by Barry Eisler
He was going in circles, literally and figuratively. Enough. He was going to confront this head-on.
He drove to Sullivan, Greenwald but, mindful of Ben’s admonitions, parked in the office and theater complex across the street. He crossed Page Mill on foot, used a back entrance, and headed straight to Osborne’s office. He pushed away all the thoughts that were trying to crowd in—all the reasons he was being stupid, all the ways it could go wrong. He swallowed but his throat stayed dry.
Osborne was on the phone, his cowboy boots up on his desk. Alex closed the door and walked straight in. Osborne gave him a look— Don’t you even knock?—and went on talking. For one second, Alex’s doubts threatened to paralyze him. Then something broke through, and he strode behind the desk and depressed the receiver button on the phone.
Osborne swiveled his feet off the desk and planted them on the floor. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said. He swatted Alex’s hand off the receiver and started punching in a number. Alex picked up the unit and hurled it across the room. It crashed into the wall and shattered.
Osborne leaped to his feet. “Are you crazy?” he said, his eyes wide.
Alex looked at him. His heart was pounding but his head felt marvelously clear. “What do you know about Obsidian?” he said.
“I don’t know anything. Obsidian was yours, remember? And your Bible-quoting brother already asked me all this. At gunpoint, I should add.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re lucky to be alive yourself.”
And all at once, Alex knew Osborne had snowed Ben. There were no photos. He was afraid, yeah, maybe of exposure, but not of that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been looking at Alex as though he were no more than an annoying bug. He wouldn’t have reverted to asshole mode so quickly.
There was a Lucite deal tombstone on Osborne’s desk. Without thinking, Alex picked it up like a rock and belted Osborne in the head with it. Osborne cried out and fell, smacking his face into his desk on the way down. Alex stood over him, brandishing the tombstone, breathing hard.
Osborne rolled left and right, clutching his face, blood gushing from his nose. “You little shit,” he gasped.
Alex smiled. He felt exhilarated. He was either flying or falling—he couldn’t tell which and he didn’t care.
“I made a copy of Obsidian,” he said, improvising. “I’ve posted it to a Usenet newsgroup with full details of your involvement and everything else I know. Right now it’s encrypted. But if I don’t punch in a code within one hour, it decrypts and disseminates to a dozen other newsgroups. So you better tell me what you know.”
Osborne tried to stand. Alex said, “Stay where you are or I’ll bash your head in.”
Osborne stopped moving. “You’re done here, hotshot. And not just at Sullivan, Greenwald. When I’m finished making calls, you won’t be able to get a job with a firm in the entire Valley.”
Alex laughed. He recognized the technique—a double-down, a negotiating escalation. He’d never negotiated using a heavy object before, but apparently the principles were the same.
“You know what?” he said. “Why don’t you just tell the whole thing to the San Jose police? There’s a Detective Gamez there who’s investigating Hilzoy’s murder. And he’s in touch with the Arlington cops who are looking into the death of the patent examiner your people killed. How much do you think I need to feed them? They’re going to get a warrant and examine your phone records, your e-mail; they’re going to look down your throat and up your ass and whatever it is you’re hiding, once they’re pointed in the right direction, they’re going to find it. They’ll perp-walk you right out of here and I’ll make sure the Merc and the Chronicle and KRON are on hand to get it on the evening news. So don’t try to sell me that bill of goods about incriminating photos from Thailand. This was no hostile takeover, David. You’re a silent partner. But you don’t have to tell me about it. I’ll just let that Usenet post run and then I’ll be able to read all about it in the Merc. Yeah, that’ll be fun.”
He dropped the tombstone on Osborne and turned to walk out. The trick was to really believe the bluff. It was the same as walking out during a negotiation. Whatever part of your mind knew it was a tactic had to be walled off. You really were walking out. You wanted to walk out.
He was all the way to the door and actually had his hand on the knob when Osborne said, “Wait.”
Alex opened the door and glanced back. “Forget it. You had your chance.”
“All right, all right. You win. Just close the damn door and hear me out.”
Alex closed the door but kept his hand on the knob, the posture communicating, You have about ten seconds to change my mind.
“I know some people in Washington,” Osborne said. He grabbed a handful of tissues from a box and held them against his nose. “White House people. Focused on counterterrorism.”
“Yeah?”
“One of the areas they’re focused on is cyberwarfare. Systems security. So when you told me about what Obsidian could do, I made a phone call. Just trying to be helpful, that’s all.”
Alex laughed. “I admire your patriotism, David. I know it didn’t have anything to do with political back-scratching or creating IOUs or sucking up to people who could steer government work to your clients. You’re way too fair-minded for any of that to have figured in.”
Osborne held the tissues away from his face, then reapplied them. “Think what you want.”
“So what did the White House people tell you?”
“They told me maybe I’d read about a program in the newspaper.”
“What program?”
