Inside Out (7 page)

“Oh, man.”

“So now we have three overlapping investigations. The CIA, which caused this monumental goat-fuck to start with. The Justice Department, which if they recover the tapes will, with all their good intentions and by-the-book behavior, wind up doing the same damage the blackmailer is threatening.”

“And me.”

“I’d call that
us
. But yes.”

Ben nodded. He couldn’t deny, he liked the sound of the plural better. “Us, then.”

He thought for a minute. The whole thing had been so smoothly delivered. But there was something missing at the center of it. Something obvious.

“Why?” he said.

“I told you, I can’t trust the others.”

“No, I’m asking you why not one of the other guys in the unit. Why’d you come to me?”

“Well, for starters, I had to get you out of a hellhole in Manila.”

“The real reason.”

Hort sighed. “I’m dealing with manpower issues right now, that’s why. Most of the ISA is tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the ones who aren’t, two are recovering from injuries you inflicted when you met up with them in California. And another operator you might remember, Atrios, isn’t reporting in again, ever.”

Ben was glad Hort hadn’t tried to bullshit him about how special he was. The truth was, there wasn’t a man in the unit who wasn’t in some way the best.

He thought again. There was something nagging at him … and then he realized.

“This whole time, we’ve been talking about ‘the blackmailer.’ Singular. You used it. And you didn’t correct me when I did.”

Hort smiled. “Is that right?”

“You know who it is.”

Hort’s smile broadened. “Just don’t forget who trained you, son, all right?”

Ben felt an absurd flush of pride and tried to ignore it. “Who?”

“A good man with a lot of demons, demons that finally got the better of him. His name is Daniel Larison. You never knew him, but he was part of the unit. One of the originals, in fact. He was one of the few people who had access to the tapes.”

“So why isn’t everyone looking for him now?”

“Because he died in the bombing attack on Prime Minister Bhutto in Karachi on October 18, 2007.”

There was a long pause. “He faked his death?”

“I believe he did. He had contacts in Pakistan’s ISI and he could have had foreknowledge of the attack.”

“And not warned anyone?”

“I told you, the man has demons.”

“Damn. How many people died in that attack?”

“About a hundred and forty, and three times that burned and maimed. Larison was in Karachi on temporary duty. Shortly before the attack, he reported he was going to meet a contact at Bhutto’s rally. But that might have been deception, and he could have left the country under a false passport after. The bomb was big enough to make it impossible to identify all the remains, one of which was assumed to be Larison’s based on knowledge of his movements and on other factors. Anyway, we couldn’t inquire too closely without getting into a pissing match with the ISI about placing operators unauthorized on their soil.”

“Yeah, but they know we—”

“They know, and they don’t want us to remove their ability to deny that they know. Anyway, if anyone could have pulled this off, it was Larison.”

“What’s his motive?”

“Well, there’s a hundred million dollars in play. That’s a lot of motive right there.”

“Would you do what he’s doing for a hundred million?”

“It doesn’t matter what I would do. It’s what Larison would do. Like I said, the man had demons. He saw some shit in the course of his work that mandated time with a shrink, but he would never see one.”

Hort paused, and a ripple of sadness seemed to pass across his face.

“Yeah, he shouldered an unfair burden, and the weight was
causing cracks. He was a serial steroid abuser, for one thing. He had anger management issues, for another. Too many times, he stepped over the line in the field. I won’t lie to you, either—a lot of this is my responsibility. I saw the signs, I knew he’d been in the field for going on way too long. He needed a reprieve, he needed help. But with two active war theaters and shadow operations like we’ve never seen before, we’ve been stretched. Hell, we’ve got National Guard deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, grunts on their fifth tour of duty, politicians asking more and more and giving us less and less to do it with. Put enough pressure on the system, you’re going to start seeing cracks. Cracks in the system, cracks in the soldiers.”

Interesting. Hort had read the anger in Larison as he’d read it in Ben. Well, it wasn’t like the unit attracted a lot of Zen Buddhists.

“Why are you so sure it was him?”

