Laramie looked at him.

“Malcolm Rader is expecting you back on Monday. Nobody there knows what you and your team have been doing. In fact, nobody anywhere does. Besides me, of course, your cell, and your guide.”

“Along with the people you work for,” Laramie said.

Ebbers looked at her-into me more than at me, she thought. She didn’t like the look one bit.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Either way, we will need to maintain radio silence on the issues we covered by phone after your interrogation of the Scarsdale sleeper. The radio silence will need to extend further: any and everything you and your team did, thought, or spoke about during this matter shall never surface. We don’t want anyone in the federal government to know about it. We don’t want anyone in the media to know about it; we don’t want Congress to know about it. This includes whether you are someday subpoenaed to testify on these topics under oath.”

There it was again-the we. The we that she assumed would never be fully revealed or explained.

“As far as anyone involved with the task force is concerned,” he said, “the White House sent a special investigator. You were never named. As the unidentified special investigator, you generated some intel for the task force, and the task force and other federal and local agencies and law enforcement organizations reacted as effectively as possible to the gravest of threats to our nation’s security. The real you, meanwhile, has been gainfully and separately employed by the Central Intelligence Agency throughout this ordeal.”

As much as it bothered her, Laramie had to admit that the pieces of the suicide-sleeper puzzle that involved the Pentagon, its biological weapons research, and the origin of the Marburg-2 filo were better dealt with later. The only problem was that with this form of acquiescence, the chance these facts would ever see the light of day would decline in an accelerated manner as time progressed. Documents would be shredded; people would be bought; all that would remain in a few months’ time was hearsay from the likes of her, Detective Cole, Wally Knowles, Eddie Rothgeb, and Cooper. And numerous measures were probably already teed up that would discredit any such accounts.

Laramie had a pretty good idea how it had worked. Whatever authority Ebbers possessed-if any-waging a battle against another wing of the federal government wasn’t a part of that mandate. A judgment call had been made-and while she might well be capable of raising a stink in the media, or elsewhere, she decided to agree with the call. For the moment.

There wasn’t much choice.

“On a going-forward basis,” Ebbers said, “the people I work for will retain the right to utilize the services of you and your team. This right will be exercised in a case-by-case manner.”

Laramie noted the form of Ebbers’s comment. Since it had not been a request, she saw no need to provide an answer.

“In keeping these services available to us, however,” he said, “there will, and must necessarily, involve a single, logical, and, frankly, ruthless caveat. The caveat, of course, is that every member of your team must remain utterly silent on the matters of which he or she has recently partaken. Any violation of this caveat…well, Miss Laramie, don’t allow anyone on your team to violate the caveat.”

Ebbers said this with a dark twinkle in his eye, Laramie struggling to return the gesture with a comparable expression, considering she’d just been told that if she or any member of her hastily assembled squad were to say a word about the operation they’d just conducted, the indiscretion would be punishable by death-or something close to it.

They warned me about this during my training at The Farm. That in taking a position in the intelligence ranks, your successes may never be trumpeted-and your failures, almost certainly exposed.

Not that I appear to be working for the Central Intelligence Agency any longer. At least not solely…

Resigning herself to matters, she thought of her moment with Cooper on the boat, motoring over to Cuba on the flat, dark sea.

Live slow, mon, he’d said, and she let those words roll around her brain now.

“Report to your office on Monday,” Ebbers said. “Malcolm Rader knows one thing only-and he is the only one who knows. He knows it is not true that you fell ill and required surgery, plus a one-month recovery at a specialized facility, as the rest of the personnel in your department, as well as those in your private life, have been told. You were not permitted to take any visitors, of course,” he said, “due to your condition.”

“Fine,” Laramie said, her first word of the last few minutes sounding loud and annoying to her as she spoke it.

“And look,” Ebbers said, standing, “you’ve made a full recovery. Congratulations and here’s to your health. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

On autopilot, Laramie took his cue and stood. She shook his hand as he extended it.

“Though it may seem difficult to grasp at the moment,” he said, “your performance in this investigation has been exemplary.”

Handshake concluded, Laramie nodded her thanks, started to say something, then decided to leave it. She also decided to leave her untouched coffee and sandwich on the table, Laramie simply adjusting the strap of her shoulder bag until it hung comfortably as she steered her way out.

58

When Ebbers reached the street and his waiting Lincoln Town Car, the engine was already running, its rear door unlocked, per the routine. The car featured heavily tinted windows, which normally kept people from seeing Ebbers within-but today, kept Ebbers from noticing that the deeply tanned individual behind the wheel of the car was not the man who usually did his driving. As Ebbers closed his door, the locks did a four-door stereophonic chunk-prompting Ebbers to examine the man behind the wheel. Realizing he’d made a mistake, Ebbers discovered, upon attempting to exit the vehicle, that the door handle didn’t do him any good.

Cooper turned and had a look at the initially nervous but gradually calming former head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Having discovered the Lincoln to include a handy child’s lock on each of the rear doors, he’d activated the feature shortly after offering the driver a brief nap.

Ebbers spoke first.

“Appears our operative has made it out alive,” he said.

Cooper smiled with little to no cheer.

“So it does,” he said.

Ebbers looked around the interior of the car, then out its windows onto the virtually abandoned street.

“What’d you do with my driver?” he said.

“He’ll be fine,” Cooper said. “So Lou?”

Ebbers crossed his arms.

“Yes,” he said, shooting for indifferent impatience.

“I’ve been watching the media onslaught documenting every facet of this terrifying crisis for two and a half weeks now,” Cooper said.

“Have you,” Ebbers said.

“Yep. And you know, it’s interesting-there’s been nothing, anywhere, on how, where, and by whom this M-2 filo was created.”

After a digestive moment, Ebbers said, “Now that you mention it, I don’t recall seeing any such coverage, either.”

Cooper nodded.

“Probably,” he said, “if a story were run a few months from now, mentioning that the biological weapons of mass destruction deployed by the sleepers had been created in a lab funded by the Pentagon-that would be, well, bad for the image of the good ol’ U.S. of A.”

Ebbers looked at him for a while.

“Probably,” he said, “but then again I’m sure the administration would discover and then point out the lack of double-sourcing by the reporter breaking the story, or expose some other questionable ways the reporter generally goes about doing his business, and the way he investigated this story in particular.” Ebbers held Cooper’s eyes. “Even so-yes, such a report would potentially do some damage.”