Inside Out

32. Maneuvering

Ben’s phone buzzed. He opened his eyes and saw faint light coming through the window. He picked up. “Yeah.”

“You get any sleep?” Hort said.

Ben looked at the clock readout. Shit, he’d been unconscious for over six hours. He’d needed it. “Yeah, believe it or not.” Paula opened her eyes and Ben raised a finger to his lips.

“Good. We have a task group meeting with the national security adviser in thirty minutes. We just got an email from Larison, and he says he’ll be calling. I want you to listen in.”

“Listen in? How am I going to do that?”

“I’m going to leave my mobile phone on. Set to speakerphone. A little oversight on my part.”

“You can do something like that in the White House?”

“The meeting’s not in the White House. The national security adviser wants to keep this thing as far from the president as he can. The meeting is at his house in Potomac.”

Once again, Ben was intrigued that Hort was including him in management stuff, if only on a listen-and-learn basis. “Okay…,” he said.

“It’s just him, me, and the deputy director of central intelligence, Stephen Clements. Clements is the genius who convinced the national security adviser that it made sense to try to snatch Larison. And by the way, the snatch teams weren’t Ground Branch. They were Blackwater.”

“Are you kidding? The Agency contracted out this snatch?”

“They did. The good news is, the national security adviser is very unhappy about it. With a little luck, that means he’ll listen to reason.”

“You mean listen to you.”

“Son, believe me, on this one there’s no difference.”

“So those two guys who tried to drop Paula and me… they were Blackwater?”

“That’s a little unclear right now. Clements says they were Ground Branch, there to supervise. He thinks Larison killed them along with the snatch teams. Or he’s pretending to think that.”

“What do you think?”

There was a pause. “I don’t know what to think. There’s always a lot of maneuvering between the various agencies. I’d hate to think it’s gotten to the point where we’re trying to bump off each other’s players.”

“I told you, it was supposed to be a hit.”

“I don’t doubt you. Believe me, there’s more behind-the-scenes bullshit on this op than I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, I’ve been getting that feeling.”

“Well, for that reason as much as any other, I want you to be able to see how decisions are getting made here.”

So that’s why Hort wanted him to listen in-to prove that he had nothing to do with the two guys outside Nico’s office. To show that, even after Obsidian, Ben could trust him. Or maybe this was more management grooming. Or both.

“Okay,” he said again.

“I’ll call in a half hour. Keep your phone on mute. And I’ll call again after, when it’s done and we can talk securely.”

“Roger that.”

“How’s your FBI friend?”

It was the second time Hort had referred to her as his “friend.” He wondered whether Hort suspected something was up. He would have seen her photo from her Bureau file.

“She’s okay. A little shaken up by what happened yesterday, but okay.” He looked at Paula’s face, but couldn’t learn anything from her expression.

“All right, good. Be ready in thirty minutes.” He clicked off.

Ben put the phone down. Paula said, “What was that?”

Ben wasn’t sure how to answer. He couldn’t really get rid of Paula before the next call. And the thought of needing to do so, when they were lying next to each other naked, was exceptionally strange.

“It was my boss. He says Larison is supposed to call in again in thirty minutes. He wants me to listen in.”

“Why?”

“So I’ll know what’s going on.”

“Which is…?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But it seems like the snatch teams were Blackwater, and the two guys who showed up after were CIA Ground Branch.”

She frowned. “Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not sure, but my boss’s information is usually pretty good. Looks like the CIA doesn’t want you to recover those tapes. And doesn’t want anyone else to, either.”

She didn’t say anything. He thought she looked a little ill.

“I know,” he said. “It’s a dark day for interagency cooperation. Outside of you and me, I mean.”

He thought the crack would get her to smile, but she didn’t. Which was really too bad, because, after all, they had a half hour to kill.

“You okay?”

She shook her head. “I just… I just don’t know what the hell’s going on.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some crazy shit, but this one is up there, no doubt.”

“Then why are you so cheerful?”

He shrugged. “I got laid last night. That always puts me in a good mood.”

That made her smile. “Yeah? Was she good?”

He felt his lips. They were swollen and tender. “Well, she’s got a good straight right, I can tell you that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really? Is that all?”

He smiled. “No, there’s more. And if she joins me in the shower, I’ll tell her all about it.”

33. Not a Place You Want to Be

Thirty minutes in the shower wasn’t quite what Ben would have allotted if it had been up to him, but they managed to use the time well. Afterward, Paula got into the sundress and Ben pulled on the shirt he’d bought. He put the one he’d been wearing the day before in the laundry bag with Paula’s clothes. They’d dump it somewhere far from the hotel.

“Just gotta listen in on this call,” he said. “And then we’ll go.”

“Put it on speakerphone.”

Shit, he should have seen that coming. “I don’t think-”

“Don’t tell me you’re keeping secrets from me. Not after what happened yesterday. Not after what’s happened since then.”

He briefly considered telling her that was all separate, that shared danger, even a shared pillow, didn’t mean he could share operational details, too. And decided that, if he did, she was going to start punching him again. And besides, it wasn’t really a question of operational details. It was just a bunch of managers arguing about what to do. And hell, she knew a lot already.

He nodded. “All right. Speakerphone.”

She smiled. “Now, this is Larison? Calling whom?”

“As far as I know, just my boss, the national security adviser, and a guy from the CIA.”

“Who’s your boss?”

Shit. Another one he should have seen coming. He was tired. Or he was distracted by what had happened with her. Either way, things were getting past him.

“Let’s just listen in, okay?” he said.

“There’s nobody from Justice on this call?”

“I guess not.”

“Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Justice is blind,’ doesn’t it?”

Ben shrugged. “I think these guys are more concerned about the national security implications of the situation than they are about the justice ones.”

They sat on the unused bed and waited. The phone buzzed just a minute later. Ben raised a finger to his lips, answered the call, and immediately pressed the mute button.

“I’m going to explain the deal to you,” said a low and raspy voice, the tone calm and confident. Given the current circumstances, Ben figured it was Larison, about to issue instructions.

“We’re listening.” Ben didn’t recognize this one, either, but assumed it was the national security adviser, running the meeting.

“It’s actually very simple,” Larison said. “Nothing’s changed. If the diamonds haven’t been delivered to me in twenty-four hours in accordance with my instructions, the tapes will be released.”

“I understand,” the national security adviser said. “I’m going to turn this meeting over now to our new point man on the operation. I think you know him. Colonel?”

“How are you doing, son?” Hort said. Paula mouthed, Your boss? And Ben, feeling he had no choice, figuring she pretty much knew who he was at this point anyway, nodded.

There was a pause. Larison said, “Hort?”

“It’s me.”

“I had a feeling they’d bring you in.”

“Well, I wish they’d brought me in earlier. This thing would have been handled better.”

“All I want to hear is that you have the diamonds. If you do, we’ll keep talking. If you don’t, you’re wasting my time.”

“We have them.”

“Where are they?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where are you holding them? What city?”

“They’re here in Washington.”

“Good. I’ll call again in twenty-four hours and tell you how you’ll deliver them. You’ll use a single courier. I think you understand what will happen if you deviate from my instructions.”

“You made your point in Costa Rica, son. Loud and clear.”

“Twenty-four hours. You’ll want to have a jet ready.”

There was a click, then a dial tone, then silence.

The national security adviser said, “What do you think?”

“I think this is another opportunity,” a third voice said. “We can pick him up at the point of exchange.” It must have been Clements.

“I’m sorry,” Hort said, “can you tell me how that’s different from your previous plan? The one that cost fourteen lives and put Larison on a hair trigger. Literally, most likely, if we’re talking about his dead-man switch.”

“He got lucky.”

“You got lucky. Lucky he didn’t just uncork and release those tapes. In case you haven’t noticed, the man is not exactly stable.”

“We don’t even know if there is a dead-man switch. He could be bluffing.”

“He’s not bluffing. I know him. And right now, I guarantee you he’s got the switch set to dangerously short intervals. When he picks up the diamonds, he’ll probably have it down to about fifteen minutes. Your plan is to take him, secure him, revive him, elicit accurate intel, and disarm the switch in under fifteen minutes?”

“Better that way than just handing over the diamonds and hoping for the best.”

“‘That way’ is a fantasy, and the only thing a fantasy is good for is jerking off.”

Paula covered her mouth to suppress a giggle and Ben gave her a yeah, that’s my boss shrug. It was weird, and a little intoxicating, to be listening in on such a high-level conversation. And to have made Paula party to it.

“Where are you going to get the men, anyway?” Hort said. “You going to go back to Blackwater? And what are you going to do if the information Larison gives you doesn’t disarm the trigger, but instead sets it off? How are you going to know, until you see the footage from those tapes on the Al Jazeera nightly news and every American network?”

There was silence for a moment. Clements said, “What you’re proposing means we’ll have those tapes hanging over the head of the U.S. government forever. And eventually, they’re going to come out.”

“Maybe. But everything you’ve tried is guaranteed to make them come out. Besides, Larison is going to have something hanging over his head, too. Nico. And his family. Like I said before, we have nuclear parity now. Mutual assured destruction. Which wasn’t pleasant for anyone back in the day, true, but it managed to keep the peace.”

The national security adviser said, “I have to say, I don’t like the idea of his getting away clean.”

“Sir,” Hort said, “you can always pick him up later if that’s what you choose to do. I’d advise against it even later for the same reasons I’m advising against it now, but you could if you wanted to. What you can’t do is try to pick him up now, with that dead-man switch set to the kind of interval I know he’s programmed it for. Give him the diamonds, let him walk away and calm down. Eventually, having to worry about resetting that trigger every hour is going to get to be too much of a risk and too much of a pain in the ass. He’ll adjust it to every twenty-four hours, or every forty-eight. If you pick him up then, there’s a chance. Right now, there just isn’t.”

There was a long silence. The national security adviser said, “Have a jet ready tomorrow. With the diamonds.”

Hort said, “Yes, sir.” Ben heard the sounds of papers being shuffled, people getting up, and then the line went dead. He hit the end call button.

“I can’t believe they’re just going to give him the diamonds,” Paula said. “Blackmail, murder… they’re just going to pretend none of this ever even happened?”

Ben shrugged. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get the hell out of Costa Rica. Just in case local law enforcement is looking for me in connection with what happened in Los Yoses yesterday.”

“But Larison-”

“Larison’s gone already. Probably crossed the border somewhere while we slept. I know this is hard for you to accept, Paula, but this isn’t a criminal investigation. It never was. My best guess? Even in the Bureau, there are people who recognize it’s not a criminal investigation, and they’re leaking to people in the CIA, people who are very committed to stopping a criminal investigation. And to stopping you, if you insist on trying to conduct one. That’s not a place you want to be.”

“This really just… sucks.”

“On the one hand. On the other hand, no one’s talking assassinations anymore, right? The powers that be have decided to resort to diplomacy.”

She shook her head and grimaced. “I don’t know what the hell the powers that be are doing. I really don’t.”

34. Courier

They drove north on the coastal road toward the airport in Quepos. Fifteen minutes into the drive, Ben’s phone buzzed.

“All right,” Hort said. “You heard.”

“Yeah.”

“So you know, somebody’s going to need to hand over those diamonds tomorrow. I want it to be you.”

Ben was surprised. “Me?”

“You know anyone better?”

“No, I’m game. I just… you know, it’s not what I usually do.”

“Well, none of this is usual. I need you to get to Washington ASAP. We don’t know what Larison is planning for tomorrow. We’ll have a jet ready, but beyond that, all we can really expect is that he’ll be issuing instructions step-by-step to keep us scrambling.”

“In case anyone tries to grab him again.”

“Exactly. Although his primary defense against a snatch is still his dead-man setup. Where are you now?”

“About an hour from Quepos.”

“The jet will be waiting for you there. It’ll take you to Washington National. Give the FBI agent a lift if she wants it, but get clear of her after that. Stay in the area tonight, and be ready to roll by 0700 tomorrow.”

“Roger that.”

He clicked off. Paula said, “So you’re going to be the courier.”

Ben glanced over. He hadn’t said that much on the call, but it had been enough. “Looks like it.”

“You okay with that?”

He shrugged. “Is there a reason not to be?”

“Well, some people might consider Larison to be a pretty dangerous character, for one.”

Of all the reasons Ben might have been concerned, danger just wasn’t one of them. He thought about saying something about how danger was part of the business, but decided it would sound cheesy. Or that she would just accuse him of being a hard-ass again.

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

“I could go with you.”

“Actually, you can’t. Larison said it has to be a single courier.”

“Did he really say that?”

“He did.”

“Well, damn.”

“Look, it’s all over now but the logistics. Somebody’s got to give him the diamonds. It could be anyone. It just happens to be me. By tomorrow evening, or the next day at the latest, this thing will be done. After that, the tapes will be released or they won’t be released, but that particular problem is above our pay grade.”

She didn’t answer.

“Okay? Paula, this isn’t up to me.”

Still no response.

“Look, if anything changes, I’ll let you know.”

“How?”

“Well, you live in D.C., right?”

“Fairfax. Why?”

“It’s just, I don’t have a place to stay tonight-”

She laughed.

“-and I’m always looking for ways to improve those interagency relations.”

“Yes, you’ve been diligent about that.”

“I try.”

“You know, last night was nice-”

“This morning, too.”

“And this morning, too. But having you stay at my apartment… right now, that’s too much for me.”

“More of the ‘you wanted to be fucked, not made love to’ thing.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I could just fuck you, then. I’m pretty flexible that way.”

She laughed again.

“Seriously,” he said. “Was this just a one-off? Because, when you weren’t trying to punch me in the face and bite my ear off, I thought it was pretty good.”

She nodded. “It was good. A little… crazy. But good.”

“So?”

“So I think I need a little time to digest everything that just happened, okay? Not just with you. With everything.”

– -

They barely spoke on the flight back. Paula’s eyes were closed for hours but Ben sensed she wasn’t sleeping-that she was instead simply withdrawing into herself. Withdrawing from him. He watched her and noticed for the first time how long her lashes were. He noticed not for the first time how good she looked in the sundress. But neither of these observations felt relevant. It was as though she’d pulled down a steel curtain between them. She seemed as distant and unreachable as though the night before hadn’t ever happened.

