Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 126

‘You want the F-35s to attack,’ Koenig said. A statement, not a question.

Tas smiled. Then he coughed. Then he smiled again.

‘Because in this real-life remake of Die Hard , the F-35s are the FBI and the boat is the electromagnetically sealed vault at the Nakatomi Plaza,’ Koenig continued. ‘You can’t blow up the boat yourself, so you need them to do it for you.’

‘Is it not a beautiful way to end this movie?’

‘And I guess right here, right now, I’m John McClane to your Hans Gruber?’ He paused a second. ‘I should have worn a white vest.’

Tas chuckled. Genuine amusement. It reached his eyes. They crinkled. ‘I’ve not thought of it like that,’ he said. ‘But I suppose there was a sense of inevitability that we would end up together like this. Of course, in this version, there is no Beretta 92 secured to your back with Christmas tape.’ He picked up something. It was long and tapered and deadly. Koenig’s Fairbairn–Sykes. The one Draper had taped to the small of his back. ‘Although I appreciate the effort you went into providing such an authentic experience.’

Koenig didn’t respond.

‘This is elegant,’ Tas said. ‘Original?’

‘Far as I can tell, it saw service in Normandy.’

‘I like knives. Guns are so impersonal. There is something intimate about ending a life with a knife. I think it’s the bodily contact. You’re close enough to watch the light in their eyes dim. To witness the absolute shock when they realise the unthinkable is happening.’

‘Knives are a tool, Jakob,’ Koenig said. ‘A weapon of last resort.’

‘Not for me,’ Tas said. ‘There’s a history to knives you don’t get with other weapons. A shared link with our ancestors. Ever since Palaeolithic man defended what was his with pieces of chipped stone, men have been killing each other with bladed weapons. Knives are perfect in their simplicity. They don’t jam. They don’t run out of ammunition. They don’t stop working because it’s wet. Or too hot. Or too cold.’

‘Palaeolithic man?’ Koenig said.

Tas nodded. ‘It’s the period of human technological development characterised by the use of rudimentary stone tools.’

‘I know what it is,’ Koenig said. ‘I’m just surprised a chump like you knows that too.’

‘I haven’t always been in this profession,’ Tas said, ignoring the insult. ‘I studied ancient history at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. Although even as a child I had a fascination with knives. Read everything I could on the subject. I even studied the convergent evolution of bladed weapons. Do you know what that is, Mr Koenig?’

‘It’s where species occupying similar ecological niches adapt in similar ways.’

Tas nodded. ‘And did you know that no matter where our ancient ancestors lived, the very first tool they developed was a chipped-stone blade?’

Koenig didn’t respond. He couldn’t. A wave of pain was coursing through him. It was travelling up his body, from the tips of his toes to his hair. It felt like he was being lowered feet first into lava. He let out a low growl.

Pain is just weakness leaving the body. He tamped it down. Did his best to ignore it.

‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re a very boring man, Jakob?’

‘Not twice,’ Tas replied.

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes this time. They were crinkle free. Koenig thought that was interesting. Tas was manipulating everyone and everything around him, but he was still vulnerable to manipulation himself. He had an ego and he liked it stroked.

‘Tell me, Mr Interesting ,’ Tas said, ‘what do you want to talk about?’

Koenig shrugged. Wished he hadn’t. ‘We’re at the point in the movie when Gruber shared his plan with John McClane,’ he said. ‘You fished me out of the water so you didn’t have to die alone. I get that. But should we not die like men? And men talk. Real men.’

Ego stroked.

‘So, how about we talk about how you’ve managed to do what I’m assured isn’t possible?’ Koenig continued. ‘Bess says you can’t permanently contaminate Lake Mead. I say you’ve found a way. Something to do with the F-35s.’

Tas checked his watch. ‘Sure, why not,’ he said. ‘We still have a few minutes to kill. The optimum time for an attack on the dam would be at dusk, during the park rangers’ shift change. That’s what would seem most believable to the eye in the sky.’ He checked his watch again. Nodded once, little more than a head bow. ‘Why don’t you try to work out exactly what it is you’re sitting on?’

‘Can I phone a friend?’

Tas grinned.

Koenig added the Die Hard information to what he already knew. The boat was low in the water. It had landed in Maine and been driven across the country. That meant Tas hadn’t been able to use any old boat. He’d had to use this boat. Koenig had never studied marine engineering, but he understood the physics. Boats floated when the amount of water they displaced was heavier than the boat itself. The primary way to displace water was to create space. Space that could be filled with drugs, guns, wine, cigarettes, even people.

‘It’s not explosives,’ he said. ‘You could have picked that up anywhere. There was no need to smuggle it into the country.’

‘It’s not explosives.’

‘A virus?’

‘Why would I need a boat for a virus? Surely a test tube would do?’

‘A poison or a chemical the think tank hadn’t considered? One with longevity.’

‘No. Miss Carlyle is quite correct. Poison would be inconvenient. It wouldn’t indefinitely render the water undrinkable.’

‘Bess thought the most likely way to intentionally cause a mass migration event was to poison the air with weaponised fungi,’ Koenig said. ‘One of the mycotoxins. Causes severe illness, enough to displace the population. But we’re on water. That would make a mycotoxin release less effective, not more effective.’

‘It’s not fungi,’ Tas said.

Koenig was fresh out of ideas. He was almost fresh out of blood. ‘I have no idea, Jakob. We know there aren’t any nuclear bombs in play.’

‘I’ll give you a clue,’ Tas said. ‘You’re getting warmer.’

‘There are no missing nukes, Jakob. When there’s a threat like this, everyone checks their stockpile. No country wants suitcase bombs in play.’

‘You’re not listening, Mr Koenig,’ he said. ‘I said you’re getting warmer .’

He emphasised warmer. Like he was being literal, not figurative. And when Koenig thought about it, he was warm. And he should have been cold. The body compensated for blood loss by restricting the blood vessels in the limbs and extremities. It concentrated on vital organs like the heart and the lungs and the liver. The skin and the arms and the legs got a much-reduced amount. The less blood you had, the colder you became.

But Koenig was warm, as if he were leaning against a radiator. Which meant the heat was coming from an external source. In the last ten minutes the deck had gone from feeling like wood warmed by the sun to wood that hadn’t long been out of the fire.

He could think of only one thing that generated heat like this.

Despite the heat, Koenig shivered. Like he’d stepped out of a sauna and into the snow. He understood everything. He understood why the boat had been smuggled into the country. And he understood why Tas needed Smerconish to close the deal.

Koenig had failed.

He had failed and Tas had won.

Margaret had won.

Because as sure as bacon for breakfast, Lake Mead was about to become toxic. And there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it.

‘The boat isn’t packed with explosives, is it, Jakob?’ he said. ‘It’s packed with something much worse.’

‘You’ve worked it out, Mr Koenig!’ Tas said, grinning from ear to ear. Proud. ‘Well done! The boat isn’t packed with explosives; it’s packed with spent nuclear fuel rods.’