Ebbers spoke up again.
“Not sure,” he said, “I want to hear about the second mistake.”
Laramie felt a sudden tingle of fear. It hit her veins like a shot of espresso and moonshine: Christ, he might just think I’m right…and what if I am?
“The second, well, not mistake, but my opinion on the second flawed-”
“Fuckup, then,” Ebbers said, almost yelling to make sure she heard him over her own voice. “Tell me where they’re wrong, Miss Laramie.”
Laramie blinked. “Well, if you’re a cop, you’re supposed to bust somebody based on evidence. Not just a hunch. But my hunch is that Benny Achar did not make a mistake at all. He is not a ‘perp.’ This is what the task force believes, and it is the way they refer to him: as a perp. Instead, I believe him to be a deep cover agent gone native.”
A silence ensued, the digitized snap, crackle, and pop of the encrypted line the only audible emission from the phone. Laramie tried to picture Ebbers sitting there doing the math on what she’d just told him.
His voice came level and flat from the phone.
“I’m familiar with the term,” he said, “but considering he killed over a hundred American citizens by suicide bomb and pathogen dispersal, I’m having trouble grasping how the idea of his ‘going native’ applies.”
Time to get in as much as you can.
“I think it’s not only possible,” Laramie said, speaking quickly, “but likely that he turned on his employers. Or his country-or whoever it is he was ‘sleeping’ for. I think that instead of the perp he’s been characterized as, Achar was a turncoat-for our side. I think he did exactly what he planned to do. I think he carefully and deliberately calculated exactly how much filo to disperse, and when to do it-in particular, right after his wife and son took off from Miami-in order to achieve three objectives.”
She kept on, barely taking in air as she went.
“First: cause the least number of casualties while still displaying the pathogen’s effects. Second objective: reveal to such people as you and me his role as a deep-cover sleeper agent. And third: make it likely the M-2 epidemic that results remains, in size and scope, an outbreak that would be contained within the length of time he told his wife to hide. Seven-plus days, or thereabouts. So she could survive, and his son could too, while he nonetheless accomplished his other objectives.”
Laramie left it at that.
It took a while, but at length the tinny, double-encrypted voice of Lou Ebbers said, “He told his wife to hide for a week? I didn’t see that in the book.”
Laramie didn’t waste any time-since he’d bitten, it was time to set the hook.
“He told her to hide for ‘no less than seven days.’ She told me in my interview with her in the Hendry County sheriff’s interrogation room. She admitted that he warned her-I’m fairly certain he didn’t tell her what he was up to, but he warned her before she left town that ‘if something should happen,’ she would need to hide out for that period of time. Which she did-armed with enough cash to stay at a motel anonymously for that length of time.”
“So he knew what he was about to do? That proves nothing.”
“I think what he told her proves he knew approximately how far the virus would reach. How long it would continue spreading before it might run out of gas, particularly assuming the kind of response the CDC would enact in our terror-prone time. He spreads the whole batch with nobody positioned to quarantine its effects, the epidemic would still be active to this day. He knew it wouldn’t happen like that-because the amount he chose to disperse could be contained in a week to ten days. Bottom line: if you assume Achar warned his wife in order to save her life, then you must conclude he intended to disperse only the amount of M-2 filo that he actually did disperse.”
“If.”
“If I’m right, then he didn’t intend to kill the people of Miami at all. He didn’t even plan to infect the entire Everglades, though I do believe this was his original mission. What he did plan to do was to send a signal. To us.”
“If that was his intention,” Ebbers said, “wouldn’t it have been easier to walk into his friendly neighborhood FBI office and confess?”
“There’s at least one explanation why he wouldn’t have done that,” Laramie said.
“Which is what?”
“He’d have gotten his wife and son killed. Let alone the skepticism he’d be met with.”
“Got them killed how?”
“If his employer knew he’d sold out-gone native-it could be there was a threat on his family or the likelihood of retaliation. But if he succeeds in pulling it off the way he did, it might just seem to his employer that he made a mistake. This is exactly what we thought, at least to start with. It’s still what the task force thinks. But if you see it my way, Achar has succeeded in sparing his wife and son the wrath of the ‘bio-dirty bomb’ he was sent here to detonate, while still revealing to Lou Ebbers & Company that the enemy’s troops are out there.”
After a few clicks of static, Ebbers’s voice came again.
“Others,” he said, “who haven’t gone native.”
Laramie nodded as though he were standing there.
“Theory being,” Ebbers said, “his love for his wife and son drove him to do this?”
“Maybe, sure-he became his cover and didn’t want them to die.”
“Assuming you’re right,” Ebbers said, “it follows that he’d have left us more clues.”
Laramie thought about that. She noticed the sound of the traffic on the highway outside-the rumble of a passing semi, the wash of a few sedans, the whoosh of an SUV floating into the conference room from somewhere past the end of the red brick road. She didn’t say anything, and Ebbers didn’t say anything either, not for quite a while-long enough for Laramie to wonder whether they’d lost the connection.
Then Ebbers’s smudged voice came from the speakerphone again.
“All right, then,” Ebbers said. “Find them.”
“Find…his other clues, you mean?” Laramie said.
“The other clues-and the other sleepers.”
The job she’d been interviewing for, it seemed, had just become a little more permanent.
“I’m a little unclear on how to do that, though, sir-will I be able to utilize certain members of the task force? Some of the men and women I interviewed were pretty forthcoming, and I’ll need the help if I’m going to-”
“The task force is being disbanded. You’ll be taking over.”
“Pardon me?”
The hiss and crackle of the line reigned for a few seconds. Then Ebbers’s voice, in its digital monotone, said, “What part didn’t you understand?”
Laramie thought for a moment about what she’d found so far, and the kinds of places she’d have to look to find more. The people she’d need to talk to, the resources she’d need to deploy. None of this was her specialty. How would she…
“Look, Lou, um-I’m capable of being pretty industrious, but as you certainly understand, I’m no operative. And my analytical experience, as you also know, doesn’t have much to do with terrorism. Actually, it doesn’t have anything to do with terrorism. I’m probably the last person you should-”
“No kidding, Columbo.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that what your father used to tell you?”
Laramie felt some heat pop up into her neck and snake toward her cheeks.
“Listen,” she said, “I already know you know everything there is to know about me. Congratulations. In fact, can you tell me when I’m menstruating next? I’m occasionally a little inconsistent, mostly based on my diet, or how far I run in the mornings. So maybe you could tell me when I’m due again-that’d plug in nicely with the Columbo thing, the coffee, the sandwich, and the things your people packed in my Tumi bag. But in the meantime, I am flattered by the job offer, if that’s what this is-but I’m not your man, Lou. You don’t need me. You need paramilitary people. Spies. And counterterrorism experts to run them. I don’t mean to sound ungratef-”