by Barry Eisler
Manuel Antonio lived up to its billing: white sand beaches framed by swaying palm trees to one side and blue surf to the other; dozens of lively bars and clubs and restaurants; nothing but young, toned men, all relaxed, fearless, looking to hook up. He remembered thinking the moment he arrived he would have to find a way to get back, it was that good.
He’d met Nico on Playita, one of the surfing beaches. Nico was riding a board in and then paddling it back out, sometimes with some other surfers, other times alone, and Larison was watching from the sand, admiring the way Nico got the most out of his waves, enjoying the occasional flash of brilliant teeth against smooth, cappuccino-colored skin, the lean muscles that stood out whenever he cut back against a wave or moved his arms to recover his balance. A few times, as he got close to the beach, Nico caught his eye and smiled. Larison smiled back, wondering. He guessed Nico was at least ten years younger. Some guys liked hooking up with someone older, more experienced. Some didn’t. He knew which he hoped the gorgeous creature on the surfboard would be.
After about a half hour, Larison had walked down the hot sand and stood with his feet in the cool, clear water. He watched Nico surfing in, glad to see he was heading right in his direction.
Nico rode in about twenty feet from the beach, then slowly sank into the water as the wave’s force depleted. He picked up his board and waded over to Larison, smiling, rivulets of water running down his skin, his chest and shoulders broken out in gooseflesh.
“You like to surf?” he asked in Spanish-accented English.
Larison was surprised. When he didn’t want to be spotted as an American, he was adept at projecting something else, and thought he had been. “How do you know I speak English?” he asked.
The smile broadened. “You seem so happy. I think maybe you’ve never been here before.”
Larison should have been irritated or on guard that this guy had made him. But he wasn’t. In fact, for reasons that just then he didn’t really understand, he felt secretly glad.
“Well, you’re right about that,” he said.
“So? You like to surf?”
Larison smiled. “I like surfers.”
A blush appeared behind Nico’s tan cheeks, a blush Larison found surprisingly disarming, even endearing.
They had dinner that night, then made love in Larison’s hotel room. Larison was ordinarily aggressive in bed, and usually attracted men who sensed the conflicted rage in him and wanted to be on the receiving end of it. But Nico brought out something different in him, something much more gentle, even tender. They’d spent the next two days and nights together, and Larison had concocted an excuse to delay his return to Honduras for two days more. He would have tried to stay even longer, but Nico had to return to San Jose, where he had a small architectural practice. They drove back to the capital city together in Nico’s old Jetta. As they sat in the idling car at the curb of the airport passenger drop-off, there were a dozen things Larison wanted to say, none of which he could find the courage to articulate.
“Do you want to see me again?” Nico asked, as Larison hesitated, his hand on the door handle.
“Yes,” Larison said, meeting his eyes and then looking away, both hopeful and terribly afraid of what might be said next.
“I want to see you, too.”
Larison looked at him again, hoping Nico would see how much his words meant, and understand why Larison couldn’t answer.
“You’re married, aren’t you?” Nico said.
Larison looked away, ashamed but also strangely grateful for Nico’s ability to read him, to understand what other people could never see.
He wanted to lie. Instead he found himself nodding, unable to meet Nico’s eyes.
“It’s okay,” he heard Nico say. “I thought so. I’m glad you told me.”
“It’s … complicated.”
“Of course it is,” Nico said, without a trace of sarcasm or condescension.
“Can we … let’s just see what happens. I want to see you again. This feels different.” He couldn’t believe what he was saying. He swallowed. “Special.”
“I’m out, you know. Everyone knows I’m gay—my family, my firm. I don’t really want to go back to halfway in the closet, you know?”
Larison nodded, his mind a roiling mass of emotions. He’d never had this kind of conversation before, with anyone. He’d never even imagined having it. He never would have dared.
“But I would do that,” Nico said. “For you.”
Larison looked at him. He couldn’t speak. He felt an excitement that was becoming indistinguishable from panic.
And just then, in that mad moment, gripped by impossible hope, Larison felt something bloom in his mind. An idea—no, not even an idea, just a possibility, a possibility he’d never considered before but whose contours he was immediately able to recognize.
“Give me some time,” he heard himself saying. “There are some things I can do … to find a way out of what I’m in. Can you do that? Can you be patient?”
Nico smiled shyly and said, “For you, Dan,” and Larison was immediately glad he’d told Nico his real first name. Ordinarily he wouldn’t do that, but from the first instant there had been something about Nico that had made Larison want to be honest with him. About the things he could be, anyway.
He took Nico’s card but didn’t embrace him. He knew Nico wanted him to, but also knew Nico sensed that he was already melting back into his public self and that any contact in that guise would be unacceptable.
