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  Rader sipped his sissy drink. “Your point?”

  “Bear with me. The other side of this? It’s almost not possible that these two exercises are not connected. I considered the possibility of coincidence when I made the discovery, but you know as well as I do-better than I do-that the facts I presented to you on the way down here point, odds on, to collusion: I practice to invade my neighbor in June during a cloudy day in a place and time that known paths of spy satellites would not cover-and you practice to invade yours in April-on a cloudy day, et cetera.”

  “Laramie, I will grant you that there is a chance-”

  “Malcolm, you’re the one who taught me how to find these things in the first place!” She stopped-you had to keep a lid on the volume, sitting in a corner of a commissary known to have been snooped on as a matter of routine. “Listen. I have a theory. You and I both understand the political climate in China, and specifically the political leanings of the members of the council. We could present each member’s full dossier to prove the point, but by now the ideology of each of these men is virtually common knowledge. You know as well as I do that it’s unlikely-impossible, in fact-that the council has approved any invasion plans. General Deng Jiang is doubtless aware of the exercise, probably overseeing it, and that means he’s planning for an invasion, whether with the approval of the council, or not. If he needs to win them over, he can do it through extortion and other old-school techniques-he’s used these tricks before. He’s an extremist who doesn’t fit in, but he’s in deep with the intelligence chair and has the goods on everybody from his days overseeing military intel. Okay?”

  “With you so far. It’s my territory.”

  “I’ve learned from the best. But with a second nation’s military involved in a virtually identical operation, conducted on the same timetable-Malcolm, the facts suggest, and I have prepared a report, for your eyes only, hypothesizing what I’m about to tell you. My opinion is that we’ve stumbled across what I’ll call a ‘rogue faction’-an unofficial alliance between certain extremists on the State Council and the government of North Korea. A new al-Qaeda, if we feel like using a sensationalist label.”

  “That is sensationalist, since your hypothesized group has, well, yet to do anything.”

  “Let’s follow my theory all the way through. The rogue faction, presuming it exists, enjoys ties-or, greater than that, influence over more than one nation. There are joint preparations under way for potential simultaneous invasions of American allies, or, to be more accurate, nations whose independence is critical to our foreign policy and therefore our national security. What do you think will happen if I look elsewhere? We should establish a task force, Malcolm-it will take time if there are other participating nations, or other connected extremists within nonextremist regimes, but if further documentation exists-I realize that I am again being sensationalistic, but these could be the first signs of, well, you could call it a new form of world war, Malcolm.”

  “That’s just not likely.”

  “When the plans to use hijacked passenger jets to destroy commercial buildings turned up in an apartment in the Philippines, it seemed unlikely then that anything-”

  “Enough!”

  Laramie quieted down at his tone. Rader leaned back, lifted his macchiato, and sipped. He swirled the coffee in the cup. She liked that he was mulling it over, or at least giving the outward impression that he was mulling it over. She suspected she should enjoy the moral victory. She could sense defeat looming.

  Rader coughed. “You and I,” he said, “are far from privy to the policy-making issues faced by our administration.”

  Laramie couldn’t decide whether she wanted to strangle him, or yawn.

  “Nor,” he said, “do we have any exposure to the administration’s intel docket. It could be, for instance, that Peter Gates had prior knowledge of your discovery, and evidence in favor of, or possibly against your theory, perhaps presented to him by another analyst, or agency. You’ve done some good work here, but the key to assessment lies in the chain of command. Your initial findings and the style of your original report were a bit inflammatory, no?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “I believe that your ideal strategy, that which will allow your findings to be most effectively considered, is to offer this additional intel as a private gesture.”

  “A private gesture? Malcolm, I’m coming to you so you can take this in the right direction, but considering what I’m coming to you with-”

  “A peace offering,” Rader said, continuing. “‘Memo to Peter Gates: Here’s something more. I leave it in your hands. I conclude nothing. I leave policy decisions to you. Thank you for your guidance.’”

  Laramie was favoring strangulation.

