Public Enemy Read online

  Oh, yeah, Cooper, came a caustic, hollow whisper he recognized immediately as the voice of the golden priestess. Make no mistake-it’s me you’ve found. Been callin’ you here, and now I’m found. Only you’re too fucking late, old man. And ain’t that too bad? But it doesn’t matter…and it never did. You were the one calling yourself back-

  Cooper shook off his latest flirtation with insanity and closed himself in the room. He turned, steeled himself against the reek, and came back around with the flashlight. Time, he thought, to conduct a more rational examination of the mausoleum you’ve just stumbled into-maybe I can even determine whether I’m hallucinating, or I’ve managed to stumble into a new phase of my nightmares.

  He came in and took a look around.

  Like its new door, the room too had been updated with recent construction. Peering at the ceiling, corners, and walls, Cooper thought for a moment he was feeling some kind of déjà vu aftershock, a residual rhyming vibe put out by Sleeping Beauty or her golden priestess statue counterpart-but then snapped out of the dream state and realized where he’d seen this place before. Almost to the inch, it matched the main room of the subterranean crypt he and Borrego had found beneath the rain forest village. The key difference being the decor: the crypt in Guatemala, when they’d found it, had already been pillaged by Borrego’s intrepid grave robbers; here, the sort of gold artifacts found in Cap’n Roy’s lost stash of goodies remained fully intact and on glorious display.

  The treasures had been kept, or installed, or meticulously re-created-however they were put here, Cooper thought, this place is loaded. Designed as some kind of honorable burial for the woman.

  He walked a circuit around the room, finding a series of pedestals between the walls and the elevated coffin, some holding candles that appeared recently burned, some propping up statues or other gold loot. Along the walls, designed with indentations similar to those in the Guatemala crypt, stood more artifacts-mostly statues depicting Sleeping Beauty in one pose or another, sculpted in identical tradition to the golden statue in his bungalow.

  He’d heard that statue call out to him for help-calling him to Guatemala and now here, where he’d seen what he was meant to see. But Cooper knew it hadn’t been the statue, or Sleeping Beauty, who’d really been calling. He knew he hadn’t been called here by a ghost, or statue, or Julie Laramie and the people she worked for.

  He’d called himself here-or, he thought, the ghost of your MIA-POW self had. That long-abandoned chunk of your soul, gone missing, replaced, in your everyday existence, by pain and medication, but still alive and well here in these dungeon hallways. Haunting the chambers beneath the mansions and forts-calling you back for an assist.

  Fine. I’m here-I’ve heeded your call. Some fucking good it’s done the both of us-trapped right back where we started. You happy?

  He passed a tapestry and came to a marble slab embedded in the wall. Upon closer examination, the slab appeared to represent some kind of memorial: a long list of names had been carved into the slab. It felt to him a little like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington-only the marble on the wall here was of a lighter hue, and all of the memorialized names were either Spanish or, well, native sounding, he thought, that odd, almost vowel-free spelling of Mayan people and places. Cooper ran his fingers across some of the names before continuing with the remainder of his once-over mausoleum survey.

  Then he stopped and came back to the marble slab.

  He counted the names, then counted them again. The number of names on the slab, both times he’d counted, came to one hundred and seventeen. This number didn’t mean anything to him particularly, but the feeling he’d just got about what he was looking at did.

  He turned and looked over at Sleeping Beauty.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  He knew it could have been any of a number of duties for which the names on the marble plaque had been honored. And he knew there wasn’t anything pointing specifically to what had just occurred to him. But sometimes you just had a feeling-a bad feeling-and you goddamn well knew the feeling was right.

  He thought of the terror book, and the scenarios the CDC had laid out for the potential spread of the filo epidemic. He remembered a reference in one of the reports to “ten, or twelve, or twenty” suicide bombers, and the potential spread of hemorrhagic fever that could result.

  Ten, or twelve, or twenty, the report had said. Too bad, though, he thought: it isn’t twenty-or even fifty.