After that, he was able to find a way to visit Costa Rica at least twice a year, sometimes as many as four. He traveled only under legends he himself had developed. He was extremely paranoid about communication, creating an encrypted email account for each of them under false identities and instructing Nico how to use it without establishing any possible connection to either of them. The security procedures were unfamiliar to Nico, but he understood Larison’s fanaticism to be an outgrowth of his fear of being outed, and was always exceptionally careful as a result. In fact, Nico displayed an aptitude and even eagerness for some of the security tools of the trade, which gratified Larison not only for the obvious substantive reasons, but also because he knew it was a sign of Nico’s devotion and desire to please him, as well.
Of course, meeting repeatedly in Costa Rica and staying in Nico’s apartment was suboptimal from a security standpoint, but Larison didn’t have the money to fly both of them to neutral locations or to pay for hotels. It was all he could do to conceal from Marcy the money he was diverting from his military salary for coach travel to Costa Rica. More than that would have risked causing suspicions.
But now they would be able to travel anywhere, live anywhere. He’d come to love Costa Rica and what it represented, but he thought it would be wise to move on, at least for a while, when this thing was done. He’d asked Nico before about someplace new—Barcelona, maybe, or Buenos Aires. Nico had been reluctant because his practice was based in San Jose. So Larison had told him he was working on something big, a sale of his company that would set them both up for life. Larison would finally leave his wife, buy them land somewhere, and Nico could design the house while he worked on establishing a new practice. How did that sound? Nico said it sounded wonderful, though Larison sensed he didn’t really believe it could be true. Well, he’d see soon enough.
The sun was now completely blotted out by looming office buildings and darkness was seeping into the sky. He came to a Hilton hotel and decided it would do as well as any other. He walked in, hoping he’d be able to sleep a little better this time than last.
PART TWO
The people in government who made mistakes or who acted in ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate have been held publicly accountable by severe criticism, suffering enormous reputational and, in some instances, financial losses. Little will be achieved by further retribution.
JACK GOLDSMITH, FORMER ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL IN THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S OFFICE OF
LEGAL COUNSEL
That is not to say presidents and vice presidents are always above the law; there could be instances in which such a prosecution is appropriate, but based on what we know, this is not such a case.
JON MEACHAM, NEWSWEEK
If you’re going to punish people for condoning torture, you’d better include the American citizenry itself.
MICHAEL KINSLEY, THE WASHINGTON POST
11
Rough Men
Three hours after leaving McGlade, Ben and Paula were on a flight to Costa Rica. Hort had arranged for a small jet to take them from Orlando International. Ben didn’t ask and Hort wouldn’t have told him, but Ben suspected the jet was part of the Jeppesen/Boeing–supported civilian fleet used to render and transport war-on-terror detainees through a series of black site prisons.
Ben had never been to Costa Rica and hated the idea of a hot landing in a place he didn’t know and didn’t have time to reconnoiter. Ordinarily, he would arrive in a place several weeks before the actual action to thoroughly familiarize himself with the terrain. No chance for that this time around, but he’d bought a guidebook in Orlando and was perusing it on the plane. Far from ideal, but it was a start. And he’d picked up some sneakers and a Tommy Bahama short-sleeved button-down shirt and cargo shorts that he figured would blend better than the faux-FBI outfit he’d worn to visit Marcy Wheeler. Paula was still in her navy pantsuit, and he figured she was most comfortable looking professional and governmental. Fine for her, but he generally liked to look like whatever would be least noticed in the environment at hand.
He’d called Hort after leaving McGlade’s office. Lanier’s credentials checked out: FBI special agent, joined the Bureau out of SMU right after 9/11, currently working out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C.—same as one Dan Froomkin. Known for being a maverick and a pain in the ass, but also for getting results. Hort agreed with Ben’s assessment that her threat to kick up a public fuss about Ben’s visit to Larison’s wife wasn’t a bluff. Meaning for the time being, it was best to keep her close.
“Now, listen,” Hort had told him. “Maybe Costa Rica will turn out to be a dead end. But if it’s something, if Larison has someone he cares about there, if part of his plan is to disappear with her afterward to a private island or who knows what, and he figures out you’re keying on that someone, he’ll feel cornered. You’d be threatening his op, his girlfriend, everything. This is personal to him. So you watch yourself, son. I told you, you’re good, but you’re not in his league. Not yet.”
The “not yet” removed the sting. “I’ll be careful.”
“Good. And hang on for a minute … okay, while we’ve been talking, I got a printout of Larison’s travel records from the ICE database. Looks like he did travel to Costa Rica, spring of 2005. Flight from Tegucigalpa, where he was TDY at the time. But nothing in April 2007.”
“He traveled that first time under his own name?”
“Yes, and it fits. Say something happened while he was there that first time, he met someone. After that, he wouldn’t want to keep going back under his own name. With one data point, there’s no pattern, nothing for anyone to look for. He had no way of knowing he’d get placed in Costa Rica through something else. Now, you say this McGlade claims Larison killed someone on one of these trips?”
“That’s what he told us, yeah. The one where Larison traveled from Miami on April 17.”
