“I… whatever you want to call it. I don’t want to be part of it.”

“You want to stay ignorant.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Because you’re not ignorant anymore. You come a certain distance, you can’t just turn around. It doesn’t work like that.”

Ben thought of Larison, asking him, You really want that knowledge?

He thought of what it would be like to kill this man, who’d been a mentor, a father figure.

He decided he could live with it.

“You threatening me, Hort?”

“I don’t have to threaten you. You can work with me or get owned by the CIA. That’s pretty much the deal right now.”

Ben swallowed, his nausea worse. So this was what it meant to be an insider.

“You’re not worried I’m going to expose this?”

Hort laughed. “You still don’t get it, do you? There’s nothing to expose. It’s all right there to see, for anyone who cares to look. But nobody does. And there’s nothing they could do, anyway.”

42. Frog in a Pot

Ben left the restaurant ahead of Hort. He had a killer headache and he felt like the only thing keeping him from puking was that he hadn’t touched his food.

The last thing Hort had said to him before he left was, Think it over. He’d said it with complete confidence, the supreme unconcern of a man who’d had this conversation many times before, and always with the same inevitable result.

He stopped at a CVS pharmacy to pick up some fresh skivvies and a toothbrush, then spent the night in a downtown hotel. He was exhausted, but couldn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling and reran events, trying to make sense of them.

He wished Larison had just released the tapes. He hated that he’d prevented it. But then Al Jazeera would be broadcasting terrorist recruitment propaganda right now. And by commission or omission, Ben would have been part of what caused it.

You see, when the oligarchy looks in the mirror and says, “The State is me,” it’s not inaccurate. It’s not hubris. They’re just describing reality. They’ve made it so.

It was like a terrorist hostage situation. To take out the terrorists, you’d have to sacrifice the hostages. You want to go after the oligarchs and the self-interested, you have to take out the nation, too.

He rubbed his eyes, wishing he could sleep. When this thing had started, he’d so wanted to be on the inside. And then Hort had opened the door and showed him what the inside was really like.

You come a certain distance, you can’t just turn around. It doesn’t work like that.

Maybe I was stupid along the way to get in that position, to get in so deep I couldn’t find my way back, only out.

There had to be a way out of this. There had to be.

– -

He slept fitfully for five hours and was up at just after dawn. He showered, dressed, and headed out to get something to eat. His appetite had returned in the night and he was starving.

The air was already muggy and oppressive. Summer insects buzzed unseen in the trees. He fueled up at a diner and walked to the Lincoln Memorial. He observed Lincoln ’s stoical features, then zigzagged from the Korean to the Vietnam to the World War II memorials. He thought of his parents, of that long-ago Washington weekend. He wondered what they would make of their son now.

He walked along the Mall, past oblivious joggers and robotic early commuters, past pigeons and a lost-looking dog, past the sallow-eyed homeless who watched this scene, surrounded by monuments and marble, every morning and every night. He stared at the hollow dome of the Capitol.

Paula had told him she lived in Fairfax. Maybe she drove to work, but he doubted it. Traffic on 66 had to be a bitch. Why bother, when it was a straight shot on the Orange Line from Fairfax to Federal Triangle Station and from there just a short walk to the Bureau?

He set up in a coffee shop at the intersection of Twelfth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Unless she was in the habit of varying her routes and times, and he’d seen zero evidence of that, he didn’t expect he’d miss her.

He didn’t. He’d been waiting less than an hour when he saw her coming up Twelfth Street. He watched as she turned right onto Pennsylvania Avenue, eight lanes of traffic leading to and from the Capitol, then fell in behind her, squinting into the sun, cars and buses chugging past.

“Paula.”

She jumped and turned around. “What are you doing here?”

She looked scared. He’d expected her to be surprised, but not scared.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked around, then back at him. “Did you kill him?”

“Who?”

“You know who. Ulrich.”

“No. Although I gather certain people might want to make it look that way.”

“How are they going to do that?”

“I saw him right before he died.”

She didn’t answer.

“I know you worked for him, Paula. You sent him my picture. You kept him apprised. That was me they were going to take out in Costa Rica, right? No wonder you were so shaken up. Two guys who are supposed to take me out clean, and I dropped both of them right in front of you. Right on you, actually.”

She looked away. “I didn’t know. Didn’t know that was going to happen.”

“They tried again yesterday, did you know that? Followed me from the airport.”

She pursed her lips. “Those two in Arlington?”

“So you knew about them.”

“It was on the news.”

He looked at her. “Why? I just want to know why.”

“I don’t know anymore,” she said, shaking her head slowly.

“Well, try. Try to explain.”

She sighed. “There are people who know what’s going on, and people who don’t. People who can get things done, and people who can’t.”

“That’s it? That’s why?”

“Look, I joined the FBI right after 9/11 because I wanted to make a difference. It took me about a year to figure out I couldn’t. That no one can make a difference. The system’s too big. The only thing you can make is a stand. And making a stand without making a difference is quixotic at best. More likely, it’s suicide, like some Buddhist monk setting himself on fire to protest something that’s never going to change anyway. So I went from idealist… to realist.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

“At least I see what’s going on. Look at you, stumbling around in the dark, not even knowing why.”

“This is what you meant by ‘No one sees me coming.’ And when you told me you know how to work a cover… your whole life is a cover. And all that bullshit about how you’d rather just be yourself… you think having natural hair is all it takes? Do you even know who you are?”

She frowned. “I know who I am.”

“Bugged you when I asked, though, didn’t it?”

“Oh, are you going to analyze me now?”

He looked at her. “Why’d you sleep with me?”

She shrugged. “You’re a good-looking guy. Is that so hard to understand?”

“That was it? You had an itch to scratch?”

“What, you think I fell in love with you? Please.”

“I think you felt something, yeah. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been so fastidious about my kissing you or seeing where you live. You let me into your body but not into your apartment?

What’s that?”

“It’s what I had to do.”

“To get me to trust you. Drop my guard.”

“Something like that.”

“Something like that. So you found out I was the courier, and told Ulrich, and they set another team on me.”

“I told you, I didn’t know what they were going to do.”

“And I’m the one who’s stumbling around in the dark?”

She didn’t answer.

“Look me in the eye, Paula. Prove to me you’re not human, because I don’t believe it. Tell me you didn’t feel anything.”

“What if I did? We call that ‘two birds with one stone.’ You have a problem mixing a little pleasure with your business?”

“So you fucked me for business. What does that make you?”

“But I told you, I enjoyed it, too.”