They were able to get ninety minutes of the voyage out of the way before the sun ducked behind the ocean. Cooper was powering them along at twelve knots with the catamaran’s eighty-horse motor, and the surface of the Caribbean was about as flat as it got-slow, rolling swells of the sort that never went completely dormant, but utterly lacking in wind and chop. This meant, among other things, that Laramie hadn’t yet begun to purge the contents of her stomach, slim as Cooper assumed the contents to be given Laramie’s usual intake of such things as small-size salads with nonfat dressing on the side.
The boat was a 30' Endeavorcat. Cooper had got Abe Worel, a longtime charter captain based out of Virgin Gorda, to reserve the boat for him through a Cancún outfit Worel had a stake in-Cooper suggesting to Worel that he secure comprehensive insurance as part of the rental arrangement and leaving it at that. Worel told him where to go to find the boat and that it would be ready for him anytime after four. By six, Cooper and Laramie were pushing off from the rental company’s dock.
As the sun began its hastened retreat below the horizon, Laramie explained her team’s theory that an “Americanization campus” of some sort would be what Achar had directed them to with his GPS-coordinates code. She also told Cooper her secondary suspicion about the site, generated when she’d seen the coordinates represented on the map of Cuba: she believed that whatever they’d find, they’d find underground.
Cooper said, “So we’re heading to this place, presuming we’ve got the location correct, to do what? Ask who’s in charge?”
“Maybe,” Laramie said.
“Why don’t you just snap off some satellite shots and whip out your magnifying glass? After you isolate what it is you’re looking for, the people you work for can send in somebody properly equipped to crash the party. Such as, I don’t know, possibly the U.S. Marines.”
“I already have snapped off some satellite shots, and you’re slowing down as you age,” Laramie said. “This isn’t the party we need to crash. If it’s an Americanization campus, then it follows it’s run by whoever sent the sleepers, but it doesn’t change the fact that he, or she, or they, have already planted the sleepers. It’s the sleepers we need to ‘crash,’ not the training grounds. And who knows-maybe we’ll find something altogether different. It could be-however unlikely it is at face value-that Castro’s the one behind this, and the GPS location represents the place where he actually keeps the list of sleepers.”
“Or maybe we find nothing.”
“True.”
“Then why are you going?” Cooper said. He checked the glow-in-the-dark compass and flicked the wheel slightly to starboard, adjusting the catamaran’s course by a few degrees.
Laramie didn’t say anything for a while. She didn’t do much either-just kept her head set back against the cushion in her seat. Maybe she’s keeping quiet, he thought, because the reason she came was to seize the chance, international terror crisis or no, to wing it southward with the ex.
Ex? Cooper made an attempt to withdraw the thought, something he always found himself trying yet failing to do in the presence of Laramie-and only Laramie. Otherwise, he was usually quite pleased by his own thoughts. At the moment, though, he found some fury swell up within, along with a question to himself: How could four months in the islands qualify as a relationship?
Well, that’s what you called it: you just referred to yourself as the “ex.” One in a long string of thoughts, words, and other annoying acts I’d usually prefer I never thought, or said, or did. Laramie-still the lie detector she always was, a goddamn truth serum you didn’t even have to drink to begin suffering its effects.
“I’m coming along because I need to see it for myself,” Laramie said, interrupting his thoughts.
Cooper wasn’t buying.
“Even though you don’t know what it is?” he said.
“What we’re finding?”
“Right-if it’s anything at all. You’re going just because you need to see for yourself?”
“I’m going,” she said, “because I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Cooper tried but failed to make the connection, but he didn’t need to prompt her, Laramie forging on with no delay.
“Somebody I used to work for,” she said, “who’s currently working somewhere else, recruited me to do what I’m now doing. Meanwhile, I think it’s still not quite four and a half years since I was pulling a string of all-nighters cramming for my undergraduate poli sci exams-”
“Working with one hell of a professor, the way I understand it,” Cooper said.
“-so here I am, not even five years later, and I’m overseeing a ‘counter-cell cell,’ which-unless my new boss, or somebody else in addition to him, has also recruited other unqualified persons such as myself to do the same thing…look, if you believe the theory that there’s ten, or twelve, or twenty other sleepers out there, this ‘cell’ they’ve got me in charge of currently holds the fate of thousands, even tens or hundreds of thousands of American lives in the balance. Solely. I’m having some trouble with this. It doesn’t make any sense. Or, it does in a strange way-I wrote a thesis for an independent study project in school, and the people I work for are employing a strategy that is pretty much a carbon copy of what I recommended in the paper. It’s the way I thought to be the proper means by which to fight today’s terrorist threats. But who cares? Somebody else certainly thought of the same thing-they probably just stumbled across my paper and tossed it in the vault once they realized the similarities. And, well, I mean, I’m pretty good at solving puzzles, I guess you could say. But this is one hell of a serious puzzle. I’m not remotely qualified for this.”
“Just don’t shrug,” Cooper said, “Ms. Atlas.”
Laramie turned, aiming, he surmised, to eye him sharply, but even in the encroaching darkness he saw a softness hit her eyes when she caught his. She turned away, looking out at the vanishing horizon again, the direction she’d been facing for the majority of their conversation. Fending off the seasickness, he thought. She’d soon lose that battle. Once the horizon disappeared, so too would her equilibrium.
