Fault Line

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 a

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!”