Meaning she should probably go ahead and take the meeting.

She stepped through the arch to see that the Weston Reading Room was a collection of hardwood reading tables enveloped by Italian Renaissance decor, approximately the size of a squash court and dominated by the presence of four immensely tall stained-glass windows that lined one of its walls. About half of the room’s lamps, all standing on the reading tables-of which Laramie counted twelve-were lit. The room looked to her like an inspiring, if stiff, place to engage in study. But more than anything, it looked to her like the perfect place to hold a quiet meeting nobody would know was taking place.

She figured this for the reason a man she recognized was seated at one of the tables at the far end of the room. He was facing the stained-glass windows, but Laramie had a good angle on his profile, and if you happened to work for the Central Intelligence Agency, which Laramie did, it was particularly easy to recognize a man like the one seated at the table in the Weston Reading Room. Among other reasons, the walls of the Agency’s headquarters building in Langley, Virginia, were lined with portraits of the men who’d held the job this man had only recently been compelled to vacate. Laramie had also met with him once or twice.

It had been about a year since the man had left his portrait-related post, a forced resignation attributable equally to the corrupt practices of his late deputy director and the fatal dose of satellite intelligence Laramie herself had stumbled across and then proceeded to ram up the hierarchy’s tail end.

Laramie detected the scents of coffee-and food. She saw that the man she’d been sent to meet with was chewing a bite of the sandwich he held in his hand; as Laramie watched, he set the sandwich down and took a sip from the unmistakable white cardboard cup, the single green word that may as well, for Laramie, have said oasis instead of Starbucks. On the table across from the man sat an unopened bag, along with a second cardboard cup of coffee.

Deciding things were looking up, Laramie approached the table beside the stained-glass windows for her breakfast meeting with Lou Ebbers, the former head of the CIA.

Ebbers stood. He wasn’t smiling, but on the other hand he wasn’t frowning either. He offered a hand and Laramie shook it. She was starting in on an apology when she thought better of it-hadn’t the meeting she’d been told to show up for never really existed in the first place?

“Morning, Lou,” she said.

“Afternoon,” Ebbers said in his trademark North Carolina lilt. “Took the liberty of picking out a sandwich for you. Coffee’s got skim milk and Equal, way I’m told you like it.”

Forgoing the chance to reply to his jab at her tardiness, Laramie came around the table, set her bag on the floor, and took the seat across from him, which she figured was what he wanted her to do. She took two long gulps of coffee; as Ebbers sat back down, she opened the brown paper sack and withdrew the sandwich within. It was turkey, lettuce, and tomato on a croissant, the same selection she always had them make for her in the CIA commissary.

Once she’d eaten half of the sandwich, Laramie said, “This does not appear to be a ‘Senate-mandated interagency intel session.’”

Ebbers sipped his coffee.

“Doesn’t, does it,” he said. Laramie smelled caramel and wondered whether Ebbers, like Rader, preferred the sissy drinks from the Starbucks menu.

Ebbers said, “You familiar with the post I took when the president accepted my resignation?”

Laramie thought for a moment.

“You’re at the Pentagon, I think,” she said. “But I can’t recall anything more specific than that.”

“Deputy secretary for Domestic Law Enforcement Agency Interface, Defense Intelligence Agency,” he said. “I also hold the concurrent post of special assistant to the national security advisor.”

Laramie nodded. She knew that positions like the former DCI’s involved such unintelligible titles for a reason: nobody could ever remember them, therefore no one had any idea what persons with such titles did. She assumed the “special assistant” part of his job reflected more accurately his stature and role. Lou Ebbers, it seemed, was an unaccountable sort of person.

Ebbers eyed a set of three newspapers stacked on the corner of their table.

“Startin’ with the paper at the top,” he said, “take a look. Page D1. Column six.”

Laramie pulled the first of the papers over. It was the Southwest Florida News-Press, D being the Local & State section. The paper was dated just over five weeks ago. She saw the headline of the story Ebbers had pointed out. It said, BURST GAS MAIN KILLS 12.

Ebbers sipped at his coffee again; since it appeared he was waiting for her to do so, Laramie read the article. It was a pretty basic story, a longer version of the headline: an explosion had destroyed a block of homes in a rural housing development located near the center of the state, forty miles east of Fort Myers and about two hours from Miami. The development community, called Emerald Lakes, had been built in an unincorporated portion of Hendry County near a town called LaBelle; it was mentioned in the story that the development had gone bankrupt five years prior, after fewer than five of the two hundred housing units had been sold. A real estate firm called Superior Home Manufacturing Ltd. had acquired Emerald Lakes out of bankruptcy and subsequently managed to find buyers for approximately half the homes in the community. The article reported forty injuries as a result of the blast, none serious, in addition to the twelve deaths. A local sheriff was quoted as stating unequivocally that the incident “was in no way terrorism related.” He also said that the management company, Superior Home Manufacturing, did not appear to be at fault.

“Next paper in the stack,” Ebbers said when he could see she’d finished. “Feature headline.”

Laramie plucked newspaper number two from the pile, also the News-Press, dated three weeks after the first. It was a longer piece:

DEADLY FLU LEADS TO QUARANTINE

LaBelle (Wednesday)-The death toll from the influenza epidemic that has plagued LaBelle, in Hendry County, has risen to 93, leading authorities to quarantine a portion of the county. Residents of LaBelle had already been stricken recently by a gas main explosion that claimed 12 lives and injured 40 in a housing development in nearby unincorporated Hendry County. In a prepared statement, Hendry County Sheriff Morris Haden said, “All surviving residents of LaBelle have now been admitted to two local hospitals. The grounds of the hospitals and large portions of the town itself have been quarantined so as to halt the spread of this highly contagious and deadly flu virus.”

No one has been allowed in or out past the quarantine demarcations during the past 48 hours, Sheriff Haden said, except approved medical and law enforcement personnel. Since the quarantine, Sheriff Haden said there have been no new documented cases outside of the quarantine zone, making him “cautiously optimistic” that the quarantine is working effectively.

Authorities have been troubled by the rapid spread of the devastating flu, which is said to be an altogether different strain than the avian, or “H5N1” flu virus experts have predicted could escalate into a global pandemic. Despite its differences from the avian flu, to date, there has yet to be a documented case where a victim afflicted by the LaBelle influenza virus has survived. Officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), now working on-site in LaBelle and at local hospitals, confirmed that the spread of the flu appears to have slowed or even halted.

(CONTINUED ON PAGE A7)

Laramie turned to the indicated page and finished reading, finding only one additional interesting fact: an official at the CDC had issued a statement indicating that no evidence had been discovered linking the flu outbreak to the gas main explosion three weeks prior.