Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 86

‘It’s over,’ Carlyle said. ‘They don’t know anything.’

It was true. Although Hobbs had told them everything, it was clear he and Harper were subcontractors. Bit players. They didn’t know why their targets had to die, only that they did. Jakob Tas had contacted them through a trusted intermediary, and they’d met in the bar of a Holiday Inn in North Dakota. They’d negotiated a fee, although Hobbs got the impression Tas would have agreed with whatever he’d asked for. Money didn’t seem to be in short supply. Hobbs was given a burner phone and a list of people to kill. The ‘how’ was up to them, but their deaths were to look accidental or self-inflicted. Nothing that raised suspicion. A payment of $250,000 landed in their offshore account within twenty-four hours of each death. In two years, they’d killed nineteen people. Koenig did the math: $250,000 multiplied by 19 was $4,750,000, almost as much as he was worth to the Russians.

Carlyle checked each name against criteria known only to her and nodded every time. As the interrogation went on, her expression grew darker. She didn’t know the people Hobbs and Nash had murdered, but they meant something to her anyway. She could see a pattern they couldn’t.

Chuck Hiatt from Arizona had been their most recent murder. According to Hobbs, seven days ago he’d had a nasty accident. He’d fallen out of the window he was cleaning and snapped his neck. Clumsy. Hobbs and Nash had spent a week in El Cuyo, a quiet beach town on Mexico’s Yucatan coast, before heading back to New York and into their waiting arms. If they’d gone straight home after the Chuck Hiatt job, things might have turned out differently.

‘Who’s next?’ Koenig asked.

‘We were done,’ Hobbs said. ‘Chuck Hiatt was the last name. It’s why we had a vacation.’

‘I need you to call Jakob Tas,’ Koenig said. ‘Tell him you need to meet. Say there’s a problem with one of the jobs. That you left evidence behind that might identify him.’

‘I can’t. I don’t have the burner any more. Getting rid of it was a condition of the job.’

‘Use another phone. In fact, because you were doing as you’d been asked, you’d have to use a different cell.’

Hobbs shook his head. ‘Won’t work,’ he said. ‘Tas only answers numbers he recognises.’

Koenig frowned.

‘What’s his number?’ Draper said. ‘I’ll get my guys on it.’

‘It’s no longer in service,’ Draper said, reading from her own phone. ‘My tech guy ran the number; it went dead four days ago. Hasn’t been used since.’

‘ Four days?’ Koenig said. ‘Not seven?’

Draper checked her phone. ‘That’s what the email says. Why?’

‘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 off four days 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, he chose to.’

‘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?’

‘She’s an adult and we’re out of options.’

‘You know her best, Bess,’ Draper said. ‘What do you think? Will she do it? And if she says yes, is she even up to it?’

Carlyle considered the question carefully. ‘She’s a tough old bird, but she’s very ill.’ She paused a beat. ‘But we don’t have a choice. Ben’s right: we can’t take them with us and we can’t hand them over. But you’re right as well: we can’t let them starve to death. Someone has to stay with them. It can’t be either of you, and it can’t be me. That leaves Margaret. I say we ask her.’

‘Margaret,’ Koenig called out. ‘Grab your tea and pop over here. We have a favour to ask.’

But Margaret didn’t answer. She was staring out of the window. She seemed transfixed by something happening outside.

‘What is it, Margaret?’ Carlyle asked.

She didn’t answer.

Carlyle joined her friend at the window. She peered out as well. She turned, her face paling. ‘There are men on the street,’ she said. ‘Men with guns.’