They went through customs and then through the terminal. Standing outside arrivals, diesel buses and honking taxis lurching past, the midday Washington sun superheating the humidity around them, Ben tried to think of the right thing to say. And couldn’t.

“Are you… sorry?” he asked.

“Not exactly.”

He chuckled. “Well, that’s a ringing endorsement if ever I heard one.”

She shook her head. “I’m just… confused.”

“I tried to tell you it was a bad idea.”

“I don’t remember you trying all that hard.”

“Believe me, I did.”

“Well, maybe I should have listened.”

“Yeah, maybe you should have.” It came out harsher than he’d intended, but still.

She nodded slowly, then said, “I need to go.” She turned and started to move away.

“Paula.”

She turned back to him.

“I know you need to write some kind of report. You should… be careful what you put in it.”

She took a step closer. “Are you threatening me?”

He felt irritation rising and pushed it away. “First of all, I don’t threaten. And second, no, all I’m doing is giving you some well-intentioned advice. As a friend. Those Ground Branch guys in Los Yoses knew your name. There’s still a lot we don’t know about this whole thing, and what we don’t know is making certain people extremely twitchy.”

She didn’t answer.

“But hey, write whatever the hell you want.” He turned to go.

“Ben. Wait.”

He turned. For a moment, she looked like she was genuinely struggling with something. Her mouth opened, then closed. She pursed her lips, and it was as though her expression were somehow… dissolving. For a second, he thought she might cry.

“What?” he said.

Then her face solidified again and she shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, and walked away.

He watched her heading toward the Metro. He was having trouble believing she could just walk away to write a report while he delivered the diamonds to Larison. Well, she didn’t have much choice. Still, if the shoe had been on the other foot, he would have been humiliated, furious. Maybe that’s what was bugging her.

His phone buzzed. Hort.

“Yeah.”

“Are you still at National?”

“Yeah, we just landed.”

“Lanier?”

He watched. “She’s gone.”

“Good. Larison just called in. He’s moved up the delivery. Told us to have a jet ready to leave from National at 1800.”

“Where did the call come from?”

“We can’t pinpoint these satellite phone calls because from geosynchronous orbit, the footprint is too big. It could have come from Costa Rica. Or the southeastern United States. Or anywhere in between.”

“You think he’d have the diamonds delivered in Costa Rica?”

“I don’t know. Before, I would have said not a chance, but now that Nico’s known, maybe he thinks it doesn’t make a difference.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Larison has the number of the phone I gave you. He’s going to call you at 1800 with instructions on where you’ll be flying. We’re refueling and servicing the jet you just came in on and it’ll be ready.”

“What does he know about me?”

“Not a single thing outside you’re a guy delivering a package. From his standpoint, you might as well be a pizza delivery man.”

“Hell of a pizza.”

“Yeah. I’ll meet you on the Crystal City Metro platform in one hour with the diamonds. Yellow Line, in the direction of Huntington.”

Ben wondered if Hort was choosing such a public location to reassure him again. It wasn’t really necessary. If Hort had wanted to set him up, there had been plenty of opportunities already. Or he could have just left him in the Manila city jail.

“I’ll be there,” Ben said.

An hour later, on the Crystal City platform, amid bored, oblivious commuters walking and waiting beneath the science fiction hush of the vaulted cement ceilings, Ben spotted Hort coming toward him in civilian clothes, a backpack over his shoulders. He saw Ben and walked over.

They shook hands. Ben eyed the backpack. “Is there really a hundred million dollars in there?” he said.

“There is. Twenty-three pounds, in case you’re curious. Don’t lose it.” He slipped the pack off and handed it to Ben.

“Don’t I have to sign for this?”

“Are you kidding? We give out bricks of hundred-dollar bills in Iraq and Afghanistan like we’re handing out lollipops and solicit work through no-bid contracts and there’s that three-trillion-dollar stimulus… at this point, a hundred million in the black ops budget is nothing but a damn rounding error. The only thing unusual is that we’re using diamonds instead of cash.”

A train pulled in with a hiss of pneumatic brakes and a recorded announcement of its arrival at the station. Ben watched commuters flowing on and off like zombies in a horror movie.

“The Fed had a hundred million worth of diamonds just lying around?”

“No, what you have in that bag is another triumph of government-private sector cooperation. Someone at the CIA had the admittedly excellent idea of engaging Ronald Winston.”

“Winston?”

“Son of the late Harry Winston. World’s premier diamond expert. We needed someone with deep contacts in the markets in Africa, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, New York, someone who could cajole a few Saudi princes. And also someone monumentally discreet. Apparently there’s only one man who fit the bill, and that’s Winston. He personally certified every stone in this bag and I took possession directly from him.”

“What was Winston’s cut?”

“I’m sure he was well compensated. Being indispensable, and discreet on top of it, puts a man in a position to charge a premium.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Now, listen. It’s just you on this. There’s no one else. So if anyone tries to interfere with you, you stop him. Any way you have to. Remember, you’re carrying a hundred million in there in untraceable, easily convertible stones. Plenty of people would like to get their hands on that, never mind the tapes.”

“Roger that.”

“You’re armed?”

Ben nodded. “Same Glock you set me up with when I was Dan Froomkin, FBI. It was on the jet where I left it.”

“Good. We can’t have Larison thinking we’re fucking with him again. The connection you uncovered in Costa Rica gives us a lot of leverage, and that’s important, that’s our insurance that if we let him walk away happy, he won’t release the tapes. But no sense antagonizing him, either. If another team from Blackwater shows up and tries to take him again, he might just decide the hell with it, we’re never going to give him what he wants, he might as well just release the tapes and the hell with the rest. We don’t want him in that frame of mind.”

His phone buzzed. He glanced down, saw the caller’s number was blocked. He looked at Hort.

Hort said, “Anyone else have this number?”

“No. Just you, as far as I know.”

“It’s him, then. Calling early again to keep us jumping. Go ahead.”

Ben accepted the call. “Hello.”

“Is this the courier?”

The same low, raspy voice Ben had heard on the conference call. The same confident tone. It was him. Larison.

Ben looked at Hort and nodded. “Yes.” After all the circling around, the listening in on other people’s calls, it was strangely satisfying to be engaging Larison directly.

“You’re going to start off by driving.”

“I thought I was flying somewhere.”

“Maybe you are. But first, you’re going to drive. Do you have a navigation system?”

“On my phone.”

“Good. Head west on Interstate 66. I’ll call you again in a little while and tell you what to do next. Now, listen. I’m going to be watching you. I might be tailing you, I might be having you drive past static checkpoints. I might have video installed on the route to monitor you that way. If you’re being followed, if you’re not alone, I’ll put a bullet in your brain and pick up the diamonds that way. Understood?”

The threat made Ben want to answer in kind, but he caught the reaction and suppressed it. “Understood.”

The line went dead. Ben repeated the conversation for Hort.

“Shit,” Hort said. “Should have seen that coming. We don’t have a car ready. All right, take mine. The driver’s outside.”

They left the station and walked over to a dark gray Crown Victoria parked at the curb. Hort told the driver, a crew-cut Asian too young to be part of the unit, that they’d be taking the Metro. The guy got out and Ben got in. He put the backpack on the floor of the passenger side and made sure the door was locked.

Hort held open the driver-side door and leaned in. “Remember,” he said. “It’s just you. And be damned careful with Larison. He killed twelve operators in Costa Rica. One more isn’t going to make a difference to him.”

35. Mirror

Ben slipped in the Bluetooth earpiece, opened the iPhone navigation function, and followed Route 1 north to I-66. He checked his mirrors, but in the late afternoon rush hour traffic, there was no way to spot surveillance. It was entirely possible Larison could have ghosted up behind or alongside him and snuck a peek in the car. But Ben had a feeling he hadn’t. No, if Ben had been Larison, he’d have planned a route involving increasingly quiet streets and residential neighborhoods with multiple points of ingress and egress-the kind of route that reveals a tail by winnowing him out of traffic and forcing him to stay close-and set up there. A standard surveillance detection route, in fact, the only difference being that this time, the person trying to spot the tail would be not the driver, but someone running countersurveillance from a static location.

On the other hand, he’d thought he knew what Larison would do in Los Yoses. And hadn’t even been close.

The iPhone buzzed. Ben accepted the call through the earpiece. “Yeah.”

“Go north on Glebe Road. Then west on Sixteenth Street North, past the hospital. Then right on George Mason.”

Ben input George Mason into the phone. A map came up. It was what he expected: the street cut through a residential area and offered multiple outlets leading to a half dozen major arteries. If someone were following him, they’d have to reveal themselves there. Probably Larison was set up nearby, watching.

“I’m turning onto Glebe now.”

“Just keep going.”

Several cars took the exit behind him. He marked the makes and colors as he drove past several blocks of brick and stone houses and well-kept lawns. The hospital came up on his right, multiple buildings along an entire block, surrounded by parking lots. He made a right on George Mason and continued past the west side of the hospital. Two of the cars that had followed him off the highway turned with him-a black Cadillac and a blue Toyota behind it. Nothing definitive-Glebe and George Mason were both busy streets, and it would have been surprising if no one else had turned off onto them from 66. As for Larison, he could have been watching from anywhere inside. Or from one of the cars parked along the street. Or from behind a tree. There was no way to know.

“Okay, I’m on George Mason now.”

“Make a left on Twentieth Street. Then zigzag over to Nineteenth. Left, right, left, right.”

“Doing it now.”

The Cadillac continued straight on George Mason. The Toyota made a left behind Ben. Still nothing definitive-the western sun was reflecting off the Toyota’s window and Ben couldn’t see inside, but someone who lived in this neighborhood might have followed the same route. Still, suspicious enough to warrant some simple countermeasures.

“Got a possible problem here,” Ben said. “I’m alone, per your instructions. But if that’s not you in the blue Toyota, I think someone’s following me.”

“It’s not me.”

“Okay, I’ll go around the block and see what he does.”

Ben made a right on Greenbrier, then a right on Patrick Henry. The Toyota stayed with him. He could make out a driver and a passenger, both in shades. He made a right again, back onto George Mason. The Toyota stayed with him.

“Okay, it’s official,” he said. “The blue Toyota is a tail. Looks like two men in the car. I’m telling you so you’ll know I didn’t put them there. Also, from the route I just drove, they know I’m aware of them now.”

“How did they follow you?”

Ben wished he knew. He thought of Hort again, but it just didn’t make sense. A tracking device in the car, then? Satellites? And who were the guys behind him, anyway? Blackwater? Ground Branch?

“I have no idea,” he said. “I’m just the courier. I was told to follow your instructions and that’s what I’m doing.”

There was a pause. Larison said, “Is your navigation system up?”

“Yes.”

“Head west again. You see the high school at Washington Boulevard and McKinley?”

Ben dragged the phone’s touch screen to the right. “I see it.”

“The parking lot behind it?”

“Yes.”

“Turn into the parking lot from Madison and circle around it.”

“All right.”

Ben drove and the Toyota stayed with him. Even if he’d known who was behind him, and he didn’t, he wouldn’t have liked the idea of the parking lot. There was no way to know where Larison might be waiting inside or along the way, and the man seemed to have a penchant for high-caliber, armor-piercing ammunition. Overall, though, Ben judged it unlikely that Larison would try to greet him with a bullet. He’d want to first confirm that the courier actually had the diamonds. It was post-confirmation when things were maximally likely to become unpleasant.

As for the occupants of the Toyota, of course, that was a little harder to say. He patted the Glock in the shoulder holster and drove.

He headed south on Madison and turned into the parking lot per Larison’s instructions. The lot was a rectangle, bordered by a chain-link fence, with the entrance and exit on one of the short sides. It had four rows-two along each of the long sides and two up the middle-and might have held fifty cars full, though there were only a half dozen at the moment. Ben drove along, the Glock in his hand now, his head swiveling, scanning for Larison. The Toyota pulled in behind him.

He passed a white pickup parked to his right. No occupants. He checked left. Right. Forward. Nothing. He checked the rearview-

Larison, in jeans and a windbreaker and a baseball cap, popping up from the bed of the pickup like a deadly jack-in-the-box-

Shit, shit, shit-

Pointing a pistol at the Toyota, two-handed grip-

Ben’s head snapped left, snapped right, looking for a way to turn, trying to determine whether, how to engage-

Bam! Bam!

He checked the rearview. Damn it, whatever he was going to do, he was already too late. Larison had put two rounds through the windshield. The Toyota veered to the right and crashed through the chain-link fence into a tree. Larison dashed up behind it, the gun up at chin level. A shot came from inside the car, blowing out the driver-side window. But the guy must have been aiming over his shoulder and the shot went wild. Larison fired again, came closer, and fired twice more.

It was like Costa Rica again. Every reflex, every self-preservation instinct Ben had was screaming, Get out of the car, engage. But he couldn’t. Larison’s dead-man trigger was protecting him like a bulletproof vest.

Ben peeled around the far end of the lot, his tires screeching, and got the car pointed north, toward Larison, keeping one of the parked cars between them. He reached across and opened the passenger-side door. If Larison tried to circle behind him the way Ben had seen him do to so many deceased-immediately-thereafter people already, Ben would be out the passenger side and laying down fire in a heartbeat.

But Larison didn’t try to maneuver. Keeping his gun on Ben, he walked calmly over and went around the front of the car. Ben tracked him with the Glock, his finger firm against the trigger, but didn’t fire.

Larison leaned over and looked into the open passenger-side door. He was carrying an HK, Ben noted. The Mark 23. Forty-five caliber, maybe the same he’d used in Costa Rica. Up close, Ben could see dark circles under his eyes.

“Hand over the gun,” Larison said, pointing the HK at Ben.

Ben had known men in his professional life who naturally radiated quiet danger. It was nothing they said, and nothing they did, at least not overtly. You could just feel it about them, that they were capable, competent killers. It’s what Taibbi had been talking about, with those soldiers he’d mentioned. Ben had thought the guy was being melodramatic when he called Larison the angel of death. But he got it now. The man just exuded lethality, a kind of uncomplicated readiness to kill. Combined with everything Hort had told him and everything he’d seen, it was intimidating. So it took a certain level of discipline and determination for him to respond as he did.

