Page 99 of Nobody's Hero
Carlyle looked at Koenig thoughtfully. Looked like she was evaluating him.
‘And torture is all about fear,’ Draper continued. ‘That’s how it works. It’s thefearof pain, not the pain itself. If the person applying pain understands the psychology of torture, they should ensure the pain is noticeably worse than the time before. The victim not only has the memory of the pain they’ve just experienced, they also have the fear of the pain to come. No one talksduringthe pain. It’s always before the next lot is applied.’
‘That may be so, Miss Draper,’ Carlyle said. ‘Maybe Ben won’t be the national security risk I was. But I don’t see how a problem shared is a problem halved. Not in this case. I know the Acacia Avenue Protocol better than anyone, and I can make neither head nor tail of what’s happening. I can see the individual pieces, but the bigger picture eludes me. I can’t see how they connect. And I know what I’m looking for. Ben wouldn’t. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how this helps.’
‘That’s the thing, Bess,’ Draper said. ‘Hecanhelp. If you let him, he’s the best chance you have.’
‘How?’
‘Because Koenig happens to be the best lateral thinker I’ve ever met. If anyone can make sense of these disparate pieces, it’s him.’ She stood. ‘Now, I’m going to give Nash a drink of water. I’m knocking off all internal communication devices. Please, please,please, tell Koenig what the Acacia Avenue Protocol is.’
She left the front of the Gulfstream and shut the door behind her. It closed with an expensive-soundingsnick. Carlyle held Koenig’s gaze for a full minute. Didn’t say anything. Just stared and scrutinised.
‘You have to trust someone, Bess,’ he said. ‘If not me, who?’
Still nothing.
‘I know part of it anyway,’ he added.
‘Oh?’
‘Like Jen says, I’m a lateral thinker. I think the Acacia Avenue Protocol is an attack on our infrastructure. It has to be. It’s the only thing that joins up all the dots.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because of who Hobbs and Nash were killing. They weren’t random. Not if you ignore who they were and concentrate on what theydid. Louise Durose was a landfill-management expert. Hank Reynolds worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, something to do with wastewater systems, and Michael Gibbs had designed software that was supposed to increase deepwater port productivity. They’re infrastructure jobs. We don’t yet have the bios of the sixteen others that Hobbs and Nash killed, but I’m sure they’ll have worked in infrastructure too. And I bet not one of them headed up their department.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the Peter principle.’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s the management theory that people rise to positions of incompetence. They get promoted out of jobs they’re good at but eventually get a job they’renotgood at. In some hierarchical organisations the entire management structure is staffed by the incompetent.’
‘And why would this be relevant to an attack on our infrastructure?’
‘Because the people Hobbs and Nash killed were the ones who got things done. The ones who understood how everything worked. And how to fix it when it broke. The people above them are the Peters in the Peter principle. And the Peters aren’t just the incompetents. They’re the policy wonks. The political appointments. The dumb lucky and the nepotists. But because most organisations don’t take continuity planning seriously, if you take out the level below the Peters, the organisation grinds to a halt.’ He paused, then added, ‘Have I passed?’
Carlyle slumped in her seat. Seemed to go back into her shell. But just when he thought she was going to take Acacia Avenue to her grave, she decided not to. She decided to trust him.
‘What do you know about the Partition of India, Ben?’
Chapter 105
‘Out of left field’: baseball terminology for the base runner sprinting to home plate being surprised by a throw from left field.
It now means unexpected.
The East Coast Sweeney had been unexpected. So had Margaret using her hairpin to murder Hobbs and a shard of bone china to slash her own throat.
And now Elizabeth Carlyle had asked Koenig what he knew about the Partition of India. She had come out of left field.
Because when he’d figured out the Acacia Avenue Protocol was an attack on the US’s critical infrastructure, he’d expected Carlyle to reel off one of the greatest hits. The transportation network is always vulnerable, particularly bridges and tunnels. The infrastructure-reliant Global Positioning System – GPS – can be disrupted. The power grid is susceptible to acts of men, like terrorism, and acts of God, like solar storms. A successful cyberattack on the financial markets would have generational consequences. And these were the risks he’d known about a decade ago. Things would have moved on. The more advanced infrastructure became, the more susceptible it became to bad actors. It was the price of advancement.
But Carlyle hadn’t reeled off one of the greatest hits. She’d asked him about the Partition of India. What he knew about it. Which wasn’t much. Other than the headlines. That it was when Britain split one country into two: India and Pakistan. It was probably on the British curriculum, but it wasn’t taught in American schools.
‘I know it didn’t go as planned,’ Koenig said.