Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 92

Rachel, Draper’s ex-FBI special agent, had arrived in New Silloth shortly after they’d identified it as the location where Jakob Tas had ditched his phone. Rachel didn’t know what she was looking for, but she knew that a fishing village in Maine was a different beast from a megacity like New York. The first rule of New York was that you minded your own business; the first rule of a Maine fishing village was that you minded everyone’s business. Not in a nosy-needs-to-know way, more like they watched out for each other.

And that meant strangers stood out. They were watched. Not like Edward Woodward was watched in The Wicker Man . They weren’t sacrificed because the harvest had failed. Rachel knew if she wandered around looking a little bit lost, it wouldn’t be long before someone asked if she needed help.

The residential streets were dark and sleepy, so she’d headed to the docks where the fishermen and -women were making an early start. She stood and watched the boats. Made sure people saw her. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before someone sidled up to her. A bowlegged man in his fifties. He offered her a coffee in a chipped mug.

‘You a cop?’ he’d asked.

Direct.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘You look like a cop.’

She’d flashed her old FBI credentials. Covered the retired stamp with her thumb. Tricksy.

He’d grinned. ‘Seen that too many times to be fooled, ex -Special Agent . . . ?’

‘You can call me Rachel. You’re ex-job?’

‘Willy Deeker, Baltimore PD. Mainly worked narcotics.’

‘Like The Wire ?’

‘I get that a lot.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What are you doing in New Silloth, Rachel?’

‘There’s a guy we’re keen to find. His last known location was here.’

‘When?’

‘When what?’

‘ When was his last location known? If you know the where, you also know the when.’

Rachel had told him. Willy Deeker nodded. As if he’d been expecting it.

‘There were three of them. They were hanging around not far from where we are now. Looked like they wanted to be noticed. They were waiting for something.’

‘Did you see what?’

‘A NorseBoat 21.5. Good condition. Soon as it appeared, a truck turned up. They trailered it right out of the water. Seemed like an odd time to be doing something like that, so I went over for a look. Acted the fool so they wouldn’t worry.’

‘And?’

‘The story they cooked up about moving the boat from the Atlantic to the Pacific was a crock of shit. The Australian who piloted the NorseBoat was the only one who knew what he was doing. The guy in charge didn’t even know what the drain plug was for. The others didn’t speak. The big guy didn’t even look like he could speak. Anyway, they were breaking no laws I could see, so I went on my merry way.’

Rachel doubted that. If Deeker was ex-BPD, there was no way he’d have left it like that. ‘I sense a “but” coming . . .’

‘But not before I saw the guy in charge take everyone’s cell phones and drop them in the sea.’

‘That was . . . suspicious.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I don’t suppose you happened to get the truck’s licence plate, Willy?’

‘I went one better than that, Rachel,’ Willy Deeker had replied. ‘I got a photo.’

Rachel called in what she’d discovered. Draper’s tech guy had back-doored his way into Maine’s automatic licence plate recognition database and tracked the truck to the New Hampshire border. New Hampshire only allowed licence plate data to be retained for three minutes, so he’d bypassed the Granite State and headed straight to Vermont, where he picked it up again. As soon as he’d figured out the truck’s general direction, he cast ahead until he’d found them in Kansas and plotted out their journey, interstate by interstate, until he lost them in California, fifty miles outside San Diego.

He’d then waited for the boss to get a signal.