  If my sense of what this memorial is all about is right, then it’s one hundred and seventeen.

  He reflected that most of what he’d just encountered-everything he’d encountered during the past month, in fact-defied explanation. He knew he wouldn’t necessarily get all the answers. Maybe, he thought, you’ll get none of the answers. But last time he was here, he’d been sent on a fool’s mission-dispatched to accomplish nothing, a pawn in some political chess match that ended in a useless draw. And despite the relative success of his assassination effort, he’d been ruined for his trouble.

  Maybe this time, his trip could actually turn out to be worthwhile.

  He found among the crushed implements in the pouches of his paratrooper suit a scrap of paper and something with which to write. Propping the Maglite between his left arm and rib cage, he copied all one hundred and seventeen names, reading and writing carefully, getting the spelling of every man and woman precisely right.

  If his instincts proved correct, then Laramie and her Three Stooges could probably do something with this goddamn list-trouble being how I’m going to get it out of here.

  That was when he heard another noise.

  This one had definitely come from the hall. He killed the Maglite and kneeled down to hide behind Sleeping Beauty; the sound, which he interpreted as footsteps and the opening and closing of another door, came again. He guessed it had come from slightly above and very nearby. He considered again that this section of the subterranean labyrinth must be close to the house-at least some part of the house.

  Another door opened and closed and the sound of footsteps grew louder, coming now from somewhere just outside the door.

  Cooper drew his pistol, knowing he’d be better off using it in the tight quarters of the crypt than the MP5. He rotated the strap of the assault rifle so the gun draped from his back, out of the way but still handy.

  He heard the metallic clink of the handle as it was engaged from out in the hall. Iron scraped against stone, the edge of the door brushing the floor of the room as it pushed open.

  Then somebody came into the room.

  53

  Cooper heard the flare of a match, and kept his knee to the ground as an orange glow overtook the room. He slid around the coffin, listening to the scuff of footsteps to keep track of where the visitor stood in the room, Cooper keeping himself hidden. When the room was fully aglow with candlelight, he heard the visitor retreat to the door and close it. For a moment Cooper wondered whether the visitor had only come to light the candles, then departed, but another foot-scuff from the opposite side of the coffin answered that question.

  Considering the visitor sounded as though he or she was alone, Cooper decided he may as well find out who’d come to say hello. He held the FN Browning tight against his palm, feeling its cool comfort, and stood.

  There wasn’t as much shock as he might have expected to encounter on the face of Raul Márquez. It looked more as though the man was insulted that one of his staff would be allowed in here-but then Cooper could see the gradual interpretation of things in the man’s eyes and, soon, a kind of hardening of his expression.

  Fear did not appear to be a component of the man’s reaction.

  “Buenas noches, Señor Presidente,” Cooper said flatly. “It is nighttime, isn’t it? I’ve more or less lost track.”

  There came less and less expression on Márquez’s face.

  “The trespasser,” he said in English. That was all he said.

  “Sí,” Cooper said.

 
Márquez adjusted his line of sight to take in Sleeping Beauty. Judging from where Márquez stood, Cooper assumed him to have already been looking at the corpse, before the odd sight of the beach bum in the paratrooper gear had popped up behind the coffin.

  “Beautiful, isn’t she,” Márquez said.

  Cooper took a careful, sideways sort of look at the embalmed woman beneath them.

  “Statuesque,” he said.

  Márquez looked at Cooper again.

  “You’re here to assassinate me,” he said.

  In surveying the photographs provided by Laramie’s guide, Cooper had noted a resemblance in Márquez to the statues in Borrego’s antiquities stash, and in person it was the same-he looked distinctly Native American. From the rich brown color of his skin to the high cheekbones and black hair, Márquez fit right in with the faces depicted in the artifacts in this strange room-including the face of Sleeping Beauty.

  “Maybe,” Cooper said.