Laramie kept at it.
“I thought if I got my nose out of the terror book,” she said, “and saw something live and in person, then maybe something, anything, would occur to me. Maybe nothing that would explain why I was chosen for the job, and why there isn’t somebody else, or thousands of somebody elses, possibly including the U.S. Marines, more qualified than I to be out there searching for Benjamin Achar’s true identity-and the identity and whereabouts of his fellow sleepers. But I thought I might see something that’d make the four or five puzzle pieces out of a thousand we’ve found thus far orient themselves on the jigsaw board. Christ,” she said, waving her hand, “whatever. We’ve found virtually nothing besides these GPS numbers, so maybe I just want to see what we’ve found.”
Cooper looked at her, and couldn’t see it in the dark, but thought suddenly of the tiny mole he knew existed just above her right ear, which he remembered having noticed the second time they made love. It had been an awkward session-each of them recovering from fairly morbid gunshot wounds but still finding the places each needed to find.
Another thought I need to purge.
“Of course, even if you found nothing,” he said, “you figured you might just be able to use this Havana vacation of ours to talk things through with your operative. Maybe catch a little R & R, even, before returning to strategy central and good old Professor Eddie.”
“Stop it,” she said. “This may surprise you, but I’m not necessarily interested in taking any R & R. Don’t you realize the stakes here? What’s wrong with you?”
Cooper almost grinned, thinking he’d finally struck paydirt.
“I’m trying to figure out who these assholes are, and you’re goofing off?” she said. “No, I take that back: you’re flirting.”
“Me?”
“Stop it.”
She was staring at him again, maybe shooting him an evil eye, but Cooper couldn’t really see her in the failing light. He locked the steering wheel, stood, balanced his way forward, found the onboard fridge he’d loaded up before they left, withdrew a Budweiser longneck for himself and the bottle of Chardonnay he’d brought for her. Might not last long in that landlubber’s stomach of hers on the ocean in the dark-but Laramie, he thought, needs a goddamn drink.
He came back to their spot near the helm, opened the bottle, poured and handed her a paper cupful of the wine, popped his Bud, then did his best to clink his beer against the paper cup for a toast.
“Relax, lie detector,” he said.
After a while, Laramie said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. He slid back into his place behind the wheel, discovering, as he settled in, that he was feeling something close to what he’d felt during those times when he’d been away from Conch Bay for a week, or month, and took his swimming goggles and headed out to poke around the reef. Familiar territory, warming his cold soul like ninety-proof bourbon going down the hatch.
“You know what we’re going to find?” he said.
“No,” she said.
“We’re going to find what we’re going to find,” he said.
Laramie didn’t say anything for a while. He assumed she was drinking some of the wine.
“That’s very Zen of you,” she finally said from the darkness.
“Live slow, mon,” Cooper said, and put away some of his beer.
Two hours later, nursing his fourth Budweiser, Cooper found to his amazement that Laramie had not yet fallen victim to a bout of seasickness. During those two hours, while they rode in relative silence, Cooper considered, then made his decision, reflecting, as he went in circles, that he didn’t have a choice. Any way he looked at it, he was going to have to tell her what he’d found. As she’d put it herself, too much was at stake.
He was just going to have to do a better job of keeping the snuffer-outers away from Laramie than he’d done for Cap’n Roy.
Plus, there was the selfish angle. He wasn’t quite willing to accept himself as a good soldier, obligated to perform good deeds in service of the safety of American citizens. These citizens were part of a nation that had fucked him over, up, and down-with little remorse-more than once. And according to the theory he was following as to the identity of the snuffer-outers, somebody with considerable power, working for the government of that nation, had arranged the killing not only of Cap’n Roy and a few other relatively innocent souls-but, by intention or utter, careless negligence, of an entire Indian civilization.
And by invoking Laramie, the human lie detector machine, he might just be able to turn her against the people she worked for in service of his own case-and the vengeance those voices in his head were asking him to seek.
The people Laramie works for, he thought, are bound to know some-thing-or maybe everything-about that fucking factory, the people who burned it to the ground, and the chief snuffer-outer I’m looking to put at the top of my dead pool.
And considering they’ve made the mistake of hiring the human lie detector machine, maybe I can put this to my advantage and squeeze some info out of the equation.
Cooper peered into the shadows where Laramie was seated and tried to determine whether she was awake. He couldn’t, so he said, “You actually took the Dramamine?”
She had never abided by his suggestion before.
“I did,” she said from the darkness.
“We’ve got a few hours to kill,” Cooper said.
When Laramie didn’t say anything, Cooper realized what it sounded as though he was implying-or proposing. He enjoyed the moment of crackling tension, imagined or real, before explaining himself after a while.
“Reason I mention that,” he said, “is there’s a story you should probably hear.”
“A story,” Laramie said after her own measured delay. “What about?”
Cooper grunted. “Among other things,” he said, “a twelve-inch priestess, a murdered chief minister, and a guy who calls himself the Polar Bear.”
The sound of waves, and a mild rush of breeze, came at them for a moment.
“Sounds like one hell of a story,” Laramie said.
“You’ve got no idea,” Cooper said, and commenced to killing time with his tale, careful to clarify how he thought it may well connect to the intended wrath of the suicide sleepers she hoped to thwart.