Klein raised a single eyebrow. “Still too wound up to sleep?”
Smith smiled thinly. “I can sleep on the plane, Fred.”
“Oh?” Klein said calmly. “Are you planning some travel?”
Smith shrugged his shoulders. “Aren't I?”
The other man relented. He tossed his briefcase onto the bed and perched himself on a corner. “As a matter of fact, you're quite right, Jon,” he admitted. “I do want you to fly out to Paris.”
“When?”
“As soon as I can get you out to Dulles,” Klein told him. “There's a Lufthansa flight leaving for Charles de Gaulle around ten. Your tickets and travel documents are in my case.” He pointed to the bandage wrapped around Smith's left arm. “Will that knife wound give you any trouble?”
“It could use some stitches,” Jon said carefully. “And I should take some antibiotics as a precaution.”
“I'll arrange it,” Klein promised. He checked his watch. “I'll have another medical doctor meet you at the airport before your flight. He's discreet, and he's done some good work for us in the past.”
“What about Peter Howell?” Smith asked. “I could use his help in whatever mission you've got planned for me in Paris.”
Klein frowned. “Howell would have to make his own way there,” he said firmly. “I won't risk compromising Covert-One by making travel arrangements for a known British intelligence agent. Plus, vou'll have to maintain the fiction that you're working for the Pentagon.”
“Fair enough,” Smith said. “And my cover for this jaunt?”
“No cover,” Klein said. “You'll be traveling as yourself, as Dr. Jonathan Smith of USAMRIID. I've arranged your temporary accreditation to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. With all this political hysteria building,” he nodded at the TV screen, where protesters were now burning several American flags, “the French government can't afford to be seen working with any U.S. intelligence service or with the American military. But they are willing to allow medical and scientific experts in to 'observe.' At least so long as they do so with 'maximum discretion.' Of course, if you land in any trouble, the authorities there will deny you were ever extended an official invitation.”
Smith snorted. “Naturally.” He paced back to the window, staring down, still restless. Then he turned back. “Do you have anything specific for me to look into once I get there? Or am I just supposed to sniff around to see what turns up?”
“Something specific,” Klein said quietly. He reached over and pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase. “Take a look at those.”
Smith flipped open the folder. It contained two single sheets — each a copy of a TOP SECRET cable from the CIA's Paris Station to its Langley headquarters. Both had been sent within the past ten hours. The first reported a series of astonishing observations made by a surveillance team trailing a terrorist suspect inside La Courneuve. Smith felt his hackles rise as he read the description of the “sensor boxes” rigged on street lamps around the district. The second cable reported the progress being made in tracing the license plate numbers of the vehicles driven by those involved. He looked up at Klein in amazement. “Jesus! This stuff is red-hot. What are the boys at Langley doing about it?”
“Nothing.”
Smith was bewildered. “Nothing?”
“The CIA,” Klein patiently explained, “is too busy right now investigating itself for gross malfeasance, murder, money laundering, sabotage, and terrorism. So, for that matter, is the FBI.”
“Because of Burke and Pierson,” Smith realized.
“And possibly others,” Klein agreed. 'There are indications that at least one senior official in MI6 may also have been involved in TOCSIN. The head of their Lazarus surveillance section was killed in a single-car accident a couple of hours ago… an accident the local police are already labeling suspicious.“ He looked down at his fingertips. ”I should also tell you that the sheriffs department has found both Hal Burke and Kit Pierson.'
“And they're dead, too, I suppose,” Smith said grimly.
Klein nodded. “Their bodies were discovered inside the charred remains of Burke's farmhouse. The preliminary forensics work seems to indicate that they shot each other before the fire took hold.” He sniffed. “Frankly, I find that far too convenient. Someone out there is plaving a series of dirty games with us.”
“Swell.”
“It's a bad situation, Jon,” the head of Covert-One agreed somberly. “The collapse of this illegal operation is paralyzing three of the best intelligence services in the world — right at the moment when their skills and efforts are most needed.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch, saw the no-smoking sign prominently displayed on the door, and then stuffed them back with a distracted frown. “Curious, isn't it?”
Smith whistled softly. “You think that was intended all along, don't you? By whoever's really responsible for these mass nanophage attacks?”
Klein shrugged. “Maybe. If not, it's all one hell of a nasty coincidence.”
“I don't put much faith in coincidences myself,” Smith said flatly.
“Nor do I.” The long, lean head of Covert-One stood up. “Which means we're up against a very dangerous opponent here, Jon. One with enormous resources, and with the ruthlessness to make full use of every scrap of power it possesses. Worse yet,” he said softly, “this is an enemy whose identity is still completely unknown to us. Which means we have no way to discern its purposes — or to defend ourselves against them.”
Smith nodded, feeling chilled to the bone by Klein's warning. He paced back to the window, again staring down at the quiet streets of the nation's capital. What was the real aim behind the two separate nanophage releases in Santa Fe and Paris? Sure, both attacks had killed thousands of innocent civilians, but there were easier — and cheaper-ways to commit mass murder on that scale. The nanodevices used in those two places represented an incredibly sophisticated level of bioengi-neering and production technology. Developing them had to have cost tens of millions of dollars — maybe even hundreds of millions.
He shook his head. None of what was happening made much sense, at least on the surface. Terrorist groups with that kind of money would find it far safer and more convenient to buy nukes or poison gas or existing biological weapons on the world black market. Nor would ordinary terrorists find it easy to gain access to the kind of high-tech lab equipment and space needed to produce these killer nanophages.
Smith straightened up, suddenly sure that this unseen enemy had a far deeper and darker goal in mind, a goal it was moving toward with speed and precision. The slaughters in New Mexico and France were only the beginning, he thought coldly, the mere foretaste of acts even more diabolical and destructive.
Chapter Thirty-Five
An endless succession of numbers and graphs passed on by satellite link from Paris scrolled slowly across a large computer screen. In the darkened room, the flowing numbers and graphs were eerily reflected in the thick safety glasses worn by two molecular scientists. These men, the chief architects of the nanophage development program, were studying each piece of new data as it arrived.
“It's clear that releasing the nanophages from altitude was extremely effective,” the senior member of the pair remarked. “The enhanced sensor arrays in our control phages also achieved optimal results. For that matter, so did our new self-destruct system.”
His subordinate nodded. By every practical measure, the remaining engineering problems of their early- design nanophages had been solved. Their Stage III devices no longer needed specific sets of narrowly defined biological signatures to home in on their targets. In one short step, their kill ratio had risen from only around a third of those contaminated to nearly everyone caught inside the nanophage cloud. Plus, the improved chemical loads contained inside each shell had proved their effectiveness by almost entirely consuming all those attacked. The pale, polished bone fragments left on the pavements of La Courneuve were a far cry from the bloated half-eaten corpses littering Kusasa or the unpleasant blood-tinged slime strewn across the grounds outside the Teller Institute.
“I recommend that we declare the weapons fully operational and move immediately to a full production run,” the younger man said confidently. “Any further design modifications suggested by new data can be carried out
