alive or dead.”
Nomura looked up at Castilla. “Now, however, after seeing those peaceful protesters murdered outside the Teller Institute, I have another concern.” He lowered his voice. “My father talked of a covert war being waged against the Lazarus Movement. And I laughed at him. But what if he was right?”
Later, once Hideo Nomura had gone, Sam Castilla walked to the door of his private study, knocked once, and went into the dimly lit room.
A pale, long-nosed man in a rumpled dark gray suit sat calmly in a high-backed chair placed right next to the door. Bright, highly intelligent eyes gleamed behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. “Good morning, Sam,” said Fred Klein, the head of Covert-One.
“You heard all that?” the president asked.
Klein nodded. “Most of it.” He held up a sheaf of papers. “And I've read through the transcript of last evening's NSC meeting.”
“Well?” Castilla asked. “What do you think?”
Klein sat back in his chair and ran his hands through his rapidly thinning hair while he considered his old friend's question. Every year it seemed as though his hairline receded another inch. It was the price of the stress involved in running the most secret operation in the whole U.S. government. “David Hanson is no fool,” he said finally. “You know his record as well as I do. He has a nose for trouble and he's bright and pushy enough to follow that nose wherever it leads him.”
“I know that, Fred,” said the president. “Hell, that's why I nominated him as DCI in the first place — over Emily Powell-Hill's vigorous and often-expressed objections, I might add. But I'm asking you for your opinion of his latest brainstorm: Do you think this mess in Santa Fe is really the work of the Lazarus Movement itself?”
Klein shrugged. “He makes a fairly strong case. But you don't need me to tell you that.”
“No, I don't.” Castilla walked over heavily and dropped into another chair, this one next to a fireplace. “But how does the CIA's theory track with what you've learned from Colonel Smith?”
“Not perfectly,” the head of Covert-One admitted. “Smith was very clear. Whoever these attackers were, they were professionals — well-trained, well-equipped, and well-briefed professionals.” He fiddled with the briarwood pipe tucked in his coat pocket and fought off the temptation to light up. The whole White House was a no-smoking area these days. “Frankly, that does not seem to square with what little we know about the Lazarus Movement…” Go on,“ the president said. But it's not impossible,” Klein finished. 'The Movement has money.
Maybe it hired the pros it needed. God knows that there are enough special ops-trained mercenaries kicking around idle these days. These people could have been ex-Stasi from the old East Germany, or ex-KGB or Spetsnaz- types from Russia. Or they might be from other commando units in the old Warsaw Pact, the Balkans, or the Middle East.'
He shrugged. “The real kicker is Smith's claim that none of the nan-otechnology being developed at the Institute could have killed those protesters. If he's right, then Hanson's theory goes right out the window. Of course, so does every other reasonable alternative.”
The president sat staring into the empty fireplace for a long moment. Then he shook himself and growled, “It feels a bit too damned convenient, Fred, especially when you consider what Hideo Nomura just told me. I just don't like the way both the CIA and the FBI are zeroing in on one particular theory of what took place in Santa Fe, to the exclusion of every other possibility.”
“That's understandable,” Klein said. He tapped the NSC transcript. “And I'll admit I have the same qualms. The worst sin in intelligence analysis comes when you start pounding square facts into round holes just to fit a favorite hypothesis. Well, when I read this, I can hear both the Bureau and the Agency banging away on pegs — whatever their shape.”
The president nodded slowly. “That's exactly the problem.” He looked across the shadowed room at Klein. “You're familiar with the A-Team/ B-Team approach to analysis, aren't you?”
The head of Covert-One shot him a lopsided grin. “I'd better be. After all, that's one of the justifications for my whole outfit.” He shrugged. “Back in 1976, the then-DCI, George Bush Sr., later one of your illustrious predecessors, wasn't completely satisfied with the in-house CIA analysis of Soviet intentions he was getting. So he commissioned an outside group — the B-Team — made up of sharp-eyed academics, retired generals, and outside Soviet experts to conduct its own independent study of the same questions.”
“That's right,” Castilla said. 'Well, starting right now, I want you to form your very own B-Team to sort through this mess, Fred. Don't get in the way of the CIA or the FBI unless you have to, but I want somebody I can trust implicitly checking the shape of those pegs they're hammering.'
Klein nodded slowly. “That can be arranged.” He tapped the unlit pipe on his knee for a few seconds, thinking. Then he looked up. “Colonel Smith is the obvious candidate. He's already on the scene and he knows a great deal about nanotechnology.”
“Good.” Castilla nodded. “Brief him now, Fred. Figure out what authorizations he'll need to do this, and I'll make sure they land on the right desks first thing in the morning.”
Chapter Thirteen
An old, often-dented red Honda Civic drove south along County Road 57, trailing a long cloud of dust. Unbroken darkness stretched for miles in every direction. Only a faint glow cast by the sliver of the moon lit the rugged hills and steep-sided gulches and arroyos east of the unpaved dirt-and-gravel road. Inside the cramped, junk-filled car, Andrew Costanzo sat hunched over the steering wheel. He glanced down at the odometer periodically, lips moving as he tried to figure out just how far he had come since leaving Interstate 25. The instructions he had been given were precise.
Few people who knew him would have recognized the strange look of mingled exhilaration and dread on his pallid, fleshy face.
Ordinarily, Costanzo seethed with frustration and accumulated resentments. He was plump, forty-one years old, unmarried, and trapped in a society that did not value either his intellect or his ideals. He had worked hard to earn an advanced degree in environmental law and American consumerism. His doctorate should have opened doors for him into the academic elite. For years he had dreamed of working for a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, single-handedly drafting the blueprints for essential social and environmental reforms. Instead he was just a part-time clerk in a chain bookstore, a crummy dead-end job that barely paid his share of the rent on a shabby, run-down ranch house in one of Albuquerque's poorest neighborhoods.
But Costanzo had other work, secret work, and it was the only part of his otherwise miserable life he found meaningful. He licked his lips nervously. Being asked to join the inner circles of the Lazarus Movement was a great honor, but it also carried serious risks. Watching the news this afternoon had made that even clearer. If his superiors in the Movement had not given him strict orders to stay home, he would have been at the Teller rally. He would have been one of the thousands slaughtered so viciously by the corporate death machines.
For an instant, he felt a deep-seated rage boiling up inside him, overwhelming even the everyday petty grudges he usually savored. His hands tightened on the wheel. The Civic swerved to the right, nearly running off the rough road and into the shoulder of soft sand and dead brush banked up on that side.
Sweating now, Costanzo breathed out. Pay attention to what you're doing now, he told himself sharply. The Movement would take vengeance on its enemies in good time.
The Honda's odometer clicked through another mile. He was close to the rendezvous point. He slowed down and leaned forward, staring through the windshield at the heights looming on his left. There it was!
Setting the Civic's turn signal blinking out of habit, Costanzo swung on the county road and drove cautiously into the mouth of a small canyon snaking deeper into the Cerrillos Hills. The Honda's tires crunched across a wash of small stones carried down by periodic flash floods. Tiny clumps of stunted trees and sagebrush clung precariously to the arroyo's sheer slopes.
A quarter-mile off the road, the canyon twisted north. Narrower gulches fed into the arroyo at this place, winding in from several directions. There were more withered trees here, springing up between weathered boulders
