about thirty hours of sleep. And to not think anymore.
Ben set down his glass. 'I was followed from the airport.'
Hort nodded. 'I wondered. There was something on the news about a shooting in Arlington. You think I had something to do with that?'
Ben shook his head. 'No.'
'Good. Although I wouldn't blame you.'
It was awkward feeling so suspicious of Hort. He supposed he needed to get used to it. 'I need to ask you some questions,' he said.
'I want you to. It's why I brought you here. So we could talk.'
'Larison told me about the Caspers. About Ecologia.'
Hort took a sip of wine. 'I thought he might.'
'Why didn't you tell me?'
'You needed to find out in your own way.'
More manipulation, then. He was seeing a side of Hort he'd never adequately appreciated. Or that he'd been willfully blind to. 'How… you were involved in that?'
'Yes.'
Ben waited. Hort said, 'In the last administration, JSOC was reporting directly to the Office of the Vice President. There was a special class of detainees the CIA had rendered out of various Asian and European countries. Highly secret. Unacknowledged. People we picked up in targeted operations, not the wholesale bullshit we used to populate Guantanamo. The vice president wanted a specialist to interrogate them. One man, to keep things compartmentalized, to have a single source who could assemble the pieces and see through the lies. I went to Larison.'
'Larison tortured them.'
'That's… what it turned into.'
'That's what you meant before. When you told me not to give in to that temptation.'
'That's right. And I hope you were listening.'
'Did you get anything from them?'
There was a pause. Hort said, 'Nothing we couldn't have gotten using the Army Field Manual. If we'd wanted to. But like I told you, the vice president and his crew were after more than just the results.'
'And when they were done, they couldn't let them go.'
'That's right. Once the original mistake was made, we were faced with a variety of unpleasant choices. The least unpleasant was the Ecologia program.'
'When was this?'
'September 2006. The same time the president acknowledged the existence of the black sites and the fourteen high-value detainees being moved from the sites to Guantanamo. And there was a bonus: the administration needed some actual bad guys in Guantanamo, which the black site detainees provided.'
'A distraction?'
'Misdirection. All the president was doing was announcing what was already widely known. The black sites became the story, and while public attention was focused there, Larison was quietly eliminating the Caspers, the black sites' premier occupants.'
'You used Larison for it.'
'To maintain the compartmentalization. Plus, I thought he was hardened at that point. Another mistake. In fact, he was suffering. But too tough to admit it.'
'But… that means he would be on the tapes.'
'I doubt he cares at this point. Or if he did, he could just have deleted or obscured his face.'
Ben was as fascinated as he was appalled. What Hort was telling him had really happened. It didn't get more inside than this.
'How did it work?'
'The program?'
'Yes.'
Hort shrugged. 'The CIA was holding the Caspers in various secret prisons-Thailand, Romania, Lithuania, a prison within a prison at Bagram. They were identified only by a number. Larison would show up with the prisoner's number and an authorization code. And the guards would turn the prisoner over.'
'Like an ATM.'
'Same concept. But without records of deposits and withdrawals.'
They were quiet for a moment. Something occurred to Ben. He said, 'Giving Larison fakes… was that authorized? On the call you had me listen in on, the national security adviser was on board with giving him the real thing.'
Hort smiled. 'No. It wasn't authorized.'
'Then who has the real diamonds?'
Hort's smile broadened. 'I do.'
Ben shook his head. 'What are you… what's going on here?'
'I'll tell you what's going on. The country is facing a perfect storm of vulnerability. The previous administration turned programs like rendition and torture that had always rightly been run at a retail level into a wholesale operation, an operation that couldn't be concealed. There's a public backlash now and the new administration is having trouble containing it. Meanwhile, intel demonstrates what common sense already told us: U.S. torture has been the greatest jihadist recruitment bonanza ever invented. We need new capabilities to address the problems we've created. Unfortunately, we've lost some of the old ones. For a while, there was an off-the-books operation run by someone named Jim Hilger that had been doing the country a lot of good, but that's been wiped out.'
He took a sip of wine. 'I and a few others are trying to rebuild. The military is going to have an increasingly influential role in the new order of things. Two active war theaters with no end in sight, the war on terror, military commissions for terror suspects, that's all bipartisan now. The last administration wanted to use the military in domestic law enforcement, and I expect we'll see more of that, too. I want you to be part of it all.'
Ben thought. The management-style questions, letting him listen in on the conference call with the national security adviser… this is what it was all about. He didn't know what the hell to think.
'And Larison?'
'I want Larison to be part of it, too. A highly capable man and officially dead on top of it. There's a lot he could do. And a lot you could learn from him.'
Ben thought about what Larison had told him, and wondered if maybe Hort didn't know the man the way he thought he did.
'You see the pattern?' Hort said. 'We take the gloves off, it works, so we do more of it. What should be a retail program goes wholesale. You get force drift, mistakes, revelations, commissions, dismantling. Now we're unprotected, our methods have made things worse, and when we're attacked again, the public will scream for protection and won't care how. And we'll repeat the whole sorry cycle again.'
Ben shook his head. 'I don't get what you're trying to do.'
Hort nodded. 'This is all new to you,' he said. 'I get that. I want to explain a few things about how America really works. I think then you'll understand where I'm coming from.'
'Okay.'
'Number one, the country is run by corporate interests. I never understand when people get all worked up about socialism. There's no socialism here. There's corporatism.'
'I don't follow you.'
'Okay, pop quiz. Why do we give nearly three billion dollars a year to Israel?'
'So she can defend herself.'
'Wrong. It's just a way of funneling a subsidy to U.S. arms manufacturers, which is where Israel, by quiet understanding, turns around and spends the money. But no one would support it if we called it 'Raytheon aid.' 'Foreign aid' just sounds so much more aboveboard.'
Ben didn't answer. Hort said, 'Okay, next. Health care reform.
Why?'
'So more people will have insurance.'
