by Barry Eisler
He amped up the speed of his sit-ups, bludgeoning back the paranoia. He cranked out two hundred and fifty and rolled to his feet. He was still breathing through his nose. He started doing squats.
He wondered whether he should have taken a chance and staked out his ex-wife. She was still in Kissimmee, the town near Orlando where they’d lived in the years before Larison had ostensibly died—she’d grown up there and her folks were still local, and with Larison traveling so much, it had been comfortable for her, especially with the baby. For anyone who managed to connect what was going on with Larison, it would be a logical spot to begin, and Larison would have liked the opportunity to run reconnaissance to get a sense of who and what he was up against. But in the end, he’d judged the risks not worth the rewards. His primary weapons were stealth, movement, and surprise. Outnumbered as he surely was, anything that put him in contact with the enemy was an enormous risk.
Squat, stand. Squat, stand. On every other rep, he leaped into the air and landed on his toes. Sweat trickled down his sides.
Anyway, Marcy didn’t know anything about him. She never had. Their whole marriage had been a pathetic farce. He couldn’t even blame her for the baby. Really, he should have thanked her. It made everything he had to do afterward easier. The main thing was, operationally, she was a dead end. He was fine.
Then why was he pushing the workout so hard?
Because you’re keyed up, that’s all. Who wouldn’t be?
He finished the squats and went straight into lunges. Two fifty, five hundred, it didn’t really matter. He could go practically forever, it was just a question of time.
It was all so strange. He was officially dead, he’d been hiding for years, he’d severed all contact with anyone who’d known him as Larison. And yet it was only now that he felt everything was about to irrevocably change. He had the overwhelming sense of being perched on the edge of a dark precipice. He had no choice but to leap, not seeing what was on the other side, knowing only that it would be everything he always wanted, on the one hand.
Or an extremely unpleasant death, on the other.
He wondered for a moment whether he really had a preference. Did it matter?
He decided it didn’t. After the sobbing, the begging, after the awful … sound they all made, the men he’d interrogated had all eventually reached that point of surrender, of not caring how they were released, wanting only for it to be over. It was strange that he should feel a kinship with them now.
And then he thought of Nico. If this didn’t go well, Nico would never know what had happened. He’d probably assume Larison had abandoned him and gone back to his wife. The thought of Nico left that way, forever wondering, doubting, was like a vise around his heart.
No. It wouldn’t end that way. He had all the cards. And he was playing them well. He’d gotten this far, hadn’t he?
He wondered again whether Hort would be involved. And if so, what dumb young fool Hort would set against him. Whoever he was, Larison might have felt sorry for him. But he didn’t. They’d burned the pity out of him. The only pity he had left he would save for himself.
5
Someone Else Would Worry About Why
Less than an hour after his arrival, Hort walked Ben out of the Manila city jail. A sedan with a driver who looked like Diplomatic Security drove the two of them back to the Mandarin Oriental, where Ben showered, vacuumed down two plates of pasta and a beer, and passed out. Hort woke him at eight. The car took them to the airport, where they checked into adjacent first-class seats on a Philippine Air flight to Los Angeles. The luxury was anything but standard, and Ben took it to mean that whatever Hort wanted, it needed to be done ASAP. This would likely be Ben’s last chance to sleep for a while.
The moment they were in the air, Hort took out an ordinary iPhone and selected an application that would pump out random subsonic signals to scramble any listening devices. The military called the application the Susser, meaning subsonic signals scrambler, but like so much other military hardware, such as the GBU-43/B massive ordnance air blast—more widely known as the Mother of all Bombs—this one, too, had its own nickname: the Cone of Silence. Everyone knew the national carriers allowed their nations’ spy services to bug the first-class seats for industrial espionage.
Hort set the phone down on the armrest between them and put a Bluetooth earpiece next to it. “These are for you,” he said. “There’s more information on the phone, but we’ll get to that.”
“Okay.”
“Two days ago, someone contacted the new director of central intelligence,” Hort said, his voice so low it was almost inaudible over the background roar of the engines. “This someone has gotten hold of some extremely sensitive materials and wants to be paid for their safe return.”
Ben pinched his nostrils and cleared his ears. “How sensitive are we talking about?”
“A hundred million dollars sensitive. That’s what our blackmailer is asking for. Payment in uncut diamonds, none larger than three carats. Small, anonymous, easy to move.”
“What do they have, photos of the president in flagrante?”
“I wish that’s what this were about. No, what they have is interrogation videos.”
Ben thought for a moment. “I read somewhere the CIA had destroyed a bunch of waterboarding videos. First there were just a couple, then they admitted closer to a hundred, something like that?”
Hort nodded. “That’s the story they told the papers. Truth is, they never destroyed anything. The destruction story was just disinformation they put out when they discovered the tapes were missing.”
“Yeah, but this story broke … I forget, but it’s been years.”
“December 2007. That’s when they discovered the tapes were missing, that’s when they started trying to cover it up.”
“And then …”
“And then in March 2009, they changed the story. Ninety-two tapes, not just a few.”
“Why?”