“I’m not sure. But there’s no one else that makes any sense.”

“Then couldn’t the other players—the Agency, the Bureau—figure out Larison, too? That he had the access, faked his death—”

“They could, but they won’t. They don’t know him the way I do. Larison was the best. He’s what you’ll be in ten years if you keep developing the way you need to. Right now, you’ve got the confidence and the instincts. What you need is judgment. And control.”

That was a rebuke for Manila. Ben couldn’t deny the justice of it.

“If it’s just the Agency and the Bureau on this, how did you find out? What’s your connection?”

Hort smiled as though pleased that Ben was considering all the angles, asking the right questions. But he said only, “I’ve been around for a while, son. I know people.”

Yeah, a guy like Hort had contacts everywhere: Pentagon, State, all the spook services … probably even the White House. Couldn’t really expect him to reveal his sources and methods.

“So, what’s our time frame?”

“Five days. And he says he has an electronic dead-man trigger. Even if we find him, we can’t just take him out.”

“A bluff?”

Hort shook his head. “It’s exactly what he would do. Or you or I would do, for that matter.”

“What do I do when I find him?”

That ripple of sadness passed across Hort’s face again. “You don’t do anything. Your job is just to find him and fix him. Not to finish him. Not yet, anyway. For the time being, we’re going to have to play this one by ear.”

Ben wasn’t sure what playing it by ear would be about. Up until now, “find, fix, and finish” had always constituted a half-redundant description of what Ben did, with “finish” being the real point. He wanted to ask what Hort had in mind, and why he thought they might be able to end this without ending Larison in the process. But he’d asked the important questions already, and that kind of “why” wasn’t in his job description anyway. His orders were to find and fix Larison, and he would carry them out. Presumably, at that point, he’d get some new orders. In the meantime, someone else would worry about why.

The next morning, Ben was slowly circling Belthorn Drive in Kissimmee, Florida, a half-hour drive southwest of the airport in Orlando. According to Hort, this was the current residence of Larison’s “widow,” now going by her maiden name, Marcy Wheeler. For the moment, Wheeler was pretty much the only actionable thing they had to go on.

He drove, his head sweeping back and forth, absorbing information, looking for the detail that didn’t fit: a parked car with a couple of hard-looking men inside, a van with darked-out windows, a man in shades strolling along and somehow not from the neighborhood. Nothing tickled his radar. Belthorn was a sleepy collection of modest ranch houses being inexorably replaced by more imposing McMansions. But for the heat and the occasional
palm tree, it could have been a suburban street in just about any lower-middle-class American neighborhood transitioning from older families and long-standing homes to younger, more aggressive colonists, newcomers with more of a need to make a statement and more appetite for the housing debt such statements required.

Wheeler lived in one of the older, smaller homes, a one-level yellow rectangle that looked like it contained one or at most two bedrooms and that badly needed a fresh coat of paint. Ben parked at the end of the street, far enough to keep Wheeler from seeing the license plate on his rented car, near enough to watch the house. Hort had told him Wheeler had a son, and it was almost time for school.

He watched and waited, hoping he was doing the right thing. He knew he couldn’t trust Hort the way he once had, not after what had happened with Alex and Sarah. But at the same time, when the op was blown, Hort had immediately stood down. He could have killed all three of them—should have, in fact, from a strictly operational perspective—but instead, he had let them walk away. Why leave all those loose ends? Ben could only surmise that it had been personal, that Hort had almost been looking for a reason to not follow his orders. But was that enough reason to trust the man now?

On the other hand, what were the alternatives? Leave the unit and join a private outfit? He could, he supposed. With the government stretched so thin, men with his credentials were making a mint as contractors. Even elite groups were having to offer retention bonuses, bonuses that more often than not didn’t work.

Yeah, he should do it. Three years as a contractor in someplace like Somalia and he could practically retire.

