Laramie stopped fiddling with the dry-erase marker she’d been holding.
“So,” she said.
Cole raised his eyebrows and dropped them. Laramie thought of the way she remembered Tom Selleck doing this on reruns of Magnum, P.I., except that she remembered Magnum being a lot better-looking than Cole.
“You might have wondered initially why you were summoned here,” Laramie said. “Or why you were asked to read the package of documents with no explanation or preamble. That was intentional. The document you read last night is this incident’s version of a ‘terror book,’ aka murder book, as it is usually known in domestic homicide cases. We didn’t explain it in advance because we wanted you to form your own impressions. To give weight where you chose to give weight, to consider circumstances the way you naturally would upon reading the document.”
She grabbed hold of the dry-erase marker again, popped off the top and tacked it back on again with her forefinger and thumb. She’d rehearsed parts of this speech but had ultimately decided to more or less go with the flow.
“You’ve each volunteered your services in defense of the country. You’ve been screened for suitability and liability and, for now at least, you’ve passed. Congratulations. You now work for me. I work for someone else. The man in the other room keeps an eye on all of us; he also gets us what we need. There will be another member of the team arriving here shortly.”
To the extent the $20 million fee would buy his time, Laramie had decided to use Cooper in the way you were supposed to use field operatives-secretly. She wasn’t yet sure how they’d be putting him to use, and until she’d figured that part out, she wasn’t planning on telling the other members of the team about his involvement.
“Operating alone, in whatever degree of secrecy one finds at the Flamingo Inn, here is what you will now be asked to do,” she said. “Despite the indirect references to the contrary in the terror book, we are operating under the assumption Benjamin Achar was not acting alone. We are assuming that five, or ten, or twenty or more fellow deep cover operatives are living within our borders under assumed identities, armed with an equivalent stash of Marburg-2 filovirus and the wherewithal to disperse it over a much wider zone than Achar succeeded in reaching.”
There came no expression from Knowles, whose sunglasses remained planted on the bridge of his nose, the man a poker player.
“I’ll anticipate some of your questions because we don’t have time for process particulars. We’ll work out of this motel for now. Food and laundry services will be provided. There are rules, but we’ll get into that later. You are now, but only temporarily, members of a miniscule, clandestine counterterror unit. That oversimplifies it, but it’s the closest and best explanation. We have support personnel who will perform back-room investigative work-research, fingerprint matching, forensics and other technical analysis, if needed. There is an operative available to us for investigative work, surveillance, or certain preemptive acts as needed. You could also look at it this way: you have just joined a counterterrorism video game already in progress-or board game, if that helps the translation for any of you as old-fashioned as me-except that it is real. Our combined role in the ‘game’ is simple: we use the clues, tools, and ingenuity available to us to identify and stop Benjamin Achar’s fellow sleepers and the individual or organization who sent them.”
Knowles cleared his throat and Laramie inclined her chin in his direction.
“The difference between the definition of ‘counterterror,’” he said, “and ‘antiterror’ centers around proactive measures designed to preemptively combat the terrorist threat-you’re proactive in ‘counterterror,’ reactive in ‘antiterror.’ I assume your choice of words reflects and considers this fact. Do we have a commando team in this tool kit of ours?”
Cole frowned and made a sighing sound.
Laramie said, “If you’re asking me whether part of our assignment is to kill the enemy, I’m not entirely clear on that. Our actions may lead to that, however, so if you have any problem-”
“No problem here,” Knowles interrupted.
Laramie nodded. When Knowles passed on following up with more questions, Laramie gestured with the dry-erase marker, first toward Knowles, then Cole.
“It is anticipated that you, Mr. Knowles, may function as the chief scenario builder, and that you, Detective Cole, would contribute primarily as an investigator. The third member of the team is a reasonably well-known diplomacy and foreign affairs professor who has consulted with the federal government from time to time. He will assist us in narrowing the list of likely nations, or people, who might have sent the sleepers here. Despite this general orientation, there are no titles, there exists no hierarchy besides my leadership, and there are no lines dividing your roles.”
She set the marker lengthwise on the table like a tower and took a sip from the latest in a long line of bad cups of coffee. For once, she didn’t feel much need for the caffeine. She swallowed the sip and replaced the coffee on the table beside the marker.
“Unless you convince me otherwise,” she said, “we will be operating under the theory that Benjamin Achar did not make a mistake in blowing himself up or dispersing the amount of pathogen he did. According to what his wife revealed to me-which you would not have seen in the terror book-Achar told her to be prepared to hide for ‘no less than seven days’ if anything happened while she was out of town with their son. He knew he was going to do what he did when he did it, and I believe he also knew how much filo serum it would take to do some damage but not cause a plague.”
“Used his flare gun,” Cole said gruffly.
Laramie couldn’t quite hear.
“Sorry?”
“He used his flare gun. Fired one into the sky for us to see. Saying, ‘Look what’s about to happen if you don’t do anything about it.’ So we can do something about the others. That’s the way I read it too.”
“Really,” Knowles said. His tone was laced with sarcasm-indicating very clearly he believed Cole was playing the role of teacher’s pet, adjusting his theory to get some extra credit. Laramie saw Cole steer a challenging look at the author. Thinking she was already being made to feel like a day care supervisor, Laramie addressed Cole.
“Then I suppose you’d also agree,” she said, “that if the whole explosion was a flare gun, he probably left some firecrackers lying around too. Or bread crumbs. Depending on the analogy.”
“Yes,” Cole said, holding his evil eye with Knowles.
“Second question,” Knowles said. Loudly.
“Second answer,” Laramie said. “Maybe.”
Knowles almost appeared to Laramie to have smirked, but if he had, the movement of the straight line that was his mouth vanished as quickly as it had come.
“How much do you know about the lies in the media?” he said.
Laramie waited, considering her answer.
“Not much,” she said. “Why do you ask.”
“I don’t have a lot of faith in your average reporter,” the author said, “but maybe you can help me here. I study the news like religion, and I can tell you with assurance that there has not been one single leak of the facts as they’ve been shown to us in the ‘terror book.’ I find this an unlikely if not impossible set of circumstances. Except, that is, if the so-called crisis you’ve dropped us into is nothing more than an exercise.”
Laramie almost smiled at the very serious Wally Knowles.
“I’ll agree, it does seem unlikely,” she said. “My introduction to this incident came six days ago in almost exactly the same way you’re getting this intro now. Is it an exercise? Same question I asked. Answer: it could be. I don’t know. I no longer think so, but you’ll have to judge for yourself.”