Smith shrugged. “Easy. I'm a doctor and a molecular biologist. My interests here in New Mexico were purely medical and scientific.”
“Purely medical and scientific? Don't forget that I've read both your witness statement and your Bureau file,” she shot back. “For a doctor, you certainly know how to kill easily and efficiently. Weapons training and unarmed combat skills are a little out of the usual medical school curriculum, aren't they?”
Smith kept his mouth shut, wondering just how much Kit Pierson really knew about his career. Everything he had ever done for Covert-One was buried beyond her reach, but his Army Intelligence work would have left some traces she could sniff out. So had the part he had played in resolving the Hades Factor crisis.
“More to the point,” she continued, “maybe one out of every three people in this country will be bright enough to understand your medical connection. Everybody else, especially the crazies, will only see that nice little Army uniform jacket you keep in the closet — the one with the silver oak leaves on its shoulder straps.”
Pierson tapped him on the chest with one long finger. “And that, Colonel Smith, is why I don't want you anywhere near this investigation. If just one nosy reporter zeroes in on you, we're going to have real trouble on our hands. This case is tricky enough,” she said. “I don't intend to provoke another Lazarus riot on top of everything else.”
“Neither do I,” Smith assured her. “Which is why I plan to keep a* low profile.” He indicated his civilian clothes, a lightweight gray windbreaker, green Polo shirt, and khakis. “While I'm here, I'm just plain Dr. Smith… and I don't talk to journalists. Not ever.”
“That's not good enough,” she replied adamantly.
“It will have to be,” Jon told her quietly. He would bend a bit to placate Kit Pierson's natural irritation at finding an outsider poaching in her province, but he would not shirk his duty. “Look,” he said. “If you want to complain to Washington, that's fine. In the meantime, though, you're stuck with me… so why not take me up on my offer to help?”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. For a second Smith wondered whether he was heading for that “preventive detention” hole Agent Latimer had warned him about. Then she shrugged. The gesture was so slight that he almost missed it. “All right, Dr. Smith,” she said coolly. “We'll play this your way, for the moment. But the instant I get permission to sling you out of here, off you go.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Then, if that's all, I'm sure you can find your own way out,” she suggested, pointedly checking her watch. “I have work to do.”
Smith decided to push her just a bit further. “I need to ask just a couple of questions first.”
“If you must,” Pierson said levelly.
“What do your people think about the odd way the demolition charges were set inside the Harcourt lab?” he asked.
She raised a single perfect eyebrow. “Go on.” She listened carefully to his conjecture that the bombs there were only intended to breach the lab's containment — not to wreck it completely. When he finished, she shook her head in icy amusement. “So you're an explosives expert, too, Doctor?”
“I've seen them used,” he admitted. “But no, I'm not an expert.”
“Well, let's assume your hunch is correct,” Pierson said. “You're suggesting the slaughter outside was deliberate — that the terrorists planned all along to release these Harcourt nanophages on anyone in reach. Which means the Lazarus Movement came here intending to make its own martyrs.”
“Not quite,” Smith corrected her. 'I'm suggesting the people who pulled this off wanted to make it seem that way.“ He shook his head. ”But I've been thinking hard about this, and there's no way that the nanode-vices Brinker and Parikh created were responsible for what happened. No way at all. It's completely impossible.'
Pierson's face froze. “You'll have to explain that to me,” she said stiffly. “Impossible, how?”
“Each Harcourt nanophage carried biochemical substances intended to eliminate specific cancerous cells, not to break down all living tissues,” Smith said. “Plus, each individual phage was infmitesimally small. It would take millions of them, maybe tens of millions, to inflict the kind of damage I saw on any single human being. Multiply that by the number of people killed, and you're talking about billions of nanophages, possibly even tens of billions. That's far beyond the number the Harcourt folks could possibly have manufactured with their equipment. Don't forget, they were focused entirely on the design, engineering, and testing of what they hoped would be a medical miracle. They were not set up for mass production.”
“Can you prove that?” Pierson asked. Her face was still an unreadable mask.
“Without the computer records?” Smith shook his head. “Maybe not solidly enough to suit a court of law, I guess. But I was in that lab almost every day and I know what I saw — and what I didn't see.” He looked curiously at the pale, dark-haired woman to see whether or not she would arrive at the same damning conclusion he had.
Instead, she said nothing. Her mouth was a tight, thin line. Her gray eyes seemed fixed on a distant point somewhere far beyond the narrow confines of her tent.
“You understand what that means, don't you?” Smith said urgently. 'It means these terrorists came to Teller with their own nanodevices already prepared — nanodevices that were engineered from the start to butcher thousands. Whoever those people were, they sure as hell weren't part of the Lazarus Movement, not unless you think the Movement maintains its own sophisticated nanotech labs!'
At last, Pierson swung her gaze back toward him. A muscle on the right side of her face twitched. She frowned. “If your suppositions are correct, that may well be true, Doctor.” Then she shook her head. “But that is a very big if, and I'm not yet prepared to overlook all the other evidence of Lazarus Movement involvement.”
“What other evidence?” Smith asked sharply. “Do you have solid IDs for those terrorists Sergeant Diaz and I killed yet? They have to be in some agency's files. Those guys were professionals. What's more, they were pros who had access to very high-level Secret Service planning and procedures. People like that don't hang around street corners looking for work.”
Again, Pierson said nothing.
“Okay, what about their vehicles?” Jon pressed her. “Those big black SUVs they drove up in. The ones left parked outside the building. Have your agents been able to trace them yet?”
She smiled icily. “I conduct investigations in an organized fashion, Colonel Smith. That means I do not run around prematurely reporting the results of every separate inquiry. Now, until I persuade the powers-that-be to yank you out of here, you're welcome to attend all relevant briefings. When I have facts to share with you, that is where you will hear them. Until then, I strongly suggest that you exercise the virtue of patience.”
After Smith left her tent, Kit Pierson stood next to her desk, considering the wild claims he had made. Was the self-assured Army officer right? Could Hal Burke's operatives have deliberately released their own plague of killing machines? She shook her head abruptly, pushing the thought away. That was impossible. It had to be impossible. The deaths outside the building were completely unintended. Nothing more.
And the deaths inside the building? her conscience asked. What about them? Casualties of war, she answered herself coldly, trying hard to believe it. There was nothing to be gained by wasting time wrestling with feelings of guilt or regret. She had more immediate problems to deal with, chief among them Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith. He did not strike her as a man who would be content to stand aside, no matter how many warnings she gave him.
Pierson frowned. Everything depended on her ability to maintain sole control over this investigation. Having someone like Smith running around pushing theories that contradicted her official line was unacceptable — and dangerous, to her, to Hal Burke, and to the whole TOCSIN operation.
Nor did Pierson believe for a minute that Smith was working solely as a scientific observer and liaison officer for either USAMRIID or the Joint Chiefs. He had too many unusual skills, too wide a range of experiences. There were also some very odd gaps in the FBI file she had examined. So who were Smith's real bosses? The Defense Intelligence Agency? Army Intelligence? Or one of the half-dozen other government cloak-and-dagger outfits?
She picked up her secure phone and dialed a seven-digit cell number.
“Burke here.”
“This is Kit Pierson,” she said. “We have a problem. I want you to run a detailed background check on a Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith, U.S. Army.”
“That name rings an unpleasant bell,” her CIA counterpart said sourly.
“It should,” she told him. “He's the so-called doctor who managed to kill half your handpicked assault