“Okay, that would be an Airbus A320, hundred and fifty seats. Figure two-thirds full, half the passengers women … my guess is, we’ll have to sift through something like forty or fifty names before we spot the one that isn’t like the others. Once we know what legend he was traveling under that day, we can cross-reference, see if he’s been using it for something else. This is promising. Good work, son.”
Ben was annoyed at himself for needing the man’s approval. He wondered if Larison had been this way, or if that was something an operator grew out of. Maybe that’s what Hort meant about him becoming like Larison, if he kept developing this way. He wondered.
Hort had also checked up on Taibbi. Vietnam combat veteran, three tours with the 82nd Airborne, and an LRRP—long-range reconnaissance patrol. Meaning he was self-reliant, understood stealth, and would be handy with a variety of close-range weapons. A conviction in 1982 on arms-trafficking charges. Pleaded guilty, served three years, moved to Costa Rica in 1987, and hadn’t had a problem with the law since then. According to his current passport and cellphone records, he was presently in Jacó, and Ben could reasonably expect to find him at his bar.
He looked at Paula. She was asleep in the seat facing his, her head dipped forward. The cabin was aglow with the sun setting ahead of them and her face was obscured by shadow.
He watched her, enjoying the opportunity to do so unobserved. He liked her hair, liked that she kept it short and natural. Though with her face, he supposed she could do pretty much anything she wanted with her hair and things would be just fine.
He wondered what it must be like for her at the Bureau, a black woman, clearly smarter and more capable than most of the people she had to answer to. Did she have to work twice as hard as her peers? Did she use her sex appeal, or did she try to suppress it? She didn’t wear a ring. Was she single? Did she date? Were guys intimidated about going out with a government agent? Did she ever have a thing for someone at work, and have to fight to try to hide it?
He rotated his neck, cracking the joints, still watching her. What would she be like in bed? Would the professional façade be so important she couldn’t ever let it go? Or could she allow someone to see her naked, not just literally, but figuratively, too?
She said no one ever saw her coming. If it was true, he decided, it was also a shame. He decided Paula coming would be a very fine thing to see.
And then he thought of Sarah and was immediately ashamed of himself. But what could he really share with her? He never felt so alive as he did when he was hunting. Not a politically correct thing to admit, probably, and Sarah would have found it repellant, but wasn’t it true for everyone? That everyone loved to do the things they were good at? Yeah, he wasn’t the smoothest guy in the world, and sure, he had some development ahead of him, but Hort was right, there was nothing he was suited for like ops. He’d survived shit that would have killed most men, most good men, even, and he’d survived it because he was better. How could he not enjoy—how could he not exult in—what he did, what he was? And who was Sarah, or anyone else, to judge him for that?
What was that saying? People sleep soundly in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm them. Something like that, anyway.
Well, he was one of those rough men. And he wasn’t going to change that, not for Sarah, not for anyone. And fuck anyone who had a problem with it.
12
A Massive Deductible
Ulrich could no longer see the K Street traffic below him. It was dark outside, and his windows were now effectively mirrors. It was too late to make any more phone calls, and he was too agitated to get any work done anyway, but still he lingered. His two sons were in college and his home life had long since settled into a sexless kiss hello, followed by a perfunctory recitation of the minutiae of the day, followed by the sounds of the television in the next room, followed by sleep. He and his wife had become strangers, bound mostly by past and progeny, acquaintances who continued to share the same space merely out of habit, the result of some long-ago momentum that itself was slowly dying, as, he supposed, were they.
Not that it had been so terribly different even before the boys had left for school. He was the vice president’s special assistant back when the vice president had been the secretary of defense, and after that he’d served as the Defense Department’s general counsel. Cynthia had put her foot down about the hours after Timmy, their second, had been born, and Ulrich had joined a law firm to placate her. The money was better but the work was boring, and he’d missed being on the inside.
So returning as the new vice president’s chief of staff when his old boss was tapped as the president’s understudy was impossible to resist. Cynthia had put up a few pro forma arguments, but she knew not to fight the battle she couldn’t win.
So for eight years he’d arrived at his sons’ basketball games only in the last quarter, if at all, and the family had maintained the fiction that dad was mostly home for dinner by moving the meal hour to eight, then to nine … and even then, more often than not, he’d had to call with an apology and another useless promise that everyone knew he’d break next time, too. Mostly by the time he’d get home in the evening the boys had been asleep, and often he was gone again the next morning by the time they woke. Weekends he tried to be around. But with two active war theaters and so many initiatives to keep the country safe … it was just all-consuming. How would he have explained it to his family if there had been another attack on his watch? They told him they understood and he hoped it was true. And Cynthia, whatever resentments she might once have harbored over his absences, seemed to have long since let them go. He was grateful to her for that. But none of it changed the fact that his children had grown up and left the house, and he’d barely been around to see any of it. And nothing would ever bring that time back for him, or give him a chance to relive what he’d missed. Nothing.