“They didn’t say. I figured it was the FISA stuff, the NSA domestic spying stuff. I’d seen something about it in The Wall Street Journaland in Wired. The Quantico Circuit, where some whistleblower said the telecoms gave the government access to customer calls.”
“What else?”
“They said a lot of private companies were cooperating and they needed our help to fight terrorism. And it’s true, too. That’s why the telecoms were helping, to listen in on al Qaeda—”
“Stop it. I don’t care about the politics or about your justifications. What did they tell you about Obsidian?”
“That it could help with the program.”
Alex didn’t get it. From what he’d seen of Obsidian, you could use it for sabotage, maybe extortion, but not this other stuff. He wished Sarah were here. She knew a lot more about what the government was up to than he did.
“That it could help them spy?” he said.
“That was my understanding.”
Alex thought. It was certainly possible Obsidian had other uses. He’d recognized as much at the hotel when he’d first cracked Hilzoy’s notes. And the fact that the government was playing defense in trying to prevent other players from having Obsidian didn’t mean they weren’t simultaneously interested in its offensive potential, too. Good God, Ben walked into his meeting without knowing any of this. Where was he? And why hadn’t he called yet?
“What else?” Alex said. “What about Hilzoy, and Hank Shiffman, the patent examiner?”
“I didn’t know about any of that. I mean, they told me there were certain people they wanted to interview, but—”
Alex laughed. “‘Interview’? They murdered two people you knew about. You expect me to believe you thought they just wanted to ‘interview’ me, too? David, if you weren’t so pathetic, you’d be hilarious.”
Osborne didn’t respond.
Alex said, “What did they give you? What would make you …” And then he got it. The photos in the ego case. The new telecom client.
“Business?” Alex said. “You did all this … so they’d steer you business?”
Osborne wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I was just trying to help.”
“Tell it to the cops.”
Alex opened the door and walked out. “Wait!” Osborne called out after him. “Alex!”
; Alex was aware of the secretaries looking up from their bays as he passed, their eyes wide, their ears practically straining forward. He didn’t care. He kept moving.
Osborne caught up with him and grabbed him by the arm. “Listen to me,” he hissed. “I’ll make you partner. With the work I’ve been bringing in, the management committee will do whatever I tell them. This year, no question.”
Alex paused and looked at Osborne’s hand. After a moment, Osborne withdrew it.
“You know,” Alex said, “not so long ago, I would have believed you when you said that.”
Osborne nodded vigorously. “Believe it. It’s the truth.”
“But that’s not the point,” Alex went on. “The point is, I don’t care.”
He walked on down the corridor, Osborne’s entreaties following him all the way into the stairwell.
33 JUST A NEGOTIATION
Alex tried Sarah and Ben again from his car. No answer from either. He called Sarah’s secretary. Sarah hadn’t checked in. He was starting to get seriously worried.
He didn’t know what to do. Maybe if he could figure out some of Obsidian’s other applications, the ones the government seemed so eager to exploit? But he didn’t have time.
What if they’d grabbed Ben? He’d seen the way Ben had been ready to trust his commander, seen that he wanted to trust. Alex knew the look. He’d seen it a hundred times in the eyes of clients who wanted the deal so badly that they caved on critical provisions, telling themselves the provisions wouldn’t matter because everything was going to go smoothly, everyone would be making so much money there’d be no time and no reason for recrimination or regret. Probably it was the same look a rich man got right before his second marriage. What the hell, we don’t need a prenup. We’re in love.
Damn it, what was he going to do?
His cell phone buzzed. He looked down and saw it was Ben. Thank God.
He grabbed the phone, pressed the Answer Call button, and brought it to his ear. “Ben? Where’ve you been? I was getting worried.”
“Ben’s fine,” answered a low baritone voice with a Southern accent. “You must be Alex.”
Fear seized Alex’s heart and throat. He felt it with horrifying total recall—Oh no. Oh Please God no—and he started shaking so badly he had to pull over to the side of the road.
“Who is this?” he managed to say.
“I’m someone who knows your brother well and doesn’t want him to come to any harm. And you can help with that.”
“How?”
“Hand over Obsidian, son. That’s all we want. And everybody walks away. Ben, Sarah, everyone.”
Jesus Christ, they had Sarah, too? He pressed the back of his phone hand against his mouth and hugged himself with the other, rocking back and forth in the seat, struggling to hold back tears. He was dead. They were all dead. If these guys could outwit Ben, with all his training and experience, what the hell kind of chance could Alex possibly have?
Stop it. Think. Use your brain.
Right. He still had Obsidian, didn’t he? And if he had something they wanted, he could negotiate.
Framing it that way calmed him a little. It put him back on more familiar ground.
He took a deep breath and let it out. Another. Then he brought the phone back to his ear.
“I don’t think we have a problem here,” he said. “You want Obsidian, and I want Ben and Sarah.”
“That’s exactly right,” the voice said. “No reason for this to be complicated. It’s gotten too complicated as it is.”
See? Just like a negotiation. You can do this.
