They were silent for a bit. Nobody ate anything.

“So are you saying you’ll do it?”

Cooper saw the splotchy redness flooding its way up Laramie’s neck into her cheeks. He decided he would read the embarrassment as Laramie failing to grasp how to do two things at once-first, to get his confirmation-the ol’ “Yes, ma’am”-and second, to express whatever fear or empathy she was feeling about the fact he was about to head into Central America with a ninety-nine percent chance of failing to come out alive. So she came at it from the all-business side, the skin language telling him the rest.

“I’m assuming the people you work for,” he said, “can load me up with some intel on our friend with the, ah, possibly short life expectancy.”

Laramie reached below the table and touched the shoulder bag she’d brought with her.

“I have a great deal of it here,” she said. “But yes. We will get you all that we can. The support issues will of course be handled for you.”

“A plane,” he said, “not of government affiliation. Et cetera.”

Laramie nodded, thinking of the conversation she’d held with her guide just prior to hitting the road.

“There’s a man who handles these things for us,” she said. “And you’re correct, of course-there will be no affiliation or documentation of any kind.”

“Famous last words,” Cooper said, and held up the memo.

Laramie shook her head. Cooper thought her gesture looked like the kind of action in which somebody would engage to rid herself of an aggravating flying insect.

“So you’ll do it,” she said.

Cooper ate some more of his burger without looking at her. Then he polished off most of his beer, looked at then elected to take Laramie’s water, and drank some of that too.

“I didn’t say I agreed to do it yet,” he said.

“I know you didn’t say-”

“No doubt the Three Stooges believe their theory to be correct, but let me ask you this: are you positive he’s the guy? Is he definitely, positively, beyond a reasonable doubt, absolutely good for it?”

Laramie didn’t move much or say anything for a minute. Then she said, “The Three Stooges, huh?”

“Your cell.”

“No kidding. Look,” she said, “I wouldn’t put it beyond some doubt. But I will say I find it likely enough for us to take a calculated gamble and make this call.”

Cooper nodded. “Not that it matters, but you’ll be ‘making this call’ and taking that calculated gamble on more than one life.”

“You mean you? In addition to him? Of course I know-”

“Yeah, me too, but that’s not what I mean. I mean others also. Along the way.”

“We recognize that too.”

“You and your Grand Poobah, you mean,” Cooper said.

“Grand-” Laramie shook her head. “Right. Okay-I, then. I recognize that. But yes, him too. The Grand Poobah as well as the Three Stooges. It should go without saying I don’t like risking-”

“Doesn’t matter,” Cooper said, holding up a hand. “It’s just conversation.”

“What do you mean?” Laramie said.

He took his time chewing another bite of his burger and swallowing a sip of the beer.

“Since none of you has the luxury of doing the deed,” he said, “the decision, of course, rests elsewhere.”

“Well certainly, if you’re the one pulling the trigger-”

“You may want to keep it down, Laramie, here in this lively Irish pub. Volume aside, what I’m telling you is I’m not going to do it unless I know he’s the guy.”

Laramie’s cheeks popped pink.

Cooper said, “You can feel free to tell the people you work for-if you even know who they are, that is-that these are the only terms under which I’ll conduct this mission. Of course, if you, or they, would like to find somebody who takes orders with a bit more verve, then go right ahea-”

“This is the way these things are done, do you understand that?” Laramie said. “There is no way we have of knowing any better that he’s the one. This is how it works-you assess the intel, analyze it, determine the probabilities, and make a goddamn decision, whether you like that decision or not. Hundreds of thousands of American lives could be at stake, Mr. Twenty Million Dollar Man. You can’t just elect to cancel the decisions Lou’s mak-”

Cooper interrupted her but didn’t miss the slip.

“You can stop with the campaign speech. You’d make a great CIA spy-master. Like our old friend Peter M. Gates, and our other old friend Lou Ebbers. Hell,” he said, watching Laramie for a reaction but getting none, “if I were the president, I’d appoint your cute little ass to director of national intelligence in a Caribbean minute. But down here at my lowly level, this here foot soldier-duly assigned the icing of a president of an entire, if annoying, country-has decided he will go ahead and find out for himself from the horse’s mouth whether it’s the right horse we’re talking about. If I’m satisfied he’s the ‘doer,’ then I’ll happily do the deed. If not, not. Accordingly, you, the Poobah, and the Stooges can blow this whole thing out your ass, or you can proceed with sending me on my way. Your call.”

Laramie didn’t say anything, or change expression for a time that felt to Cooper like ten minutes. He decided to keep eating while this inactivity took place. He ordered and began nursing yet another beer while he was at it.

When she finally spoke, Laramie said, “You’re not doing this for us. Are you?”

“Ah,” Cooper said after swallowing his last morsel of beef. “The return of the lie detector.”

“It’s not about the threat to American citizens for you at all,” she said.

Cooper shook his head in utter nonchalance.

“No,” he said.

“It’s about you. You’re doing this because of your own need to go back. Or,” she said, “at least something related to that. To you.”

“Why, yes,” he said, sounding as though he were about to fall asleep. Which, thanks to the beers, the run on the beach, and the talk of foreign policy decision making, he was.

Laramie’s eyes locked on his. She held the stare, and Cooper saw the red splotching creep up past her jawbone before she spoke her next words, so he knew he’d be getting something good. Still, he didn’t expect quite what he got.

“In coming here to see you,” she said, “I was fully intending, as the commanding officer of this unit, to order you to take me to your hotel room and have your way with me. Because you know what? I don’t know whether you’re going to make it in, make it out-or make it, period, taking this assignment. But in your inimitable way,” she said, “you have managed to infuriate and frustrate me to the point where I almost, but not quite, fail to give a holy shit-”

“And that’s because I’m skeptical as to the intentions of the government that put the filo in the hands of Márquez to begin with?”

Laramie kept it zipped, still red in the neck but cooling off a few degrees as she considered his statement. Cooper drained his beer and signaled for the check.

Laramie leaned across the table, almost to where her nose was touching his.

“Maybe that happened,” she said. “And maybe Ollie North or one of his pals paid some bills for the genocidal maniacs who killed Márquez’s friends and family when he was a twelve-year-old kid. Maybe we’ve murdered our share of Native Americans directly, in fact, and even used atomic weapons. I’m not disputing those facts.”

Cooper stared back at her hard look, but felt himself falling apart again-Laramie the lie detector causing him to feel embarrassment about his rambunctious behavior, logical though it always seemed from the confines of solitude.

“Nonetheless, Mr. Twenty Million Dollar Operative,” Laramie said. “This likely victim of our flawed foreign policy intends, it seems, to take more than an eye for an eye. So exactly how much sympathy for the devil do you intend to show?”

Cooper unrolled four twenties on the table, snatched the turned-over memo, and gave Laramie the third version of his unpleasant smile.