  “Better yet,” he said, “I’ll take a look at the document you mentioned. Why don’t you slug it as a confidential brief, addressed solely to me. Do not duplicate the document. Do not forward to file. I’ll suggest any formatting changes you’ll need; you tidy it up; then we feed it to Rosen. Perhaps only verbally. This allows him, in turn, to present your findings to Gates, who will, based on history and experience, know what to do and when, guided by his judgment of the most appropriate timing.” Rader was nodding at the good sense his plan made. “We work it this way, and Gates is pleased. Rosen comes off as handling his staff like a champ, and you and I get some credit. You, specifically, show that you’ve learned from your earlier brush with-well, disaster.”

  Laramie looked at him. She thought about how many people she was discovering were concerned not only about their own careers, but also those of others, including even her own, when, oh, by the way, there appeared to be a couple more important issues at stake. She thought about taking her frustrations out by giving Rader some kind of harsh, sarcastic reply, decided against it, and thought instead of the punch line delivered by Eddie Rothgeb in his Saturday morning lecture, and the fax that followed.

  Politics: give them what they want to hear.

  “That,” she said, “is a pretty good idea, Malcolm.”

  “Hey, it’s how we work around here. I don’t need to tell you that.” He smiled, the patronly boss, and Laramie offered a smile in return. Two happy, career-minded professionals, she thought, sharing coffee in the commissary.

  “No,” she said, “you don’t, Malcolm. Thanks for hearing me out.”

  “Anytime,” he said. “Anytime you’re buying, that is.” He chuckled.

  Laramie yawned.

  She knew a place in Annapolis. It took her ninety minutes from Langley; leaving early didn’t spare her the usual rush-hour traffic, but she didn’t mind the drive. It helped to clear her head, and she wanted to do this far from home, and certainly nowhere near the office. She parked in the public lot tucked behind the town’s main drag, walked two blocks to the waterfront, and turned into a narrow shop with the word MORPHEUS painted on its green awning. It was six-fifteen when she arrived, toting the same bag she’d brought with her to O’Hare on the Rothgeb trip. She took the bag everywhere-used it like a purse, but it was big enough to throw just about anything inside. Today it held her wallet, keys, makeup, and the one-page fax from Eddie Rothgeb.

  Morpheus looked like a narrow, single-store version of Starbucks, only lit like a nightclub; its small waitstaff offered coffee, a few pricey pastries, and, on a rental basis, T3 Internet time. Use your own or take a spin on one of the house computers.

  Laramie had endured a tedious dinner date about three months ago; they’d eaten around the corner at an Italian place with white tablecloths. The dinner conversation had stunk, but she’d wandered in here to split a slab of cheesecake with the guy afterward. Not her usual menu choice, but Laramie usually ate big if she was having a terrible time with men. If you aren’t interested and the date is already under way, there’s nothing much to do or talk about, and you aren’t worried about how you look anymore, you know you won’t even consider swapping bodily fluids-why not blow out the diet for the day and give yourself so
mething to be annoyed at later? A reason to run a couple extra miles in the morning.

  It turned out that her busted-date dessert spot had been a cyber café, and she’d remembered that walking out of the commissary following the sissy-drink session with Rader.

  She talked to the coffee jock behind the counter and paid for an hour on one of the computers in cash. She picked out a Mac, clicked onto the Yahoo! portal, and created a new account under a fictitious name. Trying a few clever code names, she discovered all of them to be taken. In the end she settled on EastWest7.

  Then she confronted the blank screen.

  There was, she supposed, only one question that remained once all the secret-agent, leave-the-office-early-and-drive-to-Annapolis excitement was over, and she was forced to figure out what to say to Senator Alan Kircher: had she really found something that warranted the clandestine whistle-blower routine? Rothgeb and his theories aside, the minute she engaged in a dialogue with somebody outside the Agency on the topic of classified intel, her future with CIA would probably prove instantly and drastically shortened. Somebody, somewhere, would eventually find out what she was up to; they always did. Laramie thinking she could last two weeks or two years, but sooner or later, send this correspondence and she’d be pink-slipped.

