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.”
Cooper digested the business speak.
“Containing some phrase or other,” he said.
“Or other,” Márquez said. “Yes.”
“Care to provide some of your army’s assumed identities? Lessen your sentence at the pearly gates?”
Márquez almost let a smile crease his lips.
“My dear assassin,” he said, “please go fuck yourself.”
Cooper nodded, then jutted his chin at his captive.
“Who is she,” Cooper said. “Sleeping Beauty, here.”
Márquez then offered a clamp-lipped smile-not appreciating the joke, it seemed.
“My lover and partner.”
“The king and queen of the suicide sleepers,” Cooper said. “How nice.”
The thin-lipped smile held, serving as Márquez’s response to Cooper’s wiseass commentary. In a moment, the smile evaporated.
“Ironic, isn’t it,” Márquez said, “that in life, her blood may have yielded a vaccine.”
Cooper blinked.
“For the ‘filo’?”
“Yes. She survived it.”
“Christ,” Cooper said. “The girl from the clinic?”
Márquez looked at him and sort of shrugged-the expression meant to convey, Cooper figured, that Márquez didn’t really care to understand, but had no idea what Cooper was talking about.
Cooper thought about the story from Márquez’s childhood, as relayed by Laramie’s Three Stooges during the “cell’s” powwow at the Flamingo Inn. Then he thought about the village he and Borrego had found in the rain forest crater.
“The bride and groom of pain,” he said. “Birds of a feather, eh, Raul? She made it out of the village that took the brunt of the Pentagon lab’s little error, and you made it out of another Pentagon-funded genocidal strike?”
Márquez looked at Cooper about the way Cooper would expect a man to look at somebody as certifiably loony as himself-or the way he’d look at somebody who couldn’t possibly know all these things-but then spoke up again.
“You could put it that way,” he said.
“The irony you mentioned,” Cooper said. “It’s ironic because she held the key to surviving the ‘filo’ in her bloodstream but brought you the weapon in the first place?”
Márquez just kind of dead-eyed him.
“How did she do it? Come on, by the time you’re through with your end of that cycle you were talking about, I’m sure you’ll have exacted a few thousand American lives as your toll. Why don’t you come clean-maybe it’ll give you some extra credit when you visit the big man upstairs.”
“You know,” Márquez said, “you’re a strange sort of assassin.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Señor Presidente.”
“She studied science. Earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins-her specialty was pathology. Came to me with an idea following my first election. And a few other things.”
“Such as some fine rapture, I’ll bet,” Cooper said.
“Yes, that too,” Márquez said.
“And among the other things-a crate or two of goodies?”
Márquez gave him the same dead-eye stare.
“Left behind,” Cooper said, “by the lab people when they tried to burn the evidence to the ground. But she lived up there, so she knew where to look. And maybe she found a stockpile the idiots with the napalm missed. How am I doing?”
Márquez had apparently decided to clam up.
“What happened to her?” Cooper said.
“I killed her,” el presidente said.
“Why?”
“It became necessary.”
“For what reason?”
Márquez eyed him, then shrugged. “I think she would have killed me next. Lot of rage in that woman.”
Cooper nodded at this. It partially confirmed the last piece of the crypt-puzzle he’d been assembling.
“By ‘next,’” Cooper said, “you mean she’d have beheaded you too?”
Márquez looked at him again but didn’t offer a reply.
“I’m curious how she would have found the Pentagon memo,” Cooper said, “but then again maybe she had access to that kind of thing through the university.”
Either way, he thought, it seems the Indian girl from the village has sought and found her vengeance-both on the people who authorized the lab and, depending, an unhealthy dose of citizens from the country who funded it.
Too bad the swing of her machete missed the neck of a couple last souls-the snuffer-outers, the last survivors of the vengeance she hoped to exact on the architects of the filo lab.
Enter me.
He coaxed his thoughts back to the topic of the names on the memorial slab of marble. Despite the fact that they’d need to work in reverse, and track the current identity of the sleepers from their original, local names, Cooper figured Laramie, the Three Stooges, and the Grand Poobah could still make use of the list of names he’d just transcribed.
And aside from the fact that he’d been sent to “eradicate” the man, he’d now have some use for the continued survival of Raul Márquez-the King of the Sleepers.
He straightened his elbow and held the Browning tight, taking aim at Márquez’s head. Márquez almost seemed to sigh in relief-even pleasure.
“The assassin,” Márquez said, closing his eyes, “taking the assassin.”
Yeah, Cooper thought, I’ve wanted to die plenty of times too after what happened to me.
“Not quite,” Cooper said.
Márquez opened his eyes.
“I thought you were here to kill me,” he said.
“I was,” Cooper said. “And I am. But too bad-you’ll need to wallow in your misery for a little while longer.”
Keeping the Browning trained on Márquez, Cooper came around Sleeping Beauty’s coffin and-making sure to maintain a few feet between himself and Márquez’s watchful eyes-grasped the handle of the door.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said.