“Sorry, that’s not going to happen.”

Larison didn’t respond. He just looked at Ben, his eyes as flat and emotionless as mirrored sunglasses. Ben had never been faced with this much immediate danger while simultaneously being prohibited from engaging it. All his instincts were screaming, Shoot! Shoot! He gritted his teeth and his hand shook.

Larison squinted slightly. “You were the one in Los Yoses, weren’t you?”

Ben nodded.

“Why didn’t you take the shot?”

“Same reason I’m not taking it now. The diamonds are in that backpack. Just take it and go.”

Larison looked down at the bag. Then he got in the car and pulled the door shut. “Drive.”

Ben thought, What the hell?

They sat there, mirror images, each pointing a pistol at the other.

Another few seconds, and Ben would either have to shoot the guy or leap out of the car and bolt for cover. What he couldn’t do was endure the tension of neither.

“You want me to drive?” he said. “Holster that fucking HK and wedge your hands palms down under your thighs. Deep under.”

“You’re not paying proper attention.”

“No, you’re not paying proper attention,” Ben said, struggling to ignore the Shoot! Shoot! alarms screaming in his mind. “You know I’m not going to kill you. If I’d wanted to, I could have in Los Yoses. Or again just now. But there’s nothing preventing you from trying to kill me. Except this gun. Which is why I’ll be holding on to it and you’ll be putting yours away. Otherwise, we can just sit here until the police show up to investigate reports of gunshots. Or you can take the diamonds and go. It’s your call.”

There was a long, tense pause. Larison swiveled and looked through the rear window. He did the same to his right. Then he slid the HK inside his windbreaker. He looked at Ben, and Ben could swear the man was suppressing a smile.

“Drive,” he said.

Larison hadn’t sat on his hands, but Ben hadn’t really been expecting that much and decided he could live without it. The truth was, he wasn’t much more eager to be sitting there when the police showed up than he imagined Larison would be. He switched the Glock to his left hand and hit the gas. If Larison lunged at him, he could grapple with his right and shoot with his left.

“Where are we going?” Ben said.

“Get on Lee Highway. Head west.”

That made sense. Not a neighborhood street where they would stand out; not an Interstate where suspects in a shooting might expect to be fleeing. Just enough traffic for them to blend while they drifted in the direction of the Beltway, and from there, to anywhere.

“You can have the car if you want,” Ben said, checking the rearview, making sure no one was behind them. “You really need me driving you?”

“I need you to confirm you have what you’re supposed to have.”

“The diamonds are in that backpack, right at your feet. You can see for yourself.”

“I’ll let you take care of that.”

Ben got it. Larison was afraid of a nerve spray or a dye pack. He didn’t want to open the backpack himself. Smart. He looked at his phone and saw it had no signal. Larison must have been carrying a jammer, something that would take out the phone, GPS, and anything else anyone might have used to track the car. Again, smart.

They got on Lee Highway and headed west. Ben was paying the bare minimum of attention to driving. Most of his concentration was on Larison, whose hands had been resting on his knees since Ben had driven off. He knew what Ben would make of it if his hands went anywhere else, or if Larison made any sudden movement at all, for that matter. The good news was, that meant if he did move, Ben wouldn’t have to waste any time trying to interpret his intentions. The bad news was, Ben had seen how fast the man was. And if he made a move, Ben would have the action/reaction disadvantage. And Ben would be shooting left-handed.

One piece of good news, three bad. It would have been a lot easier to just shoot the guy and be done with it. Orders were a bitch.

Larison said, “How long have you been in?”

Ben glanced at him, trying to judge whether it was just a distraction. He decided the hell with it. If he didn’t talk to the guy, he was going to shoot him. He had to do something, or the tension was going to make him explode.

“The unit?”

“Yeah.”

“Six years.”

“You like it?”

“Yeah, I like it.”

“Why?”

Ben shrugged. “I’m good at it.”

“I can see that. You think that’s enough?”

“It has been so far.”

“Yeah, it was good enough so far for me, too.”

“What happened, then? Hort said you were the best.”

Larison smiled slightly. “Did he?”

It was amazing. Even over Larison, even after everything that had happened, Hort just had that power. “Yeah. It’s part of what made him suspect you. He said no one else could have pulled this off-taking the tapes, faking your death, all of it.”

Larison’s smile faded. For a moment, he looked almost wistful.

“I don’t know about the best. But I was up there.”

“Still are, from what I can see.”

“Thanks.”

“Not sure it’s a compliment, given what I’ve seen you do with it.”

“You talking about Los Yoses?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think they were going to do to me?”

“Well, it’s not like you’ve given people a lot of choices.”

Larison glanced left, then right, then behind. “People always have choices. They say they don’t to enable themselves to do what they wanted to do anyway.”

“You sound like Hort.”

“Hort said that?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, maybe he’s learning from his mistakes, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“How’d you do it, anyway? I saw them hit you with the tranq.”

“Opioid antagonist.”

“Nicely done.” He couldn’t deny it.

Larison nodded. “You know who they were?”

“Blackwater, supposedly.”

“Contractors? For me? Who sent them?”

“The Agency, from what I hear.”

“Shit, I thought they’d at least care enough to send the best.”

Ben laughed, and Larison joined him. It was bizarre, but there they were, driving along, possibly on the brink of gunplay, cracking up.

“There were two more,” Ben said, when the laughter had faded. “After you left.”

“Who?”

“Ground Branch, supposedly. But I don’t think they were there for you. They were setting up for a hit-on an FBI agent who’s been investigating this thing, or on me, or on both of us. I didn’t have time to clarify all the details.”

“Yeah, the Agency wouldn’t want anyone else to get the tapes. You dropped them?”

“Yeah.”

“Good for you.”

They drove in silence for a minute. Ben said, “You miss it?”

“The unit?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would I miss being lied to and used and manipulated? And set up and discarded, when they were through with me?”

“So you miss it.”

They both laughed again.

Ben said, “Why’d you do it?”

“Take the tapes?”

“And everything else.”

“Long story.”

“Well, we’re just driving along. Shooting the shit.”

Larison chuckled. “I saw what they were going to do to me. I did it to them first.”

“Sound tactics.”

“I wish there’d been another way. But they didn’t give me a choice.”

“You said people always have choices.”

Larison checked the surroundings again. Ben had been doing the same. Normal traffic, no apparent tails.

“I guess I did. All right, maybe it was my fault. Maybe I was the one who foreclosed all the choices. Maybe I was stupid along the way to get in that position, to get in so deep I couldn’t find my way back, only out.”

Ben wanted to ask more, but Larison seemed to be getting agitated, and generally speaking, Ben preferred not to agitate proven deadly people carrying HKs in the passenger seat next to him.

“You want to know something?” Larison said. “I like you. You remind me of me. When I was young and stupid.”

“I don’t know, man. You’re the one who’s got the whole U.S. government for an enemy now. How smart is that?”

“You think Uncle Sam’s your friend, is that it? You think your loyalty is a two-way street?”

Ben thought about Obsidian, about what Hort had done. “Not exactly, but-”

“You don’t even know what this is about, do you?”

“What, the tapes?”

“It’s what’s on the tapes.”

“You mean the interrogations. Torture.”

Larison shook his head. “Hort hasn’t told you, then. No, of course he hasn’t. Likes to keep people in the dark. ‘Need to know’ and all that.”

“Hasn’t told me what?”

“You really want to know?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Because only a few people in the world know. And you’ve seen what they’re willing to do to prevent anyone else from finding out. You really want that knowledge? You really want people suspecting you have it?”

It was weird. Not so long ago, he honestly wouldn’t have cared. He might even have thought Larison was trying to distract him with irrelevancies.

But now… he did want to know. He wanted to know what all these people had died for.

“Tell me,” he said.

“All right. But tell me something first.”

“If I can.”

“How’d you track me to Costa Rica?”

Ben hesitated. And decided he couldn’t imagine Larison retaliating against Marcy, or doing anything else that would hurt his own son.

“Your wife. Or ex-wife. She suspected you were having an affair. Hired a private investigator.”

Larison was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I’ll be damned. Marcy… I never saw that coming. You know, you look everywhere for the possible threat, and you miss the one right under your nose. Damn. So that’s it. Those two guys in San Jose-”

“Working for the PI.”

“I checked them out after the fact. They had records. So I figured it was just random street crime.”

Ben nodded. “It made sense. You had no way of knowing.”

“Well, you figured it out. What, did you interview Marcy?”

“I did.”

“And she put you in touch with the PI…”

“Right.”

They were quiet for a moment, and Ben knew Larison was reviewing everything, analyzing events through clarified hindsight, piecing it all together, understanding step-by-step how Ben had gotten to him.

“Marcy,” he said, shaking his head. “Should’ve seen that coming.”

Ben didn’t like the direction that comment might lead in. “If you think about it, it actually worked out pretty well.”

“How?”

“If the government didn’t have something on you, they wouldn’t have trusted you with the money. They would have just kept coming at you until they got you or killed you or the tapes were released. But the way it is, now that they know about your… connection in Costa Rica, Hort was able to persuade them. He called it mutual assured destruction.”

There was a pause. Larison said, “Hort has a point. As usual.”

“Don’t you even want to know how your wife is? And your son?”

“He’s not my son.”

“So then… so your wife…”

“You mean, did she know about me?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. I would have said no. But I also would have said no if you’d asked if she might have hired a PI to follow me.”

“I’m sorry, man.”

“Don’t be. I can’t blame Marcy. I was living a lie, and she was bearing the brunt of it. In the end, we’re all only human.”

Ben nodded, reassessing what he thought he’d known, wondering about Marcy.

“All right, I told you. Now you tell me. What’s this all about?”

There was a long pause. Larison said, “The Caspers.”

“Caspers?”

“Ask Hort. Ask him about Ecologia.”

“What does-”

“And if Hort won’t tell you, ask David Ulrich.”

“Who?”

“The former vice president’s chief of staff. According to U.S. News & World Report, ‘The Most Powerful Man You’ve Never Heard Of.’ Or ‘The Hidden Power,’ is how the New Yorker put it. Currently a K Street lobbyist, naturally. He knows even more than Hort. He knows everything. And hasn’t suffered from any of it. I was going to make him suffer. But now my hands are tied.”

“The Caspers. Ecologia.”

“Yes. That’s what’s really going on here. That’s what’s really got everybody’s panties in a wad.”

“I don’t know what those things are. You’re not telling me anything.”

“I’m giving you the tools to find out. Who do you think you’re really working for? King and country, or just the king?”

“What does-”

“You have to be careful now. What do you think will happen after you’ve done what they asked of you, and they decide you’re some kind of threat?”

“I’m not a threat.”

“Maybe not before, but you are now. Because of what I told you. Just wanting information makes you a threat. You want to know how they’ll hang you out to dry before they hang you literally? I’ve seen it done. I don’t even know you, and I can tell you how they’ll set you up before they knock you down.”

Ben wanted to believe Larison was just bullshitting him, but somehow… it didn’t feel like bullshit.

“Here,” Larison said, “I’ll tell you first what Hort told you about me. I’m a psycho case, right? Anger management. Combat stress. Steroid abuse. Did he tell you I’m gay?”

“He didn’t.”

“Then he was hoping you’d find out for yourself. Conclusions you come to yourself are more persuasive. Didn’t they teach you that at the Farm?”

“I don’t think he knew.”

“He knew. If he didn’t tell you, it’s only because he knew you’d find out some other way.”

“I don’t see what that even has to do with it.”

“No? You’re going to honestly tell me it doesn’t make me suspect? Alien? A freak? You need all that, if you’re going to hunt someone. Hort was just providing it. Probably doesn’t even think of it as deception, or even as manipulation. He’s just giving you the tools you need to carry out a job. You think anyone we ever tortured and killed in the big, bad war on terror was white and Christian? It doesn’t work that way. You can’t do that shit to your own kind. They have to be turned into the Other first. Dehumanized. You and I… we’re like prisoners being set against each other by the guards. If you can’t see that, you’re nothing but a tool.”

A month earlier, Ben would have laughed at something like that, thought it was demented. But now…

“You said you’d tell me how they’d set me up.”

“Easy. You got in a lot of fights growing up, didn’t you?”

The truth is, the description was an understatement. “Maybe. What about it?”

“On the one hand, nothing. Everyone in the unit got in fights as a kid. There’s a correlation between childhood fights and subsequent combat capability, that’s all. But to the public? It becomes ‘history of disciplinary problems and violence.’”

“I cheated on tests, too. Hopefully they won’t nail me with that.”

“You been in any fights lately? Bar brawls, anything like that?”

Ben didn’t answer. But with Manila so fresh in his mind, he knew his silence was answer enough.

“Yeah, I thought so. Now you have ‘anger management issues.’ ‘Inability to control violent temper.’ I’m guessing you’re divorced, am I right?”

Again, Ben didn’t answer.

“That would be ‘inability to form lasting social bonds.’ Likewise if you’re at all estranged from any kids you have. And if you ever really uncorked and got in trouble with local law enforcement, they’ll use that to crucify you. They love to mention when someone’s been arrested. Who needs a conviction? An arrest is just as good.”

Ben tried telling himself it was like a fortune-teller’s trick, that these things applied to everyone, that Larison could have done the same with anybody. But he didn’t believe it. He thought of Manila… of Ami, of the jail. He’d never imagined how those things could be woven into a narrative by someone else. And was the narrative even untrue?

“Ever downloaded porn? ‘Deviant.’ Any solitary hobbies? ‘Loner.’ Talked to an army shrink? ‘Psychiatric patient.’ Look what the brass did to Graner and the rest after Abu Ghraib. Look at what the Bureau did to that guy Steven Hatfill, or to Bruce Ivins, when they needed to convince the public they’d found the anthrax villain. You think any of those people thought they were vulnerable? You need to wake up, my friend. You need to understand the way the system works.”

“You make it sound like there’s some kind of conspiracy.”

Larison laughed. “Conspiracy? How can there be a conspiracy when everyone is complicit?”

Ben wanted to dismiss what Larison had told him as nothing but a paranoid rant. But he couldn’t. At least not until he’d learned about the Caspers. And Ecologia.

“All right,” Larison said. “We’re going to split up now. Find a place to pull over.”

