Barry Eisler - Inside out

"That's it? That's why?"

"Look, I joined the FBI right after 9/11 because I wanted to make a difference. It took me about a year to figure out I couldn't. That no one can make a difference. The system's too big. The only thing you can make is a stand. And making a stand without making a difference is quixotic at best. More likely, it's suicide, like some Buddhist monk setting himself on fire to protest something that's never going to change anyway. So I went from idealist… to realist."

"How's that working out for you?"

"At least I see what's going on. Look at you, stumbling around in the dark, not even knowing why."

"This is what you meant by 'No one sees me coming.' And when you told me you know how to work a cover… your whole life is a cover. And all that bullshit about how you'd rather just be yourself… you think having natural hair is all it takes? Do you even know who you are?"

She frowned. "I know who I am."

"Bugged you when I asked, though, didn't it?"

"Oh, are you going to analyze me now?"

He looked at her. "Why'd you sleep with me?"

She shrugged. "You're a good-looking guy. Is that so hard to understand?"

"That was it? You had an itch to scratch?"

"What, you think I fell in love with you? Please."

"I think you felt something, yeah. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have been so fastidious about my kissing you or seeing where you live. You let me into your body but not into your apartment?

What's that?"

"It's what I had to do."

"To get me to trust you. Drop my guard."

"Something like that."

"Something like that. So you found out I was the courier, and told Ulrich, and they set another team on me."

"I told you, I didn't know what they were going to do."

"And I'm the one who's stumbling around in the dark?"

She didn't answer.

"Look me in the eye, Paula. Prove to me you're not human, because I don't believe it. Tell me you didn't feel anything."

"What if I did? We call that 'two birds with one stone.' You have a problem mixing a little pleasure with your business?"

"So you fucked me for business. What does that make you?"

"But I told you, I enjoyed it, too."

"Good that you enjoy your work."

Again she said nothing.

"There's no other way for you, is there? You can't do something only for yourself. Even when you try, it's really for the people who are pulling your strings."

"You can think what you want."

"Exactly. That's the difference between you and me."

"You'll come around. Everybody does."

"You're confusing me with you," he said, shaking his head. "Look it up. It's called projection."

He walked away, past the traffic, the blank-eyed buildings, the commuter zombies.

He imagined a frog in a pot, the water getting gradually warmer, the frog never noticing any of it. He imagined people telling themselves they would never be part of something corrupt, then telling themselves they would only be part of it to make it better, then telling themselves, hey, the thing wasn't corrupt in the first place, it was just the way of the world, they'd been naive before and now they were savvy.

He thought of Paula. He didn't hate her. He almost felt sorry for her. He wondered if she'd realized what was happening to her, or if she only saw it in retrospect, after it was too late to do anything about it. Or maybe Ulrich had something on her, the way the Agency now did on him, the way all of them did on one another. It didn't matter. At some point, she'd made a choice. Now she was part of it.

He wondered if he was different.

Maybe he had a way to find out.

The Polite Thing The next morning, Ben waited in another rental car outside Marcy Wheeler's house in Kissimmee. He was nervous in a way that was weirdly different from the familiar pre-combat jitters.

He didn't need to be here. He knew she wasn't really expecting to hear from him, or, if she was, that she didn't expect the truth. But he'd said he would tell her if he could. And he sensed that somehow, if he avoided that, rationalized it away, arrogated to himself the power to shape and distort and withhold, it would make him like what he now recognized in Paula. And in Hort. Maybe he was making too much of it, but even that consideration felt like the worm of a rationalization. He thought he'd have to be vigilant about things like that, disciplined. Alert to threats to his integrity the way he was to threats to his person.

At just past eight o'clock, Wheeler's front door opened, as it had a few days before. She kissed her son and watched him while he waited for the bus, then went back in the house, again with that wistful, sad look he'd noticed last time. He got out, walked over, and knocked on her door.

When she answered, she took a step back. "Agent Froomkin," she said. "I… I didn't think you'd come back."

Ben felt a weird tightness in his chest. He could tell her anything, he realized. She'd have no choice but to believe it. Why make it hard on her? Why burden her, when she already had so much on her hands and on her mind? A little piece of fiction, a white lie, would free her from her doubts. Wouldn't anything else just be cruel? And selfish, too, to unload on her just to prove something to himself.

"It's not Froomkin," he said. "And I'm not FBI."

Her jaw tightened. "What are you?"

He shook his head. "I can't tell you that."

A little fear crept into her eyes. "What can you tell me?"

"What you wanted to know. If you still want to know it."

She looked at him for a long time. He thought maybe she was going to tell him no, don't tell me, it's too much. Free him from the responsibility. Free him from the choice.

"I want to know," she said.

He cleared his throat. "Your husband was having an affair."

She didn't blink. She didn't flinch. She looked at him, and he could tell without knowing how that she hated him.

"Who was she?" she said, her tone so flat it could have been produced by a synthesizer.

He hesitated.

Just fucking say it. "It wasn't a she."

Her pupils dilated. He could feel her sudden revulsion for him. He felt it for himself.

She said, "God."

He didn't respond.

A long moment passed. She said, "Well, I asked you to tell me, didn't I?"

She shook her head as though in wonder at her own stupidity.

"Still. I really can't believe you did. I can't believe it. I guess the polite thing would be to thank you."

Tell her the rest. Tell her he's not dead. Tell her.

But wasn't she indicating now that she didn't want to know? Didn't that change "Goodbye, Agent whatever your name is and whoever you are."

She closed the door in his face.

He stood there for a long moment, telling himself to ring the bell, get it out, finish what he'd come here for.

He didn't. Instead, he walked back to the car, feeling slightly ill. He wondered whether he'd proven something. If so, he wished he knew what it was.

He drove back to the airport in Orlando.

He had some tough decisions to make. Decide wrong one way, and he could take the fall for Ulrich. Decide wrong the other way, and he could spend the rest of his life anesthetizing himself like Paula. Or looking for some crazy Hail Mary way out, like Larison.

It seemed like the safest alternative was to do what Hort had asked. Track down the men he wanted. It would buy him time. After all, Hort couldn't monitor everything that happened in the field. He might learn something, the way he had from Larison. Speaking of whom, he could track him down, too. He'd done it before. He could do it again. There was no telling who else Hort had screwed along the way. Put together a few disgruntled former soldiers, and Hort could wind up on the wrong end of a fragging. With Clements and the CIA and the rest of the damn oligarchs or whatever they called themselves alongside him.