“You don’t trust them?”

Hort snorted. “You could say that. Right now they’re running around like a bunch of hyperactive retards. They’re going to fuck this up if we let them. So we’re not going to let them.”

Ben thought for a moment, sensing he was missing something, not sure of what it was. “Is it just the CIA? Who else knows about this?”

Hort smiled. “The DCI contacted the Justice Department. Federal blackmail case, standard operating procedure.”

“And if the FBI recovers those tapes…”

“Exactly. Their goal will be prosecution. They’ll preserve the tapes as criminal evidence. Eventually, they’ll leak. And you’ve got Abu Ghraib all over again, multiplied by about a thousand. You put those tapes on Al Jazeera, forget about just guaranteeing al Qaeda’s monthly recruitment numbers-it’ll ignite the whole Muslim world.”

“Oh, man.”

“So now we have three overlapping investigations. The CIA, which caused this monumental goat-fuck to start with. The Justice Department, which if they recover the tapes will, with all their good intentions and by-the-book behavior, wind up doing the same damage the blackmailer is threatening.”

“And me.”

“I’d call that us. But yes.”

Ben nodded. He couldn’t deny, he liked the sound of the plural better. “Us, then.”

He thought for a minute. The whole thing had been so smoothly delivered. But there was something missing at the center of it. Something obvious.

“Why?” he said.

“I told you, I can’t trust the others.”

“No, I’m asking you why not one of the other guys in the unit. Why’d you come to me?”

“Well, for starters, I had to get you out of a hellhole in Manila.”

“The real reason.”

Hort sighed. “I’m dealing with manpower issues right now, that’s why. Most of the ISA is tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the ones who aren’t, two are recovering from injuries you inflicted when you met up with them in California. And another operator you might remember, Atrios, isn’t reporting in again, ever.”

Ben was glad Hort hadn’t tried to bullshit him about how special he was. The truth was, there wasn’t a man in the unit who wasn’t in some way the best.

He thought again. There was something nagging at him… and then he realized.

“This whole time, we’ve been talking about ‘the blackmailer.’ Singular. You used it. And you didn’t correct me when I did.”

Hort smiled. “Is that right?”

“You know who it is.”

Hort’s smile broadened. “Just don’t forget who trained you, son, all right?”

Ben felt an absurd flush of pride and tried to ignore it. “Who?”

“A good man with a lot of demons, demons that finally got the better of him. His name is Daniel Larison. You never knew him, but he was part of the unit. One of the originals, in fact. He was one of the few people who had access to the tapes.”

“So why isn’t everyone looking for him now?”

“Because he died in the bombing attack on Prime Minister Bhutto in Karachi on October 18, 2007.”

There was a long pause. “He faked his death?”

“I believe he did. He had contacts in Pakistan’s ISI and he could have had foreknowledge of the attack.”

“And not warned anyone?”

“I told you, the man has demons.”

“Damn. How many people died in that attack?”

“About a hundred and forty, and three times that burned and maimed. Larison was in Karachi on temporary duty. Shortly before the attack, he reported he was going to meet a contact at Bhutto’s rally. But that might have been deception, and he could have left the country under a false passport after. The bomb was big enough to make it impossible to identify all the remains, one of which was assumed to be Larison’s based on knowledge of his movements and on other factors. Anyway, we couldn’t inquire too closely without getting into a pissing match with the ISI about placing operators unauthorized on their soil.”

“Yeah, but they know we-”

“They know, and they don’t want us to remove their ability to deny that they know. Anyway, if anyone could have pulled this off, it was Larison.”

“What’s his motive?”

“Well, there’s a hundred million dollars in play. That’s a lot of motive right there.”

“Would you do what he’s doing for a hundred million?”

“It doesn’t matter what I would do. It’s what Larison would do. Like I said, the man had demons. He saw some shit in the course of his work that mandated time with a shrink, but he would never see one.”

Hort paused, and a ripple of sadness seemed to pass across his face.

“Yeah, he shouldered an unfair burden, and the weight was causing cracks. He was a serial steroid abuser, for one thing. He had anger management issues, for another. Too many times, he stepped over the line in the field. I won’t lie to you, either-a lot of this is my responsibility. I saw the signs, I knew he’d been in the field for going on way too long. He needed a reprieve, he needed help. But with two active war theaters and shadow operations like we’ve never seen before, we’ve been stretched. Hell, we’ve got National Guard deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, grunts on their fifth tour of duty, politicians asking more and more and giving us less and less to do it with. Put enough pressure on the system, you’re going to start seeing cracks. Cracks in the system, cracks in the soldiers.”

Interesting. Hort had read the anger in Larison as he’d read it in Ben. Well, it wasn’t like the unit attracted a lot of Zen Buddhists.

“Why are you so sure it was him?”

“I’m not sure. But there’s no one else that makes any sense.”

“Then couldn’t the other players-the Agency, the Bureau-figure out Larison, too? That he had the access, faked his death-”

“They could, but they won’t. They don’t know him the way I do. Larison was the best. He’s what you’ll be in ten years if you keep developing the way you need to. Right now, you’ve got the confidence and the instincts. What you need is judgment. And control.”

That was a rebuke for Manila. Ben couldn’t deny the justice of it.

“If it’s just the Agency and the Bureau on this, how did you find out? What’s your connection?”

Hort smiled as though pleased that Ben was considering all the angles, asking the right questions. But he said only, “I’ve been around for a while, son. I know people.”

Yeah, a guy like Hort had contacts everywhere: Pentagon, State, all the spook services… probably even the White House. Couldn’t really expect him to reveal his sources and methods.

“So, what’s our time frame?”

“Five days. And he says he has an electronic dead-man trigger. Even if we find him, we can’t just take him out.”

“A bluff?”

Hort shook his head. “It’s exactly what he would do. Or you or I would do, for that matter.”

“What do I do when I find him?”

That ripple of sadness passed across Hort’s face again. “You don’t do anything. Your job is just to find him and fix him. Not to finish him. Not yet, anyway. For the time being, we’re going to have to play this one by ear.”

Ben wasn’t sure what playing it by ear would be about. Up until now, “find, fix, and finish” had always constituted a half-redundant description of what Ben did, with “finish” being the real point. He wanted to ask what Hort had in mind, and why he thought they might be able to end this without ending Larison in the process. But he’d asked the important questions already, and that kind of “why” wasn’t in his job description anyway. His orders were to find and fix Larison, and he would carry them out. Presumably, at that point, he’d get some new orders. In the meantime, someone else would worry about why.