  “I suppose I expected a more…militaristic response,” Márquez said.

  “Such as?”

  “An air strike, perhaps. Missiles launched from a drone. Who knows.”

  “Well,” Cooper said, “you got me.”

  Márquez shrugged.

  “Appropriate that it should happen here,” he said.

  “My assassinating you, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  Cooper waited. Márquez seemed to have an idea in mind he was looking to express, and Cooper saw no reason to slow the head of state from taking the path.

  “My own vengeance is wrought,” Márquez said, “or will be, in short order, thanks in significant part to the selfless contributions of those honored in this room. And now you’re here-meaning, I’m sure, to exact your vengeance. It is a circle of violence-or cycle, perhaps. I did not begin the cycle, but I’ve long expected my demise would become a part of it. I’m relieved. Relieved my painful journey is concluding; relieved my conclusion comes now. Now that I have set in motion what I was meant to do.”

  “So you’ve told your deep-cover jihad to combust themselves, then,” Cooper said.

  “Yes. They’ve been activated.”

  “All one hundred and seventeen of them?”

  Márquez’s eyes twinkled behind his otherwise sullen visage.

  “If you say so,” he said.

  “Depending on when you carved the plaque, of course,” Cooper said, “they wouldn’t all have made it this far.”

  “No,” Márquez said, “they wouldn’t.”

  “But probably more than six of them, I’ll bet,” Cooper said.

  “I’ll bet you’re right.”

  “How?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The people I work for,” Cooper said, almost cringing at the words his mouth had chosen, “would want me to ask how it is you activated them.”

  Márquez chuckled unemotionally.

  “How else to inform an army to engage its capitalist enemy,” he said, “than through the most capitalist of acts?”

  “Sorry,” Cooper said, “but I’m a little rusty on my Marxist dogma.”

  “You should bone up,” Márquez said. “Comes in handy from time to time. The answer is through a very expensive broadcast television media campaign.”

  Cooper digested the business speak.

  “Containing some phrase or other,” he said.

  “Or other,” Márquez said. “Yes.”

  “Care to provide some of your army’s assumed identities? Lessen your sentence at the pearly gates?”

  Márquez almost let a smile crease his lips.

  “My dear assassin,” he said, “please go fuck yourself.”

  Cooper nodded, then jutted his chin at his captive.

  “Who is she,” Cooper said. “Sleeping Beauty, here.”

  Márquez then offered a clamp-lipped smile-not appreciating the joke, it seemed.

  “My lover and partner.”

  “The king and queen of the suicide sleepers,” Cooper said. “How nice.”

  The thin-lipped smile held, serving as Márquez’s response to Cooper’s wiseass commentary. In a moment, the smile evaporated.

  “Ironic, isn’t it,” Márquez said, “that in life, her blood may have yielded a vaccine.”

  Cooper blinked.

  “For the ‘filo’?”

  “Yes. She survived it.”

  “Christ,” Cooper said. “The girl from the clinic?”

  Márquez looked at him and sort of shrugged-the expression meant to convey, Cooper figured, that Márquez didn’t really care to understand, but had no idea what Cooper was talking about.

  Cooper thought about the story from Márquez’s childhood, as relayed by Laramie’s Three Stooges during the “cell’s” powwow at the Flamingo Inn. Then he thought about the village he and Borrego had found in the rain forest crater.

  “The bride and groom of pain,” he said. “Birds of a feather, eh, Raul? She made it out of the village that took the brunt of the Pentagon lab’s little error, and you made it out of another Pentagon-funded genocidal strike?”

  Márquez looked at Cooper about the way Cooper would expect a man to look at somebody as certifiably loony as himself-or the way he’d look at somebody who couldn’t possibly know all these things-but then spoke up again.

  “You could put it that way,” he said.

  “The irony you mentioned,” Cooper said. “It’s ironic because she held the key to surviving the ‘filo’ in her bloodstream but brought you the weapon in the first place?”