  She composed a note on the screen before her:

  Dear Senator Kircher.

  Our friends in the East may not be as friendly as your friends are telling you.

  An intelligent source

  And there it was. The whistle-blower’s first correspondence-Deep Throat’s opening salvo. Eddie Rothgeb’s screenplay, she thought, proceeding as outlined.

  Her right hand depressed the mouse and the cursor sent the e-mail, Laramie thinking her fingers possessed the courage that she did not. No matter.

  Whichever part of her had done it, she thought, that was all it took.

  18

  There came the cold sweat-the sheen that chilled his skin. He burrowed into the sheets, hiding from the wrath of the ceiling fan, its wind biting icily at his sweaty skin. In the fitful, restless circuit that followed, he would fall into the dream, exit it shivering, cover his perspiring skin from the elements with the sheets, and fall again into the dream.

  Brief, abrupt segments of the forgotten period of his life would appear in different ways, from different angles, so that even within the cycle of the same three nightmares, he would learn something new about the portions of his life his conscious mind required him to forget. The visions came in blurred, stunted images, each snapshot bringing another, bursting into his mind’s eye then retreating-never clear or complete.

  Naked, running, seeing the blood on his naked body, he knew there was too much of it to be solely his own. He felt the lingering stab of pain from the bullet they had put in his back; he sliced his bare feet on the gravel road. Brain fogged, vision blurred, he peered into the searing sun and sharp blue sky, trying to piece together direction. North, south, east-he was headed east. He couldn’t be sure-he didn’t know where they had taken him-but if they’d kept him imprisoned anywhere within miles of the assassination team’s drop point, then he knew there was a chance, going east, to reach the Sulaco. Río Sulaco-his promised land, that river a highway to his freedom.

  He barreled into the jungle, never slowing, feeling the whip and sting of branches, of vines, thorns, nettles, the itch of insect bites-and still he ran, measuring the sun through the trees. Continuing east. East, to the Río Sulaco.

  He ran for hours. Nothing remained within-nothing. There was only exterior pain, throbbing, sharp; if he’d been able to see himself he’d have given up, Cooper a swollen mass of red welts. His naked, blistered, bleeding feet had lost their skin, propelling him eastward as little more than raw, seeping stumps.

  No river came. No highway, no power lines, no homes, no crops. Only jungle. He fell at least a hundred times, flying headlong over logs, roots, stumps-anthills-each time rising more slowly than the last. After a particularly rough tumble, he felt death’s cool breath on his hot neck.

  Enough, he remembered thinking. I’ve gone far enough.

  They couldn’t be following him, not after the hours he’d spent running, his journey taking him across tens of miles of all-but-impenetrable jungle. He set his face into the dirt, closed his eyes, and slumped. It was time for sleep, the fatigue too great for consciousness. Even, perhaps, too great for life.

  He heard birds, and insects, and wind.

  Wind.

  It was a steady wind-too steady a wind, so steady that he knew it was not wind. It was water. Moving water, rushing like the wind through the trees.

  He rose again. Scarcely capable of standing upright, he shuffled forward, attempting to run but managing little more than a crawl. Soon, he smelled it and, finally, saw it-that wide, lazy road of black water-and he stumbled, plodding down the muddy riverbank, tripping again and falling head-first, plunging, and then he splashed, his head sinking beneath the surface and bobbing up like a float at the end of a fishing line. He had found his salvation, his escape-he would ride the current a hundred miles, a thousand if he could.

  The river was warm. It stung the welts, the bites, the blisters and sores, but it felt good. It felt like freedom. The mosquitoes came off his skin, drowning in droves, and a short-lived euphoria consumed him. The excitement robbed him of the last remaining energy in his body, and he found himself slipping beneath the surface. The current began to sweep him downstream, and it was all he could do to keep his mouth out of the water, and then he could no longer manage even that, and he went under. His consciousness faded, the world blinking out as it passed by, the banks of the river moving past with greater and greater velocity in shorter and shorter flashes.