“A throw-down to the new administration. The word was, the newbies were going to investigate the tapes’ destruction more seriously than the previous one was inclined to. So the message was, ‘This is much worse than you think. Investigate and you’ll never get anything done on the economy, or health care, or global warming, or jack shit. An investigation will go in a hundred directions you don’t want. It’ll eat you alive.’”
“I don’t get it. In the end, what did they think was going to happen? Were they hoping the tapes really were destroyed?”
“That’s exactly what they were hoping. And it wasn’t a bad working theory, if you think about it. Someone should have destroyed those tapes—can you imagine what would happen if they got out?”
“Why the hell make tapes in the first place? Are they crazy over there?”
Hort shrugged. “The signal-to-noise ratio wasn’t great on the information they were getting from the program. Truth is, most of the people we were picking up, we weren’t even sure who they were. Informants were accusing people we’d never heard of, dirt-poor Pakistani farmers turning in some Arab just because they didn’t like him or didn’t want to pay him the money they owed. Settle a grudge by accusing your enemy of terrorism and collect a bounty at the same time—who could resist that? And with the methods the CIA was using, fabrication was a problem. So they tried to develop a mosaic, cross-referencing everything they extracted in the interrogations. Fabrication is random; the overlaps have more credibility, that was the theory. So every new bit of intel extracted meant they could look at previous intel in a new light. For that, they needed records, something they could go back to.”
“Yeah, records. Transcripts. Not video. Not if you don’t want to get crucified on CNN.”
“Transcripts miss things. They needed to be able to examine the totality of circumstances: when did the subject say what he said, what was being done to him at the time, what were his facial expressions at that moment, his body language, were there other indices of fabrication? They were trying to mine every bit of va
lue from the information they managed to extract. That was the whole point of the program. The tapes were a key part of it. And there was supposed to be an element of intimidation, too. You know, ‘What are your tough-guy terrorist friends going to think when they see this video of you crying and begging like a baby?’”
Ben had heard corridor talk about the program. Most of it sounded pretty stupid to him, but that was true for a lot of Agency initiatives and it wasn’t his problem. Until now, anyway.
He cleared his ears again. “These tapes … were there copies?”
“No. One set of originals, and that’s what the blackmailer has.”
“Even so, do we know that whoever took them and whoever is using them are the same? If they’ve been brokered, every middleman in the chain would have made copies.”
“My gut tells me they haven’t been passed around. First, because in all these years, no one’s heard a peep about these tapes being circulated. Second, if you’re smart enough to steal the tapes, you’re smart enough not to broker them. The risks are similar, but the real payoff only comes when you hit up Uncle Sam. Who else is going to come up with a hundred million dollars in diamonds?”
Ben couldn’t find any fault in Hort’s reasoning. “All right. What do we have to go on about the blackmailer?”
“So far, nothing. Initial call placed from a cloned sat phone. Communication through an anonymous private email account established at the caller’s instruction after that. We traced the points of access, of course. They’re all over the eastern United States. We’ve tried to triangulate. No luck. No tie-in with surveillance cameras outside an Internet café, nothing like that. The people we’re dealing with are good, no question.”
“So working backward from the blackmail doesn’t get us anything. What about from the initial theft? Assuming we’re dealing with the same person or group.”
Hort nodded slowly. “There, I think I might have a lead or two.”
Something in Hort’s tone, and in his use of “I” instead of “we,” contained a world of subterranean meaning. Ben paused, knowing Hort wanted him to figure it out.
“You haven’t told the CIA.”
Hort looked at Ben and nodded again, obviously pleased. “Go on.”
“You don’t trust them?”
Hort snorted. “You could say that. Right now they’re running around like a bunch of hyperactive retards. They’re going to fuck this up if we let them. So we’re not going to let them.”
Ben thought for a moment, sensing he was missing something, not sure of what it was. “Is it just the CIA? Who else knows about this?”
Hort smiled. “The DCI contacted the Justice Department. Federal blackmail case, standard operating procedure.”
“And if the FBI recovers those tapes …”
“Exactly. Their goal will be prosecution. They’ll preserve the tapes as criminal evidence. Eventually, they’ll leak. And you’ve got Abu Ghraib all over again, multiplied by about a thousand. You put those tapes on Al Jazeera, forget about just guaranteeing al Qaeda’s monthly recruitment numbers—it’ll ignite the whole Muslim world.”
“Oh, man.”
“So now we have three overlapping investigations. The CIA, which caused this monumental goat-fuck to start with. The Justice Department, which if they recover the tapes will, with all their good intentions and by-the-book behavior, wind up doing the same damage the blackmailer is threatening.”
“And me.”
“I’d call that us. But yes.”
Ben nodded. He couldn’t deny, he liked the sound of the plural better. “Us, then.”
He thought for a minute. The whole thing had been so smoothly delivered. But there was something missing at the center of it. Something obvious.
“Why?” he said.
“I told you, I can’t trust the others.”
“No, I’m asking you why not one of the other guys in the unit. Why’d you come to me?”
“Well, for starters, I had to get you out of a hellhole in Manila.”
