by Barry Eisler
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 ca
reful 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.
