Выбрать главу

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 Bens 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.

“How did you know it was me?” he said. “You knew he was my brother, but how did you put it together?”

There was a long pause, long enough so that Ben thought Hort wasn't going to answer. But then Hort turned and said, “I wanted to keep you out of it, for everyone's sake, including yours. But then you put in that weapons request for San Francisco, after I'd told you to stay put in Ankara. It was a concern. Just being cautious, we got into some of Alex's communications. He'd called Military OneSource, and the army personnel center, and then we checked his e-mail, and we knew he'd been in touch with you. And why else would you be coming out here, if not to help him?”

“It's not as though I had a choice.”

“That's exactly the point. There was nothing else you could have done. Blood is blood. But I didn't have a choice, either. I was responsible for a mission. And as understandable and inadvertent as your actions were, you made yourself a threat to that mission. For what it's worth, it was the hardest call I've ever had to make.”

“So you gave me up to the Russians?”

“What difference does it make how I decided to get it done? Yeah, I was taking heat from the usual suspects for your killing that damn Russian in Istanbul. Some people wanted to hang you out to dry.”

“So you did it for them.”