Will Staeger - Public Enemy

“Not entirely clear he’s comin’ back, mate.”

Cooper turned to look at his friend.

“Feeling guilty?” Woolsey said after a little while.

“Why would I feel guilty?”

“Seeing that you’ve been even more than your usual horse’s ass recently.”

“Christ,” Cooper said. “You too?”

“It’s usually funny as effin’ hell, mate,” Woolsey said. “Almost a tourist attraction in and of itself, having a bitter, angry old fuck such as yourself in the last bungalow in the row. Angry and sad-make that depressed-are bloody different, though.”

Cooper turned back around to face the water.

“See,” Woolsey said, “somebody’s pissed, you argue with him, even laugh at the bloke, right? Take some barbs but who gives. Somebody’s in a funk, it’s different-kind of rubs off on you. Rubs off on the whole effin’ place. Rubbed off on Ronnie anyway.”

Cooper lowered his eyelids. “He quit?”

“He will,” Woolsey said, “you don’t quit driving him into his own depression. Hell, Guv-lucky anybody’s even coming by any longer. Place has the atmosphere of a funeral parlor. Maybe one with a sad old dog sleepin’ in the corner.”

Cooper didn’t say anything. Woolsey, who had finished slicing the fruit, stacked a few cubes of each kind on a series of plates. When he had the servings assembled, he wiped his hands on a towel he’d been keeping in the waistband of his board shorts, turned his back, reached for the pot of coffee, and poured two white mugs full enough to prohibit the addition of any milk. He grabbed both mugs and came over and handed one to Cooper.

He took a nearby seat and the two of them sat there, facing the very short crescent of sun as it began to show itself, fatten, then rise above the horizon. Cooper sipped, Woolsey sipped, and they said nothing. Cooper didn’t disturb his PowerBook, or the piece of wood. He just kept sipping, and looking out at the water and the sun.

When they were finished with the first round, Woolsey brought the pot over and poured them each a new cup and they drank that too in silence.

When they began to hear some footsteps on the garden path-the tell-tale sound of flip-flop on gravel-Woolsey stood.

“Time for the world-famous continental breakfast,” he said.

Woolsey stood there, sort of glaring down at Cooper, until the guests behind him were only a few steps away. When they were nearly within earshot but not quite, he said, “I trust we understand one another.”

Cooper didn’t look up at him, or do anything else to acknowledge the comment, but Cooper knew better than to think he could get away with the silent treatment on a friend as old and good as Woolsey. He understood Woolsey perfectly well-this didn’t mean he was ready to admit anything-far from it-but Woolsey knew as well as he did that their little get-together had gotten under his skin. They certainly did understand one another-for nearly twenty years now, they almost always had.

When the bubbly conversation arrived along with the married couple on the veranda to spoil the solitude of his morning paradise, Cooper stood, folded his PowerBook beneath an elbow and the strip of wood in the pocket of his swim trunks, and headed out onto the beach-opting, as he usually did, to take the scenic route on his walk back to bungalow nine.

“Time to earn your money.”

Upon hearing Laramie’s voice over the earpiece of his sat phone, Cooper checked his watch-ten of twelve. He decided he had no idea when he’d fallen asleep-ten minutes ago? Twenty? However long it had been, it hadn’t been enough. If nothing else, at least the beers he’d put in the icebox would be cold now, so he’d be able to drink something chillier than piss-warm brew.

He thought immediately of asking Laramie to look into the letters “ICR” for him-admit he was a failure as an investigator, that he’d be better off swimming laps, consuming lukewarm beer, and taking his cherished late-morning naps, and leave it at that. Rub her nose in the scent, he knew, and Laramie could find just about anything-including how to get his goat like nobody’s business. Julie Laramie, he thought-the woman he’d once referred to as the human lie detector machine. Maybe I’ll just put her on the case.

Since Cooper wasn’t thinking any of these thoughts out loud, Laramie went on.

“You’ll need to get us into Cuba,” she said. “The sooner the better.”

“Us?”

“You and me. Or, if you prefer to think of it this way, the operative and his commanding officer in the ‘counter-cell cell.’”

Cooper thought for a moment, reclined as he was in the hammock that stretched between a pair of palms at the far end of the beach. He couldn’t see the restaurant from where he lay, which meant that nobody in the restaurant could see him either. Either way, it was the ideal time of day-the sun was high and hot, the sky clear, and most of the guests had headed into the restaurant or their bungalows from the beach, either eating lunch or readying to do it. A pair of kids played in the water all the way down the other end of the beach, but no one else was around.

“Whatever it is you want done on Fidel’s home turf,” he said, “if you’re calling me to do it, it can’t be good, and if it’s nasty business, you’ve got no business going along for the ride. Even as commander-in-chief of your empire of dirt.”

He had a feeling the skin on Laramie’s neck was turning a splotchy, pinkish red right about now.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” was all she said.

Cooper said nothing, unimpressed with the reaction he’d failed to earn.

“How do you go about getting there?” Laramie said. “I know you’ve been plenty of times.”

“Cuba?” Cooper said. “Pretty much the way you’d go about getting anywhere.”

He heard something that sounded like a sigh over the phone.

“I understand Cuba is happy to take tourism dollars despite the U.S. trade and travel embargo,” Laramie said. “I’m not talking about a pleasure cruise. We’ll need to go there in secret. Probably under false names. And preferably-”

“Going that way’s simple for somebody with your connections. And mine. Book a seat aboard a military transport into Guantanamo Bay and sneak in from there. That’s the preferred means of entry for CIA. Everybody, including Fidel, knows it, and no one really cares anymore. Once in a while the Cuban government’ll toss an American in prison, hold him for a day or two-”

“I don’t want to use my ‘connections,’” Laramie said, “and I don’t want you using yours, either. Technically, the investigation we’re conducting is nonexistent. I think the people I work for would be more concerned about my operating through CIA or military channels than if we were to get in there in some way that alerts the Cuban government to our presence. Anyway, it seems to me this is one of the main reasons we have you on the team-to generate HUMINT. Unconventionally, if need be.”

“One of the reasons,” Cooper said, not quite making it a question.

After enough silence had passed for Cooper to be forced to admit Laramie had refused to bite, Cooper said, “By boat, then. I’d do it by boat.”

“Yours?”

“Hell, no. Always a chance Fidel’s Revolutionary Navy’ll take your boat if they find out what you’re doing and don’t like it. It’s a small chance, but still a chance.”

“How do you do it then?”

“If you want to do it undetected, or relatively so, you just sail on in. Literally. Preferably on a pretty quick boat, but one you can afford to lose. When you say ‘sooner the better,’ how soon are we talking about?”

“However soon you can get us there.”

“Also, where we going? Pretty big island, Cuba.”