Barry Eisler - Inside out

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 naive, 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 Guantanamo. 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 Guantanamo. And there was a bonus: the administration needed some actual bad guys in Guantanamo, 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."