pressure on the rest of us. We're already catching enough hell over that mess out in Santa Fe. Now it's going to get worse."
"We could buy some relief by going along with PharmaTech's self-imposed moratorium," his aide suggested cautiously. "Just until we can prove our Teller lab wasn't at fault for the disaster."
Severin snorted. "How long will that take? Months? A year? Two years? You really think we can afford to keep a bunch of bright-eyed scientists sitting around twiddling their thumbs for that long?" He leaned forward against the thick glass. Far below, the waters of Boston Harbor were a frigid-looking green-gray. "Don't forget that a lot of people in Congress and in the press would claim we were practically admitting fault by suspending our other nanotech projects."
His aide said nothing.
Severin swung away from the windows. He clasped his hands behind his back. "No. We're not going to play Nomura's game. We're going to tough it out. Get out a press release right away. Say that Harcourt Biosciences flatly rejects the demands made by the Lazarus Movement. We will not give in to threats made by a secretive and extremist organization. And let's arrange some special media tours of our other nanotech labs. We need to show people that we have absolutely nothing to hide - and they have nothing to fear."
Chapter Sixteen
The Teller Institute
Wearing a thick plastic protective suit, gloves, a sealed hood with its own oxygen supply, and a blue hard hat, Jon Smith stepped cautiously through the shattered ruins of the Institute's first floor. He ducked sideways under a large charred beam hanging down from the torn ceiling, taking care to avoid ripping his suit on any of the nails protruding from the blackened wood. No one knew if the nanomachines that had butchered thousands of protesters were still active. So far no one had tried to find out the hard way. Small fragments of crumbled adobe and shards of broken glass crunched under his thick-soled boots.
He came out into a more open area that had once been the employee cafeteria. This room was mostly intact, but there were signs of bomb damage along two of the four walls, and chalked outlines on the broken tile floor showed where bodies had been removed.
The FBI task force investigating the disaster was using the cafeteria as a rallying point and on-site tactical command center. Two portable com-
puters were up and running on tables near the middle of the room, though it was clear that the agents trying to use them were having trouble entering data in their thick gloves.
Smith made his way over to where a man wearing a black hard hat was bent over one of the salvaged dining tables, studying a set of blueprints. The tag on the agent's protective suit read LATIMER, C.
The agent looked up at his approach. "Who are you?" he asked. The protective hood muffled his voice.
"Dr. Jonathan Smith. I'm with the Pentagon." Smith lightly tapped his blue hard hat for emphasis. Blue was the color assigned to observers and outside consultants. "I have a watching brief - with orders to provide whatever help I can."
"Special Agent Charles Latimer," the other man introduced himself. He was slender, fair-haired, and had a strong Southern accent. He was openly curious now. "Just what kind of help can you offer us, Doctor?"
"I have a decent working knowledge of nanotechnology," Smith said carefully. "And I know the layout of the labs pretty well. I was stationed here on a temporary assignment when the terrorists hit this place."
Latimer stared hard at him. "That makes you a witness, Doctor - not an observer."
"Last night and earlier this morning I was a witness," Smith said with a wry grin. "Since then I've been promoted to independent consultant." He shrugged. "I know that's not exactly by the book."
'No, it's not," the FBI agent agreed. "Look, have you cleared this with my boss?"
I'm sure all the necessary authorizations and clearances are somewhere on Deputy Assistant Director Pierson's desk right now," Smith said mildly. The last thing he wanted to do was start out by barging in at the top of the FBI's chain of command. He had not met Kit Pierson before, but he strongly suspected she was not going to be pleased to find someone outside her control hovering around her investigation.
Meaning, no, you haven't talked this over with her," Latimer said. He
shook his head in disbelief. Then he shrugged. "Swell. Well, nothing else in this screwy place is running