“I’m just wondering what it’s like to be a young, attractive, female FBI agent who’s smarter and got more moxie than most of the men around her.”

“Oh, is that me? Smarter and with more moxie?”

“Don’t forget the attractive part.”

“Yes, I heard that, too.”

“So, are they intimidated by you? Do they hit on you?”

“You know what you’re doing right now?”

“What?”

“It’s called projection. Do you know what that is?”

“I think I’ve heard of it.”

“You’ve heard of it, but you don’t recognize it. It’s when you attribute to others a behavior you sense but can’t face in yourself.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Of course it is. You’re intimidated by me and it’s making you uncomfortable. You deal with the discomfort by being sexually passive-aggressive with me. Hitting on me, that is, which makes you feel dominant. But rather than recognize any of that and deal with it like an adult, you suggest that it’s other people who must do what you yourself are doing right this very minute.”

Ben puffed up his cheeks and blew out a breath. “That’s a pretty sophisticated analysis.”

She looked at him, and once again he was struck by an incongruous gentleness in her eyes. “It’s actually pretty simple,” she said. “You’re hurting inside, Ben or whatever your name really is. That’s where all the adolescent bluster comes from. You don’t want anyone to see what’s really going on in there, so you act like a jerk to push them away. I expect it works really well for you, too.”

After everything that had happened with Alex, that one stung. He thought of Hort, stripping him bare with his commentary in that filthy prison. A few rejoinders came to mind, but because he sensed that maybe she was right, they all made him feel pathetic.

“I guess it does,” he said.

But she didn’t catch that he wasn’t sparring anymore. “Now listen,” she said, “we’re busy now, we have a job to do. But you know what? When this is over?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“When this is over, I want you to make a little time for yourself and look up some of the disorders we’ve been talking about. Projection, for example. Maybe you can get some insight.”

He didn’t answer. He’d had about as much insight as he could handle.

15. Breaking the Cycle of Violence

Ben and Paula landed at Quepos, a small airport on the Pacific coast with an open-air pavilion handling both departures and arrivals. Hort had taken care of customs, and they hadn’t needed to transit through San Jose.

At the curb, a young, fit-looking brown-skinned guy in shorts, a polo shirt, and shades was leaning against a dark green van. Ben and Paula walked over.

“Where are you heading?” the guy asked.

“Up the coast,” Ben responded, using the bona fides Hort had provided. “Hoping to see some crocodiles.”

The guy nodded, handed Ben a set of keys, and walked off without another word. Paula watched him go. “We don’t have to sign for anything?”

“I guess not.”

“If I didn’t already know you’re a spook, that’s pretty much the proof. If you were FBI, we’d be waiting in a rent-a-car line now.”

Ben smiled and opened the driver-side door. Paula rolled her eyes and moved around to the passenger side. “I know, I know, the man’s got to drive,” she said. “What does this thing do, shoot Hellfire missiles? Turn into a boat?”

“No, but if it’s what I’m expecting, in back it’s got one-way glass on the windows, a couple of comfortable swivel seats, and even a portable toilet. Perfect for all your mobile surveillance needs.”

Paula entered the coordinates for Taibbi’s bar in Jacó on her iPhone. As soon as they were clear of the airport, Ben reached under his seat and pulled out the Glock 23 that was waiting for him there. Better this way than taking a chance on trying to bring one directly, in case Hort hadn’t managed to handle customs.

“Well, that’s handy,” Paula said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share.”

“Check under your seat.”

Paula did. There was a Glock waiting for her, too.

“Now that’s the kind of interagency cooperation I’m talking about,” she said, smiling and checking the load.

“I don’t want you walking around unarmed. But don’t point it at me, okay? Once was enough.”

“Well, that would be ungrateful of me, wouldn’t it?” she said, and Ben noted that she hadn’t actually agreed. Not that it would have mattered anyway. They weren’t exactly on their way to a lifelong friendship, but he was pretty sure they were past the point where they’d be throwing down on each other.

They headed north up the coast, the sun setting to their left, the road shifting from one lane to two and then back again as it twisted past jungle and plantation and rickety roadside town. Occasionally they would crest a hill and catch a glimpse of the ocean, its surface scored with gold and pink as the sun slipped away beyond it, but mostly the route felt more tunnel than road, a passage sealed off in all directions but forward and back by the indifferent, impenetrable green of the rain forest all around.

When they passed a sign telling them they were ten kilometers from Jacó, Paula said, “Now listen. I know you like to be the driver, I know you like to be in charge. But let’s not go into Taibbi’s place bristling with attitude, okay? If we have to ratchet things up, we’ll ratchet things up. But let’s start sweet. Which means I’ll do the talking, okay?”

Ben chuckled. “Was that sweet when you told McGlade you were going to climb up his ass and chew your way out?”

“It’s what was called for at the moment. But I started nicely and evaluated him first.”

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great line. I’m going to use it myself first chance I get.”

“Do we understand each other? You’re too much of a hard-ass all the time, and I don’t want you getting in people’s faces and antagonizing them unnecessarily. We won’t get any cooperation that way. You have to know when to use sugar and when to use spice. You’re all spice.”

“All right, whatever. If you want to take the lead, it’s fine with me. All I care about is the results.”

“I don’t think that’s true, but okay.”

“What do you mean, it’s not true?”

“I mean, when someone uses a hammer for every job he’s presented with, he’s not just trying to do the job.”

He glanced over. “What’s he doing, then?”

She looked at him. “He’s enjoying the hammer.”

Ben didn’t answer. Like a few of her earlier observations, like what Hort had told him in the Manila city jail, the latest comment chafed, and he knew that must mean there was something to it. But not something he was inclined to consider at the moment.

By the time they pulled into Jacó, the last light had leached from the sky. They rolled along the main drag, two potholed lanes hemmed in on either side by low-slung buildings, some new, others ramshackle. There were open-air restaurants and dim nightclubs, souvenir shops and cheap hotels, construction sites and vacant lots and everywhere palm trees, swaying as though to silent music in the murky dark.

“There it is,” Paula said, pointing to an enormous illuminated sign for Bottle Bar, the name they’d gotten from McGlade.

“I know,” Ben said, watching three curvaceous Latina prostitutes going inside. “Just want to get a feel for the street before we go in.”

He continued down the strip. Small knots of tourists, some Tico, others foreign, wandered the sidewalks and zigzagged back and forth across the street, not aimlessly, exactly, but more with the air of people who would know what they were looking for only when they found it. The contours of the town changed somewhat as they drove, but overall, Jacó was a fractal, each part possessing and revealing the character of the whole. Which was, obviously, the bartering of pleasure-surf and sun by day, booze and sex at night. Burgos Street in Manila, Pattaya in Thailand, Orchard Tower in Singapore… they all looked different, and they all felt depressingly the same.