Inside Outt

had done. “Not exactly, but—”
    “You don’t even know what this is about, do you?”
    “What, the tapes?”
    “It’s what’s on the tapes.”
    “You mean the interrogations. Torture.”
    Larison shook his head. “Hort hasn’t told you, then. No, of course he hasn’t. Likes to keep people in the dark. ‘Need to know’ and all that.”
    “Hasn’t told me what?”
    “You really want to know?”
    “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
    “Because only a few people in the world know. And you’ve seen what they’re willing to do to prevent anyone else from finding out. You really want that knowledge? You really want people suspecting you have it?”
    It was weird. Not so long ago, he honestly wouldn’t have cared. He might even have thought Larison was trying to distract him with irrelevancies.
    But now… he did want to know. He wanted to know what all these people had died for.
    “Tell me,” he said.
    “All right. But tell me something first.”
    “If I can.”
    “How’d you track me to Costa Rica?”
    Ben hesitated. And decided he couldn’t imagine Larison retaliating against Marcy, or doing anything else that would hurt his own son.
    “Your wife. Or ex-wife. She suspected you were having an affair. Hired a private investigator.”
    Larison was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I’ll be damned. Marcy… I never saw that coming. You know, you look everywhere for the possible threat, and you miss the one right under your nose. Damn. So that’s it. Those two guys in San Jose—”
    “Working for the PI.”
    “I checked them out after the fact. They had records. So I figured it was just random street crime.”
    Ben nodded. “It made sense. You had no way of knowing.”
    “Well, you figured it out. What, did you interview Marcy?”
    “I did.”
    “And she put you in touch with the PI…”
    “Right.”
    They were quiet for a moment, and Ben knew Larison was reviewing everything, analyzing events through clarified hindsight, piecing it all together, understanding step by step how Ben had gotten to him.
    “Marcy,” he said, shaking his head. “Should’ve seen that coming.”
    Ben didn’t like the direction that comment might lead in. “If you think about it, it actually worked out pretty well.”
    “How?”
    “If the government didn’t have something on you, they wouldn’t have trusted you with the money. They would have just kept coming at you until they got you or killed you or the tapes were released. But the way it is, now that they know about your… connection in Costa Rica, Hort was able to persuade them. He called it mutual assured destruction.”
    There was a pause. Larison said, “Hort has a point. As usual.”
    “Don’t you even want to know how your wife is? And your son?”
    “He’s not my son.”
    “So then… so your wife…”
    “You mean, did she know about me?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I don’t know. I would have said no. But I also would have said no if you’d asked if she might have hired a PI to follow me.”
    “I’m sorry, man.”
    “Don’t be. I can’t blame Marcy. I was living a lie, and she was bearing the brunt of it. In the end, we’re all only human.”
    Ben nodded, reassessing what he thought he’d known, wondering about Marcy.
    “All right, I told you. Now you tell me. What’s this all about?”
    There was a long pause. Larison said, “The Caspers.”
    “Caspers?”
    “Ask Hort. Ask him about Ecologia.”
    “What does—”
    “And if Hort won’t tell you, ask David Ulrich.”
    “Who?”
    “The former vice president’s chief of staff. According to
U.S. News and World Report
, ‘The Most Powerful Man You’ve Never Heard Of.’ Or ‘The Hidden Power,’ is how the
New Yorker
put it. Currently a K Street lobbyist, naturally. He knows even more than Hort. He knows everything. And hasn’t suffered from any of it. I was going to make him suffer. But now my hands are tied.”
    “The Caspers. Ecologia.”
    “Yes. That’s what’s really going on here. That’s what’s really got everybody’s panties in a wad.”
    “I don’t know what those things are. You’re not telling me anything.”
    “I’m giving you the tools to find out. Who do you think you’re really working for? King and country, or just the king?”
    “What does—”
    “You have to be careful now. What do you think will happen after you’ve done what they asked of you, and they decide you’re some kind of threat?”
    “I’m not