But there he was, standing next to a shiny black Mercedes sedan, looking nervously left and right, absurd in his T-shirt and cowboy boots. Ben pulled into the spot next to him. Osborne watched him, his expression completely confused. Before he had a chance to process any of it, Ben was out of the car, the Glock in his hand. Osborne saw the gun and his eyes bulged.
“Don't say anything,” Ben said. “Just unlock your car and get in the driver's seat. Do that, and I'll assume you want to talk to me. Don't do it, and I'll assume you want to be dead right there.”
“I… I…” Osborne stammered.
Ben pointed the Glock directly at his groin. “Shut up and unlock the car.”
Osborne took out his keys and pressed a button. There was a chirp and the lights flashed. Ben got in the back on the passenger side. He slid past a child's booster seat and sat directly behind Osborne.
“Now drive,” Ben said. “Be smart, and this will be just a talk. Fuck with me and I'll kill you. Do we understand each other?”
Osborne said, “Where do you want me to go?”
“Right on Page Mill, toward 280.”
They pulled out of the parking lot and onto Page Mill. Osborne said, “What's this all about?”
“I'll ask the questions. You just drive. Make a left on Coyote Hill Road.”
“Coyote… why do you want to go someplace where there are no people? Why can't we just talk while I drive?”
Good instincts, Ben thought. And a smart question. Ben would never let someone take him to a secondary crime scene. Whatever the bad guy was going to do to you, it would be a hundred times worse when he had you someplace isolated.
“Do what I tell you, or I'll put a nine-millimeter round through the base of your skull. Your brain will blow up, but there'll be hardly any blood. I'll buckle you into the passenger seat and drive your corpse back to your law firm in the carpool lane. Sound good?”
“Fine, fine, Coyote Hill Road.”
A minute later, Osborne was turning as Ben had instructed him. “That dirt road,” Ben said, indicating a brown depression, lined by trees, that cut through the green hills to Deer Creek Road and some office complexes on the other side. “Turn onto it.”
Osborne complied. They rolled a little way down the dirt road, and when they were out of view of Coyote Hill, Ben said, “Stop. Kill the engine.”
“What do you want with me?” Osborne said.
Ben pushed the child seat onto the floor and slid across to the passenger side so he could see Osborne's face. “I want to know your angle on Obsidian,” he said.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“The invention Alex patented.”
“Yeah, I know what it is, I just don't know what you're talking about.”
Ben considered. There were two possibilities here. One, Osborne was running this whole thing with some impressive mercenary connections. Two, the outsiders were running him. But which was it? Osborne had to feel Ben knew more than he really did, that's what would get him talking, and to create that illusion, Ben needed to start out in the right general direction. Based on Osborne's responses, Ben's guesses would get increasingly specific. The whole act was an illusion, a lot like what fortune-tellers do to gull credulous customers, and just as for fortunetellers, the key was to establish credibility, the appearance of knowledge and even omniscience, right at the beginning.
Osborne was afraid, that much was obvious. And yeah, he was being held at gunpoint, but his fear felt like something else.
“How'd they get to you?” Ben said.
“Nobody got to me. I told you, I don't know what you're talking about.”
Ben smiled. He could see in Osborne's eyes, from the sudden beads of perspiration on his brow, that the question had terrified him. Okay, he wasn't running this thing. Someone had something on him. But what?
He glanced at the child seat on the floor. Had they threatened his family? No. Osborne's fear didn't feel righteous to him. It felt like something laced with… shame.
What did Ben know about him? He'd met him briefly. He'd been in his office for a few minutes. Alex had said something about Thailand, hadn't he? And there had been a photograph, too. Osborne and some Thai dignitary.
“It was Thailand, wasn't it?” Ben said, taking a chance, knowing if he was wrong Osborne would see he was fishing and make it hard to reestablish the proper momentum.
But he wasn't wrong. Osborne blinked rapidly and said, “This doesn't make any sense.”
Yes it does, Ben thought. That nervous blink is better than a polygraph.
“Photographs?” Ben said. “Video? What was it?”
Osborne shook his head, saying nothing. His eyelids were going so fast it was exhausting to watch. Ben could actually smell the fear coming off him, a vinegary smell that filled the car's interior.
The car seat, Ben thought. Guy with a family. A reputation. A position in the community.
And a taste for something in Thailand. Prostitutes? Could be that. Lady boys? Kids? In Bangkok, you could get anything you wanted.
Well, it didn't really matter. He knew enough to work him now.
“There's something you need to realize,” Ben said. “The people who've been blackmailing you are my enemies, too. Have you figured out yet what I do to my enemies?”
Osborne didn't say anything, and Ben went on. “So tell me what I need to know, and the people who've gotten into your life will go away. Permanently. Don't tell me, and I'll assume you're still trying to have my brother killed. Which would make you… my enemy.”
“That's not true!” Osborne said. “I don't want Alex killed. I don't want to hurt anybody.”
“Tell me, then. Convince me.”
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?