by Barry Eisler
“And now someone’s going to try to set me up for what happened to him.”
Hort didn’t answer. Ben thought, You want to see a jihad? When I’m done with you, Larison’s going to feel like your best fucking friend.
“The CIA has the security tapes from Ulrich’s building,” Hort said. “Clements generously offered to hand them over to me. Professional courtesy and all that. But I imagine he made copies. By now I’m sure you’ve noticed, that’s the way it works.”
Ben felt sick. “Then I’m compromised. Permanently.”
“No more so than most of the people in this town. It can be managed.”
“Managed how?”
“I’ve bailed you out before, son. I think you can rely on me to do it again.”
“In exchange for what?”
“I told you. I want you to work with me.”
“I already work with you.”
“I’m talking about a different capacity.”
Ben didn’t answer. If he understood what Hort was saying, he couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.
The waiter brought their steaks and moved off. Hort picked up his knife and fork, cut off a juicy chunk, put it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
“Damn,” he said. “That’s good.”
“What capacity?”
“I think you need a little context first.”
“I’m listening.”
Hort took another bite of steak and washed it down with some wine. “The most important thing is this. America is ruled by an oligarchy. If you want to understand America, you have to understand the oligarchy. And if you don’t understand the oligarchy, you can’t understand America.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean a small group of people having de facto control over a country.”
Ben thought of what Larison had said. “You’re talking about a conspiracy?”
“Not at all. Conspiracies are hidden. The oligarchy is right out in the open. It’s just a collection of people in business, politics, the military, and the media who recognize their interests are better served by cooperation than they would be by competition. There aren’t any secret handshakes. Most of the people who are part of the oligarchy don’t even recognize its existence. If they recognize it at all, they think of it as just a benevolent, informal establishment. They tell themselves it selflessly serves the country’s interests rather than selfishly serving its own.”
Ben was equal parts intrigued and horrified. “How does it work?”
Hort chuckled. “Arthur Andersen was examining Enron. The credit agencies were examining the subprimes. That alone ought to tell you everything you need to know about the way the oligarchy works.”
“But it doesn’t have—I don’t know—rules?”
“There are a few unwritten ones. Number one, above a certain pay grade, a politician can never be prosecuted or imprisoned.”
“What about Nixon?”
“Nixon would never have been prosecuted. He was told that if he resigned, he would be pardoned. And that if he didn’t, he would be assassinated.”
Ben shook his head. It seemed too outlandish to be true. “What about Clinton? He was impeached.”
“Sex is the exception. Because it doesn’t offer a patriotism defense.”
“What about the Caspers? Ecologia? People wouldn’t go to prison for that?”
“Some would have. After all, we know from Abu Ghraib that it’s all about the pictures. No pictures, no proof. No proof, no scandal. No scandal, no convictions. But even with video proof of the Caspers and what was done to them, the real architects would never have suffered. The oligarchy wouldn’t be able to whitewash it the way they did Abu Ghraib, but they’d just scapegoat a slightly higher-level target. The midlevel bureaucrats, the Ulrichs of the world, would be the sacrificial lambs. 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.”
“Hort … I don’t understand. You just accept this?”
“I’m a realist, son.”
“You don’t want to fight it?”
“Maybe I would have if I’d been born fifty or seventy years earlier. But the establishment is bigger now, more entrenched. The Roosevelt and Truman expansions were ratified by Eisenhower. Kennedy’s and Johnson’s abuses were ratified by Nixon. Bush Jr.’s extraconstitutional moves have all been ratified by Obama. It’s a ratchet effect. There hasn’t been a federal law in the last sixty years that’s done other than increase the government’s power and influence, and the power and influence of the corporations that manage the government by extension. The leviathan only grows.”
“You’re saying it can’t be beaten?”
Hort laughed. “You can’t beat the oligarchy. You can’t beat it because the oligarchy has already won. The establishment is like a virus that’s taken over the organs of the host. Now it acts as a kind of life support system, and if you remove it, the patient it battens on will die. Remember the scene in that movie Alien? Where the creature attaches itself to John Hurt’s face, runs a tentacle down his throat, and puts him in a coma, but if they cut it off, it’ll kill him? That’s the oligarchy. The establishment is a creature whose first priority is ensuring that if you try to remove it, you’ll wind up killing the host.”
“So there’s nothing that can be done.”
“No, there is, and that’s where you come in. The only possible solution is to manage this fucked-up system from the inside. That’s why I wanted the diamonds. And the tapes, if Larison comes around. They give us leverage. Then, if someone within the oligarchy is abusing his position so much that it’s creating a problem for national security, we can quietly remove him, one way or the other.”
“You mean Ulrich.”
“For example.”
“Sounds like the mafia. With me as an enforcer.”
“You can call it that. I prefer to think of it as good management. Would you rather have to clean up another mess like the Caspers, a mess caused by a bunch of fools? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being the cleanup crew. I’m tired of the board of directors being composed of dimwits and ideologues. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers … that’s all just window dressing now, the artifacts of an ancient mythology, the vestments of a dead religion. We need something different now, something suited for the modern world. We need realists, men like us. We are the change we’ve been waiting for.”
He took another mouthful of steak and chewed, nodding appreciatively.
