Inside Outt

allow him to recover.
    “My mistake,” Ben said. He turned and started to walk to the door. “I’ll give them to the Justice Department.”
    “Wait.”
    Ben turned and looked at him.
    “I’m not saying I’m interested. But… what are you asking for?”
    Ben waited a moment to let him sweat. “You can start by telling me how you recognized me.”
    Ulrich licked blood from his lips. “I’ve seen your picture.”
    “How?”
    “Your file.”
    “Bullshit. There’s no photo associated with my file.”
    Ulrich licked his lips again. “All right, look. I can see there was a mix-up here—”
    “Just tell me the truth. Or I’ll know I can’t trust you with the tapes.”
    “Okay, okay. The CIA’s been trying to get those tapes back. They—”
    “The CIA might have a photo of me. Or maybe they could get one. But that doesn’t tell me what you matched it to.”
    Ulrich didn’t answer. Ben didn’t give him time to think of another lie. He turned and walked toward the door.
    “Lanier! Paula Lanier. She took the picture. While you were sleeping, on the way to Costa Rica.”
    Ben stopped and turned. He tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t. “What?”
    “She works for me, all right? Or she did, when I represented the vice president’s office. Now I’m more of an asset for her because of my connections. Or, she’s my asset. Sometimes it gets hard to tell.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “I knew the FBI was going to be involved in this thing, okay? I knew as soon as it broke, and I needed someone I could trust. So I pulled some strings and had Lanier assigned. She’s been reporting developments to me. Including the involvement of a mysterious operative who wouldn’t even acknowledge his affiliations.”
    “Who sent those contractors to Costa Rica? Who sent the two Ground Branch guys?”
    “That was a CIA op.”
    “But you knew about it.”
    “In case you haven’t noticed, I make it a habit to know about everything.”
    Ben thought. Someone had followed him from the airport that afternoon. The only person outside of Hort who knew he’d been selected as the courier was Paula. He could have kicked himself for his stupidity, for letting his guard down. She’d played him. And he’d fallen for it.
    “What about the two guys who followed me from National today?”
    “Ground Branch again.”
    “Who the hell’s running the CIA? You?”
    “It’s not a question of who’s running it. People have common interests. We work together.”
    “And your common interest on the tapes is the Caspers.”
    “That’s everybody’s common interest. Every American’s, anyway.”
    “What are they?”
    “Why are you asking me? You work for Horton, right? He knows as much as I do. Christ, he was responsible for their orderly disposition.”
    Ben was surprised but didn’t show it. “I’ll ask him when I’m ready to ask him. I’m asking you now.”
    Ulrich looked at him. “What do you think is on those tapes?”
    Ben shrugged. “Waterboarding. Torture.”
    Ulrich laughed. “Waterboarding and torture aren’t even news anymore. Over half the country supports torture, didn’t you know? And over sixty percent of Evangelicals.”
    “Video would be different.”
    “Well, that’s probably true. Seeing what American soldiers and spies had to resort to in the war on terror would have been painful. It would have damaged our self-image as a country, weakened our will to do what needs to be done. But the Caspers were the real problem. Asking the country to accept what we had to do about them… that would have been too much. People wouldn’t be able to understand. And they shouldn’t be forced to.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You’ll give me the tapes?”
    “For the truth.”
    Ulrich nodded. “You know about the ghost detainees, don’t you?”
    Ben thought about what he’d heard. “Rumors. Detainees the CIA was holding without acknowledging their capture or detention. Shuttling them through Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and the rest so the Red Cross couldn’t verify their existence, or keeping them at the black sites. That’s what the Caspers were?”
    Ulrich wiped blood from his mouth, then regarded his hand. “If you want to keep secret prisoners, you have to build secret prisons. After 9/11, we tasked the CIA with doing exactly that. And then we populated what they built.”
    “With the Caspers.”
    “Among others. Now, the way you hear about it in the media today,