes that stared back at him were haunted, weary, and full of sadness.
Smith turned away.
More out of habit than of real hunger, he checked the refrigerator in the suite's kitchen. None of the tinfoil- wrapped restaurant leftovers inside looked appealing. Instead, he took out an ice-cold Tecate, twisted off the cap, and set the beer bottle out on the dining room table.
He looked at it for a long moment. Then he swung away and sat staring blindly out the windows, seeing only the horrors he had witnessed earlier replaying over and over in his exhausted mind.
Chapter Eleven
Malachi MacNamara paused just inside the doors of Cristo Rey Church. He stood quietly for some moments, surveying his surroundings. Pale moonlight filtered in through windows set high up in massive adobe walls. A large high-ceilinged nave stretched before him. Far ahead, at the altar, he could see a large screen, a reredos, composed of three large sections of white stone. Carvings of flowers, saints, and angels covered the stone screen. Groups of weary men and women sat slumped here and there among the pews. Some were weeping openly. Others sat silent, staring into nothingness, still numbed by the horrors they had witnessed.
MacNamara moved slowly and unobtrusively down one of the side aisles, watching and listening to those around him. He suspected the men he was hunting were not here, but it was best to make sure of that before moving on to the next possible sanctuary. His feet ached. He had already spent several hours walking the meandering streets of this city, tracking down several of the dispersed groups of Lazarus Movement survivors. It
