He got in line to order a coffee and called Hort from his cell phone.

“I can't get up there,” he said. “I need you to come down here.”

“What do you mean? Where's ‘down here’?”

“Palo Alto.”

“What's wrong? Are you nervous?”

“I'm always nervous, same as you. I'll be in the Citibank on Ramona Street in Palo Alto, between University and Hamilton.”

“I see. Lots of cameras and tellers.”

“Something like that. It'll be comfortable for both of us while we sort this shit out. Is it just you?”

“Just me and a driver.”

“That's fine. Depending on traffic, should take you forty-five minutes. I'll be waiting.”

He clicked off and shut down the phone. He stood by the counter and sipped his coffee and waited. When the people behind the pillar started to get up, he went out and took the table for himself. It was a good position. His back was to the wall, he could see up and down the street, he was camouflaged by the people around him, and he had a good view of the Citibank.

He sipped and waited and watched the street. The people walking past all looked like natives: confident, prosperous, oblivious. He felt nothing in common with any of them. He was like an emigrant returning from some faraway country to the land of his youth, only to discover he had forgotten the language, the dress, the customs, the code. He didn't belong here anymore, if he ever had. He was a stranger to this place, and it was a stranger to him.

A green Hyundai pulled up to the curb across the street in front of the Citibank. The passenger-side door opened. A black man got out and walked inside. Even if he hadn't seen his face, Ben would have recognized him from the large shaved head, the broad shoulders, the proud stride bordering on a swagger. Hort.

Ben watched the driver. The bone structure was Asian and he looked about Ben's age, with close-cropped hair and eyes concealed by sunglasses. From minute movements of his head, Ben knew the man was checking his mirrors. Not someone you could sneak up on. Not someone who was just a driver. The backseat seemed empty, but it wouldn't have been difficult to place one or two men low enough to be invisible through the windows. Still, Ben doubted there was more here than he could see. Atrios had been operating alone. He didn't think they had immediately deployable reinforcements.

He waited a minute, then called Hort's cell phone.

Hort picked up immediately. “Where are you?”

“The restaurant. Coupa Café. 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.”