Inside Outt

mentally patted himself on the back for thinking to arrive as Froomkin. He might have dropped Hort’s name, or mentioned JSOC, but he expected that if Ulrich met him under a pretext like that, he would have come down to the lobby and kept Ben away from his inner sanctum. A possible interview by the FBI, though, was something you’d want conducted in private. And privacy was a funny thing. The same kind of space that could make a person feel confident could also make him feel exposed and vulnerable. Another kernel of wisdom from the Farm.
    A smiling, pantsuited receptionist led him down a hushed, thickly carpeted hallway past a series of closed mahogany doors. Discretion, the place seemed to say. Quiet influence. Compartmentalization.
    At the end of the hallway was a single open door. The receptionist gestured to it and went back the way they’d come. Ben went inside and closed the door behind him.
    Ulrich was sitting behind a dark, massive desk. All these guys, compensating with their furniture. To the side was an ego wall covered by photos of Ulrich with the former vice president and various other political luminaries and insiders.
    Ulrich set down a pen and stood, a big man, maybe a former linebacker now going to seed. “Agent Froomkin,” he said, looking up, “what can I—”
    He saw Ben’s face and his mouth dropped open. Ben thought,
You know me. Son of a bitch.
    Ben understood Ulrich’s next move an instant before Ulrich did, and shot forward just as Ulrich lunged for the phone. Ben leaped onto the massive desk and kicked him in the face. Ulrich went flying backward. The phone clattered to the desk. Ulrich bounced off the wall behind him, blood flowing from his nose, and somehow managed to snatch the handset off the desk. He raised it to his ear and Ben stomped the receiver. Shards of plastic exploded under his heel. Ulrich looked at the receiver as though in disbelief that it had just been rendered useless, then drew his arm back to throw it at Ben. Ben eliminated that possibility by jumping down from the desk directly in front of him. Ulrich dropped the receiver and turned to run the other way. Ben grabbed him by a wrist and the back of his neck and slammed his face into the desk. He twisted his arm up behind his back and Ulrich cried out.
    “Go ahead and scream,” Ben said. “Get security up here. Get the cops. First thing I’ll tell them, the first thing my lawyer will talk about in the press conference he calls, is the Caspers. And Ecologia.”
    He felt Ulrich freeze up at just the mention of the words. Whatever the Caspers and Ecologia were, Larison hadn’t been bullshitting him.
    Ben pulled Ulrich from the desk and shoved him into his chair. Ulrich wiped blood from his face and stared at his hand as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What do you want?” he said.
    “I want to know how you recognized me.”
    “I mean, why are you here?”
    Ben realized Ulrich was too smart, and too tough, to answer questions based on assumptions. He tried to imagine the situation from Ulrich’s perspective. Ulrich thinks the FBI is calling on him. Either he’s confused by that or, more likely, scared. Then a guy shows up who Ulrich recognizes is definitely
not
FBI because Ulrich already knows him as something else. Something else that freaks Ulrich out enough for him to try to call security without saying another word. He hadn’t gotten confused when he saw Ben. He’d gotten scared shitless. Why?
    Because he recognized you as JSOC. Because he assumed you were here to kill him. And then he realized you weren’t—because he’s still alive, because someone who was here to kill him wouldn’t have announced himself to a guard and let himself be recorded by all the security cameras in the lobby and at the front desk. Now he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s trying to find out.
    “I’ve been tasked by the U.S. government with recovering some stolen property,” Ben said. “And I have.”
    Ulrich’s eyes widened. “You recovered—”
    He caught himself before he could say more. But he’d already said enough.
    “Yes,” Ben said. “Larison’s dead. I recovered the tapes. Now I want to know who I return them to.”
    Ulrich didn’t say anything, but Ben could see the eagerness, and the calculation, in his eyes.
    “You want them?” Ben asked.
    “Why would you think I do?”
    Ben was impressed by the man’s discipline. But he’d already slipped, and Ben wasn’t going to