to safeguard the world from the dangers posed by this technology.
"Our Movement, a gathering of all peoples, of all races, has warned for years of this growing threat," Lazarus said solemnly. "Our warnings have been ignored or mocked. Our voices have been silenced. But yesterday the world saw the truth - and it was a terrible and deadly truth. . . ."
The screen faded back to a neutral background once the speech ended. "Pretty damned effective propaganda," Smith said quietly over the phone.
"Extremely effective," Klein agreed. "What you just saw was a feed to every major television network in the United States and Canada. The NSA pulled it down off a communications satellite two hours ago. Every agency in Washington has been analyzing it ever since."
"We can't stop the tape from being broadcast, I suppose," Smith mused.
"After yesterday?" Klein snorted. "Not in a million years, Colonel. This Lazarus message is going to run as the lead on every morning show and on every newscast for the whole day - maybe longer."
Smith nodded to himself. No news director in his or her right mind was going to pass up the chance to feature a statement by the leader of the Lazarus Movement, especially since there was so much mystery surrounding him. "Can the NSA track the source of the transmission?"
"They're working on it, but it's not going to be easy. This footage came in as a highly compressed, highly encrypted blip piggybacked somewhere
on any one of a host of other signals. Once it was up on the satellite, the signal uncoiled and decoded itself and started feeding down to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago . . . you name the major city and there it went."
"Interesting," Smith said slowly. "Doesn't that seem like a strangely sophisticated method of communication for a group that claims it's opposed to advanced technology?"
"Yes, it does," Klein agreed. "But we know that the Lazarus Movement relies heavily on computers and various Web sites to handle its internal communications. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that it uses the same methods to speak to the world at large." He sighed. "And even if the NSA does succeed in pinpointing the origin of this transmission, I suspect we will learn that it arrived as an anonymous DVD at a small independent studio somewhere, along with a substantial cash payment for the technicians involved."
"At least now we can put a face to this guy," Smith said. "And with that, we can pin down his real identity. Run those pictures through all of our databases - and those of our allies. Somebody, somewhere, will have a file on whoever that is."
'You're jumping the gun a bit, Colonel," Klein said. "That wasn't the only satellite feed the NSA intercepted this morning. Take a look. . . ."
The screen showed an older Asian man - a man with thin white hair, a high, smooth forehead, and dark, almost ageless eyes. His appearance reminded Smith of paintings he had seen of ancient sages, full of wisdom and knowledge. The older man began speaking, this time in Japanese. A simultaneous translation into English crawled across the screen below. "I am Lazarus. I speak for the Lazarus Movement, for the Earth, and for all of humanity. . . ."
The next image was of an African elder, another man with all the power and force of an ancient king or a shaman of great power. He spoke >n full, resonant Swahili, but they were the same words, conveying the same message. When he finished, the handsome middle-aged Caucasian reappeared, this time speaking in perfect, idiomatic French.
Smith sat back in stunned silence, watching a parade of different Lazarus images - each one delivering the same powerful message fluently, in more than a dozen major languages. When the display at last flickered through static and faded into gray emptiness, he whistled softly again. "Man, now there's a clever trick! So maybe three-quarters of the world population is going to hear this same Lazarus Movement speech? And all from people who look like them and speak languages they understand?"
"That appears to be their plan," the head of Covert-One agreed. "But the Movement is even cleverer than that. Take another look at that first Lazarus."
The image came up on Smith's computer and froze just before it began speaking. He stared at the handsome middle-aged face. Why did it seem so damned familiar? "I'm looking, Fred," he said. "But what I am looking for?"