Jax had since put four of the seven phones into circulation. As expected, the first of them had gone to Bashir and the second had gone to the new player in town, Mahmud. The second pair of phones, delivered a week later – the day before – had only just been activated. It had taken a day for them to be smuggled across the prison and delivered to the remaining Halim brothers: Kazem and Mahir.

Perhaps Halim’s brothers were now in charge of the money. That might be the reason they got the phones ahead of the Kent brothers. But Clarke suspected that there wouldn’t be a transaction to trace until any transfer of responsibility was authorised by Hammad, who was locked away in Supermax. And Hammad was not due to get his phone until the following week, on the twenty-first. That might mean they’d have just four days to stop the attack.

The phones had already provided them with plenty. Nothing direct, no talk of targets or times, but a series of calls made by both Bashir and Mahmud that confirmed they were involved in a plot. Still, Clarke needed more. Much more. And time was running out.

He arrived at the drop zone a minute ahead of his ETA with the scanner, the keys and the plastic screwdriver, all CIA kit. This cooperating thing was working out okay.

CHAPTER 37

Goulburn Correctional Centre, Goulburn, NSW, Australia

THE CAMERAS would be taken care of. Jax didn’t know who would do that or how; he knew only that he had an hour. The CCTV would not be recording between 2 am and 3 am, instead showing a loop of the previous hour. No one would notice the glitch. Not when every hour after lights-out looked the same: inmates asleep, locked away for the night. The only thing that ever changed on the monitors was the time stamp.

Jax was fully dressed and standing behind his cell door. He pressed the light on his watch, a cheap digital prison buy-up job, and looked at the time.

2.01 am.

He’d now been standing behind the door for eleven minutes. Khalil was sound asleep. Jax didn’t count his breaths to check if he was out like usual. After giving him a double dose of Rohypnol, Jax simply checked that he was still breathing.

Jax had also taken a pill before lights-out, a green and white capsule containing five milligrams of dextroamphetamine. With the plan in place and everything scheduled and set to go, he couldn’t risk falling asleep, so he’d swallowed what was essentially a shot of speed.

Jax looked at his watch again, the tiny orange light on the left-hand side of the screen barely lighting up the last number.

2.02 am.