23
“That Laramie?”
“Why,” Laramie said, “would we need a public relations officer in the British Virgin Islands?”
Cooper had a Cuba libre in his left hand and his sat phone in his right, reclined as he was in the chair on the deck of his bungalow. It was dark, the swish of the trades soothing against the palms, a distant stream of voices and music floating over from the restaurant. He could just see the bar through the garden; tourists were telling stories there, Cooper thinking gleefully that Ronnie was getting what he deserved, serving the sunburned drunkards and cleaning off their tables with a wet rag when they were done.
“Image is everything,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“Mere fact of the call,” Cooper said, “indicates that you already know my name.”
“I don’t mean your name, which I assume isn’t your real name anyway. I was asking who you are. Meaning why you called, and why you wanted me to solve your little riddle and call you back.”
“Which you did.”
Laramie was silent.
“I,” Cooper said, “would be what the BV Islanders refer to as the ‘spy-ade-island.’ Chief and sole officer of station, British Virgin Islands.”
“And the ‘college recruiter’ portion of your title?”
Cooper thought about that for a moment and said, “Not a great number of schools down here, Laramie.”
“Can I ask how it is that you know my name?”
Cooper took a sip of his drink. “No,” he said.
“Then I suppose I also won’t hear how you know I wrote the memo.”
A mechanical female voice said, “Please deposit one dollar and seventy-five cents to continue your call for two minutes.” Cooper heard the sounds of Laramie inserting the proper change into the slot.
“This is an expensive call,” she said.
“Pay phone.” Cooper left it at that.
“Meaning you’re pleased I’m playing this game of yours?”
“I’d like to ask you a question,” Cooper said. “That list of materials-those I’m supposed to report on a priority basis. Would that include non-weapons-grade uranium, specifically a U-238/U-235 combination found in older power plants?”
After considering the question, Laramie said, “Based on my limited understanding of nuclear weaponry, fuel rods can be processed to create bombs, but non-weapons-grade uranium in and of itself cannot be used, practically speaking, as explosive material in a nuke. Not that it shouldn’t be reported if you’ve discovered the illegal transportation of uranium, Mr. Cooper.”
“So your list would or would not include that substance?” Cooper twirled the ice in his drink. “You did write the memo?”
“You know that I’m not officially allowed to comment on whether-”
“It was a rhetorical question, Laramie.”
Cooper wondered what the analyst was thinking on the other end of the line, Laramie standing in a random phone booth, probably bolted into the corner of a convenience store’s parking lot. The enigma from the Caribbean getting under her skin.
“Who’s Eddie?” he said.
“What?”
“Your buck-seventy-five is running low.”
“An old professor,” Laramie said.
“Old?”
“No, not old. Old as in former. A former professor of mine.”
“Where?”
“What is this?”
The hiss of the connection rose in Cooper’s ear.
“Northwestern,” she said.
“Good school.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Good professors.”
Dig around enough, Cooper thought, and you find dirt. Even with this junior analyst and her former college professor. He was thinking-
“You’re drunk.”
Cooper heard a click.
The wind had begun to die down, and there wasn’t as much noise floating over from the bar. Cooper could still see a few people milling about-the sunburned faces, tank tops, Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, one or two of them wearing slacks, probably somebody told them long pants helped fend off the no-see-’ems. Watching all this in silence, Cooper thought that perhaps Julie Laramie the junior analyst wasn’t so junior after all.
She had just taken him to the cleaners.
After draining the Cuba libre, Cooper ducked into his bungalow and found the two business cards he’d pilfered from the box on the witch doctor’s desk. Trying the easy way first, he dialed both numbers with his sat phone. The Puerto Rico number was no longer in service, Cooper yanking the phone from his ear when the annoying triple-tone blare jolted him and a woman’s recorded voice told him in Spanish that the number had been disconnected. The second number, which he’d figured for a Kingston, Jamaica, area code, went right through and gave him three short beeps. He punched in his number and the pound sign.
It took about fifteen minutes-not a bad turnaround, he thought, for two o’clock in the morning.
“Yes,” Cooper said into his phone.
A muffled male voice mumbled, “Yeah, who this.”
“It’s me,” Cooper said. “Eddie.”
A second or two of static. Sounded to Cooper like another pay phone call.
“You page me, yeah?” the voice asked.
“I’m calling about the Haiti thing,” Cooper said. “My talking to the right guy?”
Static ruled. Finally, in its mumble, the voice said, “What you need?”
Cooper hesitated a beat longer than he’d intended. He was well aware that lies worked better when you were fast on your feet, but Julie Laramie, he thought, stripped me of my bulletproof vest. Took away my edge. Her distracting effect has been to make me consider whether this moron with the pager can see right through the game.
“I need somebody,” Cooper said. “Another Haitian-know what I mean?” Wincing, he knew he’d blown it the second the words escaped his mouth.
“Fuck you, pig.”
Pager-man hung up.
Cooper shook his head. That was ridiculous-he’d had the guy going, should have been able to set up a meet, and he blows it that fast. Practically a seamless fuck-up, in fact.
He set the sat phone on the kitchen table, came over to his bed, picked up the Louisville Slugger, and took some practice swings. Thinking things over.
He’d tried the easy angle first, and if nothing else, he’d found his boy. Pager-man had bitten on the Haiti ask-hadn’t told him to fuck off till he’d blown the improv later in the conversation. Now he’d just have to track the man down-maybe meet up with him wherever he made his phone calls, ask him a few questions about witch doctors. About zombies and business cards, no need to play charades any longer with the Browning pinned to Pager-man’s eyebrow.
Without even seeing him yet-without asking enough questions to know anything for certain-Cooper had the impulse to hunt down Pager-man and whack him with the baseball bat. Maybe it was the guy’s cocky, mumbling tone, Pager-man sounding stoned out of his gourd, ready to deal some crank, or hell, maybe a recently exhumed Haitian, dial one-eight-hundred, Z-O-M-B-I-E-S-
Cooper tossed the Louisville Slugger on the bed and migrated to the chair. He fired up his PowerBook, worked through some firewalls, and got himself to the inquiry page of Interpol’s reverse-telephone directory. He pulled the business card and punched in Pager-man’s phone number. It took about five minutes for the system to spit out the phone company-Verizon. Easy enough, he thought. Exiting the Interpol database, he worked his way into an Agency site, filled out the appropriate online form, and e-mailed a request. This one would take two or three days to get an answer, but when the drones working the night shift in the basement in Langley got back to him, they’d deliver on his request and provide the correct billing address of the Verizon account coinciding with the number he’d dialed to get a hold of his new, though somewhat rude, phone pal.
Laramie knew of a Kinko’s near the turnaround point on her morning run. Since finding the China intel, she was only running twice a week; while this meant her weekly exercise quota had been halved, she’d nonetheless been able to check her new e-mail account twice while out on the runs. Outside of a canned WELCOME, EASTWEST7! from somebody called Mail Services, the in-box had remained woefully vacant.