“If it is, in fact,” Laramie said, “an ‘offending nation,’ and not simply an individual who happens to be the leader of that nation.”

Laramie counted to two-Mississippi again-mainly to cool herself down.

“Either way, that’s a call I’m not qualified to make,” she said.

“Well who is?”

Laramie felt the heat pop up through her neck and up past her cheekbones.

“Sir, are you seriously asking my recommendation on whether to authorize a nuclear strike?”

She counted every beat of the voiceless static that followed. She didn’t exactly want to have to out-and-out refuse to answer one of her boss’s questions, but during the ninety-three seconds of relative silence she confirmed her resolve. Too bad. I’ve been known to toss out an opinion or two where it wasn’t wanted, but there are plenty of reasons the president and each and every member of the Senate and House of Representatives are elected, and I’m not. This being one of the more extreme examples: it is simply not my call, even in the fucking hypothetical. But considering his words from earlier in the conversation, I’m not so sure it’s Ebbers’s call either, or the call of anybody he works for…

“What is the next option,” Ebbers said.

“As I’m certain I don’t need to tell you,” Laramie said, jumping in with great relief, “the next option, while less drastic, remains illegal, both domestically and internationally. Nonetheless, particularly considering the complications involved with option two, it must be considered as one of the choices. Option three is to assassinate Márquez. The working theory here is if you cut off the head before the order is sent, the body of sleepers may simply walk away. Assimilate into society, the way it has been theorized the many likely Soviet deep cover sleepers did when the curtain fell. And we do not have evident confirmation that any of the probable sleepers besides Achar have been activated.”

“Understood,” Ebbers said. “Do you have any additional options?”

Laramie allowed herself to breathe again. “Other than searching for additional sleepers, which I believe we should continue efforting in any case,” she said, “no.”

“I choose option three,” Ebbers said, “conducted in synch with a variation on option one and your continuing effort to identify additional sleepers. The variation: put surveillance on the six probable sleepers and see what they’re up to, rather than nabbing them right off the bat.”

Laramie realized immediately that Ebbers had just ordered-or at least chosen-the assassination of an elected leader of a sovereign nation. An order-or choice, or whatever the hell it had been, she thought-chosen almost entirely as a result of her own analysis, judgment-and suggestion. Could he have ordered up the nuclear-annihilation option? If so, who else was in on this? Who wasn’t?

Christ.

Her brain scrambled to sort through the rest of the plan-she’d ask her guide about the logistics, but assumed they’d be provided with private investigators or local law enforcement officers to perform the actual surveillance of the six sleepers. Plus, they’d continue to look for others. Fine.

Still, she hesitated.

Did Ebbers have any authority to order an assassination? To order any of what was going down? Even in the unlikely scenario that he did have some newfound authority to order the assassination of a foreign leader, was he saying she, and her cell, should arrange it? More important, if that was what he meant, was she capable of agreeing to it?

When I signed on, I’m not so sure “execution” was on my list of job duties. Maybe it was. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe I knew it was, and didn’t want to think about it. Would we prefer to have taken out Osama bin-Laden in advance, if given the chance?

Of course we would, she thought. I think.

Ebbers’s next words answered all her questions at once, though not simply.

“Send Cooper to pay a visit on Márquez,” he said. “I’ll work with you on the rest.”

Christ.

“I’ll read your silence as a form of shock,” Ebbers said, “and offer you some information with which to treat it. In case you didn’t know this, your operative has done this before. A different Central American country, and it was a long time ago, but he’s done it, and done it well. Despite his subsequent capture, in fact, and the passage of considerable time, one might still call this type of assignment the man’s specialty.”

Laramie once again experienced the sinking sensation she’d felt in her initial conversations with Ebbers. Not only did it seem Ebbers had picked her partially or solely because of her relationship with Cooper, but now it appeared he may well have been planning all along to give an assassination order, and for Cooper to execute it. And Cooper’s long experience in Central America didn’t seem like pure happenstance anymore.

All that had been expected of me was to identify the target.

Once an analyst, always an analyst.

Her thoughts of Cooper brought Laramie to the last item she’d wanted to cover with Ebbers.

“Speaking of our operative,” she said, “my team would like your help in tracking down a classified document we believe to exist in the Pentagon. As I covered in my briefing, we have reason to believe the discoveries Cooper made in Guatemala point to a connection between the facility that was burned to the ground in that country and the Marburg-2 filo Achar dispersed-and which, of course, we believe Márquez’s other sleepers also have in their possession.”

Ebbers broke in, speaking flatly.

“The Pentagon,” he said, “figures in how.”

Laramie chose her next words carefully, and sparingly.

“‘Project ICRS,’ possibly a reference to ‘Project Icarus,’ is the name of a file in the Pentagon. ‘ICR’ were the three letters Cooper discovered on a charred portion of a crate at the site of the facility that was burned to the ground in Guatemala.”

After a short pause, Ebbers said, “Not exactly a precise fit.”

He’s choosing his words carefully too, Laramie thought. She held no doubt her guide had prepped him on this in advance, but they both understood the stakes, and Laramie wasn’t going to back down and give him a way out if Ebbers planned to bury the possible connection because of the stakes.

“We know the file location,” she said. “At least the location we understand, once, to have been accurate. If there is a connection, sir, we need to understand it. At least you and I do.”

She’d planned on using her last phrase from the beginning: it was designed to help him perceive an opportunity to progress and investigate without risk-it was something she, her guide, and Ebbers could bury if they’d need to.

Not that she intended to bury anything. Which he probably understood. But he might nonetheless believe he could impel her to keep quiet-and he might also want to find out the answer for himself.

If he didn’t already know it.

Laramie thought back to the CIA man who’d posed the question in the initial task force meeting-the man she’d figured, on sight, to be a Langley spook. His question had sought clarification on how the CDC had obtained documentation of the Guatemala health clinic filo outbreak.

That CIA man knew about the connection, and maybe Ebbers did too.

Maybe she was the only one who hadn’t known. Goddammit-had the whole purpose of the task force, and the subsequent transition to her “cell,” been to confirm where the organism had come from? Or simply to stomp out the sleepers as quietly as possible, ensuring that the origin of the filo would be kept a secret?

“This isn’t going to be easy to get,” came Ebbers’s voice from the spider-phone. “Presuming it even exists any longer.”

Laramie understood Ebbers to have just given himself an out.

He was saying he’d look into it, but she would have to wait and see. Even if he got it, and read it, he could still keep it close to the vest and claim he’d had no luck in the archives.