a meeting.”
“Because of the catastrophe out at the Teller Institute?”
The younger Japanese man nodded. His black eyes flashed. “My company will not soon forget this cruel act of terrorism.”
Castilla understood his anger. The Nomura PharmaTech Lab inside the Institute had been completely destroyed and the immediate financial loss to the Tokyo-based multinational company was staggering, close to $100 million. That didn't include the cost to replicate the years of research wiped out along with the lab, and the human cost was even higher. Fifteen of the eighteen highly skilled scientists and technicians working in the Nomura section were missing and presumed dead.
“We're going to find and punish those responsible for this attack,” Castilla promised the other man. “I've ordered our national law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to make it their top priority.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. President,” Nomura said quietly. “And I am here to offer what little help I can.” The Japanese industrialist shrugged. 'Not
in the hunt for the terrorists, of course. My company lacks the necessary expertise. But we can provide other assistance that might prove useful.'
Castilla raised a single eyebrow. “Oh?”
“As you know, my company maintains a rather substantial medical emergency response force,” Nomura reminded him. “I can have aircraft en route to New Mexico in a matter of hours.”
The president nodded. Nomura PharmaTech spent huge sums annually on charitable medical work around the world. His old friend Jinjiro began the practice when he founded the company back in the 1960s. After he retired and entered the political world, his son had continued and even expanded its efforts. Nomura money now funded everything from mass vaccination and malaria control programs in Africa to water sanitation projects in the Middle East and Asia. But the company's disaster relief work was what really caught the public eye and generated headlines.
Nomura PharmaTech owned a fleet of Soviet-made An-124 Condor cargo aircraft. Bigger than the mammoth C-5 transports flown by the U.S. Air Force, each Condor could carry up to 150 metric tons of cargo. Operating from a central base located in the Azores Islands, they were used by Nomura to ferry mobile hospitals — complete with operating rooms and diagnostics labs — to wherever emergency medical care was needed. The company boasted that its hospitals could be up and running in twenty-four hours at the scene of any major earthquake, typhoon, disease outbreak, wildfire, or flood, anywhere in the world.
“That's a generous offer,” Castilla said slowly. “But I'm afraid there were no injured survivors outside the Institute. These nanomachines killed everyone they attacked. There's no one left alive for your medical personnel to treat.”
“There are other ways in which my people could assist,” Nomura said delicately. “We do possess two mobile DNA analysis labs. Perhaps their use might speed the sad work of— ”
“Identifying the dead,” Castilla finished for him. He thought about that. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was estimat-
ing it could take months to put names to the thousands of partial human remains left outside the ruined Teller Institute. Anything that could accelerate that slow, mournful effort was worth trying, no matter how many- legal and political complications it might add. He nodded. “You're absolutely right, Hideo. Any help along those lines would be most welcome.”
Then he sighed. “Look, it's late and I'm tired, and it's been a rotten couple of days. Frankly, I could use a good stiff drink. Can I get you one?”
“Please,” Nomura replied. “That would be most welcome.”
The president moved to a sideboard near the door to his private study. Earlier, Mrs. Pike had set a tray holding a selection of glasses and bottles there. He picked up one of the bottles. It was full of a rich amber liquid. “Scotch all right with you? This is the twenty-year-old Caol Ila, a single malt from Islay. It was one of your father's favorites.”
Nomura lowered his eyes, apparently embarrassed by the emotions stirred by this offer. He inclined his head in a quick bow. “You honor me.”
While Castilla poured, he carefully eyed the son of his old friend, noting the changes since they had last seen each other. Though Hideo Nomura was nearly fifty, his short-cropped hair was still pitch-black. He was tall for a Japanese man of his generation, so tall that he could easily look most Americans and Europeans squarely in the face. His jaw was firm and there were just a few tiny furrows around the edges of his eyes and mouth. From a distance, Nomura might easily pass for a man fully ten or fifteen years younger. It was only up close that one could discern the wearing effects of time and hidden grief and suppressed rage.
Castilla handed one of the glasses to Nomura and then sat down and sipped at his own. The sweet, smoky liquid rolled warmly over his tongue, carrying with it just a bare hint of oak and salt. He noticed that the younger man tasted his without any evident sense of enjoyment. The son is not the father, he reminded himself sadh.
“I had another reason for asking you here tonight,” Castilla said at last, breaking the awkward silence. 'Though I think it may be related in some way to the tragedy at the Institute.“ He chose his words carefully. ”I need to ask you about Jinjiro… and about Lazarus.'
Nomura sat up straighter. “About my father? And the Lazarus Movement? Ah, I see,” he murmured. He set his glass to one side. It was almost full. “Of course. I will tell you whatever I can.”
“You opposed your father's involvement in the Movement, didn't you?” Castilla asked, again treading cautiously.
The younger Japanese nodded. “Yes.” He looked straight at the president. “My father and I were never enemies. Nor did I hide my views from him.”
“Which were?” Castilla wondered.
“That the goals of the Lazarus Movement were lofty, even noble,” Nomura said softly. “Who would not want to see a planet purified, free of pollution, and at peace? But its proposals?” He shrugged. “Hopelessly unrealistic at best. Deadly lunacy at worst. The world is balanced on a knife-edge, with mass starvation, chaos, and barbarism on one side and potential Utopia on the other. Technology maintains this delicate balance. Strip away our advanced technologies, as the Movement demands, and you will surely hurl the entire planet into a nightmare of death and destruction — a nightmare from which it might never awaken.”
Castilla nodded. The younger man's beliefs paralleled his own. “And what did Jinjiro say to all of that?”
“My father agreed with me at first. At least in part,” Nomura said. “But he thought the pace of technological change was too fast. The rise of cloning, genetic manipulation, and nanotechnology troubled him. He feared the speed of these advances, believing that they offered imperfect men too much power over themselves and over nature. Still, when he helped found Lazarus, he hoped to use the Movement as a means of slowing scientific progress — not of ending it altogether.”
“But that changed?” Castilla asked.
Nomura frowned. “Yes, it did,” he admitted. He picked up his glass, stared into the smoky amber liquid for a moment, and then set it down
again. “The Movement began to change him. His beliefs grew more radical. His words became more strident.”
The president stayed silent, listening intently.
“As the other founders of the Movement died or disappeared, my father's thoughts grew darker still,” Nomura continued. “He began to claim that Lazarus was under attack… that it had become the target of a secret war.”
“A war?” Castilla said sharply. “Who did he say was waging this secret war?”
“Corporations. Certain governments. Or elements of their intelligence services. Perhaps even some of the men in your own CIA,” the younger Japanese said softly.
“Good God.”
Nomura nodded sadly. 'At the time, I thought these paranoid fears were only more evidence of my father's failing mental health. I begged him to seek help. He refused. His rhetoric became ever more violent, ever more deranged.
“Then he vanished on the way to Thailand.” His face was somber. “He vanished without any word or trace. I do not know whether he was abducted, or whether he disappeared of his own free will. I do not know whether he is
