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 responsibility-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.

One of the only things they don’t know is that he might well be on their approved list, but he certainly isn’t on mine. Actually, he was on her least-approved, most annoying list-a list that spanned one person.

Still, his expertise could prove highly valuable, and she had a pretty good idea she could trust the son of a bitch.

“You can go ahead and place the call,” Ebbers said.

Laramie didn’t say anything.

Ebbers too was silent again for a minute, or maybe ten, Laramie couldn’t tell, until his voice crackled through the speakerphone one last time.

“Nice talkin’ to you, Miss Laramie,” he said. “Break a leg.”

Then he hung up.