Osborne looked down. After a moment, he said, “A few months ago-”
“Don't look away. Let me see your eyes.”
Osborne looked at him, his face twisting with fear and fury.
That's right, asshole. You feel it? You're hooked up to a human lie de tector.
“A few months ago, I was leaving the office one night. There was a man waiting by my car. He called to me by name. ‘David,’ he said. ‘Good to see you.’ But I had no idea who he was. He… handed me a manila envelope. He said he had something he didn't want anyone to know about. That he could make sure no one would know.”
“What was in the envelope?”
There was a long pause. Osborne licked his lips and said, “Photographs.”
“Photographs of what?”
“Photographs from Thailand.”
Okay, good enough. Ben was getting the picture now. Someone learns about Obsidian. Leave aside how for the moment; he knew from his conversation with Alex there were multiple possibilities there. The someone wants to vacuum the invention up. What are the nodes you have to hit? The inventor, the lawyer, the patent guy. The patent office. The patent filing system. The law firm.
“What did they want from you?” Ben asked.
“They wanted to know how they could get rid of Obsidian. I told them they couldn't, it was in the government's PAIR system, for God's sake, but they told me not to worry about that. How could they get rid of it at Sullivan, Greenwald? They wanted to know how our filing system worked, passcodes, backup copies, everything.”
“And you told them.”
“I… had to.”
It made sense. They knew from the application that Alex was handling the patent. But for the information they needed to be sure of making the invention disappear, they needed an inside guy.
So how did they learn they could exploit this guy? Start with the firm's Web site. You get a list of partners and associates there, bios for all of them. You identify the likely prospects based on public information. You want married people, people with families, people with pressure points. Get a few national security letters issued, and get into their lives: tap their phones, examine their credit card statements, monitor their e-mail. Who's cheating on his taxes? Who has a mistress? Who's a closet homosexual? Who's set up a practice that requires frequent trips to one of the world's premier sex cities?
Now get into Sabre or one of the other online reservation systems to find out when he's traveling. What hotel? The guy's a partner in a major law firm, he's going to be at one of the three or four best in the city. Black bag job on his room. Pinhole camera. Hidden video. Or follow him on his way to somewhere else. Get the proof. Show it to him. Make him feel what it would be like if his wife saw these pictures. Or if the video wound up on YouTube, the URL e-mailed to everyone in his address book. You're holding his life in your hands now, his reputation, everything. You own him.
“Who was the guy whose cell phone you called this morning?”
“That's him. The same guy who was waiting for me in the parking lot that night.”
“He have a name?”
“He told me to call him Atrios.”
“Okay. Why were you calling Atrios this morning?”
“He called me yesterday. He was looking for Alex.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That Alex had been in that morning, but I hadn't seen him since. He told me to call him if that changed, and that I should check in periodically regardless.”
That checked out with what he'd said on the phone earlier, and with what Ben had run into in Alex's backyard. But who was Atrios? Who was he working for?
“Atrios,” Ben said. “How did you communicate with him?”
“I have his cell phone number. That's all.”
Ben thought about what he could do with that. Trace it back to the owner, sure, but Atrios had clearly been a pro and there was virtually no chance he had registered the phone, or rented a car, under a name that would mean anything. Damn it, it looked like killing the guy had closed off his only avenue of information. Not that he'd had a lot of choice at the time, but still.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it. It was dark. He thought, What the hell? His pocket buzzed again.
Son of a bitch. Atrios's cell.
He pulled out the phone he took from the Volvo and looked at the display. It was a 202 area code. D.C.
“I'm going to answer this,” Ben said. “Grip the steering wheel, look straight ahead, keep your mouth shut.”
Osborne complied. Ben clicked the Answer Call button and raised the phone to his ear. “It's done,” he said, in the same low voice he had used with Osborne earlier.
“Why the hell haven't you checked in?” the voice on the other end responded.
Ben had been prepared to improvise in a dozen different directions. But he hadn't been prepared for this. He froze, suddenly having no idea what to do or say.
The gravelly baritone… the rich Georgia coastal accent…
“Hort,” Ben said. “What the hell?”
There was a pause. Hort said, “Who is this?”
“It's Ben.”
Another pause. “Ben? What the hell are you doing, son?”
“Hort, what's going on here? Who was Atrios? Is my brother the target of someone's op? Am I?”
“Your brother… who's your brother? Oh, Jesus Christ almighty, are you talking about the lawyer?”
Ben desperately tried to sort through the bullshit. Was Hort playing dumb? What were the chances…
“What happened to Atrios?” Hort said. “How did you get this phone?”
“Atrios is gone.”
“Oh, damn. You… oh, damn, Ben, you have no idea of the mess you're making.”
“What mess? I'm in the middle of a mess. I'm trying to clean it up.”
“Listen to me. You are to stand down. Immediately. Do you understand? Stand down.”
“Stand down from what?”
“Are you still in San Francisco?”
Alarm bells went off in Ben's mind.
“Yeah, I'm still here.”
“So am I. We need to meet.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I'm running the op you've been fucking up.”
“Your op has been targeting my brother.”
“I think I understand that now. I didn't before. We need to straighten it out. Jesus Christ almighty.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I'm at the Grand Hyatt on Stockton. Meet me in the lobby in fifteen minutes.”
Ben was ambivalent about the suggestion. On the one hand, fifteen minutes wouldn't give Hort time to set anything up. On the other hand, he never liked a face-to-face when someone else suggested the venue.
No. He needed to mix things up, give himself time to think, make sure he didn't surrender the initiative.
“I'm south of you right now,” Ben said. “It'll take me an hour to get there. Let's make it ninety minutes to be sure.”
That would sound good to Hort. If Ben agreed to the place and was comfortable with a later time, it would mean he was feeling trustful. Although he very much wasn't.
“All right. Ninety minutes.”
Ben clicked off. He looked at Osborne. Osborne kept his hands on the wheel.
“You knew about the inventor, right?” Ben said, his head beginning to throb again. “Hilzoy. You knew what
