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‘ Die Hard ?’ Koenig said.

‘It’s an action movie,’ Tas said.

‘I know it’s an action movie, Jakob. Everyone knows it’s an action movie. There are uncontacted tribes in the Peruvian jungle who know it’s an action movie.’

‘But have you seen it?’

In his pre-drifter days, Koenig had a bunch of 35-millimetre Die Hard film cells mounted on the wall of his home office. Cost him ninety bucks on eBay. Came with a certificate of authenticity and Bruce Willis’s supposed autograph. Looked like it had been signed by a toddler. Which, admittedly, didn’t rule out anything.

‘I’ve seen it,’ he said. ‘But unless you want to debate whether or not it’s a Christmas movie, I suggest you tell me what’s on your mind.’

Tas chuckled. ‘You understand the basic premise?’

‘ Die Hard isn’t big on allegory. There are no hidden messages. Hans Gruber, arguably the greatest movie villain of all time, takes a bunch of corporate types hostage under the guise of terrorism. John McClane gate-crashes his party when he tries to save his wife. Eventually McClane figures out the terrorism angle was bullshit. Gruber was after the bearer bonds in Nakatomi Plaza’s safe. He wasn’t a freedom fighter; he was just a thief.’

‘Wrong, Mr Koenig,’ Tas said. ‘Hans Gruber wasn’t just a thief; he was an exceptional thief. Do you want to know why?’

‘Because that’s how he describes himself throughout the movie?’

‘No, the reason he was an exceptional thief was because of the way he constructed the heist. The bearer bonds he wanted were inside a state-of-the-art, high-security vault. You’ll remember it was protected by seven levels of security. Seven locks.’

‘Gruber’s whiz kid was able to bypass the first six, but the last was outside of his control,’ Koenig said, wondering where Tas was going with this. ‘The electromagnetically sealed seventh lock was powered by circuits that couldn’t be cut locally.’

‘That’s right. But Gruber, being an exceptional thief, had planned for that. By posing as a terrorist from the beginning, he was able to manipulate the FBI into shutting off the building’s power. That deactivated the last lock and opened the vault. He used the FBI’s predictability against them.’

Koenig nodded. Gruber’s master plan was riddled with plot holes, but when a movie was as entertaining as Die Hard , you went along with it.

And then he caught up with Tas’s subtext. A feeling of dread crept up his spine. Because Tas hadn’t just been ahead of them the entire time. He was still ahead of them. Nothing had been left to chance. He and Margaret had considered everything, and they had planned for everything. Right down to the minutiae. Being observed ditching his cell phone in New Silloth. Choosing a date that coincided with a visiting British aircraft carrier. Leaving dead bodies in downtown San Diego. Giving away his Lincoln Navigator on the shores of the lake. Everything led to Lake Mead with F-35s in the air and a trigger-happy DoD spook.

And the plan had worked flawlessly, like an expensive Swiss watch.

There was one thing outside Tas’s control, though. Something outside his sphere of influence. But that didn’t matter. Not when you were as skilled at manipulating people as Tas was. He didn’t need to be in control of the final piece of the Acacia Avenue Protocol. He had people for that. People who didn’t even know they were doing exactly as he wanted.

Koenig shuddered. He understood the Die Hard reference now.