Leaving it up to Ben was smart. Larison had chosen the general direction, so he knew Ben wasn’t driving him into a setup. He’d know that if he were to choose a specific spot to stop on top of it, it would make Ben twitchy.

Ben drove for a few minutes more, then saw a sign announcing National Memorial Park Cemetery. He pulled off onto an access road and went through a gated opening in a brick wall. Inside was an expanse of trees and rolling lawns that but for scores of scattered headstones could have stood in for an ordinary public park. He followed a looping drive and pulled over. They sat in the long shadows of some nearby trees, watching each other.

“Time for us to get out of the car,” Larison said. “How do you want to do it?”

This was more deference than Ben had been expecting. “Why are you asking me?”

“You’re not going to kill me.”

“I already told you that.”

“It doesn’t matter what you told me. Now I know.”

“How?”

“I just do. How do you want to do this?”

“I’ll go first.”

“Fine.”

Ben eased his little finger off the barrel of the Glock and used it to open the door. He got out, stood, and transferred the gun to his right hand. He kept it trained on Larison. Other than the sound of passing cars on the nearby highway, the cemetery was silent.

Larison opened the passenger-side door and stepped out, taking the backpack with him. He tossed it onto the driver’s side of the hood. It landed with a dull thunk. They stood there, watching each other.

Larison nodded toward the bag. “Open it.”

Ben unzipped the bag. He couldn’t resist a peek. Just a bunch of whitish, yellowish stones, really. Hard to believe it was worth a hundred million. And everything else it had cost.

He turned the bag toward Larison and held it open. “Okay?”

Larison nodded. “Zip it up again.”

Ben did. He slid it across the hood. Larison picked it up and put it on the passenger seat.

“We’re done?” Ben said.

Larison closed the door. “Unless you want me to drop you off somewhere.”

“No offense, but I think I’d rather walk.”

Larison laughed. “No offense taken.”

Larison walked around the front of the car. Ben took a step back. He didn’t think Larison had any intention of trying to disarm him, but why take a chance.

Larison stood by the open driver side. He held the door, and for a second, he seemed unsteady.

“You all right?” Ben said. “You look… tired.”

Larison blinked. “I don’t sleep well.”

They were silent for a moment. Larison looked back at the road they’d come in on. “You don’t have to worry about them suborning you,” he said. “They get you to suborn yourself.”

“I’m not following you.”

Larison held out his hand. “Let’s hope you don’t.”

Ben hesitated, then transferred the Glock to his left. They shook.

Larison got in the car. He looked off into the distance at something Ben couldn’t see.

“That sound,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t imagine. Don’t let them do that to you.”

He squeezed the bridge of his nose and sighed. “God, I wish I could sleep.”

He blew out a long breath, put the car in gear, and drove off.

Ben stood in the shadows of the swaying trees after Larison was gone. He thought, Caspers. Then, Ecologia.

He clicked on the phone and saw he had reception again. No doubt, Larison had been carrying a jammer. He brought up a map and found a Metro station-West Falls Church-less than a two-mile walk from where he stood.

He thought, Ulrich.

It was still early. And K Street wasn’t far.

36. Think It Over

Larison drove east into Arlington, where he parked the car in a strip mall and transferred the diamonds into a nylon bag. There was an envelope inside. He hadn’t noticed it at the cemetery. He held it up to the dome light, saw nothing untoward, and opened it. It was from Hort. A phone number. And a message telling him to call. There was something he needed to know.

He frowned at the note for a long moment, then pocketed it. He waved a portable metal detector over the diamonds and got no reading. Okay, no tracking device in a fake stone. In a few days, maybe a week, he’d visit a jewelry store with some samples and confirm that he’d received what he’d bargained for. And God help them if he hadn’t.

He hooked up the jammer to an external battery and left it in the car’s glove compartment. If the car had a transmitter, it would be out of commission for at least another six hours. By then, Larison would be long gone.

He bought a backpack in a sporting goods store and put the nylon bag of diamonds inside it. He used the satellite phone to reset the dead-man trigger on the tapes. Then he found a bus stop and waited, his head down, his baseball cap pulled low.

He supposed he should have felt happy, or at least relieved. But he didn’t. He’d always intended to release the tapes after he’d received the diamonds. And now he couldn’t. He’d been exposed, and Nico was at risk. Yes, as long as the tapes were out there, Nico would be safe. And he’d gotten the money. But he’d also been neutralized. There wouldn’t be any justice. And more than anything else, he’d wanted this thing to end with justice.

He tried to focus on what was in the backpack. At least there was that.

He took out the letter from Hort and looked at it again. He didn’t need to call. What could Hort tell him, anyway?

But what the hell, there wasn’t any downside. They couldn’t trace the sat call. And maybe he would learn something useful, not from anything Hort intentionally told him, of course, but by reading between the lines.

He keyed in the number. Hort picked up immediately. “Horton.”

Larison waited a moment. It was strange to be talking to him again, just the two of them, the way it had been so many times in the past. It felt like an impossibly long time ago.

“Why’d you want me to call you?”

There was a pause. Hort said, “I was expecting to hear from the courier first.”

“The courier is fine. He’s good. I hope you’ll treat him better than you treated me.”

There was another pause. Hort said, “You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you. But bear with me. It gets better as it goes along.”

Larison felt his scalp prickle. He said nothing.

“I figured your next stop would be a jewelry store somewhere. I wanted to let you know before you got there that the ‘diamonds’ you’re carrying are fake. They’re plastic. Hold a hot flame, like a butane torch, to any of them. Or hit one hard with a hammer. You’ll see.”

Larison felt an icy rage begin to spread out from his chest. It crept down his stomach and up his neck. A red haze misted his vision.

“You just made the biggest fucking mistake of your life,” he said, his voice near a whisper.

“Hear me out now. There’s good news, too.”

“Yeah, the good news is, I’m going to listen to you scream before I let you die.”

But he hadn’t hung up, and he knew how Hort would read that. Well, let him. It wouldn’t change the way this thing was going to end.

“Instead of the diamonds, I’m offering you a million dollars-diamonds, currency, gold, whatever you want.”

“Forget it.”

“On top of which, my protection and another million a year if you come back to work with me.”

A bus pulled up. Two people got off. The doors closed and it pulled away.

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about it. You could never have spent that money anyway. Most of what you were going to spend would have been for security. If you’re working with me, you won’t need that, you’ll already have it.”

“In exchange for what, exactly?”

“Peace of mind, ultimately.”

Larison laughed harshly. “You’re offering me peace of mind. That’s funny.”

“I know what you planned to do with those tapes after you got the diamonds. Well, you can’t now that Nico’s exposed. But it was the wrong way to go about it anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want people to pay for what happened to you? We’ll make them pay.”

“I want you to pay!”

“I already have, son. I have the same nightmares you do.”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t do it. You don’t live with that fucking sound in your ears.”

“I live with all kinds of things. It’s the others that don’t. Well, I want them to pay, too. And there’s something more.”

“What?”

“You need to be on the inside, son. You can’t cut loose, not after the things you’ve done. You’ve tried nihilism. And it’s been caustic to your soul, I know.”

Larison squeezed his eyes shut. He felt like his head was being crushed in a vise. “I can’t. I can’t take this anymore.”

“We’ll get you help. The best help there is. Between the money and what’s on those tapes, we can change some things that should have been changed a long time ago.”

Larison opened his eyes and breathed through his mouth. He felt sick. He’d been such an idiot, thinking he could get free. An idiot.

“The million is yours no matter what. You earned it. You paid for it. Tell me how to get it to you and it’s done. If you want the rest-the million a year, the protection, the power to set some wrong things right-we need to talk more.”

Idiot. Fucking idiot. You could have killed him. You could have-

“Think it over. Take your time.”

– killed him, you-

His stomach clenched. He clicked off the phone, leaned over, and convulsively threw up onto the curb. He gasped, his back heaving, then gagged and threw up again.

You could have killed him.

He stood there for a moment sucking wind, his hands on his knees, his eyes and nose streaming.

And not just Hort. He could have killed Marcy, too. Why hadn’t he? What stupid, pathetic sentiment had permitted him to be so fatally, disgustingly stupid? He told himself he would never make a mistake like that again, and even as he thought it he knew how meaningless the vow was now, how hollow.

When he felt a little steadier, he looked around. There was a gas station across the street. He walked over and found a guy in blue coveralls in the garage.

“I need to borrow a hammer,” Larison said, his voice ragged.

He could tell the guy wanted to refuse, and was almost glad for it. He looked at the guy, struggling to control his rage, wanting someone to vent it on. The guy figured out refusing would be a bad idea. He leaned over and pulled a large orange dead blow hammer off the floor. He handed it to Larison. “This is all I’ve got,” he said.

Larison hefted it. It weighed about four pounds. He imagined the damage it would do to a man’s skull. He said, “I’ll be right back.”

He walked around to the side of the building, took a diamond out of the bag, and set it on the concrete sidewalk. He put the bag down, lowered his stance, and gripped the hammer. He looked at the diamond for a moment. It was meaningless, inert.

He raised the hammer over his head and smashed it down. The diamond-the plastic-exploded beneath it. Shards flew in a thousand different directions.

He pulled another from the pack and smashed it with the hammer. It exploded exactly like the first. He did it again. And again. He attacked the bag with the hammer, blasting it, savaging it, beating it the way he wanted to beat Hort’s brains.

He realized he was screaming. He stopped and looked up. The gas station guy was looking at him from around the corner, appalled and afraid and frozen to the spot.

Grimacing, his breath snorting through his nose, Larison stalked over to him, the hammer dangling from his hand like a war club. The guy’s eyes widened and his face went pale.

Larison stopped an arm’s length from the guy. He looked at him for a long moment, grinning with hate. He held out the hammer. “Thanks,” he said.

The guy took it without a word or even a nod. Larison went back to the bus stop. He left the bag where he’d dropped it.

Another bus pulled up. The doors opened with a pneumatic hiss. He got on. He didn’t even know where it was going.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that even through his rage and his nausea, his horror at how close he’d been and at how badly he’d blown it, he understood what he was going to do.

Accept Hort’s offer.

Take the money.

And when he was ready, when he had regrouped and resettled and refocused, get to Hort. He thought the courier, the blond guy from the unit, might be the right place to start. He was good, Larison could see that much. But he saw something else, too: The guy wasn’t happy. He knew he was being manipulated, and was looking for a way out. Maybe Larison could give him one.

He smiled grimly. Because when he found Hort, he would do things to him, do everything to him, until he made the sound Larison could never get out of his ears.

This time, it would be like music.

37. A Drink

Ulrich’s secure line buzzed. He looked at the phone, wondering if it would be better to just not answer. It was never good news. Never.

Still.

“Ulrich.”

“Clements. Okay to talk?”

“Why do you always ask me that? Yes, it’s okay. It’s always okay. This is a fucking secure line, do you not know that?”

There was a pause. “Are you watching CNN?”

“No.”

“There was a shooting in Arlington. Two dead.”

Ulrich clenched his jaw. “Theirs or ours?”

“Ours.”

Ulrich didn’t say anything. He felt numb. The numbness wasn’t unpleasant. At the moment, he much preferred it to whatever sensation it must have been blocking.

“We can still turn this around,” Clements said.

Ulrich laughed. It started slowly and built to a cackle. He thought of these idiots, blundering about, thinking they had a clue, relentlessly ruining his life. It wouldn’t last, he knew, but for now, he relished the humor element in the whole thing.

“You want to know how you can tell when a war is lost?” he said, wiping his eyes. “When people describe it as ‘still winnable.’ Well, that’s what I’ve been doing with myself all along on this. I keep telling myself it’s still winnable. But it’s not. It’s just not. There are too many idiots. I can’t keep fighting them. I can’t keep fighting you.”

He set the phone back in the cradle and put his face in his hands. He laughed again. And then he was crying.

People wouldn’t understand. He’d worked so hard to keep the country safe. Yes, he’d authorized some difficult things, some questionable things. But what looked questionable now didn’t look at all that way after 9/11. Back then, no one was questioning anything. They all just wanted to be safe, never mind how. So what, he was going to be hanged now for refusing to let a bunch of rules and procedures and bureaucracy prevent him from keeping people safe? What was the alternative? Dot his I’s and dash his T’s and just let the next attack happen? That would have been the real crime.

He blew out a long breath. It didn’t matter. He’d known the risks, hadn’t he? He’d never been in the military, but he’d performed his own kind of service. Soldiers risked life and limb defending America. He’d risked his job, his reputation, his own freedom in the same cause. How many people could make that claim? No matter what happened, he had every reason to be proud of what he’d done. And his family did, too. Even if no one else could understand, they would.

He thought about getting a drink. It was a simple thing, really, a man stopping by a bar on the way home from work. He wished he’d done it more often.

He really ought to do it now. It might be a nice memory later.

38. Property of the U.S. Government

On the platform at the West Falls Church Metro station, Ben used the iPhone to find Ulrich’s particulars. The former vice presidential chief of staff was now a “special policy adviser” for a lobbying outfit called Daschle, Davis, Baishun, one of the K Street giants, just as Larison had said. An Orange Line train would take him to Farragut West Station, a few blocks from Daschle, Davis’s headquarters.

On the ride in, Ben considered a number of stratagems for getting into Ulrich’s office. A back entrance, the roof, an elevator shaft, a maintenance stairwell. Or, having seen Ulrich’s picture on his firm’s website, just set up and wait for him in the parking garage under the building. Or outside the front door, if he used the Metro. But any of those would require reconnaissance, and reconnaissance required time. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted knowledge. And he wanted it tonight.

Besides, he thought he had a better way.

When he emerged aboveground from Farragut West Station, it was dark. Commuters flowed past him down the station escalators, car headlights illuminated the street. The air was warm and soggy and smelled like Washington, a city built on a swamp. He walked a block north to K Street and found the Daschle, Davis building, an expensive-looking glass-and-chrome square dominating the entire block.

He went through the revolving doors, and instantly the sounds of outside traffic were erased, replaced by a quiet hush and cool, dry air. The expansive lobby mirrored the exterior-glass, chrome, a polished granite floor. A rent-a-security-guard, a black guy in a blue uniform, sat behind a station in front of the elevators. Ben walked over, his footfalls echoing in the cavernous silence.

