Will Staeger - Public Enemy

Rothgeb gestured toward the phone.

“Fifth is access to the filo. And while we can’t yet point to a specific connection between the facility our operative discovered in Guatemala and the R & D it took to develop this bug, the confluence of factors is too significant to ignore. Bottom line here: any current or former Castro crony who’s got a beef with America, sufficient resources to assemble these sleepers, and who either hails from or maintains ties with Central America generally, or Guatemala specifically, is moving very high on our list. There are a few other factors we’ve plugged in, but we need to work with what we know, and the elements I just described are pretty much what we’re aware of.”

Despite the serious issues at hand, Laramie was having difficulty suppressing a smile at how familiar Rothgeb’s overly formal semantics sounded to her. She’d sat in too many lectures, among other things, to take him nearly as seriously as he took himself.

“There’s a list maintained by the federal government, which used to be called the ‘Strongman Ranking’-back in the days when Manuel Noriega and Moammar Khaddafi were our chief enemies of state-and now seems to be referred to more pedantically. I think it’s called ‘Terrorist Most Wanted’ now. Point being, it’s unofficial, so it isn’t shown around, but it exists, and is regularly updated as a joint effort of numerous agencies, based on a number of anti-American activities and other factors conducted by the people on the list. We have a copy of it, and while our guy doesn’t need to be one of the names on the list, if our suspect is one of those guys it’s another notch against reasonable doubt.”

Knowles passed around copies of the list, which had various headers and passages blacked out. The list was heavy on Middle Eastern names, and Laramie saw at least a few that shouldn’t have been there but for their public opposition to certain American policies.

“Coming back to Fidel,” Rothgeb said, “the man has held summits with virtually every enemy of the state, of our state at any rate, on a semiregular basis, in some cases annually, in some cases monthly, some for as long a period as the past thirty years. Anyway, in searching out staunch, fellow anti-U.S., anti-imperialist Castro allies, we’re talking about a long list. With our other factors plugged in, the list narrows, of course-and look, there may well be an unknown, undocumented multimillionaire behind this sleeper operation, and if so, then we’re making a mistake. But we’re prepared to stand by our pick, primarily due to the geographical proximity of the ‘filo lab’ vis à vis his background-and largely because of his background itself. We believe public enemy number one is Raul Márquez, or somebody associated with his regime.”

Laramie’s eyes dropped to Márquez’s name on the most wanted list. She knew who he was, and knew of his loud “beef”-many beefs-with America. On the resources front, she had her doubts, but he was certainly a Castro crony-

“He was the longtime head of organized labor in El Salvador,” Rothgeb said. “He’s held a position of influence and maintained a friendship with Castro for over fifteen years. His first candidacy for the presidency was a rout, and he hasn’t looked back; plus, he’s played a major role in helping organize labor and socialism-related movements with considerable political clout throughout Central and South America, to the point where you could say he is, in effect, a coalition leader of a number of socialist states, all of whom have a major beef with the U.S. and its ‘imperialism.’ You know his rhetoric-he and Hugo Chávez are the current heads of state who’ve essentially taken the anti-America torch from Fidel. The part of it bin-Laden isn’t already holding.”

Knowles adjusted his own sunglasses from his seat on the bed and jumped in, apparently on cue, since Rothgeb leaned back just as Knowles got started.

“We could make the case against Chávez, and a number of other figures, pretty effectively,” he said. “But for a variety of reasons, we’ve eliminated each of the others. Chávez, for instance, remains in dire need of the economic health of the United States-we buy most of his oil, among other reasons, and it’s his oil money that keeps him in power. His beef isn’t with U.S. citizens, but U.S. regimes. Finally, though, there’s one specific reason we believe we’re right to pin it on Márquez. He’s of native Central American descent-of Mayan ancestry. It’s said that if you’ll listen, he will tell-though only privately-where it is his hatred of all things American originated, and the accounts we’ve found of this tale are pretty consistent.”

Knowles the storyteller grew a little more animated.

“During the Reagan era,” he said, “the U.S. funneled big sums of foreign aid to the right-wing Salvadoran government as part of our ‘containment’ strategy against Soviet-allied socialist movements. Around the time Márquez would have been a teenager, there were ‘murder squads’ in operation-the government, which was more or less funded by us, would send out raping-pillaging units to eradicate rural settlements said to be harboring the leftist rebels, which in turn were said to be funded by the Soviets. There was more at work domestically than was understood initially, though-it seemed the ‘murder squads’ were focused more on the genocide of the native population than on eradication of the rebels.”

Laramie was familiar with most of this history. “So the way he tells it,” she said, “he survived an attack from one of the U.S.-financed murder squads?”

“You got it,” Knowles said. “Apparently he was the only one to make it out of his village.”

Laramie nodded. “So, if true,” she said, “Márquez’s story means he witnessed the wholesale slaughter of his entire village-family, friends, whatever-and blames America for the genocide from which he managed to escape.”

Rothgeb leaned in over the table again.

“Yep,” he said. “And a recent history of genocidal acts against native encampments is certainly not restricted, in the Americas, to El Salvador-we think there is a high likelihood he used his own experience to recruit similarly disenfranchised indigenous-culture survivors on a pan-American basis. He’d have quite a pool to pull from-even if he was operating solely on the basis of regional genocidal acts perpetrated by regimes kept afloat in part by U.S. foreign aid.”

Knowles made a “who knows” gesture with his palms and took the baton again.

“Did he discover the biological weapons lab in Guatemala? Did a scientist who worked there steal some engineered filo and bring it to Márquez? Any number of scenarios would make a great deal of sense on top of what we’ve already laid out. It would explain a lot of the variables here.”

“He’s your guy,” Rothgeb said.

Cole spoke up too.

“Hard to go any other way with it,” he said.

Laramie digested what her “cell” had just presented. Well-oiled machine, indeed-even being the foreign affairs junkie she was, Laramie was finding difficulty poking a single hole in their theory.

“I’ll need a minute or two to soak this up,” she said. “Also, we’ll need to get as much intel on him as possible. Can-”

She had been about to summon the man, but watched as her guide leaned into the doorway as though delivered by synaptic remote control.

“-we get everything CIA and its brethren have on him and his regime?” she asked.

“Already in process,” her guide said, and retreated behind the wall.

Laramie decided she ought to arrange to have the man accompany her everywhere she went.

Knowles said, “On the topic of the letters ‘ICR’ and the facility in Guatemala, Eddie and I had an idea.” Laramie kind of turned toward Rothgeb as Knowles spoke, thinking, Eddie? “In the course of doing some research for one of my books, I came across the story of a senior Defense Intelligence Agency attaché who was arrested and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for treason. Only thing was, they didn’t nab him for being a double agent for China, or Russia, or whoever else specifically-instead, he was found to have been in business for himself, a kind of freelance provisioner of all manner of U.S. intelligence committee secrets.”