“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.”