“I’m here to see David Ulrich.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I don’t.”

“Who should I tell him is here?”

Ben could almost have smiled. He took out his credentials and set them in front of the guard. “Dan Froomkin. FBI.”

The guard picked up a phone. Explained who was here. Paused. Said, Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I have. Hung up the phone. Gestured to a sign-in sheet on the stand in front of him.

“Just need you to sign in, Mr. Froomkin.”

This time, Ben did smile. “Happy to,” he said.

He rode the elevator to the fourth floor and took the stairs from there. He didn’t consider Ulrich a threat, but using the unexpected route was a habit that had always served him well before. He mentally patted himself on the back for thinking to arrive as Froomkin. He might have dropped Hort’s name, or mentioned JSOC, but he expected that if Ulrich met him under a pretext like that, he would have come down to the lobby and kept Ben away from his inner sanctum. A possible interview by the FBI, though, was something you’d want conducted in private. And privacy was a funny thing. The same kind of space that could make a person feel confident could also make him feel exposed and vulnerable. Another kernel of wisdom from the Farm.

A smiling, pantsuited receptionist led him down a hushed, thickly carpeted hallway past a series of closed mahogany doors. Discretion, the place seemed to say. Quiet influence. Compartmentalization.

At the end of the hallway was a single open door. The receptionist gestured to it and went back the way they’d come. Ben went inside and closed the door behind him.

Ulrich was sitting behind a dark, massive desk. All these guys, compensating with their furniture. To the side was an ego wall covered by photos of Ulrich with the former vice president and various other political luminaries and insiders.

Ulrich set down a pen and stood, a big man, maybe a former linebacker now going to seed. “Agent Froomkin,” he said, looking up, “what can I-”

He saw Ben’s face and his mouth dropped open. Ben thought, You know me. Son of a bitch.

Ben understood Ulrich’s move an instant before Ulrich did, and shot forward just as Ulrich lunged for the phone. Ben leaped onto the massive desk and kicked him in the face. Ulrich went flying backward. The phone clattered to the desk. Ulrich bounced off the wall behind him, blood flowing from his nose, and somehow managed to snatch the handset off the desk. He raised it to his ear and Ben stomped the receiver. Shards of plastic exploded under his heel. Ulrich looked at the receiver as though in disbelief that it had just been rendered useless, then drew his arm back to throw it at Ben. Ben eliminated that possibility by jumping down from the desk directly in front of him. Ulrich dropped the receiver and turned to run the other way. Ben grabbed him by a wrist and the back of his neck and slammed his face into the desk. He twisted his arm up behind his back and Ulrich cried out.

“Go ahead and scream,” Ben said. “Get security up here. Get the cops. First thing I’ll tell them, the first thing my lawyer will talk about in the press conference he calls, is the Caspers. And Ecologia.”

He felt Ulrich freeze up at just the mention of the words. Whatever the Caspers and Ecologia were, Larison hadn’t been bullshitting him.

Ben pulled Ulrich from the desk and shoved him into his chair. Ulrich wiped blood from his face and stared at his hand as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What do you want?” he said.

“I want to know how you recognized me.”

“I mean, why are you here?”

Ben realized Ulrich was too smart, and too tough, to answer questions based on assumptions. He tried to imagine the situation from Ulrich’s perspective. Ulrich thinks the FBI is calling on him. Either he’s confused by that or, more likely, scared. Then a guy shows up who Ulrich recognizes is definitely not FBI because Ulrich already knows him as something else. Something else that freaks Ulrich out enough for him to try to call security without saying another word. He hadn’t gotten confused when he saw Ben. He’d gotten scared shitless. Why?

Because he recognized you as JSOC. Because he assumed you were here to kill him. And then he realized you weren’t-because he’s still alive, because someone who was here to kill him wouldn’t have announced himself to a guard and let himself be recorded by all the security cameras in the lobby and at the front desk. Now he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s trying to find out.

“I’ve been tasked by the U.S. government with recovering some stolen property,” Ben said. “And I have.”

Ulrich’s eyes widened. “You recovered-”

He caught himself before he could say more. But he’d already said enough.

“Yes,” Ben said. “Larison’s dead. I recovered the tapes. Now I want to know who I return them to.”

Ulrich didn’t say anything, but Ben could see the eagerness, and the calculation, in his eyes.

“You want them?” Ben asked.

“Why would you think I do?”

Ben was impressed by the man’s discipline. But he’d already slipped, and Ben wasn’t going to allow him to recover.

“My mistake,” Ben said. He turned and started to walk to the door. “I’ll give them to the Justice Department.”

“Wait.”

Ben turned and looked at him.

“I’m not saying I’m interested. But… what are you asking for?”

Ben waited a moment to let him sweat. “You can start by telling me how you recognized me.”

Ulrich licked blood from his lips. “I’ve seen your picture.”

“How?”

“Your file.”

“Bullshit. There’s no photo associated with my file.”

Ulrich licked his lips again. “All right, look. I can see there was a mix-up here-”

“Just tell me the truth. Or I’ll know I can’t trust you with the tapes.”

“Okay, okay. The CIA’s been trying to get those tapes back. They-”

“The CIA might have a photo of me. Or maybe they could get one. But that doesn’t tell me what you matched it to.”

Ulrich didn’t answer. Ben didn’t give him time to think of another lie. He turned and walked toward the door.

“Lanier! Paula Lanier. She took the picture. While you were sleeping, on the way to Costa Rica.”

Ben stopped and turned. He tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t. “What?”

“She works for me, all right? Or she did, when I represented the vice president’s office. Now I’m more of an asset for her because of my connections. Or, she’s my asset. Sometimes it gets hard to tell.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I knew the FBI was going to be involved in this thing, okay? I knew as soon as it broke, and I needed someone I could trust. So I pulled some strings and had Lanier assigned. She’s been reporting developments to me. Including the involvement of a mysterious operative who wouldn’t even acknowledge his affiliations.”

“Who sent those contractors to Costa Rica? Who sent the two Ground Branch guys?”

“That was a CIA op.”

“But you knew about it.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I make it a habit to know about everything.”

Ben thought. Someone had followed him from the airport that afternoon. The only person outside of Hort who knew he’d been selected as the courier was Paula. He could have kicked himself for his stupidity, for letting his guard down. She’d played him. And he’d fallen for it.

“What about the two guys who followed me from National today?”

“Ground Branch again.”

“Who the hell’s running the CIA? You?”

“It’s not a question of who’s running it. People have common interests. We work together.”

“And your common interest on the tapes is the Caspers.”

“That’s everybody’s common interest. Every American’s, anyway.”

“What are they?”

“Why are you asking me? You work for Horton, right? He knows as much as I do. Christ, he was responsible for their orderly disposition.”

Ben was surprised but didn’t show it. “I’ll ask him when I’m ready to ask him. I’m asking you now.”

Ulrich looked at him. “What do you think is on those tapes?”

Ben shrugged. “Waterboarding. Torture.”

Ulrich laughed. “Waterboarding and torture aren’t even news anymore. Over half the country supports torture, didn’t you know? And over sixty percent of Evangelicals.”

“Video would be different.”

“Well, that’s probably true. Seeing what American soldiers and spies had to resort to in the war on terror would have been painful. It would have damaged our self-image as a country, weakened our will to do what needs to be done. But the Caspers were the real problem. Asking the country to accept what we had to do about them… that would have been too much. People wouldn’t be able to understand. And they shouldn’t be forced to.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ll give me the tapes?”

“For the truth.”

Ulrich nodded. “You know about the ghost detainees, don’t you?”

Ben thought about what he’d heard. “Rumors. Detainees the CIA was holding without acknowledging their capture or detention. Shuttling them through Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantánamo and the rest so the Red Cross couldn’t verify their existence, or keeping them at the black sites. That’s what the Caspers were?”

Ulrich wiped blood from his mouth, then regarded his hand. “If you want to keep secret prisoners, you have to build secret prisons. After 9/11, we tasked the CIA with doing exactly that. And then we populated what they built.”

“With the Caspers.”

“Among others. Now, the way you hear about it in the media today, you’d think all the people we picked up in the war on terror were innocent. Because once the Supreme Court decided terror detainees had the right to petition for habeas corpus, we had to start letting a lot of them go.”

Ben thought of the Manila city jail. “Well, if you couldn’t prove they’d done anything-”

“Just because we couldn’t prove it in a court of law didn’t mean it wasn’t so. And look, okay, maybe some of them were innocent. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. But now they have a grudge. Meaning, even if they weren’t dangerous before, they are now. You want to be the one who lets one of these guys go and then have him slaughter more Americans? You’re JSOC, not the ACLU, I thought you’d get this. It’s why I’m telling you.”

Ben didn’t answer. Not so much earlier, he would have gotten it. But now, hearing it out loud, he wasn’t sure.

“So you captured these ghosts. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, the way they were interrogated might have offended the sensibilities of the armchair quarterbacks who’ve already forgotten 9/11.”

“You waterboarded them?”

Ulrich tugged on his beard. “At first.”

Ben had been waterboarded during his SERE-survival, evasion, resistance, escape-training. He’d consented to it, the people who’d done it had been his own instructors, he’d been provided with a safe word and a tennis ball he could just drop at any time to stop the whole thing, and it had only been once-and still it was one of the most unpleasant things that had ever been done to him, instantly stripping away his will and replacing it with paralyzing, childlike terror. He’d held out for fourteen seconds, which made him practically the class champion. And the Caspers had gotten the real thing, and who knows how many times.

“What do you mean, ‘at first’?”

“Let’s just say that, by the end, they wished they were just being waterboarded.”

Ben looked at him, trying to imagine what you would have to do to a man to make him long to be waterboarded, instead. He couldn’t come up with anything. He said, “And the CIA videotaped it.”

“You got it. There’s no genius like a CIA genius. Fundamentally, they created a whole line of government snuff films.”

Ben imagined a bunch of guys watching God knows what through a viewfinder, recording it, watching it again later on a screen in a dark room. Rewinding it. Pausing. He thought of what Hort had said, about how torture is always about something else. He felt sick.

“And you’re worried that if the public ever sees the videos, they’re not just going to go after the people who filmed and starred in them, they’re going to go after the producers, too.”

Ulrich looked at him. “If I were you, I’d be a little more concerned about Muslim audiences on this than I would be with domestic ones.”

“Yeah, I get that. But you’re not me.”

Ulrich didn’t answer.

Something was tickling at Ben’s mind. There were a lot of things you knew when you were in the unit, or at least that you’d hear about. But the Caspers… not a word. How had they covered it up so completely?

“What did you do with them?” he said. “The Caspers. When you were done with them. Done filming.”

Ulrich didn’t answer.

Ben said, “Tell me you didn’t.”

“Look, these were genuinely dangerous men-”

“Oh, man-”

“-who couldn’t just be released. But they couldn’t be tried, either, or they would have gone public with tales of torture. And besides, they’d go free in the end anyway because people would say their confessions had been coerced.”

“What did you do with them?”

“They were disposed of.”

“You mean, the CIA just executed them? Prisoners?”

“Not the CIA. JSOC. Your commander. Horton.”

Ben blinked despite himself. “What? Why?”

“JSOC was being run out of the Office of the Vice President. The Caspers were just one of the operations your people were involved in. They were ghosts anyway-no records of their capture, movement, detention, or imprisonment. It was as though they hadn’t existed. We just had to make de jure what was de facto. And now it is. They don’t exist. They never did.”

“Except for the tapes.”

“Yes. That’s why we wanted those tapes back. You ought to get a medal for recovering them.”

For some reason, the thought of this guy proposing a medal, and for this, made Ben want to hit him again.

“What was Ecologia, then?”

“A company that devised an innovative way to dispose of cadavers. The Ecologia machine freeze-dries Aunt Betty in liquid nitrogen, vibrates her into dust, vacuums off the water, removes any dental or surgical metals with a magnet, and leaves you with nothing but compost. They recommend you plant a tree using Aunt Betty as the fertilizer. A memory tree, I think they call it.”

“That’s how you got rid of the Caspers. You killed them and then freeze-dried them.”

“Actually, as I understand it, the Caspers were run through the machines alive. Drugged first. They didn’t feel anything. They weren’t afraid. They didn’t know what was coming.”

Ben shook his head. He’d been involved in some dark things, some things that crossed the line, he knew. But this… it was extreme.

“Are you starting to get it now?” Ulrich said. “Imagine videos worse than Abu Ghraib, worse than what’s described even in the nonredacted version of the CIA inspector general’s report. Videos that would have implicated our brave men and women in activities the liberal media would call murder. If those tapes had gotten out, it would have been a national security calamity.”

Ben thought for a minute. He said, “Who signed off on acquiring the Ecologia units? That must have been a big purchase, right? Liquid nitrogen, high-powered vibration, and magnets… and there would have been training, too, right? It’s not like you bought a toaster oven with an instruction booklet. This was big. Whose fingerprints are on the authorization paperwork?”

Ulrich didn’t answer.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“If your point is that I’m motivated because I’ve got my own skin in the game-”

“That was my point. Yeah.”

“-you should know that my own exposure or lack of exposure is hardly the point. The national security risk exists either way.”

“Can you really tell the difference between one and the other?”

“Just give me the tapes. I’ll make sure they’re properly disposed of. And you might have noticed, I’m pretty well connected in Washington.”

“You’re kidding, right? You’re a lobbyist. That’s, what, one level higher on the food chain than a telemarketer?”

“I’m talking about influence. And if you don’t think I have it, you’re not paying attention. I’d say you deserve a promotion for what you’ve done. The posting of your choice. Maybe an assignment to the National Security Council, how would that be? The national security adviser is a personal friend. You’d have his ear, you could see how policy is really made. From the inside.”

Ben looked at Ulrich’s ego wall. His urge to hit the guy had evaporated, leaving behind a sediment of dull nausea and a nameless feeling of being somehow… tainted.

“I’ve seen it,” he said. He turned and walked toward the door.

“Wait,” Ulrich said. “What about the tapes?”

Ben didn’t answer. He opened the door and kept on walking.

Ulrich hurried to his side. “Then tell me what you want,” he said, his voice low. “Money? The government was prepared to pay a hundred million to have those tapes back. You can have that, too.”

