Public Enemy Page 16

  Her seventy-two hours were just about up-a point which Laramie already understood, but which her guide emphasized further with his knock at her door. It was six A.M. when she heard his shave-and-a-haircut sound out; Laramie was already showered, dressed, and blown dry, sitting there at the little round table sipping her second cup of bad coffee while she thought through the things she would lay out for Ebbers. They hadn’t given any number for her to call, or any other means by which to report in, so she’d assumed they’d be reaching out to her, and now they had.

  Her guide drove her to an abandoned two-story stucco complex near the municipal building. The name of the strip mall behind which this building found itself was the Brick Walk-named, by Laramie’s guess, after the brick sidewalk that wound its way past the 7-Eleven, nail salon, and computer store to the stucco office building with its chunky sign: SPACE AVAILABLE FOR LEASE.

  Inside, her guide pass-keyed their way to a conference room bereft of decoration-unless, Laramie thought, you counted the collection of broken phones and ancient computer monitors stacked against the back wall as interior decor. Her guide unlocked a drawer in a small file cabinet, withdrew an insect-looking device about eight inches in diameter, and plugged it into a jack at the base of the rear wall. He punched the small red button on the lower-right corner of the device and a dial tone blared, the noise sounding like a Who concert in the silent, empty room.

  Her guide leaned over the phone and dialed a number he blocked Laramie from seeing by the way he stood. It took two rings for Lou Ebbers’s Carolina lilt to hit them from the speaker.

  “I’m assumin’ you’ve got her with you,” he said.

  Laramie’s guide nodded as though Ebbers could see him. “Yep.”

  “All right, then, Miss Laramie,” came Ebbers’s normally friendly tone, sounding garbled and sinister on the speaker. “You’re on.”

  Laramie found herself wishing she’d forced her guide to make a pit stop at the 7-Eleven so she’d have the additional java boost of a third cup-might have helped keep her on her game, and she figured she was going to need all the help she could muster. Without the aid of a bonus cup, she felt an all too familiar sinking sensation-it always seemed to happen this way, and no matter how much time she’d spent arranging her thoughts in the room, it was happening again. She was bold and brave in private, devising her grandiose theories on the evil that lurked in the world-usually while studying satellite images in the lab-but emerge from your motel-room library and the bottom falls out. Her faith in her theories evaporating before she’d even started in on them-Laramie feeling that twinge of fear that her boss would see right through her rookie interpretations and grasp how big a mistake he’d made in hiring her.

  Shut up and get going, Laramie. She decided she’d get right to the point, rather than working her way to the punch line.

  “As you promised,” she said, “the task force was pretty accommodating. I’m not convinced they showed me everything, but I had access to enough. Enough to tell you I believe the investigation is proceeding under at least two fundamentally flawed assumptions.”

  A crackle of static popped from the speakerphone.

  Then Ebbers said, “All right.”

  The sounds that came from the speakerphone had an odd digital quality to them, Laramie thinking of whatever Cher song it had been that took the singer’s voice and ran it through a synthesizer. Maybe it had been all of them.

  “One assumption I’ve made,” Laramie said, “is that you’re not interested in seeing a ‘terror book’ from me-that you want nothing from me in writing. I’m prepared, of course, to put everything I will tell you today, and more, into a report if you so choose. I’m also assuming you know more about this case than I do, or at least just as much. So I’ll keep the background short-even skip it altogether.”

  No answer came from the static-ridden phone line, which Laramie took to mean, Then why are you giving me so much background, Miss Laramie.

  “The first flawed assumption,” she said, “is that the greater Miami metropolitan area was Benny Achar’s intended target. I agree it seems the obvious choice due to its population density and basic proximity to the blast site-the filo spreads beyond the hundred-plus victims it killed and infects any part of greater Miami-Dade County and you’ve got a few hundred thousand casualties, maybe more. Achar didn’t get his whole stash airborne, of course-if he had, or so the theory goes, he’d have delivered his evolved viral hemorrhagic fever serum to the entire population of Miami. Therefore it must have been his target.”

  “Go on,” Ebbers said.

  “Like the much-discussed potential seen in the avian flu, however, the Marburg-2 filo infects both humans and a number of animal species. All humans it comes into contact with die; for many animal species the same is true. The virus spreads from one infected species to the next with no apparent resistance. My point is that when you examine the geographical choice of Achar’s blast site, there is a strategic positioning to it that is worse, from a casualties perspective, than Miami. Lake Okeechobee.”

