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‘I didn’t know,’ Koenig said. ‘I suspected. Thanks for confirming.’

‘I had no choice,’ Carlyle said.

‘I know.’

‘What the hell are you two talking about?’ Draper said.

‘The Acacia Avenue Protocol is an attack on our infrastructure,’ Koenig said.

‘That much I’d worked out for myself.’

‘And to amplify the effect, the protocol called for certain people in certain roles to be eliminated before it went live.’

‘The people Hobbs and Nash killed?’

‘Exactly,’ Koenig said. ‘Louise Durose had an innovative way of managing landfills, Michael Gibbs was an expert in deepwater ports. Everyone on Hobbs’s list will have held similar positions.’

‘Makes sense, I suppose. You want to hamper the recovery efforts.’

‘Except it doesn’t make sense. Three hundred and thirty million people live in this country. In a national emergency, we’d find the experts. Other countries would send us theirs. People have transferable skills. Killing nineteen people who happen to work in infrastructure would make no difference whatsoever.’

‘So why bother?’

‘Because after the protocol was put together, Bess added a safeguard. Something only she knew about. A Trojan horse. She told some of her think tank that for the protocol to work certain people in certain jobs had to die. She even dictated in what order they were to be murdered. But the real reason had nothing to do with amplifying the effect of the trigger event. It was because she needed a trip wire. She knew that if her security arrangements failed, her Trojan horse would get fed into the protocol alongside everything else. And when these people began to die, she’d know the protocol had been initiated and how far along it was. Now, I know Bess to be a good person. A moral woman. Yet she was willing to sacrifice nineteen people so she had a heads-up.’ He paused. ‘That’s why I know she’ll let me jump out of the plane.’

‘Her willingness to sacrifice innocent people aside, it changes nothing. Because you jumping out of the plane achieves nothing. You won’t get anywhere near Tas.’

‘I can’t defend what I did,’ Carlyle said. ‘And one day I will answer for my actions. I’ve lived with it for too long anyway. But trust me when I say if Jakob Tas achieves the impossible and turns Lake Mead toxic, it will be the starting pistol on a chain of catastrophic events the like of which this country has never seen. I’m not exaggerating when I say that successfully initiating the Acacia Avenue Protocol will set the US back thirty, forty, even fifty years. So yes, with one small adjustment, I am willing to sacrifice him.’

‘Yay,’ Koenig said.