Ben hit the down button in the elevator bank. His head hurt. He wanted to be alone.

“Just tell me what you want,” Ulrich said.

A chime sounded. The elevator doors opened. Ben stepped inside.

“I’ll let you know,” he said.

“Wait, you can’t just walk away. We’re talking about the property of the U.S. government. You can’t-”

The doors closed. Ben hit the button for the third floor. He’d take the stairs from there.

He considered that phrase, property of the U.S. government. He wondered if Ulrich intended, or even recognized, its sudden ambiguity.

39. More Inside

Ben walked through downtown D.C., feeling exhausted, adrift. This thing had seemed so straightforward at first. Why didn’t it now? Nothing had really changed. There were tapes. If the tapes got out, it would be a terrorist recruitment bonanza. He’d been tasked with locating the tapes, and he’d carried out his orders. He hadn’t managed a neat, final conclusion, there was no real victory to declare, but under the circumstances he’d achieved the best possible outcome, or anyway the least bad one. The information he’d uncovered had enabled Uncle Sam to avoid a checkmate in favor of a stalemate. And for purposes of keeping those tapes under wraps, a stalemate was just as good as a win.

So why did he feel so… empty? And unclean?

What had Larison said? How can there be a conspiracy when everyone is complicit?

He called Hort. One ring, then, “Where have you been?”

“Sorry. I couldn’t check in earlier.”

“Damn, son, don’t make me hear from Larison before I hear from you. I’m old enough for that kind of shit to give me a heart attack.”

“You heard from Larison?”

“I left him a note with the diamonds. I needed to tell him what you gave him wasn’t the genuine article.”

Ben was so surprised he shook his head as though to clear it. “What?”

“Yes, I know that’s a surprise. I’ll brief you on the rest when you’re ready.”

“They were fake? Do you know what he would have done if he’d realized?”

“I told you, I’ll brief you-”

“I’m ready right now.”

“Where are you?”

“Downtown D.C.”

“I’m at the Pentagon. Platform, Farragut West Station? That’s four stops for me, I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He clicked off. For some reason, beyond the obvious fact that Hort had put him in danger without warning him of it, it bugged him that Larison hadn’t gotten what he was supposed to. Maybe it was a brothers-in-arms thing. Maybe it was because what Hort had done felt exactly like the kind of manipulation Larison had warned him about. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was, he didn’t like it.

Hort showed up on time. “Are you hungry?” he said, walking over to the wickets, where Ben was standing. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a good steak.”

They headed west on K Street, then north on Nineteenth, against traffic both ways. It was a small thing, but Hort had trained Ben never to give the opposition something for free, and Ben wasn’t surprised he lived what he taught. After about five minutes, they arrived at a place called the Palm. White-linen-covered tables and booths, polished wood floors, cartoons of the celebrities who’d eaten there plastered on the walls. Seated maybe a hundred people and looked pretty full. The manager greeted Hort as “Colonel Horton.” Told him not to worry that he didn’t have a reservation. Ben wondered what it was all about. Hort didn’t ordinarily debrief him at places like this one. Whatever. The aroma of well-seasoned steak was suddenly incredibly inviting.

They ordered a pair of sixteen-ounce New York strips. Hort chose a bottle of wine, too, a California Cabernet from a place called Schlein Vineyard.

“I don’t get it,” Ben said quietly after the waiter had departed. He had to suppress his irritation. “How could you give Larison fakes? Isn’t he going to find out and just release the tapes?”

“I can’t guarantee that he won’t. But I couldn’t guarantee it the other way, either. Overall, I think we’re safer if he gets his payout as an annuity instead of as a lump sum. A modified version of your proposal.”

“Safer for whom? You know what he would have done if he’d figured it out while we were still together?”

“You would have handled that.”

“Come on, Hort, what was it, three days ago you were telling me I wasn’t at his level?”

“Yet.”

“Yet. I caught up to him in three days?”

“You were supposed to be just the courier. If you’d known, it would have affected your demeanor. Larison would have spotted that. So you would have been in more danger knowing than you were in ignorance. It was a calculated risk. And from the results, I’d say it was the right one.”

Ben shook his head, wanting to say more, not knowing what. It was true, it had turned out well. And it wasn’t the first time he’d been sent into the shit without knowing everything he would have wanted to, or felt he was entitled to. But still, that feeling of being… manipulated. It was settling in more deeply.

“I guess,” he said, after a moment. “But I’ll tell you, having seen the guy in action twice now, I wouldn’t want to piss him off unnecessarily.”

“You forget. I know him.”

Ben thought of that phrase Hort had used on the flight from Manila: I know people. At the time, he’d thought he understood. Now he realized Hort hadn’t been talking about contacts, or at least not only. He was talking about people’s natures. He wondered, uncomfortably, what Hort thought he knew about him. Ben could be manipulative when he needed to be-he had been with Marcy Wheeler, in fact-but it had never been second nature to him. The thought that Hort’s whole approach to everyone he knew involved assessment, and maneuver, and exploitation, and the realization that Hort probably wasn’t atypical in that regard, at least among a certain class of player… it was making him feel naïve, and concerned, and disgusted, all at the same time.

The waiter brought the wine. Hort tasted it and nodded. The waiter filled their glasses and moved off.

Hort raised his glass. “Good work.”

They touched glasses and drank. Ben barely tasted the wine. What he really wanted was a hot shower. And about thirty hours of sleep. And to not think anymore.

Ben set down his glass. “I was followed from the airport.”

Hort nodded. “I wondered. There was something on the news about a shooting in Arlington. You think I had something to do with that?”

Ben shook his head. “No.”

“Good. Although I wouldn’t blame you.”

It was awkward feeling so suspicious of Hort. He supposed he needed to get used to it. “I need to ask you some questions,” he said.

“I want you to. It’s why I brought you here. So we could talk.”

“Larison told me about the Caspers. About Ecologia.”

Hort took a sip of wine. “I thought he might.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You needed to find out in your own way.”

More manipulation, then. He was seeing a side of Hort he’d never adequately appreciated. Or that he’d been willfully blind to. “How… you were involved in that?”

“Yes.”

Ben waited. Hort said, “In the last administration, JSOC was reporting directly to the Office of the Vice President. There was a special class of detainees the CIA had rendered out of various Asian and European countries. Highly secret. Unacknowledged. People we picked up in targeted operations, not the wholesale bullshit we used to populate Guantánamo. The vice president wanted a specialist to interrogate them. One man, to keep things compartmentalized, to have a single source who could assemble the pieces and see through the lies. I went to Larison.”

“Larison tortured them.”

“That’s… what it turned into.”

“That’s what you meant before. When you told me not to give in to that temptation.”

“That’s right. And I hope you were listening.”

“Did you get anything from them?”

There was a pause. Hort said, “Nothing we couldn’t have gotten using the Army Field Manual. If we’d wanted to. But like I told you, the vice president and his crew were after more than just the results.”

“And when they were done, they couldn’t let them go.”

“That’s right. Once the original mistake was made, we were faced with a variety of unpleasant choices. The least unpleasant was the Ecologia program.”

“When was this?”

“September 2006. The same time the president acknowledged the existence of the black sites and the fourteen high-value detainees being moved from the sites to Guantánamo. And there was a bonus: the administration needed some actual bad guys in Guantánamo, which the black site detainees provided.”

“A distraction?”

“Misdirection. All the president was doing was announcing what was already widely known. The black sites became the story, and while public attention was focused there, Larison was quietly eliminating the Caspers, the black sites’ premier occupants.”

“You used Larison for it.”

“To maintain the compartmentalization. Plus, I thought he was hardened at that point. Another mistake. In fact, he was suffering. But too tough to admit it.”

“But… that means he would be on the tapes.”

“I doubt he cares at this point. Or if he did, he could just have deleted or obscured his face.”

Ben was as fascinated as he was appalled. What Hort was telling him had really happened. It didn’t get more inside than this.

“How did it work?”

“The program?”

“Yes.”

Hort shrugged. “The CIA was holding the Caspers in various secret prisons-Thailand, Romania, Lithuania, a prison within a prison at Bagram. They were identified only by a number. Larison would show up with the prisoner’s number and an authorization code. And the guards would turn the prisoner over.”

“Like an ATM.”

“Same concept. But without records of deposits and withdrawals.”

They were quiet for a moment. Something occurred to Ben. He said, “Giving Larison fakes… was that authorized? On the call you had me listen in on, the national security adviser was on board with giving him the real thing.”

Hort smiled. “No. It wasn’t authorized.”

“Then who has the real diamonds?”

Hort’s smile broadened. “I do.”

Ben shook his head. “What are you… what’s going on here?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on. The country is facing a perfect storm of vulnerability. The previous administration turned programs like rendition and torture that had always rightly been run at a retail level into a wholesale operation, an operation that couldn’t be concealed. There’s a public backlash now and the new administration is having trouble containing it. Meanwhile, intel demonstrates what common sense already told us: U.S. torture has been the greatest jihadist recruitment bonanza ever invented. We need new capabilities to address the problems we’ve created. Unfortunately, we’ve lost some of the old ones. For a while, there was an off-the-books operation run by someone named Jim Hilger that had been doing the country a lot of good, but that’s been wiped out.”

He took a sip of wine. “I and a few others are trying to rebuild. The military is going to have an increasingly influential role in the new order of things. Two active war theaters with no end in sight, the war on terror, military commissions for terror suspects, that’s all bipartisan now. The last administration wanted to use the military in domestic law enforcement, and I expect we’ll see more of that, too. I want you to be part of it all.”

Ben thought. The management-style questions, letting him listen in on the conference call with the national security adviser… this is what it was all about. He didn’t know what the hell to think.

“And Larison?”

“I want Larison to be part of it, too. A highly capable man and officially dead on top of it. There’s a lot he could do. And a lot you could learn from him.”

Ben thought about what Larison had told him, and wondered if maybe Hort didn’t know the man the way he thought he did.

“You see the pattern?” Hort said. “We take the gloves off, it works, so we do more of it. What should be a retail program goes wholesale. You get force drift, mistakes, revelations, commissions, dismantling. Now we’re unprotected, our methods have made things worse, and when we’re attacked again, the public will scream for protection and won’t care how. And we’ll repeat the whole sorry cycle again.”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t get what you’re trying to do.”

Hort nodded. “This is all new to you,” he said. “I get that. I want to explain a few things about how America really works. I think then you’ll understand where I’m coming from.”

“Okay.”

“Number one, the country is run by corporate interests. I never understand when people get all worked up about socialism. There’s no socialism here. There’s corporatism.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Okay, pop quiz. Why do we give nearly three billion dollars a year to Israel?”

“So she can defend herself.”

“Wrong. It’s just a way of funneling a subsidy to U.S. arms manufacturers, which is where Israel, by quiet understanding, turns around and spends the money. But no one would support it if we called it ‘Raytheon aid.’ ‘Foreign aid’ just sounds so much more aboveboard.”

Ben didn’t answer. Hort said, “Okay, next. Health care reform.

Why?”

“So more people will have insurance.”

“Wrong. By requiring more people to purchase insurance, the government creates new customers for the insurance companies and big pharma.”

Ben nodded, unsure. He still didn’t understand where Hort was trying to lead him.

“And the AIG bailout was a way of funneling money to Goldman Sachs, which was owed thirteen billion by AIG and would have gone under without it. Hell, the government does this for its own, too. Without bulk mail subsidies, there would be no junk mail, and the post office would have nothing to deliver. And how do you think Halliburton and all the rest have made out from Iraq and Afghanistan? Think that’s just a coincidence? None of this is even new, by the way. The Marshall Plan wasn’t about helping Europe. It was about creating new customers for American corporations.”

He took a sip of wine. “People don’t realize it, but we have corporate interests so large they have foreign policy concerns. These corporations will pay for intel. And they’ll pay for action. Hilger, for all the good he was doing, was beholden to several of them. With a hundred million in start-up capital, we’ll be independent.”

Ben shook his head, thinking this couldn’t be true. “But… I mean, we’re not supposed to be independent, isn’t that right?”

“Theoretically, yes. We’re supposed to be beholden. The question is, who are we beholden to?”

“Well… Congress, I guess. I mean, I know they’re a pain in the ass, but…”

“Congress? You know what the turnover rate in congressional elections is? In the neighborhood of two percent. Even the North Korean Politburo has a higher turnover rate than that. So who are we beholden to? Not the people. In a democracy, voters choose their leaders. In America, leaders choose their voters. There’s no competition anymore.”

“Come on, Hort, Republicans and Democrats… they hate each other, right? There’s competition.”

Hort laughed. “That’s not competition. It’s supposed to look that way, so people think their interests are being looked after, they have a choice, they can make a difference, they’re in charge. But they don’t.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m afraid it does. You see, there’s more money to be made in cooperation than there is in competition. It’s the same dynamic that leads to cartels. You can argue that the cartels should be competing. But they don’t see it that way. Their profit motive enables them to rise above the urge to compete. In the service of the greater good, naturally. People who think there’s actual friction, and real competition, between Democrats and Republicans, or between the press and politicians, or between the corporations and their supposed overseers, they’re like primitives looking at shadows on the wall and believing the shadows are the substance.”

Ben thought of Ulrich. Were he and Horton the same team? Is that what all this talk about cooperation meant?

“I went to see Ulrich,” he said. “Just now. Larison said I should.”

Hort smiled, obviously pleased. “I know you did,” he said. “And how was the late Mr. Ulrich?”

Ben looked at him, thinking he must have misheard. “What?”

40. Three Numbers

Ulrich cleaned himself up in the restroom. Now that the shock of the encounter was wearing off, pain was beginning to manifest itself. His jaw hurt, his nose hurt, and two of his teeth were loose. He felt nauseated and shaky.

What was killing him was the way he was being whipsawed. Hope, despair, then back again… you could reach the point where you just wanted it to be over, never mind how.

If what Treven had told him was true, there was still a chance. Talk to Horton, make a deal of some sort. Yes, there would be concessions-painful ones, certainly. But no one wanted those tapes out. In the end, that’s what would matter. He’d call Clements, brief him, coordinate. They’d come up with something.

