Page 102 of Nobody's Hero
‘Step two wastriggeringthe mass migration event.’
‘Which, as unlikely as it seems, Tas seems to think he can do,’ Koenig said.
‘And step three was a coordinated attack on key infrastructure. Nothing massive, and most of it will look like it was due to an overload on the system. A tunnel fire cuts off a critical supply route. A train derails. A ship sinks in a deepwater port. A cyberattack shuts down the city’s waste management system. The protocol designed a whack-a-mole attack. One incident after another. Relentless. Too many to contain. Eventually the whole system would collapse. We calculated we would go from “everything is normal” to a National Guard-enforced curfew within three weeks.’
‘That quickly?’
‘That’s a conservative estimate,’ she said.
‘It wouldn’t take that much seed money,’ Koenig said. ‘Mycotoxins already exist in weaponised form. Assholes like Tas and Hobbs need paying, but otherwise there’d be no other significant costs.’
‘We calculated one hundred million dollars,’ Carlyle said. ‘And there are almost one thousand billionaires in the US alone. They could fund it with the money they keep under their mattress.’
Mattress.
Carlyle’s analogy shone a light on what Nash had overheard Konstantin say. Helped Koenig see it properly.Waterbed.A waterbed was a mattress. It hadn’t made sense. Except now it did. Now he had the missing context. Konstantin hadn’t said ‘waterbed’. He was Russian. Russians didn’t talk like that. Konstantin had said something different. Something lost in translation.
‘Konstantin didn’t say “waterbed”,’ Koenig said. ‘I trained with the Russian SOBR, their special forces police unit, and I know how they speak English. The open and long “æ” doesn’t exist in the Russian language. The vowelsAandEend up being pronounced the same way – as an “eh” sound. So “fad” becomes “fed”—’
Carlyle swallowed hard. ‘And “bad” becomes “bed” . . .’
‘Exactly. Nash didn’t overhear Konstantin say “waterbed”, she overheard him say “waterbad”.’
He took a moment. Let it sink in.
‘Tas isn’t using mycotoxins,’ Koenig said. ‘He’s found a way to poison the water.’
Chapter 108
‘It can’t be done,’ Carlyle said. ‘Attacking the water at its source was the first thing we considered and the first thing we dismissed. The logistics are insurmountable. Tas would need a significant and steady supply of toxins. A barrel of acid dumped in the Colorado won’t cut off the water supply to forty million people. That’s not how it works. It would dissipate. The best he could hope for is a small problem. Maybe a day. There’s nothing he can do to cause a mass migration event.’
‘He’s found a way,’ Koenig repeated.
Carlyle was adamant he hadn’t but agreed that Draper should be told anyway. Not all of it, but enough to use her influence on Smerconish. Koenig calling the DIA spook to tell him he was wrong about an attack on HMSQueen Elizabethwould be dismissed. An ex-CIA agent telling him the same thing would be taken more seriously. He hoped.
Koenig briefed her as quickly as he could.
When he’d finished, she said, ‘Would this fulfil the objectives of the Acacia Avenue Protocol?’
Carlyle said, ‘If he’s successful, yes.’
‘Ifhe’s successful?’
‘I don’t believe it’s possible to poison the water. The best brains in the country studied this from hundreds of angles. Considered every possible scenario.’
‘Underestimating Margaret would be a catastrophic mistake,’ Koenig said. ‘She had access to your data and she had time to think. Time to refine your plans.’
‘I’ll ask Smerconish to re-task some of the surveillance drones he has covering the naval base.’
‘California is the most hydrologically altered land mass on the planet,’ Carlyle said. ‘It gets its water from a limited number of sources. Tell him to start with the Colorado, Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. They all supply California. Lake Mead, obviously. The Mono Basin, maybe.’
Draper scrolled through her contacts, then pressed the green call icon.
‘Sir, we have a problem,’ she said.
Chapter 109
One person who didn’t have a problem was Jakob Tas. Everything was on schedule. Koenig had been a thorn in his side, but ultimately he’d changed nothing. He’dachievednothing. Yes, Tas had lost men in New York and in Scotland, men he’d fought wars with, but they’d taken his money; they understood the risk. Letting go of Pearl and Konstantin had been more of a wrench. He’d spilled blood with Konstantin in the Central African Republic, and Pearl had saved his life in Mali. He hadn’t cared about the Australian. He’d been like a single-shot anti-tank weapon. Used once, then discarded.