"Yes, I do. I have to lead the investigative team in Santa Fe."
"Will that be a problem?" the CIA officer asked. "Arranging it with Zeller, I mean."
"No, I don't think so. I'm sure he'll jump at the chance to assign the job to me," Pierson said carefully, thinking it through out loud. "I'm the Bureau expert on the Lazarus Movement. The acting director understands that. And one thing is going to be very clear to everyone, from the
White House all the way on down the chain of command. Somehow, somewhere, in some way, this atrocity must be linked to the Movement."
"Right," Burke said. "And in the meantime, I'll keep pushing TOCSIN from my end."
"Is that wise?" Pierson asked sharply. "Maybe we should pull the plug now."
"It's too late for that," Burke told her bluntly. "Everything is already in motion, Kit. We either ride the wave, or we get pulled under."
Chapter Nine
The White House
The members of the president's national security team who were gathered around the crowded conference table in the White House Situation Room were in a somber, depressed mood. As they damned well should be, thought Sam Castilla grimly. The first accounts of the Teller Institute disaster had been bad enough. Each new report was even worse.
He glanced at the nearest clock. It was much later than he had thought. In the confines of this small artificially lit underground room, the passage of time was often distorted. Several hours had already passed since Fred Klein first flashed him the news of the horror unfolding in Santa Fe.
Now the president looked around the table in disbelief. "You're telling me that we still don't have a firm estimate of casualties - either inside the Teller Institute itself, or outside among the demonstrators?"
"No, Mr. President. We don't," Bob Zeller, the acting director of the FBI, admitted. He sat miserably hunched over in his chair. "More than
half of the Institute's scientists and staff are listed as missing. Most of them are probably dead. But we can't even send in search-and-rescue teams until the fires are out. As for the protesters. . ." Zeller's voice trailed away.
"We may never know exactly how many of them were killed, Mr. President," his national security adviser, Emily Powell-Hill, interrupted. "You've seen the pictures of what happened outside the labs. It could take months to identify what little is left of those people."
"The major networks are saying there are at least two thousand dead," said Charles Ouray, the White House chief of staff. "And they're predicting the count could go even higher. Maybe as high as three or four thousand."
"Based on what, Charlie?" the president snapped. "Spitballing and raw guesswork?"
"They're going with claims made by Lazarus Movement spokesmen," Ouray said quietly. "Those folks have more credibility with the press - and the general public - than they used to. More credibility than we do right now."
Castilla nodded. That was true enough. The first terrifying TV footage had gone out live and unedited over several news network satellite feeds. Tens of millions of people in America and hundreds of millions around the world had seen the gruesome images with their own eyes. The networks were now showing more discretion, carefully blurring the more graphic scenes of terrified Lazarus Movement protesters being eaten alive. But it was too late. The damage was done.
All the wild, lurid claims made by the Lazarus Movement about the dangers posed by nanoteclmology seemed vindicated. And now the Movement seemed determined to push an even more sinister and paranoid story. This theory was already showing up on their Web sites and on other major Internet discussion groups. It claimed that the Teller labs were developing secret nanotech war weapons for the U.S. military. Using eerily similar photos of the ravaged dead in both places, it connected the horror in Santa Fe to the earlier massacre at Kusasa in Zimbabwe. Those
pushing the story were arguing that these pictures proved that "elements within the American government" had wiped out a peaceful village as a first test of those nanotech weapons.
Castilla grimaced. In the prevailing hysteria, no one was going to pay any attention to calm technical rebuttals by leading scientists. Or to reassuring speeches by politicians like him, the president reminded himself. Pressured by frightened constituents, many in Congress were already demanding an immediate federal ban on nanotech research. And God only knew how many other governments around the world were going to buy into the Movement's wild-eyed claims about America's secret "nanotech weapons program."