He walked back to his office. Clements was waiting inside, standing in front of his desk, examining the shattered remnants of the phone. Ulrich jumped when he saw him. “Christ,” he said, “What are you doing here? I was just going to call you.”

Clements looked at him. “The door was open.”

Ulrich walked in. The door closed behind him. He turned and saw two burly men in dark suits that looked like they didn’t get worn very often. He noticed someone had closed the drapes.

“Is this supposed to scare me?” he said.

“Just some private security. We’ve been using Blackwater for a lot of projects lately.”

“What do you want?”

“I want the audiotapes you made.”

“You can’t have them.”

“I need you to open your wall safe.”

“Even if I were inclined to open it for you, and I’m not, and even if the tapes were in it, and they’re not, it wouldn’t help you. I told you, I made copies. They’re with a friend. Who will release them if anything happens to me.”

“The problem is, I don’t believe you. Look at you, you look down your nose at everyone, Ulrich, there’s no one you trust that much. And you had them handy the other day when you were on the phone, right here. Remember? You reminded me recently it was a secure line. I’m calling your bluff.”

Ulrich didn’t answer. The burly guys started to move in. Ulrich opened his mouth to scream for help and Clements nailed him with an uppercut to the solar plexus. Ulrich went down, wheezing.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d screamed,” Clements said. “We’ve checked all the nearby offices. Everyone’s gone home. We checked the soundproofing, too. It’s very impressive.”

The Blackwater guys dragged him over to his desk. Clements watched, flexing his fingers open and closed. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he said. “That, and more.”

They pinned him stomach-up against the desk, his feet dangling just above the floor, each Blackwater guy securing an arm and shoulder. Clements opened a case on the floor and took out a battery-operated power drill. “I want that combination,” he said. “One way or the other.”

Panting, Ulrich said, “You’re bluffing.”

To that, Clements only smiled.

“You won’t get away with this,” Ulrich said. “The cameras in the lobby-”

“We’ve taken care of the cameras. When we’re done here, I’m going to call some of my favorite Washington Post op-ed columnists and leak a few choice details about what you’ve been up to, and what terrorist group might have done this to you. Nothing that could be proven, of course, but you know how those columnists like to traffic in rumors. Makes them feel like they’re savvy, isn’t that what you said? And it’s not as though you’ll still be around to set the record straight.”

He fired up the drill and came closer. “The good news, Ulrich, is that you’re going to be seen as a martyr. We’ll use your death to sow public fear and get more of what we want. See what I’ve learned from you? I hope you’re proud.”

Ulrich tried to kick, but the Blackwater guys braced his legs with their knees. He started to tell Clements to wait, just wait for a second, they could figure this out, discuss it, but one of the Blackwater guys covered his mouth with a callused palm. Ulrich struggled desperately, but the Blackwater guys were too strong, and too experienced. He tried to say something, anything, to reason with Clements, to beg him, to get him to just wait, wait, they didn’t need to do this, he could explain, please, just listen to me! But he could only grunt into the meaty hand crushing his swollen lips and loose teeth.

Clements came closer. The sound of the drill was horrifically loud. Nothing was working. He felt a wave of horrible panic. He struggled harder. He began to scream. Clements reached him with the drill. The Blackwater guys pushed down harder. He watched through bulging eyes over the top of the hand smothering his mouth as Clements placed the drill against his left knee. And then the pain was so shocking, so total, that his thoughts were obliterated. The pain consumed him.

It went on for a long time-both knees and his left elbow. Breaks and questioning in between. Ulrich sobbed and begged. But he held on to the number. The one thing he knew was that once he gave it, they would kill him.

By the time Clements moved to do his right elbow, the desk and the floor around it were covered in piss and sweat and blood. The Blackwater guys were barely restraining him now, just keeping him from sliding off the desk. He’d lost his glasses, and the room and the faces were a blur. At some point he’d lost control of his bowels and the room stank from it, stank from shit and the smell of his own singed flesh. He couldn’t even scream anymore. Something in his throat had cracked.

“After this,” Clements said, “we do your face.”

“Please,” Ulrich croaked. “Please.”

“We can’t let those tapes come out,” Clements said. “Think of the way they’d undermine people’s confidence in government. Imagine what that would do to national security. Be reasonable now. Do what’s best.”

The drill came closer. A sound came from Ulrich’s mouth, a sound he’d never heard before, a moan, a whine, the involuntary tenor of absolute despair. Clements paused and watched him.

Crying, Ulrich rasped three numbers, three numbers that a moment earlier had seemed so important to him. But they weren’t important anymore. Nothing was important. Not the tapes, not the Caspers, not anything.

All he wanted was for it to be over.

41. The Oligarchy

Hort hadn’t responded. But he was still smiling, a smile Ben found increasingly chilling.

“What do you mean, ‘the late Mr. Ulrich’? And how did you know I was there?”

Hort took a sip of wine. “I mean ‘the late Mr. Ulrich’ because Mr. Ulrich is dead now. I understand he was alive when you left him. Though I’m not sure the building’s security tapes will reflect that.”

Ben felt the blood draining from his face. “Did you set me up, Hort?”

Hort regarded him calmly. “How? By making you go to his office? Having him argue with you in the corridor, with blood all over his face?”

Ben thought of what Larison had told him. He imagined Hort, or whoever, whispering to a reporter, He’d been under a lot of stress… family problems, an arrest in Manila… a grudge against the former vice presidential chief of staff…

“How do you know this? What happened to him?”

“It turns out he had some damaging information about some people who used to report to him. Those people went and got the information back. They didn’t ask nicely.”

“You?”

“CIA.”

“They tortured him.”

“I think Ulrich would have called it ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’”

“What about everything you said, about how torture is always about something else?”

“I didn’t do it, and I wouldn’t have done it. Regardless, I never said torture could never work. Hell, it worked for the French in Algeria.”

“But they lost the war.”

“True. But if losing a war isn’t your concern, and if you know for certain the subject has the precise information you’re after, and if you can immediately test the quality of what you get from the subject without wasting your time on wild goose chases because torture produces a hundred times more chaff than wheat, and if the subject dies afterward so he doesn’t spend the rest of his life on a personal jihad against the nation of the people who did it to him, and if no one ever knows about it so the practice doesn’t recruit thousands more terrorists, sure, it can work. Now, the conditions I just described are almost entirely theoretical and have nothing to do with the program Ulrich and company designed, authorized, and implemented. Unfortunately for Ulrich, he seems to have been the rare exception to the rule that torture isn’t worth the cost. At least, that’s what the CIA thinks.”

“And now someone’s going to try to set me up for what happened to him.”

Hort didn’t answer. Ben thought, You want to see a jihad? When I’m done with you, Larison’s going to feel like your best fucking friend.

“The CIA has the security tapes from Ulrich’s building,” Hort said. “Clements generously offered to hand them over to me. Professional courtesy and all that. But I imagine he made copies. By now I’m sure you’ve noticed, that’s the way it works.”

Ben felt sick. “Then I’m compromised. Permanently.”

“No more so than most of the people in this town. It can be managed.”

“Managed how?”

“I’ve bailed you out before, son. I think you can rely on me to do it again.”

“In exchange for what?”

“I told you. I want you to work with me.”

“I already work with you.”

“I’m talking about a different capacity.”

Ben didn’t answer. If he understood what Hort was saying, he couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.

The waiter brought their steaks and moved off. Hort picked up his knife and fork, cut off a juicy chunk, put it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

“Damn,” he said. “That’s good.”

“What capacity?”

“I think you need a little context first.”

“I’m listening.”

Hort took another bite of steak and washed it down with some wine. “The most important thing is this. America is ruled by an oligarchy. If you want to understand America, you have to understand the oligarchy. And if you don’t understand the oligarchy, you can’t understand America.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean a small group of people having de facto control over a country.”

Ben thought of what Larison had said. “You’re talking about a conspiracy?”

“Not at all. Conspiracies are hidden. The oligarchy is right out in the open. It’s just a collection of people in business, politics, the military, and the media who recognize their interests are better served by cooperation than they would be by competition. There aren’t any secret handshakes. Most of the people who are part of the oligarchy don’t even recognize its existence. If they recognize it at all, they think of it as just a benevolent, informal establishment. They tell themselves it selflessly serves the country’s interests rather than selfishly serving its own.”

Ben was equal parts intrigued and horrified. “How does it work?”

Hort chuckled. “Arthur Andersen was examining Enron. The credit agencies were examining the subprimes. That alone ought to tell you everything you need to know about the way the oligarchy works.”

“But it doesn’t have-I don’t know-rules?”

“There are a few unwritten ones. Number one, above a certain pay grade, a politician can never be prosecuted or imprisoned.”

“What about Nixon?”

“Nixon would never have been prosecuted. He was told that if he resigned, he would be pardoned. And that if he didn’t, he would be assassinated.”

Ben shook his head. It seemed too outlandish to be true. “What about Clinton? He was impeached.”

“Sex is the exception. Because it doesn’t offer a patriotism defense.”

“What about the Caspers? Ecologia? People wouldn’t go to prison for that?”

“Some would have. After all, we know from Abu Ghraib that it’s all about the pictures. No pictures, no proof. No proof, no scandal. No scandal, no convictions. But even with video proof of the Caspers and what was done to them, the real architects would never have suffered. The oligarchy wouldn’t be able to whitewash it the way they did Abu Ghraib, but they’d just scapegoat a slightly higher-level target. The midlevel bureaucrats, the Ulrichs of the world, would be the sacrificial lambs. You see, when the oligarchy looks in the mirror and says, ‘The State is me,’ it’s not inaccurate. It’s not hubris. They’re just describing reality. They’ve made it so.”

“Hort… I don’t understand. You just accept this?”

“I’m a realist, son.”

“You don’t want to fight it?”

“Maybe I would have if I’d been born fifty or seventy years earlier. But the establishment is bigger now, more entrenched. The Roosevelt and Truman expansions were ratified by Eisenhower. Kennedy’s and Johnson’s abuses were ratified by Nixon. Bush Jr.’s extraconstitutional moves have all been ratified by Obama. It’s a ratchet effect. There hasn’t been a federal law in the last sixty years that’s done other than increase the government’s power and influence, and the power and influence of the corporations that manage the government by extension. The leviathan only grows.”

“You’re saying it can’t be beaten?”

Hort laughed. “You can’t beat the oligarchy. You can’t beat it because the oligarchy has already won. The establishment is like a virus that’s taken over the organs of the host. Now it acts as a kind of life support system, and if you remove it, the patient it battens on will die. Remember the scene in that movie Alien? Where the creature attaches itself to John Hurt’s face, runs a tentacle down his throat, and puts him in a coma, but if they cut it off, it’ll kill him? That’s the oligarchy. The establishment is a creature whose first priority is ensuring that if you try to remove it, you’ll wind up killing the host.”

“So there’s nothing that can be done.”

“No, there is, and that’s where you come in. The only possible solution is to manage this fucked-up system from the inside. That’s why I wanted the diamonds. And the tapes, if Larison comes around. They give us leverage. Then, if someone within the oligarchy is abusing his position so much that it’s creating a problem for national security, we can quietly remove him, one way or the other.”

“You mean Ulrich.”

“For example.”

“Sounds like the mafia. With me as an enforcer.”

“You can call it that. I prefer to think of it as good management. Would you rather have to clean up another mess like the Caspers, a mess caused by a bunch of fools? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being the cleanup crew. I’m tired of the board of directors being composed of dimwits and ideologues. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers… that’s all just window dressing now, the artifacts of an ancient mythology, the vestments of a dead religion. We need something different now, something suited for the modern world. We need realists, men like us. We are the change we’ve been waiting for.”

He took another mouthful of steak and chewed, nodding appreciatively.

“I don’t buy it,” Ben said. “You could blow it up if you wanted to.”

Hort swallowed. “Suppose I could. Then what? You want a revolution? Chaos? Russia in 1917, China in 1949? Who knows what we’d wind up with in the aftermath. At least now we have order.”

“Maybe order’s overrated.”

“Tell that to the folks in Somalia. You of all people ought to know about that. And besides, our oligarchy has a few things to recommend it. It’s open, for one. Look at me. Descended from slaves, and here I am, a member in good standing. Anyone can join. You just have to believe in it. You just have to pay your dues and follow the rules. That’s what we mean these days by ‘equality of opportunity’ and a ‘meritocratic society.’”

“You’re part of it?”

“Of course I am. I’m not fighting it, am I? I’ve accepted its inevitability. Now I’m just trying to make it run properly.”

“Then… you’re one of the good complicit people, is that what you’re saying?”

Hort took another mouthful of steak. Chewed. Swallowed.

“There’s always been an establishment, son. In every culture, every country. There’s always going to be someone on the inside, pulling the real levers of power and influence and profit. You want it to be moral men, like you and me? Or do you want it to be the Ulrichs of the world? Because it’s going to be someone. That’s the only choice.”

Ben thought of Larison again, what he’d said about how you have to suborn yourself. He wondered if there was ever a person who’d compromised himself without at some point offering up Hort’s own words to the appalled reflection in the mirror.

“Hort… I don’t know. You’re telling me the Constitution doesn’t matter? That seems… that’s a lot.”

“It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s fiction, but necessary fiction. Part of what keeps America strong is the society’s belief that we’re a constitutional republic. That no one is above the law.”

“That we don’t torture.”

Hort nodded. “Now you’re getting it.”

“You’re saying people can’t know the truth.”

“And don’t want to know it. Do you know anything about honne and tatemae?”

“No.”

“Couple of Japanese concepts an exceptional man taught me a long time ago. Honne is the real truth. Tatemae is the façade of truth.”

“You think our job is to maintain the façade of truth?”

“I do. And that’s not a bad thing. Just like every society has an establishment, every society also needs tatemae. Think about Gitmo. What was that all about?”

Ben shrugged. “We needed a place to put the bad guys.”

Hort shook his head. “No, that’s a honne answer. The real purpose of Gitmo was to make the public feel safe. Whether it was actually making anyone safe was a secondary consideration at best. Hell, the truth is, we didn’t even know who we were putting in there, we just wanted a big number so we could announce to the public that we’d captured eight hundred of the ‘worst of the worst.’ Who wouldn’t sleep better at night knowing so many of our enemies had been taken out of the game? But we knew most of them were innocent. But it didn’t matter. We needed the number.”