“The real reason.”
Hort sighed. “I’m dealing with manpower issues right now, that’s why. Most of the ISA is tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the ones who aren’t, two are recovering from injuries you inflicted when you met up with them in California. And another operator you might remember, Atrios, isn’t reporting in again, ever.”
Ben was glad Hort hadn’t tried to bullshit him about how special he was. The truth was, there wasn’t a man in the unit who wasn’t in some way the best.
He thought again. There was something nagging at him … and then he realized.
“This whole time, we’ve been talking about ‘the blackmailer.’ Singular. You used it. And you didn’t correct me when I did.”
Hort smiled. “Is that right?”
“You know who it is.”
Hort’s smile broadened. “Just don’t forget who trained you, son, all right?”
Ben felt an absurd flush of pride and tried to ignore it. “Who?”
“A good man with a lot of demons, demons that finally got the better of him. His name is Daniel Larison. You never knew him, but he was part of the unit. One of the originals, in fact. He was one of the few people who had access to the tapes.”
“So why isn’t everyone looking for him now?”
“Because he died in the bombing attack on Prime Minister Bhutto in Karachi on October 18, 2007.”
There was a long pause. “He faked his death?”
“I believe he did. He had contacts in Pakistan’s ISI and he could have had foreknowledge of the attack.”
“And not warned anyone?”
“I told you, the man has demons.”
“Damn. How many people died in that attack?”
“About a hundred and forty, and three times that burned and maimed. Larison was in Karachi on temporary duty. Shortly before the attack, he reported he was going to meet a contact at Bhutto’s rally. But that might have been deception, and he could have left the country under a false passport after. The bomb was big enough to make it impossible to identify all the remains, one of which was assumed to be Larison’s based on knowledge of his movements and on other factors. Anyway, we couldn’t inquire too closely without getting into a pissing match with the ISI about placing operators unauthorized on their soil.”
“Yeah, but they know we—”
“They know, and they don’t want us to remove their ability to deny that they know. Anyway, if anyone could have pulled this off, it was Larison.”
“What’s his motive?”
“Well, there’s a hundred million dollars in play. That’s a lot of motive right there.”
“Would you do what he’s doing for a hundred million?”
“It doesn’t matter what I would do. It’s what Larison would do. Like I said, the man had demons. He saw some shit in the course of his work that mandated time with a shrink, but he would never see one.”
Hort paused, and a ripple of sadness seemed to pass across his face.
“Yeah, he shouldered an unfair burden, and the weight was causing cracks. He was a serial steroid abuser, for one thing. He had anger management issues, for another. Too many times, he stepped over the line in the field. I won’t lie to you, either—a lot of this is my responsibility. I saw the signs, I knew he’d been in the field for going on way too long. He needed a reprieve, he needed help. But with two active war theaters and shadow operations like we’ve never seen before, we’ve been stretched. Hell, we’ve got National Guard deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, grunts on their fifth tour of duty, politicians asking more and more and giving us less and less to do it with. Put enough pressure on the system, you’re going to start seeing cracks. Cracks in the system, cracks in the soldiers.”
Interesting. Hort had read the anger in Larison as he’d read it in Ben. Well, it wasn’t like the unit attracted a lot of Zen Buddhists.
“Why are you so sure it was him?”
“I’m not sure. But there’s no
one else that makes any sense.”
“Then couldn’t the other players—the Agency, the Bureau—figure out Larison, too? That he had the access, faked his death—”
“They could, but they won’t. They don’t know him the way I do. Larison was the best. He’s what you’ll be in ten years if you keep developing the way you need to. Right now, you’ve got the confidence and the instincts. What you need is judgment. And control.”
That was a rebuke for Manila. Ben couldn’t deny the justice of it.
“If it’s just the Agency and the Bureau on this, how did you find out? What’s your connection?”
Hort smiled as though pleased that Ben was considering all the angles, asking the right questions. But he said only, “I’ve been around for a while, son. I know people.”
Yeah, a guy like Hort had contacts everywhere: Pentagon, State, all the spook services … probably even the White House. Couldn’t really expect him to reveal his sources and methods.
“So, what’s our time frame?”
“Five days. And he says he has an electronic dead-man trigger. Even if we find him, we can’t just take him out.”
“A bluff?”
Hort shook his head. “It’s exactly what he would do. Or you or I would do, for that matter.”
“What do I do when I find him?”
That ripple of sadness passed across Hort’s face again. “You don’t do anything. Your job is just to find him and fix him. Not to finish him. Not yet, anyway. For the time being, we’re going to have to play this one by ear.”
Ben wasn’t sure what playing it by ear would be about. Up until now, “find, fix, and finish” had always constituted a half-redundant description of what Ben did, with “finish” being the real point. He wanted to ask what Hort had in mind, and why he thought they might be able to end this without ending Larison in the process. But he’d asked the important questions already, and that kind of “why” wasn’t in his job description anyway. His orders were to find and fix Larison, and he would carry them out. Presumably, at that point, he’d get some new orders. In the meantime, someone else would worry about why.
