A man Laramie knew to be the head bounty hunter-a scrawny, longer-haired version of her escort, standing no taller than Laramie’s five-four-came over and shook her hand without introducing himself or asking her name. She noticed that once he’d let go-as compared to the shake of the guard dog who’d brought her down-her fingers seemed less likely to crumble and break off.
“Afternoon,” the bounty hunter said. She found his voice almost gentle. “Based on the assignment particulars, we’re assuming you’ll prefer total privacy during your ‘conversation’ with the subject. My recommendation, ma’am, is we remove the tape from his mouth so he can speak with you, but otherwise leave him as is. Strapped in. We’ll be standing by upstairs for the duration.”
“That sounds fine,” Laramie said. She thought a little about how unwilling to talk the sleeper might turn out to be while strapped to the chair, but she wasn’t figuring on getting much out of him anyway and wasn’t about to risk her life for zero intel. Better, she decided, to stay on the safe side, particularly if she wouldn’t have one of the guard dogs with her. Which she wouldn’t regardless-the bounty hunter was right. Neither he nor the members of his squad would be permitted to listen to the interrogation.
“If you prefer, we can hang tight in the van,” he said. “But I’m always more comfortable sticking to what I like to call ‘bumrush range.’”
Laramie nodded, needing no explanation.
“Agreed,” she said.
The bounty hunter came around behind her, lifted the folding plastic-top table he’d been keeping there, and placed it in front of the sleeper. He repeated the circuit and brought a second chair over to where Laramie could sit and face Dalessandro from across the table.
Then he nodded and smiled.
“Use the word ‘help’ or just make a lot of noise,” he said. “We’ll be right down.”
“From bumrush range,” Laramie said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh,” the bounty hunter said. “Almost forgot.”
He headed to the storage post against the wall one last time, carried a heavy bucket over to Dalessandro’s side, reared back, then doused the comatose sleeper with a full bucket of what Laramie assumed from the reaction to be very cold water.
Dalessandro came suddenly awake, wide-eyed, sucking frantically for air through his nostrils, searching in a panic around the dim basement for some clue as to his whereabouts and circumstances. The bounty hunter assisted Dalessandro in his effort to breathe, ripping off the rectangle of tape in a quick swipe that looked to Laramie as though it hurt like hell.
Dalessandro heaved in a few breaths of air.
“There you go,” the bounty hunter said to Laramie. He walked upstairs and shut the basement door behind himself.
Laramie waited, standing, until the sleeper got his bearings and settled down. Once she could see he’d realized that a fairly unthreatening woman was all who stood before him, she approached the table, flipped the file she’d brought onto it, took a seat, and pulled her chair nice and close to the table.
“Hi, Tony,” she said.
Dalessandro blew some dripping water off the edge of his nose. He took the opportunity to peer around the basement again. After a while his dark eyes settled on Laramie, where they stayed for a confused couple of minutes.
“Who the hell are you?” he said.
She noticed there wasn’t any particular accent to his speech-maybe a slight East Coast edge as was appropriate to his assumed identity, but otherwise pretty much neutral, like a news anchor.
“More to the point,” Laramie said, “who are you?”
“What are you talking about? What’s going on here? One minute I’m having a beer on my couch, the next thing I know these goons bust in and throw me on the floor and I wake up in this fucking basement.”
“I can answer part of my question for you,” Laramie said. “One person we know for certain you’re not is Anthony Dalessandro. Unless, that is, you died from leukemia at age six and were subsequently resurrected in full health.”
Laramie might have seen the first spark of something besides confusion or anger in his eyes-but if so, the spark lasted about as long as a spark normally does.
“My name is Tony Dalessandro,” he said, “and I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re pretty good at this,” Laramie said. “You know the first thing they teach at CIA? ‘Never go belly-up.’ Even when caught red-handed, there’s always the chance they’ll have some doubt you’re good for whatever they’re accusing you of, as long as you never actually admit your guilt. You’re familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency-I’m sure they taught you all about them in your classes under the hill in San Cristóbal.”
There was the slight flash of rage-Laramie reading it as how the hell could anybody know these things, I’ll kill you-but that look too, real or imagined, left the basement as quickly as it came.
Laramie knew Dalessandro, or the man who called himself that, to be single, thirty-six years of age, living in a rented two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse, working as a site foreman for a major rural housing contractor, up to his ears in debt, and blessed with one hell of a handsome appearance. He’d been putting this appearance to work with a different woman almost every night since they’d been watching him-belying the source of the majority of his methodically built debt. According to his many credit card statements, Tony had spent a great deal of money on dinners, weekend getaways, sports events, private-room cash-outs at numerous strip joints, and virtually every other form of foreplay invented to date.
Not quite Benjamin Achar, Laramie thought. But in a way, very similar: both seemed to be soaking up the life they preferred to lead with great relish. The problem, as Laramie saw it, was there seemed nothing to threaten him with. Unlike Achar, he had no family, and he’d already bought the fertilizer, so was obviously fully resigned to fulfilling his assigned mission. How do you convince a guy like that to reveal whatever secrets Márquez, Fidel, or anybody else on the public enemy team had vested him with?
She went straight to the only strategy she’d been able to devise, sorting through the options on the Jet Blue flight from Fort Myers to JFK.
“I thought I’d skip the part where we beat around the bush,” she said. “We’ve been watching you, Tony. You and your colleagues. We’ve seized the fertilizer and the diesel fuel you bought this morning. We searched your home and found the filovirus vials, so we took that too. We know where you trained. We know who sent you, when, and how. But you know why I’m being blunt and getting right to it?”
He watched her with lukewarm interest. She’d earned a portion of his attention-as to whether that would get her anywhere was anybody’s guess.
“The reason I’m skipping the pleasantries is for your own benefit. The organization that has captured you is not the Central Intelligence Agency. This is relevant to your situation because CIA, or any other arm of the American government, frequently has to concern itself with pesky little things like international law. Things like civil rights and trials. At least most of the time.”
She shrugged.
“The people I work for-the people who brought you here-don’t have to answer to any of that. Plus, Tony, you don’t really exist to begin with. Therefore I’d say the simple solution to this filovirus-dispersal scheme, at least as far as your involvement with it goes, is pretty simple: after our conversation, you vanish. I think that in the place you come from, it’s probably called ‘disappeared’-you’ll be ‘disappeared.’ No trial, no sentencing. One bullet. Two, if necessary.”
She stood in the way a person would when she’d said all she’d come to say.
“If you’re interested,” she said, “I’ll give you an alternate scenario. If not, you’ll die an anonymous failure within the hour. Goodnight.”