“But the Caspers weren’t innocent. You said so.”

“That’s right, and if the public ever gets wind of what happened to the Caspers, the whole sorry story will come out, including the part about how most of the detainees were innocent. The public needs talismans, son, things like airport security, silly things like taking your shoes and belt off and leaving your six-ounce tube of toothpaste at home. On a honne level, those kind of ‘security’ measures are laughable. On a tatemae level, they convince people it’s safe to fly, and the economy keeps humming along, safe and profitable for the politicians and the corporations they work for.”

“I just… Hort, I can’t believe what you’re saying.”

“Ask yourself this. If you’re part of the oligarchy, what’s more important: that Americans be safe, or that they feel safe?”

Ben didn’t answer.

“Or what matters more: convicting a guilty man, or having society believe the guilty have been convicted? One guilty man going free is irrelevant, as long as society believes the guilty have been punished. But if society loses that confidence, you get anarchy. And the oligarchy doesn’t like anarchy.”

They were quiet for a few minutes. Hort ate. Ben didn’t.

Hort gestured to Ben’s steak and swallowed some of his own. “Try it, it’s good.”

Ben shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

Hort watched him. “I’m sorry to hear that. Well, when you feel up to it, there’s something I want you to do.”

“What?”

“I told you, we’re rebuilding. There’s you, there’s Larison, I hope, and there are a few others. And there are two in particular I want you to track down.”

“Who?”

“A former marine sniper, goes by the name Dox, is one.”

“Who’s the other?”

Hort took a sip of wine. “The same man who taught me about honne and tatemae. A half-Japanese former soldier gone freelance, named Rain. John Rain.”

“The bartender in Jacó mentioned a guy named Rain. Said he knew him in Vietnam. Called him ‘death personified.’”

Hort nodded, and for a moment his thoughts seemed far away. “I’d say that’s an apt description.”

“You want me to track this guy down. And Dox.”

“They’re the ones who took down Hilger’s operation.”

“This is retaliation?”

“Hell, no. It was unfortunate, but it wasn’t personal. Hilger got in Rain’s and Dox’s business, which even for a man as effective as Hilger turned out not to be a very smart thing to do. No, I want them on our side. I want to make them an offer. But I have to find them first. Sounds like maybe you already have one lead, this bartender in Jacó.”

So this was what all the praise had been about. All the grooming. To entice him. To make him want to be complicit.

“Hort… part of me, I’m honored. But I can’t work for this thing you call the oligarchy.”

Hort took a swallow of wine. “You’ve been working for it. You just didn’t know it.”

“I… whatever you want to call it. I don’t want to be part of it.”

“You want to stay ignorant.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Because you’re not ignorant anymore. You come a certain distance, you can’t just turn around. It doesn’t work like that.”

Ben thought of Larison, asking him, You really want that knowledge?

He thought of what it would be like to kill this man, who’d been a mentor, a father figure.

He decided he could live with it.

“You threatening me, Hort?”

“I don’t have to threaten you. You can work with me or get owned by the CIA. That’s pretty much the deal right now.”

Ben swallowed, his nausea worse. So this was what it meant to be an insider.

“You’re not worried I’m going to expose this?”

Hort laughed. “You still don’t get it, do you? There’s nothing to expose. It’s all right there to see, for anyone who cares to look. But nobody does. And there’s nothing they could do, anyway.”

42. Frog in a Pot

Ben left the restaurant ahead of Hort. He had a killer headache and he felt like the only thing keeping him from puking was that he hadn’t touched his food.

The last thing Hort had said to him before he left was, Think it over. He’d said it with complete confidence, the supreme unconcern of a man who’d had this conversation many times before, and always with the same inevitable result.

He stopped at a CVS pharmacy to pick up some fresh skivvies and a toothbrush, then spent the night in a downtown hotel. He was exhausted, but couldn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling and reran events, trying to make sense of them.

He wished Larison had just released the tapes. He hated that he’d prevented it. But then Al Jazeera would be broadcasting terrorist recruitment propaganda right now. And by commission or omission, Ben would have been part of what caused it.

You see, when the oligarchy looks in the mirror and says, “The State is me,” it’s not inaccurate. It’s not hubris. They’re just describing reality. They’ve made it so.

It was like a terrorist hostage situation. To take out the terrorists, you’d have to sacrifice the hostages. You want to go after the oligarchs and the self-interested, you have to take out the nation, too.

He rubbed his eyes, wishing he could sleep. When this thing had started, he’d so wanted to be on the inside. And then Hort had opened the door and showed him what the inside was really like.

You come a certain distance, you can’t just turn around. It doesn’t work like that.

Maybe I was stupid along the way to get in that position, to get in so deep I couldn’t find my way back, only out.

There had to be a way out of this. There had to be.

– -

He slept fitfully for five hours and was up at just after dawn. He showered, dressed, and headed out to get something to eat. His appetite had returned in the night and he was starving.

The air was already muggy and oppressive. Summer insects buzzed unseen in the trees. He fueled up at a diner and walked to the Lincoln Memorial. He observed Lincoln ’s stoical features, then zigzagged from the Korean to the Vietnam to the World War II memorials. He thought of his parents, of that long-ago Washington weekend. He wondered what they would make of their son now.

He walked along the Mall, past oblivious joggers and robotic early commuters, past pigeons and a lost-looking dog, past the sallow-eyed homeless who watched this scene, surrounded by monuments and marble, every morning and every night. He stared at the hollow dome of the Capitol.

Paula had told him she lived in Fairfax. Maybe she drove to work, but he doubted it. Traffic on 66 had to be a bitch. Why bother, when it was a straight shot on the Orange Line from Fairfax to Federal Triangle Station and from there just a short walk to the Bureau?

He set up in a coffee shop at the intersection of Twelfth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Unless she was in the habit of varying her routes and times, and he’d seen zero evidence of that, he didn’t expect he’d miss her.

He didn’t. He’d been waiting less than an hour when he saw her coming up Twelfth Street. He watched as she turned right onto Pennsylvania Avenue, eight lanes of traffic leading to and from the Capitol, then fell in behind her, squinting into the sun, cars and buses chugging past.

“Paula.”

She jumped and turned around. “What are you doing here?”

She looked scared. He’d expected her to be surprised, but not scared.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked around, then back at him. “Did you kill him?”

“Who?”

“You know who. Ulrich.”

“No. Although I gather certain people might want to make it look that way.”

“How are they going to do that?”

“I saw him right before he died.”

She didn’t answer.

“I know you worked for him, Paula. You sent him my picture. You kept him apprised. That was me they were going to take out in Costa Rica, right? No wonder you were so shaken up. Two guys who are supposed to take me out clean, and I dropped both of them right in front of you. Right on you, actually.”

She looked away. “I didn’t know. Didn’t know that was going to happen.”

“They tried again yesterday, did you know that? Followed me from the airport.”

She pursed her lips. “Those two in Arlington?”

“So you knew about them.”

“It was on the news.”

He looked at her. “Why? I just want to know why.”

“I don’t know anymore,” she said, shaking her head slowly.

“Well, try. Try to explain.”

She sighed. “There are people who know what’s going on, and people who don’t. People who can get things done, and people who can’t.”

“That’s it? That’s why?”

“Look, I joined the FBI right after 9/11 because I wanted to make a difference. It took me about a year to figure out I couldn’t. That no one can make a difference. The system’s too big. The only thing you can make is a stand. And making a stand without making a difference is quixotic at best. More likely, it’s suicide, like some Buddhist monk setting himself on fire to protest something that’s never going to change anyway. So I went from idealist… to realist.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

“At least I see what’s going on. Look at you, stumbling around in the dark, not even knowing why.”

“This is what you meant by ‘No one sees me coming.’ And when you told me you know how to work a cover… your whole life is a cover. And all that bullshit about how you’d rather just be yourself… you think having natural hair is all it takes? Do you even know who you are?”

She frowned. “I know who I am.”

“Bugged you when I asked, though, didn’t it?”

“Oh, are you going to analyze me now?”

He looked at her. “Why’d you sleep with me?”

She shrugged. “You’re a good-looking guy. Is that so hard to understand?”

“That was it? You had an itch to scratch?”

“What, you think I fell in love with you? Please.”

“I think you felt something, yeah. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been so fastidious about my kissing you or seeing where you live. You let me into your body but not into your apartment?

What’s that?”

“It’s what I had to do.”

“To get me to trust you. Drop my guard.”

“Something like that.”

“Something like that. So you found out I was the courier, and told Ulrich, and they set another team on me.”

“I told you, I didn’t know what they were going to do.”

“And I’m the one who’s stumbling around in the dark?”

She didn’t answer.

“Look me in the eye, Paula. Prove to me you’re not human, because I don’t believe it. Tell me you didn’t feel anything.”

“What if I did? We call that ‘two birds with one stone.’ You have a problem mixing a little pleasure with your business?”

“So you fucked me for business. What does that make you?”

“But I told you, I enjoyed it, too.”

“Good that you enjoy your work.”

Again she said nothing.

“There’s no other way for you, is there? You can’t do something only for yourself. Even when you try, it’s really for the people who are pulling your strings.”

“You can think what you want.”

“Exactly. That’s the difference between you and me.”

“You’ll come around. Everybody does.”

“You’re confusing me with you,” he said, shaking his head. “Look it up. It’s called projection.”

He walked away, past the traffic, the blank-eyed buildings, the commuter zombies.

He imagined a frog in a pot, the water getting gradually warmer, the frog never noticing any of it. He imagined people telling themselves they would never be part of something corrupt, then telling themselves they would only be part of it to make it better, then telling themselves, hey, the thing wasn’t corrupt in the first place, it was just the way of the world, they’d been naïve before and now they were savvy.

He thought of Paula. He didn’t hate her. He almost felt sorry for her. He wondered if she’d realized what was happening to her, or if she only saw it in retrospect, after it was too late to do anything about it. Or maybe Ulrich had something on her, the way the Agency now did on him, the way all of them did on one another. It didn’t matter. At some point, she’d made a choice. Now she was part of it.

He wondered if he was different.

Maybe he had a way to find out.

43. The Polite Thing

The next morning, Ben waited in another rental car outside Marcy Wheeler’s house in Kissimmee. He was nervous in a way that was weirdly different from the familiar pre-combat jitters.

He didn’t need to be here. He knew she wasn’t really expecting to hear from him, or, if she was, that she didn’t expect the truth. But he’d said he would tell her if he could. And he sensed that somehow, if he avoided that, rationalized it away, arrogated to himself the power to shape and distort and withhold, it would make him like what he now recognized in Paula. And in Hort. Maybe he was making too much of it, but even that consideration felt like the worm of a rationalization. He thought he’d have to be vigilant about things like that, disciplined. Alert to threats to his integrity the way he was to threats to his person.

At just past eight o’clock, Wheeler’s front door opened, as it had a few days before. She kissed her son and watched him while he waited for the bus, then went back in the house, again with that wistful, sad look he’d noticed last time. He got out, walked over, and knocked on her door.

When she answered, she took a step back. “Agent Froomkin,” she said. “I… I didn’t think you’d come back.”

Ben felt a weird tightness in his chest. He could tell her anything, he realized. She’d have no choice but to believe it. Why make it hard on her? Why burden her, when she already had so much on her hands and on her mind? A little piece of fiction, a white lie, would free her from her doubts. Wouldn’t anything else just be cruel? And selfish, too, to unload on her just to prove something to himself.

“It’s not Froomkin,” he said. “And I’m not FBI.”

Her jaw tightened. “What are you?”

He shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

A little fear crept into her eyes. “What can you tell me?”

“What you wanted to know. If you still want to know it.”

She looked at him for a long time. He thought maybe she was going to tell him no, don’t tell me, it’s too much. Free him from the responsibility. Free him from the choice.

“I want to know,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Your husband was having an affair.”

She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch. She looked at him, and he could tell without knowing how that she hated him.

“Who was she?” she said, her tone so flat it could have been produced by a synthesizer.

He hesitated.

Just fucking say it. “It wasn’t a she.”

Her pupils dilated. He could feel her sudden revulsion for him. He felt it for himself.

She said, “God.”

He didn’t respond.

A long moment passed. She said, “Well, I asked you to tell me, didn’t I?”

She shook her head as though in wonder at her own stupidity.

“Still. I really can’t believe you did. I can’t believe it. I guess the polite thing would be to thank you.”

Tell her the rest. Tell her he’s not dead. Tell her.

But wasn’t she indicating now that she didn’t want to know? Didn’t that change-

“Goodbye, Agent whatever your name is and whoever you are.”

She closed the door in his face.

He stood there for a long moment, telling himself to ring the bell, get it out, finish what he’d come here for.

He didn’t. Instead, he walked back to the car, feeling slightly ill. He wondered whether he’d proven something. If so, he wished he knew what it was.

He drove back to the airport in Orlando.

He had some tough decisions to make. Decide wrong one way, and he could take the fall for Ulrich. Decide wrong the other way, and he could spend the rest of his life anesthetizing himself like Paula. Or looking for some crazy Hail Mary way out, like Larison.

It seemed like the safest alternative was to do what Hort had asked. Track down the men he wanted. It would buy him time. After all, Hort couldn’t monitor everything that happened in the field. He might learn something, the way he had from Larison. Speaking of whom, he could track him down, too. He’d done it before. He could do it again. There was no telling who else Hort had screwed along the way. Put together a few disgruntled former soldiers, and Hort could wind up on the wrong end of a fragging. With Clements and the CIA and the rest of the damn oligarchs or whatever they called themselves alongside him.

He hoped he was making the right decision. Hort said he knew people. Would he have seen this coming? Would he have known this was the way Ben would perceive the situation, the way he would persuade himself he still had free will even as he was doing Hort’s bidding?

He didn’t know. He’d have to be careful.

You come a certain distance, you can’t just turn around.

Yeah, he could see that now. He couldn’t just walk away. He was too deep inside. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t find a way out.

But should he? There was a lot of damage you could do from the inside, if that’s what you wanted.

He smiled grimly. Yeah, if damage was the objective, inside could be awfully goddamned good.