“The reason you didn’t hear from John Hawke is because we rescued him from the yacht,” Herbert went on. “He told us everything he knew about the operation. I’m sure I’ll get more from your nephew. The Singaporean navy scooped him and several others from the Coral Sea. Probably an underachiever, right? I’m willing to bet he’ll finger you to buy leniency for himself. That’s what sycophants do.”

Darling stopped. He closed the phone. He turned.

“What do you want, Mr. Herbert?” Darling asked. “I don’t mean to leave the airfield but to go away. To leave me alone.”

“You can start with the location of the nuclear materials you’ve been shuffling around.”

“They’re in your mind!” Darling said angrily. “We’re not going to talk about your fantasies. Only about the reality of this moment. I’ll ask one more time. What do you want?”

“I just told you.”

Darling shook his head. “Mr. Herbert, I’ve tried to be reasonable with you. I’ve failed. Now I hope you’ll get off the tarmac. Because I can fly that jet, and I intend to take off.”

“You’d run over me?”

“Mr. Herbert, if everything you’ve intimated is true, one more criminal act would not make things worse,” Darling pointed out.

The Australian turned and left. Herbert had one more round in the chamber. It was his silver bullet.

“I did not accuse you of murder,” Herbert shouted. “But only a man who had already committed one would say that he has nothing to lose.”

“I suggest you move!” Darling yelled over his shoulder.

“How will your daughter feel when she learns you had her mother murdered?” Herbert said.

Darling kept walking, but only for a moment. He turned and threw the cell phone at Herbert. It fell short, exploding on the tarmac. The Australian stalked back toward Herbert.

The kill shot had hit its target. Now Herbert needed one more very specific result.

“You shit!” Darling yelled. “You deformed shit!”

There was the verbal abuse. That was the start of the final phase, like Hitler shouting orders in the bunker as his world burned. If Herbert did this right, the rest was inevitable.

“Your ambition is as limited as your mobility!” Darling went on. “You have no eyes, no soul to dream, nothing!”

“You want to talk about a soul? I lost my legs in a terrorist attack,” Herbert said. “I lost my wife then, too. I would give anything to have her back. But you had your wife killed out of vanity. Because it was convenient. Who’s the deformed shit?”

“You don’t know anything about my life!” Darling yelled.

“This may come as a shock, but the world is not Darling-centric,” Herbert said. He was pushing. He needed one more thing.

He got it.

The Australian reached Herbert’s side and threw a hard right backhand across his face. Herbert took the hit.