  Laramie paused, half expecting a sarcastic comment along the lines of, His target was a lake? Getting none, she launched into an abbreviated version of what the freelance biologist had explained about Lake Okeechobee providing the Everglades with its water supply.

  “Even if it isn’t the case, we need to consider this scenario as a possibility,” Laramie said, “because if an unobstructed waterway feeding the Everglades had been breached by the M-2 virus, that’s pretty much all Achar would have needed to take out the whole state. Virtually every animal touched by the ecosystem that is the Everglades would act as a carrier of the filo, and that means just about every animal and human in Florida. It’s possible that if this scenario were executed properly and quarantines were put into place a few days too late, a death rate among the human population here could run in the high ninetieth percentile.”

  Noisy digital silence came from the speakerphone. Laramie decided not to wait to find out whether Ebbers had any comments in response to her theory.

  “I’m not saying that looking at Everglades wildlife as the target is going to get us anywhere special right away-but what it gives us, if in fact he wasn’t acting alone, is a number of other regions in which to look for other sleepers. Say there are ten others. One may be assigned the Colorado River; another goes after the Mississippi; another the Hudson. I was never much for geography, but give me ten minutes and even I can come up with a scenario by which ten or eleven sleepers, placed correctly and armed with the equivalent stash of M-2 Achar kept in his basement, could bring down seventy-five to ninety percent of the population of the entire country by infecting areas of high animal population that overlap with the human population of nearby cities.”

  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-”

  “As in, a ‘compartmentalized counterterrorism unit’?” Ebbers said.

  His tone of voice was business as usual, as though Laramie’s menstruation-themed outbursts were to be expected.

  “Better yet,” Ebbers said, “maybe we should use the term ‘counter-cell cell’ to describe the team you’re talking about. Or ‘C-cubed’ for short.”

  Laramie more or less forgot to breathe for a moment. She would need no further clarification from Ebbers as to what he was talking about, and what he meant by saying the things he’d just said. The terms “counter-cell cell” and “C-cubed” were quite familiar to her: this was what she had called the structure she’d recommended the government use to confront today’s terror threat-in her independent study paper. The one Ebbers had revealed to require the highest security clearance in the federal government to read.

  “We recruited you,” Ebbers’s digitized voice said, “to function as the leader of just such a ‘cube.’ I used the term, ‘No kidding, Columbo,’ because you were right: yes, you will need to select a team. The paramilitary operatives; other analytical minds; any counterterrorism specialists you feel become necessary. To be clear, your team’s sole responsi
bility-the assignment of your ‘cube’-is to identify, isolate, and, as directed, take steps to eradicate the person, people, or organization for whom Benjamin Achar was working. Along with the suicide-sleeper colleagues of his who remain at large.”

  Laramie closed her eyes and counted silently in her father’s recommended fashion. She spoke only once she’d counted her way through the cycle.

  “In selecting the team,” she said, “will I be able to work from both a pool of recruits, or volunteers, as well as from my own, independently generated choices? Of personnel, I mean.”

  “Yes. We are not organized precisely as your paper proposed, but in this respect the setup is similar. The pool of recruits includes a roster of ordinary citizens, government officials, and military personnel, each of whom has been identified, approached, then solicited to volunteer, or vice versa. Most offered themselves in some capacity during the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Each has been background-checked to their birth, often further back than that. With regards to the independently generated choices you may pick, we would of course need to conduct similar background checks on each of your choices before such personnel are approved. I have the feeling, however, that you know the answer to your next question already.”

  “Did-did I have a next question?” Laramie said.

  After a while, confronted by the volume of the silence, Laramie decided she might as well give up on her short-lived facade.

  “Christ,” she said. “If you’re saying you believe there’s somebody I would call first, then you’re correct. My next question was going to be whether you know him, and whether you think he’d check out. But of course you know him.”

  “He’s already on the approved list.”

  “Of course.”

  They know pretty much everything, don’t they, she thought, and if they knew pretty much everything, they certainly knew about him. They knew he’d be the first one she’d think about reaching out to, at least if this was the kind of job they were giving her. She wondered whether the reason Ebbers picked her in the first place for the assignment had more to do with him than anything she’d written in school, or analyzed afterward.