“I don’t buy it,” Ben said. “You could blow it up if you wanted to.”
Hort swallowed. “Suppose I could. Then what? You want a revolution? Chaos? Russia in 1917, China in 1949? Who knows what we’d wind up with in the aftermath. At least now we have order.”
“Maybe order’s overrated.”
“Tell that to the folks in Somalia. You of all people ought to know about that. And besides, our oligarchy has a few things to recommend it. It’s open, for one. Look at me. Descended from slaves, and here I am, a member in good standing. Anyone can join. You just have to believe in it. You just have to pay your dues and follow the rules. That’s what we mean these days by ‘equality of opportunity’ and a ‘meritocratic society.’”
“You’re part of it?”
“Of course I am. I’m not fighting it, am I? I’ve accepted its inevitability. Now I’m just trying to make it run properly.”
“Then … you’re one of the good complicit people, is that what you’re saying?”
Hort took another mouthful of steak. Chewed. Swallowed.
“There’s always been an establishment, son. In every culture, every country. There’s always going to be someone on the inside, pulling the real levers of power and influence and profit. You want it to be moral men, like you and me? Or do you want it to be the Ulrichs of the world? Because it’s going to be someone.
That’s the only choice.”
Ben thought of Larison again, what he’d said about how you have to suborn yourself. He wondered if there was ever a person who’d compromised himself without at some point offering up Hort’s own words to the appalled reflection in the mirror.
“Hort … I don’t know. You’re telling me the Constitution doesn’t matter? That seems … that’s a lot.”
“It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s fiction, but necessary fiction. Part of what keeps America strong is the society’s belief that we’re a constitutional republic. That no one is above the law.”
“That we don’t torture.”
Hort nodded. “Now you’re getting it.”
“You’re saying people can’t know the truth.”
“And don’t want to know it. Do you know anything about honne and tatemae?”
“No.”
“Couple of Japanese concepts an exceptional man taught me a long time ago. Honne is the real truth. Tatemae is the façade of truth.”
“You think our job is to maintain the façade of truth?”
“I do. And that’s not a bad thing. Just like every society has an establishment, every society also needs tatemae. Think about Gitmo. What was that all about?”
Ben shrugged. “We needed a place to put the bad guys.”
Hort shook his head. “No, that’s a honne answer. The real purpose of Gitmo was to make the public feel safe. Whether it was actually making anyone safe was a secondary consideration at best. Hell, the truth is, we didn’t even know who we were putting in there, we just wanted a big number so we could announce to the public that we’d captured eight hundred of the ‘worst of the worst.’ Who wouldn’t sleep better at night knowing so many of our enemies had been taken out of the game? But we knew most of them were innocent. But it didn’t matter. We needed the number.”
“But the Caspers weren’t innocent. You said so.”
“That’s right, and if the public ever gets wind of what happened to the Caspers, the whole sorry story will come out, including the part about how most of the detainees were innocent. The public needs talismans, son, things like airport security, silly things like taking your shoes and belt off and leaving your six-ounce tube of toothpaste at home. On a honne level, those kind of ‘security’ measures are laughable. On a tatemae level, they convince people it’s safe to fly, and the economy keeps humming along, safe and profitable for the politicians and the corporations they work for.”
“I just … Hort, I can’t believe what you’re saying.”
“Ask yourself this. If you’re part of the oligarchy, what’s more important: that Americans be safe, or that they feel safe?”
Ben didn’t answer.
“Or what matters more: convicting a guilty man, or having society believe the guilty have been convicted? One guilty man going free is irrelevant, as long as society believes the guilty have been punished. But if society loses that confidence, you get anarchy. And the oligarchy doesn’t like anarchy.”
They were quiet for a few minutes. Hort ate. Ben didn’t.
Hort gestured to Ben’s steak and swallowed some of his own. “Try it, it’s good.”
Ben shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”
Hort watched him. “I’m sorry to hear that. Well, when you feel up to it, there’s something I want you to do.”
“What?”
“I told you, we’re rebuilding. There’s you, there’s Larison, I hope, and there are a few others. And there are two in particular I want you to track down.”
“Who?”
“A former marine sniper, goes by the name Dox, is one.”
“Who’s the other?”
Hort took a sip of wine. “The same man who taught me about honne and tatemae. A half-Japanese former soldier gone freelance, named Rain. John Rain.”
“The bartender in Jacó mentioned a guy named Rain. Said he knew him in Vietnam. Called him ‘death personified.’”
Hort nodded, and for a moment his thoughts seemed far away. “I’d say that’s an apt description.”
“You want me to track this guy down. And Dox.”
“They’re the ones who took down Hilger’s operation.”
“This is retaliation?”
“Hell, no. It was unfortunate, but it wasn’t personal. Hilger got in Rain’s and Dox’s business, which even for a man as effective as Hilger turned out not to be a very smart thing to do. No, I want them on our side. I want to make them an offer. But I have to find them first. Sounds like maybe you already have one lead, this bartender in Jacó.”
So this was what all the praise had been about. All the grooming. To entice him. To make him want to be complicit.
“Hort … part of me, I’m honored. But I can’t work for this thing you call the oligarchy.”
Hort took a swallow of wine. “You’ve been working for it. You just didn’t know it.”
“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 fue
led 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.