Inside Outt

waited. The phone buzzed just a minute later. Ben raised a finger to his lips, answered the call, and immediately pressed the mute button.
    “I’m going to explain the deal to you,” said a low and raspy voice, the tone calm and confident. Given the current circumstances, Ben figured it was Larison, about to issue instructions.
    “We’re listening.” Ben didn’t recognize this one, either, but assumed it was the national security adviser, running the meeting.
    “It’s actually very simple,” Larison said. “Nothing’s changed. If the diamonds haven’t been delivered to me in twenty-four hours in accordance with my instructions, the tapes will be released.”
    “I understand,” the national security adviser said. “I’m going to turn this meeting over now to our new point man on the operation. I think you know him. Colonel?”
    “How are you doing, son?” Hort said. Paula mouthed,
Your boss?
And Ben, feeling he had no choice, figuring she pretty much knew who he was at this point anyway, nodded.
    There was a pause. Larison said, “Hort?”
    “It’s me.”
    “I had a feeling they’d bring you in.”
    “Well, I wish they’d brought me in earlier. This thing would have been handled better.”
    “All I want to hear is that you have the diamonds. If you do, we’ll keep talking. If you don’t, you’re wasting my time.”
    “We have them.”
    “Where are they?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Where are you holding them? What city?”
    “They’re here in Washington.”
    “Good. I’ll call again in twenty-four hours and tell you how you’ll deliver them. You’ll use a single courier. I think you understand what will happen if you deviate from my instructions.”
    “You made your point in Costa Rica, son. Loud and clear.”
    “Twenty-four hours. You’ll want to have a jet ready.”
    There was a click, then a dial tone, then silence.
    The national security adviser said, “What do you think?”
    “I think this is another opportunity,” a third voice said. “We can pick him up at the point of exchange.” It must have been Clements.
    “I’m sorry,” Hort said, “can you tell me how that’s different from your previous plan? The one that cost fourteen lives and put Larison on a hair trigger. Literally, most likely, if we’re talking about his deadman switch.”
    “He got lucky.”
    “You
got lucky. Lucky he didn’t just uncork and release those tapes. In case you haven’t noticed, the man is not exactly stable.”
    “We don’t even know if there is a deadman switch. He could be bluffing.”
    “He’s not bluffing. I know him. And right now, I guarantee you he’s got the switch set to dangerously short intervals. When he picks up the diamonds, he’ll probably have it down to about fifteen minutes. Your plan is to take him, secure him, revive him, elicit accurate intel, and disarm the switch in under fifteen minutes?”
    “Better that way than just handing over the diamonds and hoping for the best.”
    “ ‘That way’ is a fantasy, and the only thing a fantasy is good for is jerking off.”
    Paula covered her mouth to suppress a giggle and Ben gave her a
yeah, that’s my boss
shrug. It was weird, and a little intoxicating, to be listening in on such a high-level conversation. And to have made Paula a party to it.
    “Where are you going to get the men, anyway?” Hort said. “You going to go back to Blackwater? And what are you going to do if the information Larison gives you doesn’t disarm the trigger, but instead sets it off? How are you going to know, until you see the footage from those tapes on the Al Jazeera nightly news and every American network?”
    There was silence for a moment. Clements said, “What you’re proposing means we’ll have those tapes hanging over the head of the U.S. government forever. And eventually, they’re going to come out.”
    “Maybe. But everything you’ve tried is guaranteed to
make
them come out. Besides, Larison is going to have something hanging over his head, too. Nico. And his family. Like I said before, we have nuclear parity now. Mutual assured destruction. Which wasn’t pleasant for anyone back in the day, true, but it managed to keep the peace.”
    The national security adviser said, “I have to say, I don’t like the idea of his getting away clean.”
    “Sir,” Hort said, “you can always pick him up later if that’s what you choose to do. I’d advise against it even later for the same reasons I’m advising