Will Staeger - Public Enemy

“Bottom line, Lou,” she said, briefing complete, “is it’s definitely a theory based on speculation, but it’s educated and informed speculation. When you do the math, he’s the guy.”

Ebbers took little time digesting.

“The six probable sleepers,” he said. “They may be only six of ten, or six of fifty-we still have no way of knowing, at least outside of the apparent enormity of the theme park training operation. Correct?”

“That’s right,” Laramie said.

“And we’ve got nothing on timing.”

“You mean, when the other sleepers are set to be activated?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing there,” she said. “Not yet.”

A click of electronic static echoed from the speaker.

Then Ebbers spoke up again.

“As usual, Miss Laramie,” he said, “you’re right-we have, in fact, reached a decision point.”

Before setting up the call, Laramie had prepared herself for what she assumed would come next. Starting with the first “job interview,” she’d grown familiar with the way Ebbers preferred to work-meaning she had a pretty good idea he’d ask what strategy she recommended they follow.

“I’ve got my own ideas,” Ebbers said, confirming Laramie’s suspicion, “but you should take me through the response scenarios as you see them-our choices on what to do now that we know what we know. In other words, what would you do, Miss Laramie,” he said, “if Márquez is, in fact, the man?”

Even though she was ready for this, it didn’t mean Laramie liked being the one suggesting some of the options she was about to lay out. She counted out a couple of Mississippis in her head, and was about to start in on response strategy number one, when Ebbers spoke again.

“You can assume something else too,” he said. “Assume, in making your recommendations, that the president, or some other decision-making entity of equivalent clout, has asked the question. That I am simply posing it for the decision maker, and that the decision maker can act immediately upon reaching a decision.”

Laramie hesitated-the way he’d put it, saying “or some other decision-making entity of equivalent clout,” struck her as an odd thing for Ebbers to say considering he was comparing such decision-making clout to the commander-in-chief’s. Whose clout, of course, was supposed to be unequivocal.

Unless, of course, you consider Congress, and the rest of the checks and balances, as “equivalent.” But the way he’d said it gave her pause-she knew Ebbers did not let slip a single word, so there was something to what he’d just revealed. And in her independent study paper, Laramie’s recommendation had been for the counter-cell “cubes” to function entirely outside the umbrella of government. She found it hard to believe the structure of Ebbers’s organization would follow every last one of her recommendations-

There was no more putting it off, so Laramie got to it.

“The alternatives are simple enough to conceive,” she said, “but to enact-”

“Get to it, Miss Laramie.”

“Fine,” she said. “Option one: roll the dice and immediately take out the six deep cover sleeper agents. Remove the pathogen vials from their possession and eradicate the threat they present. Are there ten others? Five? Twenty? Even if there are, we’ve cut down the threat to American lives by a presumably significant percentage.”

“Next.”

“Next, possibly executed simultaneously with option one, is to wage war on Márquez’s regime. Immediately. I say this because if the action isn’t immediate, and immediately effective, it could well cause Márquez to sound the alarm and activate the sleepers faster than he would have without the military action.”

The line hissed and clicked dully, Ebbers keeping mum for a minute. Laramie had a pretty good idea he was thinking this one through in precisely the way she’d thought it through before putting it on her list. He spoke up, once again confirming another suspicion of the human lie detector machine.

“War cannot exactly be waged with immediacy,” he said, “except, of course, by nuclear strike.”

“I had considered and was concerned about that version of the war strategy,” Laramie said.

Ebbers dove in on that one.

“You don’t think the threat of a virtually unchecked spread of the modern equivalent of the 1918 flu pandemic-and therefore the credible threat to upward of hundreds of thousands of American lives-outweighs the potential damage inflicted on the offending nation by a nuclear strike?”

“If it is, in fact,” Laramie said, “an ‘offending nation,’ and not simply an individual who happens to be the leader of that nation.”

Laramie counted to two-Mississippi again-mainly to cool herself down.

“Either way, that’s a call I’m not qualified to make,” she said.

“Well who is?”

Laramie felt the heat pop up through her neck and up past her cheekbones.

“Sir, are you seriously asking my recommendation on whether to authorize a nuclear strike?”

She counted every beat of the voiceless static that followed. She didn’t exactly want to have to out-and-out refuse to answer one of her boss’s questions, but during the ninety-three seconds of relative silence she confirmed her resolve. Too bad. I’ve been known to toss out an opinion or two where it wasn’t wanted, but there are plenty of reasons the president and each and every member of the Senate and House of Representatives are elected, and I’m not. This being one of the more extreme examples: it is simply not my call, even in the fucking hypothetical. But considering his words from earlier in the conversation, I’m not so sure it’s Ebbers’s call either, or the call of anybody he works for…

“What is the next option,” Ebbers said.

“As I’m certain I don’t need to tell you,” Laramie said, jumping in with great relief, “the next option, while less drastic, remains illegal, both domestically and internationally. Nonetheless, particularly considering the complications involved with option two, it must be considered as one of the choices. Option three is to assassinate Márquez. The working theory here is if you cut off the head before the order is sent, the body of sleepers may simply walk away. Assimilate into society, the way it has been theorized the many likely Soviet deep cover sleepers did when the curtain fell. And we do not have evident confirmation that any of the probable sleepers besides Achar have been activated.”

“Understood,” Ebbers said. “Do you have any additional options?”

Laramie allowed herself to breathe again. “Other than searching for additional sleepers, which I believe we should continue efforting in any case,” she said, “no.”

“I choose option three,” Ebbers said, “conducted in synch with a variation on option one and your continuing effort to identify additional sleepers. The variation: put surveillance on the six probable sleepers and see what they’re up to, rather than nabbing them right off the bat.”

Laramie realized immediately that Ebbers had just ordered-or at least chosen-the assassination of an elected leader of a sovereign nation. An order-or choice, or whatever the hell it had been, she thought-chosen almost entirely as a result of her own analysis, judgment-and suggestion. Could he have ordered up the nuclear-annihilation option? If so, who else was in on this? Who wasn’t?

Christ.

Her brain scrambled to sort through the rest of the plan-she’d ask her guide about the logistics, but assumed they’d be provided with private investigators or local law enforcement officers to perform the actual surveillance of the six sleepers. Plus, they’d continue to look for others. Fine.

Still, she hesitated.

Did Ebbers have any authority to order an assassination? To order any of what was going down? Even in the unlikely scenario that he did have some newfound authority to order the assassination of a foreign leader, was he saying she, and her cell, should arrange it? More important, if that was what he meant, was she capable of agreeing to it?