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the failed op to disappear it. It wasn’t impossible someone on the National Security Council or wherever might get sufficiently uncomfortable about their knowledge to decide to revisit the issue. But at least Hort wasn’t threatening him with it. On the other hand, he’d learned from the Obsidian op that Hort could be a master bullshitter, at least when bullshitting was required by the mission. Maybe he just knew Ben well enough to know overt threats would be counterproductive. That didn’t mean the threat wasn’t there. It wasn’t in Hort’s character or his experience to display a weapon until he was ready to use it.
    “All right,” Ben said. “So you’ve pulled all these strings, you’rerunning interference with the Australians and who knows who else, just because you care. I’m touched, Hort. Really.”
    “You know you’re on YouTube now, right? Camera phones in the bar.”
    Ben looked at him, his shame so enormous he couldn’t speak.
    “Relax,” Hort said. “You got lucky. The spotlighting in the bar was pointed at the cameras. You can barely make out the action, let alone your face.”
    Ben managed to nod, the whipsaw from horror to relief intensifying how sick he felt from what he did to the Aussie marine. He concentrated on his breathing, trying to get a grip on emotions that were slipping past his control.
    Hort looked at him. Other than the useless rattle of the fan stirring the leaden air, the room was silent.
    “So tell me, son,” he said. “What were you doing in that bar?”
    Ben didn’t know why, but the question made him feel suddenly wary. “What do you mean, what was I doing? I was having a drink.”
    “Why?”
    “I had a lot to think about. Some shit has happened to me recently, you might have noticed that. I just wanted to be alone and think. You never had something like that?”
    “All the time. But if you wanted to be alone so you could think, you didn’t need a bar. Your hotel room would have been just fine. Or you could have taken a walk. Or gone to the library.”
    “They don’t serve gin in the library.”
    “No, they don’t. The gin was part of what you wanted, I can see that.”
    Ben was getting increasingly uncomfortable. It wasn’t just what Hort was saying. It was also the quietly confident way the man was looking at him, as though he knew Ben better than Ben knew himself.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Hort looked at him. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. But maybe you need me to spell it out for you.”
    Ben held Hort’s gaze. But why did he feel like flinching?
    “What you wanted,” Hort said, “was to fuck someone up. And you couldn’t do that in your room, or taking a walk, or visiting a local branch of the Manila public library system. But a bar on P. Burgos Street was pretty much tailor-made. Now, maybe you didn’t mean to kill the man whose neck you crushed, maybe you just wanted to hurt him. It doesn’t matter. Either way, you lost control. And an operator can never do that.”
    “I didn’t—”
    “Yes, you did. Now listen. I rocked your world recently, I get that. I wish it hadn’t needed to be that way, but yeah, I turned you upside down. Your commander betrayed you, you can never trust these people again, everything you believed in is wrong. That was more or less it, right?”
    Ben didn’t answer. He hadn’t thought of it in those terms exactly, but … Shit, was he really that transparent? He could feel his face burning.
    “So you decided it was over with you and the unit, you were done. The problem is, you’re a man with a lot of energy inside you and you needed to divert it to something else. So you flew to Manila, where your ex-wife lives with your daughter. You thought you were going to be a better person, didn’t you, maybe reconcile with your ex, be a father to your little girl. Attach yourself to something new, like a man falling in love on the rebound. But it didn’t go well, did