Inside Outt

is one.”
    “Who’s the other?”
    Hort took a sip of wine. “The same man who taught me about
honne
and
tatemae.
A half-Japanese former soldier gone freelance, named Rain. John Rain.”
    “The bartender in Jacó mentioned a guy named Rain. Said he knew him in Vietnam. Called him ‘death personified.’”
    Hort nodded, and for a moment his thoughts seemed far away. “I’d say that’s an apt description.”
    “You want me to track this guy down. And Dox.”
    “They’re the ones who took down Hilger’s operation.”
    “This is retaliation?”
    “Hell, no. It was unfortunate, but it wasn’t personal. Hilger got in Rain’s and Dox’s business, which even for a man as effective as Hilger turned out not to be a very smart thing to do. No, I want them on our side. I want to make them an offer. But I have to find them first. Sounds like maybe you already have one lead, this bartender in Jacó.”
    So this is what all the praise had been about. All the grooming. To entice him. To make him want to be complicit.
    “Hort… part of me, I’m honored. But I can’t work for this thing you call the oligarchy.”
    Hort took a swallow of wine. “You’ve been working for it. You just didn’t know it.”
    “I… whatever you want to call it. I don’t want to be part of it.”
    “You want to stay ignorant.”
    “That’s not what I mean.”
    “Because you’re not ignorant anymore. You come a certain distance, you can’t just turn around. It doesn’t work like that.”
    Ben thought of Larison, asking him,
You really want that knowledge?
    He thought of what it would be like to kill this man, who’d been a mentor, a father figure.
    He decided he could live with it.
    “You threatening me, Hort?”
    “I don’t have to threaten you. You can work with me or get owned by the CIA. That’s pretty much the deal right now.”
    Ben swallowed, his nausea worse. So this was what it meant to be an insider.
    “You’re not worried I’m going to expose this?”
    Hort laughed. “You still don’t get it, do you? There’s nothing to expose. It’s all right there to see, for anyone who cares to look. But nobody does. And there’s nothing they could do, anyway.”

CHAPTER 42
Frog in a Pot
    B en left the restaurant ahead of Hort. He had a killer headache and he felt like the only thing keeping him from puking was that he hadn’t touched his food.
    The last thing Hort had said to him before he left was,
Think it over.
He’d said it with complete confidence, the supreme unconcern of a man who’d had this conversation many times before, and always with the same inevitable result.
    He stopped at a CVS pharmacy to pick up some fresh skivvies and a toothbrush, then spent the night in a downtown hotel. He was exhausted, but couldn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling and reran events, trying to make sense of them.
    He wished Larison had just released the tapes. He hated that he’d prevented it. But then Al Jazeera would be broadcasting terrorist recruitment propaganda right now. And by commission or omission, Ben would have been part of what caused it.
    You see, when the oligarchy looks in the mirror and says, “The State is me,” it’s not inaccurate. It’s not hubris. They’re just describing reality. They’ve made it so.
    It was like a terrorist hostage situation. You want to take out the terrorists? You have to sacrifice the hostages. You want to go after the oligarchs and the self-interested? You have to take out the nation, too.
    He rubbed his eyes, wishing he could sleep. When this thing had started, he’d so wanted to be on the inside. And then Hort had opened the door and showed him what the inside was really like.
    You come a certain distance, you can’t just turn around. It doesn’t work like that.
    Maybe I was stupid along the way to get in that position, to get in so deep I couldn’t find my way back, only out.
    There had to be a way out of this. There had to be.
    • • •
    He slept fitfully for five hours and was up at just after dawn. He showered, dressed, and headed out to get something to eat. His appetite had returned in the night and he was starving.
    The air was already muggy and oppressive. Summer insects buzzed unseen in the trees. He fueled up at a diner and walked to the Lincoln Memorial. He observed Lincoln’s stoical features, then zigzagged from the Korean to the Vietnam to the World War II memorials. He thought of his parents, of that long-ago Washington weekend. He wondered