away, listening closely to someone talking over his radio headset.
Understood,“ Latimer said crisply into his mike. ”Yes, ma'am. I'll make sure he gets the message and complies. Out.“ The fair-haired man turned back to Smith. ”That was Pierson. It seems your paperwork finally caught her attention. She wants to see you at the primary command center outside.'
As in immediately?' Smith guessed.
Latimer nodded. “Even sooner than that, if possible,” he said with a twisted smile. “And I'd be lying if I said you were going to get a warm welcome.”
“How truly wonderful,” Jon said drily.
The FBI agent shrugged his shoulders. “Just watch your step when you talk to her, Dr. Smith. The Winter Queen is damned good at her job, but she's not exactly what you might call a people person. If she thinks you're going to screw up this investigation in any way, she's liable to find a hole somewhere and drop you into it for the duration. Oh, she might call it 'preventive detention' or 'protective custody,' but it still won't be real comfortable… or very easy to get out of.”
Smith studied Latimer's face, sure that he must be exaggerating for effect. To his dismay, the other man seemed perfectly serious.
The safe house sat high on the crest of a rise overlooking the southern reaches of Santa Fe. From the outside, it appeared to be a classic Pueblo-style adobe built around a shaded courtyard. Inside, the decor and furnishings were absolutely modern, a study in gleaming chrome, blacks, and whites. Small satellite dishes were mounted discreetly in one corner of the building's flat roof.
Several of the home's west-facing windows had a direct line of sight to the Teller Institute, about two miles away. The rooms behind these windows were now filled with an array of radio and microwave receivers, video and still cameras fitted with powerful telephoto, infrared (IR), and thermal-imaging lenses, a bank of networked computers, and secure satellite communications gear.
A six-man surveillance team ran all this equipment, monitoring the comings and goings inside the cordoned- off area outside the Institute. One of them, young and olive-skinned with sad brown eyes, sat perched on a chair at one of the computer workstations, humming tunelessly while listening to a pair of headphones plugged into the various receivers.
Suddenly the young man sat up straighter. “I have a signal tone,” he reported calmly while simultaneously entering a series of commands on his keyboard. The monitor in front of him lit up and began filling with scrolling data — a complex and bewildering montage of numbers, graphs, scanned photographs, and text.
His team leader, much older, with short-cropped white hair, studied the monitor for several seconds. He nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent work, Vitor.” He turned to one of his other men. “Contact Terce. Inform him that Field Two appears complete and that we now have access to all of the investigative data being gathered. Report also that we are relaying this information to the Center.”
Sweating inside his protective suit now, Jon Smith submitted himself to the rigorous decontamination procedures required for anyone leaving the cordoned-off area around the Institute. Doing so meant entering one end of a chain of connected trailers and moving through a series of high-pressure chemical showers, electrically charged aerosol sprays, and high-powered vacuum suction systems. The equipment, borrowed from Air Force and Homeland Security WMD defense units, was designed to treat nuclear, chemical, and biological contamination. No one was really sure that it would neutralize the nanomachines that everyone now feared. But it was the best system anyone had been able to come up with in the limited time available. And since no one had died yet, Smith was willing to bet that either the decon procedures worked — or there were no active nanomachines left inside the cordon.
If nothing else, the painstaking process gave him plenty of time to think about what he had seen inside the Teller Institute. And that, in turn, gave him time to formulate a very ugly hypothesis about what had happened — one that might just knock the stuffing out of a lot of the pet theories floating around inside the FBI and the CIA.
I finished at last, Smith stripped off the heavy gear, dumped it in a sealed hazardous materials bin, and put his own clothes back on. He retrieved his shoulder holster and SIG-Sauer pistol from the worried-looking National Guard corporal manning a final checkpoint and stepped outside.
It was the middle of the afternoon. The wind was kicking up a bit, blowing down out of the forested mountains to the east. Jon took a deep breath of the pine-scented air, clearing the last lingering reek of harsh chemicals out of his nose and lungs.
A trim, efficient-looking young man in a conservatively cut charcoal-gray suit came straight up to him. He had the wooden, expressionless demeanor so prized by recent FBI Academy graduates. “Dr. Smith?”
Jon nodded pleasantly. “That's right.”
“Deputy Assistant Director Pierson is waiting for you at the command center,” the young man said. “I'll be happy to escort you there.”
Smith hid a wry grin. Clearly, the woman he had heard called the Winter Queen had decided not to take any chances with him. He was not going to be allowed to bunk off without hearing what the FBI thought of having another government agency, the Pentagon in his case, meddling in its patch.
Remembering Fred Klein's admonition to act discreetly, he followed the other man without kicking up a fuss. They crossed through a growing assembly of trailers and large tents. Power and fiber-optic cables connected the temporary working quarters. Satellite dishes and microwave relays were set up around the outside. Portable generators hummed close by, supplying auxiliary and backup power.
Smith was impressed despite himself. This command center was nearly as big as some of the divisional HQs he had seen in Desert Storm and running a lot more smoothly. Kit Pierson might not score high marks in the warmth and charm department, but she obviously knew how to organize an efficient operation.
She had her own work area in a small tent near the outer rim. It was sparsely furnished with a table and a single chair, power for her personal laptop, a secure phone, an electric lantern, and a folding cot.
Smith hastily suppressed his surprise when he registered that last item. Was she really serious?
“Yes, Dr. Smith,” said Pierson drily, noticing the almost imperceptible flicker of his eyes. “I do plan to sleep here.” A thin, humorless smile crossed a pale face that he might have found appealing if it had a bit more life in it. “It may be Spartan, but it is also absolutely inaccessible to the press — which I count as a blessing of the first magnitude.”
She spoke over his shoulder to the young agent hovering near the open tent flap. “That will be all, Agent Nash. Lieutenant Colonel Smith and I will have our little chat in private.”
Here we go, Jon realized, noting her deliberate shift to his military rank. He decided to try preempting her objections to his presence at the site. “First of all, I want you to know that I'm not here to horn in on your investigation.”
“Really?” Pierson asked. Her gray eyes were ice-cold. “That seems unlikely… unless you're here as some kind of a military tourist. In which case your presence is equally unwelcome.”
So much for the pleasantries, Smith thought, gritting his teeth. This sounded like it was going to be more a duel than a discussion. “You've read my orders, and my clearances, ma'am. I'm here simply to observe and assist.”
“With all due respect, I don't need help from the Joint Chiefs of Staff or Army Intelligence — or whoever really issued your orders,” Pierson told him bluntly. “Frankly, I can't think of anyone more likely to cause trouble I do not need.”
Smith reined in his temper, but only by the narrowest of margins. “Really? In what way?”
“Just by existing,” she said. “Maybe you've missed it, but the Internet and the tabloids are crammed full of rumors that Teller was the center of a secret military program to create nanotech-based weapons.”
“And those rumors are crap,” Smith said forcefully.
“Are they?”
Smith nodded. “I saw all the research here myself. No one at Teller was working on anything that could possibly have had any immediate military application.”
“Your presence at the Institute is precisely my problem, Colonel Smith,” Pierson said coldly. “How do you propose that we explain your assignment to monitor these nanotech projects?”
