Inside Outt

—George W. Bush
    They literally were chaining people up for days.… If they ever had videos of this, it’s something out of the thirteenth Century.
                                —Bob Woodward
    So it appears we now have evidence Ghul was in a CIA prison. Where he is today is still a mystery.…
                                —Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memo

New York Times
, March 2, 2009
U.S. SAYS CIA DESTROYED 92 TAPES OF INTERROGATIONS
The government on Monday revealed for the first time the extent of the destruction of videotapes in 2005 by the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that Agency officers destroyed 92 videotapes documenting the harsh interrogations of two Qaeda suspects in CIA detention… including the simulated drowning technique called waterboarding.

CHAPTER 1
About a Hundred Percent
    B en Treven could feel the Australians looking at him again, sizing him up for whether he’d make a good victim tonight. He brushed his blond hair out of his face and kept his gaze on nothing in particular, nodding his head slightly as though he was enjoying the pulsing house music. He knew the smart thing was to ignore them, but part of him couldn’t help hoping they’d take their wordless interview just a little further. It had been a hell of a day and he could feel that old, crazy urge to unload on someone. If these guys wanted to give him a reason, it was up to them.
    The three of them were in civilian clothes, but he’d heard the accents and seen the swagger and took them for sailors on shore leave. Manila’s P. Burgos Street, an eternally crumbling matrix of neon and girly bars and massage parlors, had ingested them as it had ingested generations of sailors and marines and sex tourists before them. It would appropriate their money, alleviate their lust, and expel them after like pale effluent into the dank Manila night.
    The burliest of the three missed his shot at the spotlit pool table, and as he stepped away to make room for his buddy, he squinted and waved a hand up and down in Ben’s line of sight, palm forward, as though wiping a window: The gesture read,
Hello? Anybody there?
    Ben kept his expression blank.
Oh yeah, pal, somebody’s here. And believe me, you don’t want to meet him.
    A petite Filipina waitress in heels and a microscopic skirt sauntered over to the pool table, balancing a tray of San Miguels one-handed. Ben hadn’t seen her earlier—she must have just started her shift. She took the Australians’ pesos, distributed their beers, and studiously failed to respond to their leering smiles. Then she turned and headed in Ben’s direction, the Australians’ eyes following her ass.
    “You need another drink, sweetie?” she asked Ben, smiling, her eyes dark, her teeth white against her smooth brown skin.
    He was standing with his back to the bar and she would have known he could have just ordered from the bartender. He didn’t know whether her interest was personal or professional. He wondered whether it would irritate the Australians.
    He shook his head and offered only a polite smile. “Thanks, I’m good.”
    She leaned a little closer. “Are your eyes… green?”
    “That’s what people tell me.”
    She smiled again. “It’s my favorite color. If you need anything, just tell me, okay?”
    “I will. Thanks.”
    She walked away. The Australians didn’t track her ass this time. They were looking at Ben.
    He told himself that as long as he didn’t do anything to provoke them, it wasn’t his fault. But he also recognized that he was ignoring them almost ostentatiously now, that a more effective way to avoid a problem would have been to raise his Bombay Sapphire and give them a cold smile:
I’m aware of you, I’m not afraid of you, I’m being friendly so you can now look for trouble elsewhere without having to acknowledge you’ve backed down to the guy you were initially assessing.
    He took a swallow of the gin and set the glass down on the bar. Yeah, that would have been the better way. But that afternoon his ex-wife had told him she never wanted to see him again, that their daughter, Ami, believed the man now raising her was her real father, that he shouldn’t have tracked them down in the first place, and what could he have been thinking after they hadn’t heard from him in nearly three years? She hadn’t even seemed angry when he’d approached her in the rain in front of Ami’s suburban