alone in a small but elegantly furnished compartment. The window shades were pulled down, shutting out any glimpse of the larger world outside. Images flickered across the computer screen set before him, televised images of the carnage outside the Teller Institute.
He nodded to himself, coolly satisfied by what he saw. His plans, so carefully and patiently prepared over the course of several years, were at last coming to fruition. Much of the work, like that involved in selectively
pruning the Movement's former leadership, had been difficult and painful and full of risk. The Horatii, physically powerful, precisely trained in the arts of assassination, and infinitely cruel, had served him well in that effort.
For a moment a trace of sorrow crossed his face. He genuinely regretted the need to eliminate so many men and women he had once admired - people whose only fault had been a reluctance to see the need for sterner measures to accomplish their shared dreams. But then Lazarus shrugged. Personal regrets aside, events were proving the correctness of his vision. In the past twelve months, under his sole leadership, the Movement had accomplished more than in all the prior years of halfhearted conventional activism combined. Restoring the purity of the world required bold, decisive action, not dreary oratory and weak-kneed political protests.
In fact, as the name of the Movement suggested, it meant bringing new life out of death itself.
His computer chimed softly, signaling the arrival of another encrypted report relayed to him from the Center itself. Lazarus read through it in silence. Prime's death was an inconvenience, but the loss of one of his three Horatii was far outweighed by the results from the attack on the Teller Institute and the resulting slaughter of his own followers. Gulled by the information he had fed them, information that confirmed their own worst fears, officials in the American CIA and FBI and those of other allied intelligence services had trapped themselves in an act of mass murder. What must seem to those poor fools to have been a terrible error was, in fact, intended from the beginning. They were guilty and he would use their guilt against them for his own purposes.
Lazarus smiled coldly. With a single deadly stroke he had made it virtually impossible for the United States, or for any other Western government, to act decisively against the Movement. He had turned their own strength against them - just as would any master of jujitsu. Though his enemies did not yet realize it, he controlled the essential levers of power.
Any action they took against the Movement would only strengthen his grip and weaken them in the same moment.
Now it was time to begin the process of setting once-loyal allies at one another's throats. The world was already suspicious of America's military and scientific power and of Washington's motives. With the right prodding and media manipulation, the world would soon believe that America, the sole superpower, was tinkering with the building blocks of creation, creating new weapons on a nanoscale - all in pursuit of its own cruel and selfish aims. The globe would begin to divide between those who sided with Lazarus and those who did not. And governments, pressured by their own people, would increasingly turn against the United States.
The resulting confusion, chaos, and disorder would serve him well. It would buy the time he needed to bring his grand design to completion - a design that would transform the Earth forever.
Chapter Ten
Night was falling fast across the high desert country around Santa Fe. To the northwest, the highest peaks of the Jemez Mountains shone crimson, lit by the last rays of the setting sun. The lower lands to the east were already immersed in the gathering darkness. Just south of the city itself, tongues of fire still danced eerily amid the twisted and broken ruins of the Teller Institute, flickering orange and red and yellow as the flames fed on broken furniture and supporting beams, spilled chemicals, bomb-mangled equipment, and the bodies of those trapped inside. The rank, acrid smell of smoke hung heavy in the cool evening air.
Several fire engine companies were on the scene, but they were being held outside the area cordoned off by local police and the National Guard. There was no longer any real hope of finding any survivors inside the burning building, so no one wanted to risk exposing more men to the runaway nanomachines that had killed so many Lazarus Movement activists.