  In a section of whitewater, one of his legs struck a rock and snapped like a twig, and he felt his head crack against something hard. He lost his bearings, suddenly forgetting how he’d come to be here. He tried to gasp but couldn’t find any air; there was only water, which he’d inhaled and could not expel. Panic struck him, but there was no physical strength remaining for him to tap into. He struggled, flailing, trying in vain to push his head above the surface-sucking, heaving. The world began to fade around the edges, then crumble to blackness, and finally, with no remaining hope, he felt a deep sense of calm.

  Cooper always welcomed the calm. When it came, he knew the second of the three dreams in the cycle had finished. He would open his eyes and find the welcome confines of his bungalow, surviving to await the third dream.

  When he opened his eyes tonight, though, he found that he hadn’t awakened in the bed of his bungalow. He hadn’t been pulled from the delta of the Río Sulaco by a kindhearted fisherman, either, in the way that his third dream usually began.

  Instead, he saw rocks. He reached for an object that was hard to see, buried as it was beneath a set of smaller stones, and as he pulled on it the object broke free, and he saw that it was a plank of wood. He looked up, frantically now, in hopes he wouldn’t see what he suspected he would-but, to his horror, he saw precisely what he knew he would see.

  Standing around his broken body, doing their little dance, were Cap’n Roy’s band of Marine Base cops. They kept on with the show as Cooper watched them from his nook in the rocks, Riley and the others doing their best to distract any wandering eyes with the illusion that work was being done out here, so that the wandering eyes would fail to notice the pile of rags and rotting flesh and bone that had washed ashore.

  19

  One year before the USS Chameleon was sunk by the Vietnamese mine, a group of London businessmen each kicked in five thousand pounds sterling and purchased one-half of a private island in the British Virgin Islands. Another twenty-five-hundred U.S. dollars built each partner a two-room bungalow, and the partners had themselves a nifty investment property. Part vacation time-share, part tax shelter, it allowed its owners to split up the high-season calendar among themselves and rent out the rooms for the remainder of the year. On paper, the resort lost
money; in reality, it provided the partners a small but undeclared cash dividend at the end of each year.

  To manage the property, the investors found a suitable candidate when a graduate student named Chris Woolsey applied to the ad they’d posted at Oxford. At the end of his first summer of work, Woolsey accepted the investors’ offer and dropped out of the two-year masters program he’d beat out thousands of candidates to attend and opted, instead, to turn his first few months spent at the place called Conch Bay into an endless summer.

  It didn’t take much of Woolsey’s time or energy to tend to Conch Bay’s guests. Woolsey made a daily run to Tortola on a rickety skiff, retrieving enough in the way of food and supplies to keep his charges drunk and fed; he cleaned the outhouse seat every night, turned down the cots, and threw the old set of sheets in the wash and hung them out to dry in the sun each afternoon. A cistern collected and filtered rainwater for the showers; a septic-tank service boat came to do the dirty work every three weeks or so. After his supply run in the morning, Woolsey, meanwhile, spent the remainder of each day one of three ways: on the beach, at the bar, or in the water. He read virtually every literary classic still in print.

  Easily the oddest of the many odd guests ever to stay at the rustic resort was a visitor who’d arrived about three years into Woolsey’s tour of duty. The guest introduced himself with only one name, arriving one morning on a water taxi and renting one of the ramshackle bungalows by paying six months’ rent up front, in cash; he added five thousand on top of the rent to cover whatever meal-and-alcohol plan Woolsey could muster for the same stretch of time. He then, to Woolsey’s amusement, proceeded to do little more than stay in his room, sleep on the beach, and get schnockered for three months running. The guy didn’t talk once. Still, Woolsey provided him with a plastic cooler, ducking into the man’s quarters whenever he went out to the beach, Woolsey keeping the cooler loaded with tuna sandwiches and whatever fresh fruit he’d brought over on the skiff. The man always ate all the food, so Woolsey kept filling it up.