Ah, bullshit. The truth was, he liked being in the unit. Partly it was the training. He shot with Delta, jumped with the Smokejumpers, and learned his tradecraft from grizzled CIA survivors of Denied Area operations. He enjoyed the pride, the quiet swagger
that came with being ISA. There were maybe three hundred men, not just in America, but in the world, who could legitimately claim to be his peers. That was saying something.

But it was more than that. He liked being on the inside. He liked knowing the secrets, the way things really worked, the real world beneath the surface everyone else inhabited. Contractors had the salary, and maybe they still had the swagger, but they didn’t have the inside position. And he didn’t want to give that up.

And why should he? What else did he have? A daughter who thought he was dead, an ex-wife who wished it were so … crap, it hurt, but when he was alone with his thoughts like this, he had to admit his life was a mess. He was glad he and Alex had managed to mend some badly broken fences recently, that was something. But what had it really changed? They weren’t attached by much more than blood before, and it wouldn’t be all that different now.

And Sarah? Their chemistry was pretty unbelievable, it was true. They couldn’t have been more different and at first he thought she hated him. Which maybe on some level she did, but then they’d wound up in bed anyway. He’d initially tried to pass it off as the effects of shared danger and a combat hard-on, but the truth was, it felt like more than that.

Even so, the only reason she’d let herself get close was because she didn’t really understand what he did. How could she understand? They were from totally different worlds. And let’s face it, she was the kind of person who was more comfortable pretending his world didn’t even exist. Which was ironic, because as far as he was concerned, it was her world—a world where violence never solved anything and where no one was evil, just misunderstood, and all people were fundamentally rational and could be reasoned with—that was the illusion, the pretty veneer. He knew the truth. He knew what things looked like from the inside. And he liked the view.

He thought about how he’d handle Wheeler. He knew subtlety wasn’t his forte—never had been, never would be. He was better at kicking in doors than at persuading people to open them, and
this was a persuasion job, no doubt. But he’d had the elicitation training at the Farm, and over the course of various ops, he’d managed to put that training to good use. It was like Hort said, he just needed to exercise a little more control. He’d be okay.

At just past eight o’clock, Wheeler’s front door opened. A small boy, eight years old if Hort’s information was correct, stepped outside, Wheeler just behind him, blond hair tied back, gray shorts and a navy tank top. She helped the boy struggle into a backpack, kissed him, and waved him off, then watched while he waited at the curb with a few other kids similarly outfitted. A few minutes later, a yellow school bus pulled up. There was a hiss of hydraulic brakes, a red stop sign sprouted from its side, and then it was gone, the children along with it. Wheeler watched it go, looking somehow deflated in its wake. Ben thought of Ami in Manila, another child of a dead father.

Come on, forget it. It’s better like this. Put it away
.

He got out of the car and started walking toward Wheeler’s house, his head sweeping left and right, keying on the hot spots. He detected no problems. He was wearing an olive poplin suit, white shirt, wine-colored tie, and black wing tips, all courtesy of a Brooks Brothers in Orlando, all practically government-issue. A standard Bureau Glock 23, spare magazines, pocket litter, and FBI ID and passport in the name of special agent Daniel Froomkin had been waiting for him in a dead drop near Orlando. Hort had explained that there actually was a Froomkin on the payroll in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., that the legend was fully backstopped. They couldn’t expect Wheeler to cooperate with someone who had no colorable legal authority.

The air was humid and smelled of cut grass. A thin, Mexican-looking guy was pushing a buzzing mower across one of the lawns on the other side of the street. Ben paused and watched him for a moment. The guy’s T-shirt was soaked with sweat and he was wearing earplugs against the noise. His arms were weathered and brown from too much sun. A beat-up pickup loaded with gardening equipment sat at the curb. The guy felt legit.

He headed up a short riser of cement steps, the Glock creating a reassuring weight and pressure under his left armpit, reminding himself one last time that he was Dan Froomkin, FBI, investigating a crime. Even a civilian could sometimes spot the incongruity in the vibe between an operator and an investigator. One of the things they’d taught him at the Farm was that to make a cover work, you had to submerge your true self inside it. The key was to
believe
your cover, to feel it like it was the truth.