Fault Line

Hort's expression was so steady it might have been frozen. “You did something else, didn't you?”

Alex nodded. For one crazy second, he looked like the little know-it-all he'd been as a kid. Ben felt a ridiculous surge of hope.

Hort swung the gun so that the muzzle was pointed at Alex's face. Ben's breath caught.

“What?” Hort said. “What did you do?”

Alex extended the laptop. “Here. You can see for yourself.”

Hort ignored it. The gun didn't waver. He looked at Alex with machine eyes and Ben was so sure he was going to fire he couldn't breathe.

Then Hort lowered the gun. He took the laptop and watched the screen wordlessly for a moment.

“What is this?” he said. “StatCounter? I don't understand.”

“Oh, that's just a Web site that tracks downloads and site traffic,” Alex said. He leaned forward and pointed to the screen. “Look, you can see here how many people have downloaded the program from Source-Forge. And here, that's Slashdot-wow, a hundred downloads in a half hour, that's pretty exciting. I also sent it to McAfee and Norton.”

The pounding in Ben's head was so bad he could feel it in his stomach, too. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry or puke. Maybe all three.

Hort was clenching his jaw so tightly the muscles in his cheeks stood out like marbles. “Oh, you poor dumb son of a bitch,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes glued to the screen. “You have no idea what you just did.”

“I know what I did.”

“You just unleashed anarchy, son. Anarchy. America is the most networked country on earth. This thing is going to go around like a virus, and no one is more vulnerable to it than we are.”

“No, you don't get it. I didn't just post the executable. I posted the source code, too.”

“We had all the-”

“No, you didn't. Hilzoy hid another copy. Hid it in plain sight, in a copy of a song he liked on a public file-sharing site. It took me a little while to find the right file-it was only a little bigger than the rest of them. But it was there. I decrypted it with Obsidian and now everyone has their own copy.”

“Then we're fucked. You fucked our whole country.”

“I'm not saying there won't be a few disruptions. But you know what? Right now, in a thousand basements and garages, more pimply-faced hackers and hobbyists than you can count are ripping this thing apart. Some will be trying to find out how to exploit it, yeah. Others will come up with ways to defend against it. The network is like an organism. The people are its T cells. You can't stop something like this, no matter how many people you kill. It's bits. It's information. And-”

“And information wants to be free,” Sarah said.

“Anyway,” Alex said, “the anarchy thing is only part of it. Or maybe it isn't part of it at all.”

Hort watched him. “What do you mean?”

“According to your inside man, Osborne, the NSC wasn't interested in Obsidian because it could disrupt networks. They wanted it for a domestic spying program.”

“Osborne told you this?”

“Ask him yourself.”

There was a long pause. Hort's expression was grim. He said, “I believe I will.”

Ben said, “They used you, Hort. They duped you. How do you like the taste?” It wasn't rational, but it made him feel a tiny bit better to know someone had fucked Hort the way Hort had fucked him.

Hort looked at the screen again. He shook his head slowly.

“Look at that,” Alex said. “Another twenty downloads just since we've been talking. This is getting some buzz now. It's picking up speed.”

“Genie's out of the bottle,” Ben said. “Go back to Washington and tell them they can't get it back in. Tell them you did all this for nothing, you piece of shit.”

Hort blew out a long breath. He closed the laptop and looked at Alex, then at Ben, then at Sarah.

“This op is over,” he said. “The mission failed. I failed.”

He glanced at one of the men in back. “Uncuff them. Let them go.”

The man said, “But-”

“Do it.”

The man hesitated, then leaned over and unlocked the cuffs. He inclined his head to Ben's ear. “This isn't over, asshole,” he rasped.

“Maybe you didn't hear me,” Hort said, and the interior of the van reverberated with his baritone. “This. Mission. Is. Over!”

Ben flexed his hands. They were numb. His wrists were slick with blood and flayed skin.

The three of them got out of the van. Hort rolled down his window and looked at them.

“Maybe Genie is out of the bottle,” he said. “But some folks might still think that after what happened, certain people are a security risk. I'm going to tell them you're not. I think I owe you that. Don't do something to try to make me look stupid. You'd regret it if you did.”

He looked at Ben. “It was the mission, Ben. And that's all it should ever be. Now you have to see if that's a standard you can aspire to. I won't try to make that decision for you.”

Ben rubbed his wrists and nodded. The truth was, he didn't know what he was going to do. A minute earlier, he would have given anything to have one last shot at Hort. Now he wasn't sure.

“Go,” Hort said, and the van pulled away.

Ben turned to Sarah. “You okay?”

“I need to go,” she said, shaking her head.

“Well, sure, we could just-”

She held up her hands and took a step back. “No. I just need… I just want to be alone.”

Ben said, “Sarah, wait.”

She shook her head. “Like you said, it was a mistake.”

Alex said, “Sarah, don't go. We need to-”

“Forget it,” she said, turning and breaking into a run, not even looking back.

Caltrain was only a few blocks away. Ben guessed she was going home. “Let her go,” he said.

“You think she'll be okay by herself?”

“I think if Hort were going to do anything, he would have done it now, while he had all three of us.”

“He's not worried you'll come after him?”

Ben shook his head, trying to sort it out, feeling distinctly unsure of himself. “He might be, but-no, he wouldn't have let us go. Or letting us go knowing that I might want payback. It was like an apology.”

Alex grimaced. “Not much of an apology, I'd say.”

“Yeah, well, it beats some of the alternatives I was expecting. You know, he as much as told me he didn't want this mission. I think… maybe part of him was relieved to have a reason to stand down.”

“You can't really know that. How can you trust a guy like that?”

Ben thought for a moment. All the answers that presented themselves felt stale and useless.

“I can't,” he said, and the words brought up a fresh wave of pain and nausea. “I can't.”

They were quiet for a moment. “Tell me what you did,” Ben said. “You published Obsidian?”

“Yeah. But just on the tech sites. I didn't contact any of the political blogs Sarah told us about. There wasn't time.”

“It's better you didn't. Disseminating it the way you did neutered Hort's op. Going political on top of it-that kind of scrutiny would have made him feel threatened. And a guy like Hort, you don't want him to think you're a threat. Anyway, how did you find the source code? I didn't follow that.”

Alex smiled. “I could use a beer. You want to go someplace?”

Ben thought about that. A beer… with Alex?

“What about your car?”

“It's probably already towed. I'll say it was stolen.”

“All right, then. A beer.”

They started walking. “And after the beer,” Ben said, “if you want, we could… go to the cemetery.”

Alex glanced at him, then away. “You don't have to.”

“No, I want to. I'd like to go with you.”

They walked, the afternoon sun warm on their faces. “You know, I knew it was a trap,” Alex said.

Ben laughed. “A trap? What movies have you been watching?”

“Well, I just knew you wanted to trust this guy, and that you shouldn't. I had to find some way to end this.”

Without thinking, Ben slung an arm across his shoulders. “You did good.”