One-Mississippi.

She thought of the topic she had written about. She thought about the case she had made, how and what she’d spelled out in the paper.

Two-Mississippi.

As she considered what was in the report, and what it could mean that it was highly classified and in the hands of a senior intelligence bureaucrat with a mysterious and forgettable job title, the butterflies in her stomach condensed to a heavy, concentrated mass that sank toward her legs.

Three.

She decided to wait to hear what Ebbers had to say about the paper before jumping to any conclusions. She felt the sinking mass ease, and lift-after all, it was almost impossible, even ludicrous, to think what she was considering might be the case-

“What’s most interesting,” Ebbers said, glancing through her report, “is that you wrote this five months prior to 9/11.”

The way he looked at the pages, Laramie could tell he wasn’t reading. That he’d seen it before and knew it well.

“Terrorism,” Laramie said, mainly to buy some time, “wasn’t, um, exactly a new phenomenon, even then, of course.” She immediately felt foolish for saying this. “There are obviously more than a few mistakes in there, sir, as-well, as I’m sure you know.”

Ebbers smiled a tight-lipped smile.

“Fewer than you might think,” he said.

He refolded the document along its crease and put it back in his pocket.

“A car service will pick you up from your hotel room tomorrow after an early wake-up call. You will be taking a morning flight out of Dulles. A bag has been packed for you and will be delivered to you at your destination in Florida. Your own car will be returned to your condominium and the keys will be waiting for you on the kitchen counter-right where you always leave them-upon your return.”

Laramie said, “Is this an open-ended trip?”

“I’ll get to that,” he said. “It’s important no one from your professional or personal life knows where you’re going. We’ll watch the hotel and your condo during the next forty-eight hours and monitor the activities of some of the people you encounter as a matter of routine. Some will understand you to have called in sick.”

Laramie stared, not ready to appreciate the irony of calling in sick in order to investigate a strange flu epidemic.

“A tour guide will greet you on arrival and transport you to the operations center. During this investigation, your guide will arrange for all necessary logistics. You will meet with the principals heading the investigation to date. There is, as you might expect, a multijurisdictional pig fuck of special agents-in-charge, case officers, Homeland Security officials, CDC scientists, doctors, local authorities, even diplomats and politicians waist-deep in the mud puddle. Talk to any and all such personnel as you see fit. You will have access to all the documents these people have seen or generated; have a look at these too. Do whatever it is you prefer to do in the course of your assignment, Miss Laramie, but one way or the other, I’ll need you to recommend to me how we should go about finding the culprits and shutting them down. I’ll need a report from you on this topic seventy-two hours from the time you arrive in Florida.”

Ebbers scratched his chin.

“Meaning,” he said, “I want you to get in there and figure out what the fuck is going on, and once you’re there, you’ve got three days to do it.”

Laramie looked around the table but could find only the uneaten half of the sandwich, the empty cups, the sandwich bags, the newspapers, and the reading lamp, but no apparent hint as to what was going on here. She knew this much: Ebbers had shown her the copy of her independent study paper only so she could see that he had it-perhaps see the stamps on it. This meant he was telling her something; she knew that too. But he certainly couldn’t have been telling her what she thought he was telling her.

Except that he just had-hadn’t he?

Laramie tried to get a grip and think through the circumstances from a practical point of view. In a few seconds, she’d thought of some things.

“Um,” she said, “taking the part I believe I understand from this, I should say that I find it unlikely the-well, let’s say the special agent-in-charge working this thing for the Bureau gets a call. From me. ‘I’d like to talk to you about the case. Everything you know. What you think happened here, and why.’ Let’s be honest, he won’t exactly be forthcoming-”

“He’ll talk to you. And so will everybody else.”

Laramie blinked.

“In its way, the investigation is now ours,” Ebbers said. “You are now working for us. Your guide will give you the rest.”

There it was again-ours. Us. She looked at him, and he looked back at her in silence. She wasn’t going to ask the questions she wanted to ask. She could tell that if she asked, at least directly, he wouldn’t answer. At least not directly. Maybe she didn’t need to ask; maybe she already knew.

“One more question,” Laramie said.

“Go ahead.”

“I recognize that you wouldn’t tell me anyway, but if I don’t ask the question I’ll wonder whether I should have. I can’t not ask the question.”

Ebbers inclined his head.

“Is this an exercise?” Laramie said.

Ebbers thought for a moment.

“A fair question,” he said. “You ask, I presume, because you haven’t heard of any organization of the sort that has just ‘borrowed’ you. Also because you hadn’t previously studied, and so are only vaguely familiar with, the news coverage of the Florida incidents. And so on.”

“Yes.”

Lou Ebbers smiled.

“I would like you to treat this as though it is not,” he said.

Ebbers stood, drained his coffee, gathered the newspapers, tucked them under an arm, crumpled his sandwich bag, removed the plastic lid from the coffee, stuffed the crumpled bag in the coffee cup, closed it, and proffered a two-finger salute.

“Good luck,” he said, and walked out, leaving Laramie alone with the remaining half of her turkey sandwich and the empty Starbucks cup.

Because Cooper refused to fly American Eagle, he rode his Apache to St. Thomas, where he’d discovered by way of a few clicks that a direct flight ran to Dallas twice a day-American Airlines, no Eagle. He connected to Austin and was picked up outside the baggage claim by a stork-legged, humongous-breasted woman who was already giggling when Cooper saw her leap out of her Mercedes. She was already giggling, he supposed, because she was always giggling. She had bee-stung lips, long black hair lopped off into bangs, and big, round eyes with creases in the wings that made her look as if she were smiling even when she wasn’t, which, from Cooper’s three-day, hands-on experiential episode, wasn’t often. She was a tenured professor of archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin, though this wasn’t how Cooper knew her: he knew her as one of three women chartering a trimaran out of Tortola during a “ladies’ week out,” a six-day trip bopping around the snorkeling and watering holes of the Virgin Islands.

The Conch Bay Beach Club Bar & Grill had been a natural stop on the tour, but after the planned one-night stay, Susannah had convinced her two friends to leave her at the club for the last few days of her trip, while they caroused about the rest of the Virgins and retrieved her on their return to Road Town.

It seemed Cooper had triggered the release of a hormone from a long-dormant gland; despite Susannah’s admitting, over their first drink, to going without sexual activity for six years running, Cooper seemed to remember nineteen as the number of times they had managed to copulate in the succeeding seventy-two hours. Susannah had handed him her card on her exit walk out the dock-flipping it over, tapping him on the ass, kissing him on the cheek, and waving so-long as Cooper read the inscription she’d written on the back of the card: If you ever want to try that again, you call me right away, Island Man!