Burke eyed him closely. “Isn't the answer obvious?” he said. “If this man broke once under pressure, the odds are that he will break again. We can't afford that. TOCSIN is already risky enough. Just finish him and dump the body where it won't be found for a few weeks.”
The driver moaned softly behind his gag. His shoulders slumped.
Terce nodded. “Your reasoning is impeccable, Mr. Burke.” His green eyes were amused. “But since it is your reasoning and your verdict, I think you should carry out the sentence yourself.” He offered the CIA officer a long- bladed fighting knife, pommel first.
This was a test, Burke realized angrily. The big man wanted to see how far he would go in binding himself to the dirty work he ordered. Well, riding herd on a group of black ops mercenaries was never easy, and he had killed men before to prove himself on other operations — murders he had carefully concealed from his deskbound superiors. Hiding his distaste, the CIA officer shrugged out of his jacket and hung it over one of the ski clamps. Then he rolled up his shirtsleeves and took the dagger.
Without pausing for further reflection, Burke stepped behind the stool, yanked the bound driver's head back, and drew the blade of the fighting knife hard across his throat. Blood sprayed through the air, scarlet under the bright bulb of the overhead light.
The dying man thrashed wildly, kicking and tugging at the ropes holding him down. He toppled over, still tied to the stool, and lay twitching, bleeding his life away onto the concrete floor.
Burke turned back to Terce. “Satisfied?” he snapped. “Or do you want me to dig his grave, too?”
“That will not be necessary,” the other man said calmly. He nodded toward a large roll of canvas in the far corner of the porch. “We already have a grave for poor Joachim over there. Antonio can share it with him.”
The CIA officer suddenly realized he was looking at another corpse, this one rolled up in a tarp.
“Joachim was wounded while retreating from the Institute,” Terce explained. “He was hit in the shoulder and leg. His injuries were not immediately life-threatening, but they would soon have required significant medical attention. I did what was necessary.”
Burke nodded slowly, understanding. The tall green-eyed man and his comrades would not risk their own security by seeking medical treatment for anyone hurt too badly to keep up. The TOCSIN action team would kill anyone who threatened its mission, even its own members.
Chapter Twelve
It was after midnight and the heavy red-and-yellow Navajo drapes were drawn tight, sealing off the Oval Office from any prying eyes. No one outside the White House West Wing needed to know that the president of the United States was still hard at work — or with whom he was meeting.
Sam Castilla sat at his big pine table in his shirtsleeves, steadily reading through a sheaf of hastily drafted emergency executive orders. The heavy brass reading lamp on one corner of his desk cast a circular pool of light across his paperwork. From time to time, he jotted rough notes in the margin or crossed out a poorly worded phrase.
At last, with a quick stroke of his pen, he slashed his signature across me bottom of the several different marked-up orders. He could sign clean copies for the national archives later. Right now the important thing was to get the ponderous wheels of government turning somewhat faster. He glanced up.
Charles Ouray, his chief of staff, and Emily Powell-Hill, his national security adviser, sat slumped in the two big leather chairs drawn up in front of his desk. They looked weary, worn down by long hours spent shuttling back and forth between the White House complex and the various cabinet offices to get those orders ready for his signature. Trying to broker agreements among half-a-dozen different executive branch departments, each with its own competing views and pet agendas, was never easy.
“Is there anything else I need to know now?” Castilla asked them.
Ouray spoke up first. “We're getting our first look at the morning papers from Europe, Mr. President.” His mouth turned down.
“Let me guess,” Castilla said sourly. “We're getting hammered?”
Emily Powell-Hill nodded. Her eyes were worried. “By most of the major dailies in every European nation — France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain, and all the others. The general consensus seems to be that no matter what went wrong inside the Teller Institute, the carnage outside is largely our responsibility.”
“On what grounds?” the president asked.
“There's a lot of wild speculation about some kind of secret nanotech weapons program gone awry,” Ouray told him quietly. “The European press is playing that angle hard, with all the sensational claims front and center and our official denials buried way down near the end.”
Castilla grimaced. “What are they doing? Running Lazarus Movement press releases verbatim?”
“For all practical purposes,” Powell-Hill said bluntly. She shrugged. “Their story has all the plot elements Europeans love: a big, bad, secretive, and blundering America running roughshod over a peaceful, plucky, Mother Earth-loving band of truth-telling activists. And, as you can imagine, every foreign policy mistake we've made over the past fifty years is being raked up all over again.”
“What's the political fallout likely to be?” the president asked her.
“Not good,” she told him. 'Of course, some of our 'friends' in Paris and Berlin are always looking for a chance to stick it to us. But even our
real European friends and allies will have to play this one very carefully. Siding with the world's sole superpower is never very popular and a lot of those governments are shaky right now. It wouldn't take much of a swing in public opinion to bring them down.'
Ouray nodded. “Emily's right, Mr. President. I've talked to the folks over at the State Department. They're getting very worried back-channel questions from Europe, and from the Japanese, too. Our friends want some firm assurances that these stories are false — and just as important, that we can prove that they're false.”
“Proving a negative?” Castilla shook his head in frustration. “That's not an easy thing to do.”
“No, sir,” Emily Powell-Hill agreed. “But we're going to have to do our best. Either that, or watch our alliances begin crumbling, and see Europe pull even further away from us.”
For several minutes after his two closest advisers left, Castilla sat behind his desk mulling over different ways to reassure European public and elite opinion. His face darkened. Unfortunately, his options were very limited. No matter how many of its federal labs and military bases the U.S. opened to public inspection, it could never hope to completely calm the tempest of Internet-fed hysteria. Crackpot rumors, damning exaggerations, doctored photos, and outright lies could circle the globe with the speed of light, far outpacing the truth.
He looked up at the sound of a light tap on his open door. “Yes?”
His executive secretary poked her head in. “The Secret Service just called, Mr. President. Mr. Nomura has arrived. They're bringing him in now.”
“Discreetly, I hope, Estelle,” Castilla reminded her.
The faint trace of a smile crossed her normally prim and proper face. “They're coming through the kitchens, sir. I trust that is discreet enough.”
Castilla chuckled. 'Should be. Well, let's just hope none of the night-shift press corps folks are foraging there for a midnight snack.' He stood up, straightened his tie, and pulled on his suit coat. Being ushered into the White House past the kitchen trash cans was a far cry from the impressive ceremony that usually accompanied a visit to the American president, so the least he could do was greet Hideo Nomura with as much formality as possible.
His secretary, Mrs. Pike, opened the door for the head of Nomura PharmaTech just a minute or two later. Castilla advanced to meet him, smiling broadly. The two men exchanged quick, polite bows in the Japanese manner and then shook hands.
The president showed his guest to the big leather couch set squarely in the middle of the room. “I'm very grateful you could come at such short notice, Hideo. You flew in from Europe this evening, I hear?”
Nomura smiled back civilly. “It was no great trouble, Mr. President. The benefits of owning a fast corporate jet. In fact, it is I who should express my thanks. If your staff had not contacted me, I would be the one begging for
