Either way, she knew this was as far as she could take it.

“I have the file location here,” she said, unfolded the page of alphabetical listings of Pentagon files, and read him the details.

“That it?” came Ebbers’s electronically distorted voice.

Laramie nodded at the speakerphone.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s it.”

“All right, then,” he said, and she heard the line go dead as the red indicator light doused.

45

Following his eavesdropping session by way of a sat phone connection to the Flamingo Inn, Cooper snatched an extra towel from a housekeeping cart in the Naples Beach Hotel and headed, shoeless, for the beach. He’d chosen to hunker down in his preferred four-star digs in Naples while Laramie and her Three Stooges, as he’d begun to think of them, hashed things out at the Flamingo Inn. He’d expected at least some sort of shit to hit the fan following their discovery of the theme-park-for-rent; Cooper, being the dedicated employee that he was-and, mostly, seeing little choice-elected to stay stateside while the shit-fan contact proceeded.

He decided to go easy on his bones today, halving his usual fourteen-mile Naples beach run. He finished in just over an hour-not bad, he thought, for a conch fritter addict.

By the time he trudged back to his towel and sat phone, Cooper found himself to be a heaving ball of sweat, not quite able to find his wind. Running anything faster than fourteen-minute miles now seemed to cause him nothing but physical grief. Used to be he’d log two miles in the same stretch on the clock.

So be it.

He strolled off the exhaustion before returning to discover just what he expected: somebody had left a message for him. After confirming the call had come from the Flamingo Inn, Cooper called Laramie back.

“Where have you been?” she said before he said a thing.

Cooper considered the question.

“I’ve been where I please.”

Laramie waited a moment or two, and when she spoke again Cooper thought he detected a notch less tension in her voice.

“We’ll need to talk in person,” she said.

This didn’t surprise him. He checked his watch-12:45.

“How’s a late lunch at Paddy Murphy’s Irish Pub sound,” he said, “great little joint right downtown here.”

He expected Laramie to shoot down this idea, and that he’d soon be hoofing it northeast to LaBelle, but Laramie went the other way on him.

“Sounds fine,” she said. “See you there at four.”

Cooper hung up and tossed the phone back onto its nest in the towel.

He had a pretty good idea what Laramie was going to tell him when they sat down for their late lunch-or early dinner-or whatever the hell it would be. In fact, after listening in on the conversation at the Flamingo Inn, Cooper knew with virtual certainty what was coming. It had only been a matter of time-time enough for Laramie to contact “the people she worked for,” and for the decision to be made and sent back down the line.

The “cell’s” choice of how to proceed at this point was an easy one-particularly, he thought, when you had someone like me at your disposal. And intelligence agencies always did. Was Laramie’s team right about the man at the top of their suspect list? Cooper figured they were. And that was the only real variable-that and the decision-maker’s call, but U.S. foreign policy decision makers, Cooper had learned long ago, were predictable. They inevitably thought they could get away with anything, and he imagined the people Laramie was working for would offer no exception.

Considering where Márquez lived, Cooper wasn’t exactly looking forward to the task Laramie would be handing him. If he agreed to do what he knew she’d be asking-ordering-and fulfill his duty as the Twenty Million Dollar Thug, he mused that his immediate future would resemble the fate of an aging Vietnam vet who’s just learned a new war has been declared against the communist regime in Hanoi-and this time, the Army is pleased to inform you, we’ve decided to draft men in their mid-fifties to go and do the fighting!

Cooper peeled off his tank top-the words LIVE SLOW emblazoned on the front, SAIL FAST on the back-and started down to the ocean. He hit the water and kept walking until it reached his waist, then stopped, planting his hands on his hips, and peered around Naples’s white-sand slice of relative paradise.

The beach was almost entirely empty-as might, he thought, be expected on this weekday morning. No boats in sight, no kites hanging in the wind, no fishermen kicked back with their poles dug into the sand near the water’s edge.

There’s something to the idea of confronting one’s past, he thought. You get lucky and maybe you get to taste a distilled form of redemption-something that all the Maker’s Mark, painkillers, even the finest Mary Jane in the world would never quite match. Cooper had felt it-maybe he’d even known it was on the way-when he’d looked into the eyes of the rebel soldier guarding the bogus checkpoint in Guatemala.

He’d felt how he craved the confrontation-to peer in at the abyss that was his past. To figure out, by going back, how to establish some kind of comfort level with the hell you knew, and still know. And maybe, in so doing, to find a way of living with myself without the aid of the charming batch of pharmaceuticals, spirits, and hemp I routinely consume in my busy attempt at distorting the ugly visions of my past and present.

Of course he knew this was coming.

Hell-taken along with the guaranteed presence of the ever-annoying yet annoyingly ever-pleasant Julie Laramie, he decided he might even have to confess that the job they were about to hand him was the reason he’d agreed to sign on to begin with. That, and the case it seems I somehow agreed to take as detective-to-the-dead-that priestess statue being my second-ever client.

You knew they would ask you to go back-and that’s why you propositioned them at the all-too-reasonable price of twenty million bucks.

He dove into the shallow waves. After looping down to the bottom, he dolphin-kicked his way around, moving at considerable speed a few inches from the sandy, shell-studded ocean floor. He kept his eyes open, clocking the scenery in the clear water. He swam parallel to the beach for a few dozen yards, heading for the air above only once his lungs were set to burst-at which point he popped into the bright sunlight, breaking the surface in a glittery shimmer of sunshine and foam.

Just because I knew they’d send me back doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it.

He ducked back into the salty silence.

46

Laramie handed him the faxed, heavily blacked-out copy of the two-page memorandum with the words PROJECT ICRS on its subject line. He saw immediately there were seven names on the distribution list, and that the memo had come from an entity called RESEARCH GROUP. Cooper took a swallow from his second pint glass of Bass Ale. Their food orders had yet to arrive, and after the seven-mile run, even he-quasi-retired operative with a liver to match Hemingway’s-was already feeling the effects of the brew.

He read the page and a half of text. The document described an amount of funding-blacked out-that had been dedicated to “unconventional counterbioterror research relating to infectious viral pathogens,” with a mention that the pathogens subject to “vaccination research” included viral hemorrhagic fever, “aka filoviral strains.” The research, it was reiterated, would be “conducted for the purpose of the development of suitable vaccinations or immunizations for strategic national defense use.” The author of the memo, speaking on behalf of the “Research Group,” wrote that the group “hereby authorizes the establishment of the proposed ‘Project Icarus’ research facility at which to conduct these operations.” The memo was dated “3 August 1979.” The location and other details of the facility were either not included in the memo or had been redacted.