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.