keyboard. A faint stale whiff of sweat, unwashed dishes, mildew, and general neglect hung in the air.
Pierson wrinkled her nose in distaste. The man was disintegrating under the pressure as TOCSIN collapsed around them, she thought coldly.
“Want a drink?” Burke growled, dropping heavily into the swivel chair in front of his desk. He waved her into the other chair, a battered armchair with lumpy, fraying upholstery.
She shook her head and then sat watching while he poured one for himself. The whiskey sloshed over the rim and left a wet ring on his desk. He ignored the spill, instead downing his drink in one swift gulp. He set the glass down with a thump and looked up at her. “Okay, Kit, why exactly are you here?”
“To persuade you to shut TOCSIN down,” she said without hesitating.
One corner of the CIA officer's mouth turned down in an irritated frown. “We've gone through this before. My answer is still the same.”
“But the situation is not the same, Hal!” Pierson said forcefully. Her lips thinned. 'And you know it. The Teller attack was supposed to force President Castilla to act against the Lazarus Movement before it was too late — to act as a relatively bloodless wake-up call. It wasn't supposed to make Lazarus stronger. And it certainly wasn't supposed to trigger a worldwide spree of bombings and murders we can't stop!'
“Wars always have unintended consequences,” Burke said through clenched teeth. “And we are in a war against the Movement. Maybe you've forgotten what's at stake in this matter.”
She shook her head. “I haven't forgotten anything. But TOCSIN is only a means to an end — not the end itself. The whole damned operation is unraveling faster than you can stitch it back together. So I say we cut our losses while we still can. Call off your action teams now. Tell them to abort any ongoing missions and drop back into cover. Then, once that's done, we can plan our next move.”
To buy himself some time before replying, Burke picked up the whiskey bottle and poured another drink. But this time he left the glass untouched. He looked closely at her. “You can't run from this one, Kit. It's gone too far for that. Even if we shut TOCSIN down right now and pull in our horns, your little friend Dr. Jonathan Smith is still going to be out there asking questions we do not want answered.”
“I know that,” she said bitterly. “Trying to kill Smith was a mistake. Failing to kill him was a disaster.”
“What's done is done,” Burke said, shrugging both shoulders. “One of my security units is hunting the colonel. Once they pinpoint him, they'll nail him.”
Pierson looked at him in exasperation. “Which means you have absolutely no idea where he is right now.”
“He's gone to ground again,” Burke admitted. “I sent people to the Santa Fe PD after you called to let me know Smith was snooping there, but he disappeared before they arrived.”
“Wonderful.”
“The nosy bastard can't run far, Kit,” the CIA officer said confidently. 'I have agents watching the airport terminals in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque. And I have a contact in Homeland Security running his name through every commercial flight manifest. The moment he surfaces, we'll know it. And when he does, our guys will close in.“ He smiled thinly. ”Trust me on this, okay? For all practical purposes, Smith is nothing but a dead man walking.'
Along the county road below, the drivers of the two dark-colored automobiles traveling slowly without any headlights turned off their ignitions and coasted to a stop, pulling off to the side not far from the gravel track heading uphill. Still wearing the U.S. Army-issue AN/PVS 7 night-vision goggles he'd been using to drive without lights, Jon Smith stiffly climbed out of the second car and walked forward to the vehicle in front.
Peter Howell unrolled his window as Smith came up. Below his own set of goggles, the Englishman's teeth flashed white in the near-total darkness. “Rather an exciting ride, wasn't it, Jon?”
Smith nodded wryly. “Perfectly delightful.” He rolled his neck and shoulders from side to side, hearing tense muscles and joints crack and pop. The last fifteen minutes of driving had been nerve-racking.
The night-vision equipment was top-of-the-line gear, but even so the images these third-generation goggles produced were not perfect — they were monochromatic, with a slight green tint, and they were a tiny bit grainy. You could drive without lights while wearing them, but it took real effort and serious concentration to avoid drifting off the road or colliding with the vehicle ahead of you.
In contrast, following the government sedan taking Kit Pierson from the FBI's Hoover Building to her own home in Upper Georgetown had been a piece of cake. Even late on Saturday night, Washington's streets were packed with cars, trucks, minivans, and taxis. It had been easy enough to hang two or three car lengths back without being noticed.
Neither Jon nor Peter had been surprised when Pierson took off only minutes later, this time using her own car. Both had been sure from the beginning that this sudden briefing for her superiors was only a blind, a way to cover her real reason for flying back so abruptly from New Mexico. But again, the task of following her discreetly was comparatively easy — at least at first. It had only gotten really difficult once she turned off the highway onto a succession of smaller side roads where traffic was sporadic at best. And Kit Pierson was no fool. She would have been bound to grow suspicious if she saw the same two pairs of headlights gleaming in her rearview mirror through mile after mile of darkened, nearly empty countryside.
That was when both Smith and Peter Howell had been forced to slip on their night-vision goggles and switch off their lights. Even so, they had been forced to hang back farther from her Passat than they would have preferred — always hoping they would not miss whichever tumoff or crossroads she finally took to make her rendezvous.
Smith looked up the gravel track. He could just make out a small house on the crest of a low hill. The lights were on, and he could see two cars parked outside. This looked like it could be the place they were hunting.
“What do you think?” he asked Peter quietly.
The Englishman pointed to the U.S. Geological Survey l:20,000-scale map open on the seat beside him. It was part of the set included in the equipment left for them at Andrews Air Force Base. The IR illuminators on their goggles allowed them to read the map. “This little drive doesn't go anywhere else but that farm up there,” he said. “And I doubt very seriously that our Ms. Pierson plans to take her sedan very far off-road.”
“So what's the plan?” Smith asked.
“I suggest we back up a quarter-mile or so,” Peter said. “I noticed a small copse of trees there which we can use as cover for the cars. Once we've got the rest of our gear on, we can make our way quietly up to that farmhouse on foot.” He showed his teeth again. “I, for one, should very much like to know who Ms. Pierson has chosen to visit so late at night. And what exactly they are discussing.”
Smith nodded grimly. He was suddenly quite sure that some of the answers he needed were locked away in that dimly lit house on the hill.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The ruins of the Chateau de Montceaux, known as the Chateau of the Queens, were hemmed in by the forest of Montceaux — a stretch of woods rising above the southern bank of the undulating River Marne, roughly thirty miles east of Paris. First built in the mid-1500s on the orders of the powerful, cunning, and crafty Queen Catherine de Medici, the wife of one king of France and the mother of three more, the elegant country palace and its vast park and hunting preserve had at last been abandoned around 1650. Now, after centuries of neglect, little remained — only the hollow shell of a grand stone entrance pavilion, the oblong moat, and sections of crumbling wall lined with gaping windows.
Strands of mist curled between the surrounding trees, slowly burning away as the morning sun climbed higher. The bells of the Cathedral of St-Etienne in Meaux, five miles away, rang out, summoning the faithful, few though they were these days, to Sunday Mass. Other bells pealed across
the peaceful countryside as the smaller parish churches in the nearby villages echoed the summons.
Two vans hauling a pair of trailers sat in a large clearing not far from the ruins. Signs emblazoned on the vehicles identified them as part of an organization called the Groupe d'Apergu Meteorologique, the Meteorological Survey Group. Several technicians were busy near the rear of each trailer, erecting two angled launch rails aimed almost due west. Each launch rail included a pneumatic catapult system powered by compressed air. Other men
