Page 81 of Nobody's Hero

‘Because unless Tas is better at this than me, he’s made a mistake.’

Carlyle looked up. Koenig saw something in her face he hadn’t seen before. Hope. ‘He has?’ she said.

‘I think so,’ Koenig said. ‘Hobbs claims his last job was seven days ago. Yet Tas turned his phone offfourdays ago. That means Hobbs’s last job and Tas turning off his phone are unrelated. Otherwise, he’d have gotten rid of his phone immediately after Hobbs rang. He’d have gotten rid of it seven days ago, not four. Why risk carrying it an extra three days?’

‘I’m not following.’

‘It’s something you said, Bess. You said, “It’s over.” And I think it is, just not in the way you meant it. You were referring to our search for whoever is behind this.’

‘I was.’

‘But what if Tas turned off his phone because the part of the operation when he needed to be contactable is over?’

Draper didn’t respond. Carlyle looked thoughtful.

Margaret snored and woke herself up. ‘Sorry,’ she said. She stood and stretched. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea. We’ve no milk so we’re having it without, I’m afraid.’ She moved towards the kitchen area and turned on the kettle. She leaned against the counter and looked out of the window. Koenig didn’t blame her. He didn’t want to look at Hobbs either.

‘This is an operation with several moving parts,’ Koenig continued. ‘It has to be. Hobbs and Nash have been killing seemingly unconnected civilians. Your think-tank academics have been disappearing. We were attacked at a remote Scottish airfield. And right in the middle is the mysterious Jakob Tas. He might be the organ grinder; he might be the monkey. We have no way of knowing. But four days ago, he turned off his phone. Why?’

‘You have a theory?’ Draper said.

‘What if there are no parts left to move? What if Tas turned off his phone because he doesn’t need it any more? That he’s incommunicado because the end game has started?’

‘If that’s the case, turning off his phone would be the sensible thing to do,’ Carlyle said. ‘Yet you seem to think he’s made a mistake.’

‘I do,’ Koenig said. ‘Because as far as Tas knows, everything is going to plan. Turning off his cell was a precaution, not a necessity. He wasn’t forced to turn it off, hechoseto.’

‘He’s proceeding as planned,’ Draper said, looking thoughtful.

‘He is. And if we can find out when and where his cell was turned off, we’ll know when and where that last part stopped moving. The trail hasn’t gone cold; it’s red-hot.’

Draper picked up her cell phone. She pressed redial and put it on speakerphone. It was answered immediately.

‘Ma’am?’ a man said.

‘I need the last known location of that number I gave you,’ Draper said. ‘I also need the exact time it was turned off. And then I want a breakdown of every tower it pinged. I want to know exactly where it’s been. I want the breakdown within twenty-four hours; I want the last known location in the next fifteen minutes.’

‘On it,’ the man said.

Draper ended the call and made another. Again, it was answered immediately.

‘Get the Gulfstream ready,’ Draper said.

‘Where are we headed, ma’am?’

‘I’ll let you know when I know.’ She ended the call and slipped her cell back in her pocket. She pointed at Hobbs and Nash. ‘What are we going to do with these two?’ she asked Koenig.

‘No idea,’ Koenig said. ‘We can’t take them with us, and we can’t hand them over to Smerconish. Not until we know who’s leaking our actions. I say we wrap them in duct tape and leave them here.’

‘They’re not fucking Sea-Monkeys, Koenig,’ Draper said. ‘They’ll need food and water. I won’t have someone starving to death on the wrong side of my ledger.’

Koenig thought for a moment, then said, ‘Whatever happens next, it’s likely to be fast-moving. Agreed?’

‘Probably.’

‘Why don’t we leave Margaret? If she restricts herself to spoon-feeding them, she should be safe enough.’

‘What if she collapses?’