Alex took another long, deep breath and slowly let it out. “What do you propose?”
“There’s a parking garage on Bryant Street in Palo Alto, between University and Lytton. Meet me on the fourth floor in one hour.”
“Let me talk to Ben.”
“I’m sorry, son, I can’t take that chance. I don’t want the two of you passing messages to each other.”
A good negotiator knows not to confuse means with objectives. The objective here was to make sure Ben was all right. Talking to him was only one way to do it.
“Ask him what was the name of the family dog,” Alex said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I want to make sure he’s all right. I understand why you don’t want me to talk to him directly, but presumably you don’t object to another way of my verifying that’s he’s okay?”
There was a pause. The voice said, “No, I don’t object.” Another pause, then, “Arlo.”
“All right, good. And now …” He stopped. He didn’t know a single personal thing he could ask about Sarah. Bizarrely, he considered, What did you do to Ben’s shirt? But thankfully he came up with something better.
“Ask Sarah what brand of workout clothes she wears in the gym,” he said.
There was another pause, longer this time. Alex thought he heard something in the background … a choking noise? He wasn’t sure.
The voice said, “Under Armour.”
All right. They were alive.
“I’ll meet you,” Alex said. “But there’s something you need to understand.” He fed the voice the same bluff he’d used with Osborne. Obsidian was encrypted and cued up to publish to a dozen Usenet news groups. If anything happened to any of them, Obsidian and everything else would be public domain.
“You’re being careful,” the voice said. “I understand that. I respect it. Just bring me what I want, and I promise everyone’s going to be fine.”
The line went dead.
Alex crossed his arms and rocked back and forth, fighting panic.
Think. Think. Think.
But he couldn’t think of anything. If they’d only had another copy of the source code, they could have just published it.
Wait. There had to be another copy. Hilzoy wouldn’t have given the PTO the source code with the hidden functions. There were effectively two versions of the executable, which meant there had to be two versions of the underlying source code. Hilzoy was always careful about backing up the executable; he must have backed up the second version of the source code somewhere, too.
But where? There was nothing more in Hilzoy’s notes, or if there was, Alex was never going to find it in time. And there was nothing more on the disc. Alex had been through it again and again, and the only extraneous thing had been that MP3. What was the name of the song? Sarah had recognized it. “Dirge,” that’s right. Christ, Hilzoy couldn’t have picked a more appropriate title.
But there was nothing in the song. He’d been over it. It was just—
And then he had an idea. It was a long shot, a long, long shot. But he didn’t have anything else, and in his near terror and despair, he clutched at it with fierce devotion.
He looked at his watch. There was time. He could make this work. All he needed was an Internet connection.
And a hell of a lot of luck.
34 DEAD MAN’s SWITCH
Ben listened to Hort from the back of the van, his frustration and rage growing. Alex didn’t know what he was doing. He was coming to Hort like a fly into a Venus fucking flytrap.
They were in a seven-seat passenger van. Sarah and Ben were in the middle row, Sarah on the driver’s side, Ben on the passenger’s, their hands cuffed behind their backs. The Asian guy was driving and Hort was in the passenger seat. The two guys who’d flanked him outside Coupa Café were in back.
When Hort had asked him the name of the family dog, Ben had understood immediately what Alex was doing. Tactically, it was smart. Strategically, it was a disaster. What good was it going to do him to confirm that Ben and Sarah were alive, if the confirmation made Alex do something that would result in all of them dead a half hour later?
But he’d given up Arlo’s name anyway. He might have been able to stand up to their trying to beat it out of him, but he didn’t see what good it would do. They’d kill him and pick up Alex eventually anyway. He needed to bring this all to a head.
When
Hort had asked Sarah about her workout clothes, she’d answered, “SourceForge.” Ben recognized the name of the tech site from their earlier discussion at the hotel. She was trying to tell Alex fuck it, just disseminate the executable of Obsidian, it’s better than nothing. Her instincts were good, but Hort didn’t buy it. He nodded to one of the guys behind Ben, and the guy had slipped a sleeper hold around Ben’s neck and started to strangle him. Sarah watched for less than two seconds before revising her answer.
Yeah, her instincts were good. Not just the tactics, either—the objective, too. Because nothing was going to save any of them as long as Hort still had a chance to recover Obsidian. Christ, if only he’d realized what was really going on when they were back at the hotel. Alex and Sarah could have done their thing, and Hort’s op would have ended right there.
He looked at Sarah. She glanced up at him and gave him a tiny, sad smile. The smile did nothing to conceal the fact that she was scared shitless. She hadn’t said a word since they’d disarmed him and loaded him into the van next to her. She was smart. She probably knew they were all going to die. She was probably right.
Now they were driving southeast on Foothill Expressway. Ben didn’t know why—they’d told Alex to meet them in Palo Alto, the opposite direction, and apparently Alex had agreed.
He’d had time to think, and understood at least some of what had happened. Hort must have given him up to the Russians. But why? Live or die, he was going to try to find out.