  Márquez just kind of dead-eyed him.

  “How did she do it? Come on, by the time you’re through with your end of that cycle you were talking about, I’m sure you’ll have exacted a few thousand American lives as your toll. Why don’t you come clean-maybe it’ll give you some extra credit when you visit the big man upstairs.”

  “You know,” Márquez said, “you’re a strange sort of assassin.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, Señor Presidente.”

  “She studied science. Earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins-her specialty was pathology. Came to me with an idea following my first election. And a few other things.”

  “Such as some fine rapture, I’ll bet,” Cooper said.

  “Yes, that too,” Márquez said.

  “And among the other things-a crate or two of goodies?”

  Márquez gave him the same dead-eye stare.

  “Left behind,” Cooper said, “by the lab people when they tried to burn the evidence to the ground. But she lived up there, so she knew where to look. And maybe she found a stockpile the idiots with the napalm missed. How am I doing?”

  Márquez had apparently decided to clam up.

  “What happened to her?” Cooper said.

  “I killed her,” el presidente said.

  “Why?”

  “It became necessary.”

  “For what reason?”

  Márquez eyed him, then shrugged. “I think she would have killed me next. Lot of rage in that woman.”

  Cooper nodded at this. It partially confirmed the last piece of the crypt-puzzle he’d been assembling.

  “By ‘next,’” Cooper said, “you mean she’d have beheaded you too?”

  Márquez looked at him again but didn’t offer a reply.

  “I’m curious how she would have found the Pentagon memo,” Cooper said, “but then again maybe she had access to that kind of thing through the university.”

  Either way, he thought, it seems the Indian girl from the village has sought and found her vengeance-both on the people who authorized the lab and, depending, an unhealthy dose of citizens from the country who funded it.

  Too bad the swing of her machete missed the neck of a couple last souls-the snuffer-outers, the last survivors of the vengeance she hoped to exact on the architects of the filo lab.

  Enter me.

  He coaxed his thoughts back to the topic of the names on the memorial slab of marble. Despite the fact that they’d need to work
in reverse, and track the current identity of the sleepers from their original, local names, Cooper figured Laramie, the Three Stooges, and the Grand Poobah could still make use of the list of names he’d just transcribed.

  And aside from the fact that he’d been sent to “eradicate” the man, he’d now have some use for the continued survival of Raul Márquez-the King of the Sleepers.

  He straightened his elbow and held the Browning tight, taking aim at Márquez’s head. Márquez almost seemed to sigh in relief-even pleasure.

  “The assassin,” Márquez said, closing his eyes, “taking the assassin.”

  Yeah, Cooper thought, I’ve wanted to die plenty of times too after what happened to me.

  “Not quite,” Cooper said.

  Márquez opened his eyes.

  “I thought you were here to kill me,” he said.

  “I was,” Cooper said. “And I am. But too bad-you’ll need to wallow in your misery for a little while longer.”

  Keeping the Browning trained on Márquez, Cooper came around Sleeping Beauty’s coffin and-making sure to maintain a few feet between himself and Márquez’s watchful eyes-grasped the handle of the door.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  54

  Upon her return to the Flamingo Inn, Laramie found herself greeted by a strange call from Lou Ebbers.

  Not unexpected, but strange nonetheless.

  He told her he had pulled the fire alarm-how, he hadn’t clarified further than before, but he said he’d pulled it nonetheless. He mentioned that emergency quarantine preparations were now in process; the identity and location of the sleepers Laramie’s cell had found had been revealed to the FBI, CIA, and other relevant agencies, and busts made immediately. “Other cells,” as he’d put it on the call, had also identified additional sleepers on the same approximate time line as her team, and those sleepers had been rounded up too-fifteen total captures. He indicated that in the past hour, the media had just been given a great deal of advance intel, something Laramie already knew from the coverage of the “credible terror threat” she watched on CNN from the DirecTV-equipped seat on her Jet Blue flight back down south from JFK.