He waited a minute, then called Hort's cell phone.
Hort picked up immediately. “Where are you?”
“The restaurant. Coupa Cafe. Across the street.”
“I hope you're not playing games with me, Ben.”
“Just being cautious, sir. Like you taught me.”
The line went dead. Ben watched him walk out of the Citibank and cross the street, his head moving, his eyes checking the same hot spots Ben would have checked. He saw Ben, gave a slight nod of acknowledgment, and walked over. He pulled a chair around so the two of them were at right angles, but Ben still had the better view of the street. The man's presence-his command aura-was almost overwhelming. Ben resisted the urge to speak, to explain himself, to ask for understanding.
“What do you want me to say?” Hort said in a low voice. “It was a goat fuck. The question now is, what do I need to do to set your mind at ease?”
“Just tell me everything,” Ben said, amazed at his own temerity. “You've always been straight with me.”
Hort nodded. “The first thing you need to understand is, no one knew it was your brother.”
“Come on, Hort. How many Trevens do you know?”
“Until recently, only you. What you need to understand, though, is that I wasn't the one managing the target list. That was Atrios. All I knew was that he'd determined the mission required the removal of an inventor, a lawyer, and a patent examiner. I didn't need to know more than that.”
“You didn't want to know.”
Hort pursed his lips. “Maybe.”
“Tell me the rest.”
Hort glanced around, then leaned forward. “There's a special access program,” he said, “being run directly out of the National Security Council. Its focus is cyberwarfare.”
“What's the program called?”
“You don't need to know what it's called. You're not even supposed to know it exists. It's all sensitive compartmented information and I'm going out on a serious limb reading you into it without authorization.”
“What's it called, Hort?”
Hort sighed. “You're going to make me pay for my sins, are you?”
“I just don't want to feel like you're holding anything back from me.”
“The program is called Genie.”
“All right. What does Genie do?”
“I don't know all the particulars. The only reason I know about the program at all is because of the invention your brother was trying to patent.”
“Well, tell me what you do know.”
“Apparently, all patent applications relating to cryptography are subject to a DoD national security review. Your brother's application for Obsidian received the routine look-over. But something about the invention attracted additional scrutiny. Long story short, the application got kicked upstairs all the way to the White House. And the Genie people in the NSC didn't like what they saw.”
“Why not?”
“I don't know why not. All I know, all I'm supposed to know, is that if Obsidian were to fall into the wrong hands, it could pose a major threat to the whole U.S. network infrastructure.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Someone in the White House made a decision. National security required that Obsidian be vacuumed up. All knowledge of it erased. The operation involved two prongs: electronic and real world. NSA was tasked with the electronic. We handle the real world elements.”
“So the inventor, the patent guy… those were your ops?”
“Those were my orders.”
“But Hort, those were… I mean, those guys were Americans.”
“You know how it is, Ben. I don't make the rules.”
Ben drummed his fingers on the table. “What I'm starting to wonder is whether there are rules. Not for the enemy. For us.”
“I'm not happy about it, either. But the bottom line is, it's about saving lives. And sometimes saving lives involves collateral damage, you know that. It's a hell of a decision to have to make, but someone made it. And whether you or I agree with the decision doesn't matter. Our job is to carry it out.”
“Look, Hort, I know what goes on. But it's one thing to pick people up, hold them in a navy brig incommunicado as enemy combatants, isolate them, keep them from talking to anyone. But just… executing them? Americans? When did we start doing that?”
Hort blew out a long breath. “I agree, it's a hell of a situation. No one would want to sign up for it. But we're not in this because it's easy. We're in it because it's a job that needs to be done.”
“Yeah, but-”
“What are we going to do when one of our enemies gets a hold of something like Obsidian and uses it against us? When they shut down a power grid, or air traffic control? Are we going to apologize to the families of the people who burned to death in those flaming crashes because we could have kept the tools that caused it out of enemy hands, but we were too squeamish?”
They were quiet for a moment. Ben knew he was right, on one level, but…
He thought of Sarah, of what she had said about breaking the law a little.
He shook the thought away. “What about the Russians?” he said. “How do they fit into this?”
“They don't. That's just a bad coincidence.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have a communications intercept from their embassy in Ankara. They're on to you for the Istanbul op. We're trying to find out how, and how much.”
“What? How could anyone know who did that guy in Istanbul? I didn't leave behind anything, Hort. I was in and out of there like a ghost.”
“Well, you left five bodies behind. Ghosts don't do that.”
“There were going to be four bodies regardless.”
“Iranian bodies. A dead FSB Russian is a whole different kind of problem.”
“That still doesn't tell us how anyone could have pinpointed me for that guy.”
“Like I said, that's what we're trying to find out.”
“So who were those guys at the Four Seasons? They weren't FSB. They weren't that good.”
“They were Russian mafia, operating out of Brooklyn. They do contract work for the FSB.”
Ben thought about it. What Hort was saying wasn't impossible. But
…
“Look,” Hort said, “I can make it so your brother gets left alone. I need your guarantee-and you will be held accountable for that guarantee-that there are no copies of Obsidian, that no one can use this thing, that your brother will forget any of this ever happened and never say a word to anyone. Guarantee me that, and I can call in some favors with the NSC and make sure your brother is off their radar for good.”
Ben considered. The truth was, this was just what he was hoping for. What, in fact, he was going to propose himself. It could solve everything. Give Hort the backup copy, tell Alex to keep his mouth shut. After all, it wasn't like Alex was an unknown quantity to them anymore. Alex's brother was an insider, a brother who could vouch for him.
He wondered for a moment what Sarah would make of that. She'd probably say something about how convenient it was not to be one of the little people, to have a relative in the party or on the politburo.
And what about Sarah? Were they still after her, too? Could Hort call them off?
“What about the girl?” he said. “Sarah Hosseini, the lawyer. Is she part of the op?”
“She worked on the patent, too,” Hort said. “Compared to your brother, she was tertiary, but yeah, now especially there's a real concern.”
“You can't get her off the hook?”
Hort laughed. “What do you think, I'm a magician? Sarah's not even her name. It's Shaghayegh.
