Will Staeger - Public Enemy

He counted the names, then counted them again. The number of names on the slab, both times he’d counted, came to one hundred and seventeen. This number didn’t mean anything to him particularly, but the feeling he’d just got about what he was looking at did.

He turned and looked over at Sleeping Beauty.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

He knew it could have been any of a number of duties for which the names on the marble plaque had been honored. And he knew there wasn’t anything pointing specifically to what had just occurred to him. But sometimes you just had a feeling-a bad feeling-and you goddamn well knew the feeling was right.

He thought of the terror book, and the scenarios the CDC had laid out for the potential spread of the filo epidemic. He remembered a reference in one of the reports to “ten, or twelve, or twenty” suicide bombers, and the potential spread of hemorrhagic fever that could result.

Ten, or twelve, or twenty, the report had said. Too bad, though, he thought: it isn’t twenty-or even fifty.

If my sense of what this memorial is all about is right, then it’s one hundred and seventeen.

He reflected that most of what he’d just encountered-everything he’d encountered during the past month, in fact-defied explanation. He knew he wouldn’t necessarily get all the answers. Maybe, he thought, you’ll get none of the answers. But last time he was here, he’d been sent on a fool’s mission-dispatched to accomplish nothing, a pawn in some political chess match that ended in a useless draw. And despite the relative success of his assassination effort, he’d been ruined for his trouble.

Maybe this time, his trip could actually turn out to be worthwhile.

He found among the crushed implements in the pouches of his paratrooper suit a scrap of paper and something with which to write. Propping the Maglite between his left arm and rib cage, he copied all one hundred and seventeen names, reading and writing carefully, getting the spelling of every man and woman precisely right.

If his instincts proved correct, then Laramie and her Three Stooges could probably do something with this goddamn list-trouble being how I’m going to get it out of here.

That was when he heard another noise.

This one had definitely come from the hall. He killed the Maglite and kneeled down to hide behind Sleeping Beauty; the sound, which he interpreted as footsteps and the opening and closing of another door, came again. He guessed it had come from slightly above and very nearby. He considered again that this section of the subterranean labyrinth must be close to the house-at least some part of the house.

Another door opened and closed and the sound of footsteps grew louder, coming now from somewhere just outside the door.

Cooper drew his pistol, knowing he’d be better off using it in the tight quarters of the crypt than the MP5. He rotated the strap of the assault rifle so the gun draped from his back, out of the way but still handy.

He heard the metallic clink of the handle as it was engaged from out in the hall. Iron scraped against stone, the edge of the door brushing the floor of the room as it pushed open.

Then somebody came into the room.

Cooper heard the flare of a match, and kept his knee to the ground as an orange glow overtook the room. He slid around the coffin, listening to the scuff of footsteps to keep track of where the visitor stood in the room, Cooper keeping himself hidden. When the room was fully aglow with candlelight, he heard the visitor retreat to the door and close it. For a moment Cooper wondered whether the visitor had only come to light the candles, then departed, but another foot-scuff from the opposite side of the coffin answered that question.

Considering the visitor sounded as though he or she was alone, Cooper decided he may as well find out who’d come to say hello. He held the FN Browning tight against his palm, feeling its cool comfort, and stood.

There wasn’t as much shock as he might have expected to encounter on the face of Raul Márquez. It looked more as though the man was insulted that one of his staff would be allowed in here-but then Cooper could see the gradual interpretation of things in the man’s eyes and, soon, a kind of hardening of his expression.

Fear did not appear to be a component of the man’s reaction.

“Buenas noches, Señor Presidente,” Cooper said flatly. “It is nighttime, isn’t it? I’ve more or less lost track.”

There came less and less expression on Márquez’s face.

“The trespasser,” he said in English. That was all he said.

“Sí,” Cooper said.

Márquez adjusted his line of sight to take in Sleeping Beauty. Judging from where Márquez stood, Cooper assumed him to have already been looking at the corpse, before the odd sight of the beach bum in the paratrooper gear had popped up behind the coffin.

“Beautiful, isn’t she,” Márquez said.

Cooper took a careful, sideways sort of look at the embalmed woman beneath them.

“Statuesque,” he said.

Márquez looked at Cooper again.

“You’re here to assassinate me,” he said.

In surveying the photographs provided by Laramie’s guide, Cooper had noted a resemblance in Márquez to the statues in Borrego’s antiquities stash, and in person it was the same-he looked distinctly Native American. From the rich brown color of his skin to the high cheekbones and black hair, Márquez fit right in with the faces depicted in the artifacts in this strange room-including the face of Sleeping Beauty.

“Maybe,” Cooper said.

“I suppose I expected a more…militaristic response,” Márquez said.

“Such as?”

“An air strike, perhaps. Missiles launched from a drone. Who knows.”

“Well,” Cooper said, “you got me.”

Márquez shrugged.

“Appropriate that it should happen here,” he said.

“My assassinating you, you mean.”

“Yes.”

Cooper waited. Márquez seemed to have an idea in mind he was looking to express, and Cooper saw no reason to slow the head of state from taking the path.

“My own vengeance is wrought,” Márquez said, “or will be, in short order, thanks in significant part to the selfless contributions of those honored in this room. And now you’re here-meaning, I’m sure, to exact your vengeance. It is a circle of violence-or cycle, perhaps. I did not begin the cycle, but I’ve long expected my demise would become a part of it. I’m relieved. Relieved my painful journey is concluding; relieved my conclusion comes now. Now that I have set in motion what I was meant to do.”

“So you’ve told your deep-cover jihad to combust themselves, then,” Cooper said.

“Yes. They’ve been activated.”

“All one hundred and seventeen of them?”

Márquez’s eyes twinkled behind his otherwise sullen visage.

“If you say so,” he said.

“Depending on when you carved the plaque, of course,” Cooper said, “they wouldn’t all have made it this far.”

“No,” Márquez said, “they wouldn’t.”

“But probably more than six of them, I’ll bet,” Cooper said.

“I’ll bet you’re right.”

“How?”

“Sorry?”

“The people I work for,” Cooper said, almost cringing at the words his mouth had chosen, “would want me to ask how it is you activated them.”

Márquez chuckled unemotionally.

“How else to inform an army to engage its capitalist enemy,” he said, “than through the most capitalist of acts?”

“Sorry,” Cooper said, “but I’m a little rusty on my Marxist dogma.”

“You should bone up,” Márquez said. “Comes in handy from time to time. The answer is through a very expensive broadcast television media campaign.”