She looked around, covering her mouth. “I don’t think anyone will be joking about it anymore.”
Anselm shook his head, he really didn’t like coincidences.
“Hey!” He snapped, pointing to one of the green-faced deputies, “Don’t be sick in here! Go outside!”
He shook his head, growling. “Where’s his rig”
“What” Gwen asked.
“The airfoil Where is it” Anselm asked, gesturing around the immense inner chamber of the tower.
“I expect,” Jacob said dryly, “that his `rig’, as you call it, made it.”
Anselm looked up, way up, and frowned. “Or it’s still hung up on one of your turbines up there.”
“Sir.ah.” One of them held up a hand.
“Yes What”
“Do you want all the body parts in the same bag” The man asked helplessly, “Cause we’ll need to call for some more if you want them separate.”
Anselm Gunnar wiped the moisture from his forehead as the last bits of the body were finally transported out of the central base of the tower. The warm air that was constantly rushing past him didn’t do anything at all to cool him off, and the moist muggy feel of it just seemed to sap his energy.
“I wish I knew what was going on around here,” he said after a moment, glancing to one side as Inspector Dougal appeared at his side.
“You” She snorted. “This is my town, Interpol. Yesterday I saw the first attempted murder ever committed here, and today.today I’m pretty sure I saw the first successful one.”
“Abdallah has to be here. Something is going on,” Anselm said grimly. “I don’t know what yet, but something.”
“I’m not going to argue, Anselm,” she said after a moment, sighing. “But I don’t know what to do about it right now either.”
“You have a team processing the scene”
She nodded, “The chief assigned it to Inspector Koons. He’s a good man. Thorough.”
Anselm nodded, “Alright. We’ll wait for his report.You think we can find the airfoil”
She shrugged, shaking her head uncertainly. “I’ll put out a word with the Thermies and the local off road club. We’ve got a couple game wardens who track through the desert a lot too, so if it came down around here we might have a shot at finding it.”
Anselm nodded, “See if you can’t get Koons to send someone up the tower too.They have to service the turbines, right”
“Of course.”
“Try to get someone to check them, we might have got lucky and had it snag on one.”
Gwen nodded, “Alright. I’ll pass the word.”
Anselm sighed, “Meanwhile I have a report to make. I’ll see you back at the station, ok”
Gwen nodded, “Alright.”
She frowned after him as he walked off, then abruptly shook herself and turned to find Inspector Koons.
“Agent Gunnar.”
Anselm nodded at the face on the semi-circular screen of his portable. “Madam Director.”
He had managed to secure an empty Mag-Lev car and was riding it back toward his hotel, but he’d place the call on the move just in case someone had planted a device in his room. It wasn’t likely, but it had happened to him before and Anselm despised making the same mistake twice.
“Have you located the target” The Director of Interpol asked him sternly, her face pinched as she seemed tired.
“Not yet, Ma’am.” Anselm replied, “We have a second confirmed photograph.”
“I saw it. It was taken before Inspector Somer’s photograph.”
He nodded.
“So you don’t know if he’s still there.”
“He’s here, Ma’am.” Gunnar said confidently. “I may not be able to prove it, but I know it. Abdallah is here.”
“Be that as it may, I can’t authorize a full scale operation without sufficient evidence,” she reminded him. “The Australian government would hardly thank us for sending fifty agents and inspectors, as well as a Special Tactical Response Team into the country’s most famous landmark, and I can’t get them to sign off on the joint operation without evidence.”
“I know Ma’am,” Anselm nodded grudgingly. “I’ll just have to find it for you.”
“Indeed you will, Agent Gunnar,” she told him, “and soon.”
He nodded, face a little grim, but determined.
“One thing,” she said then, causing Anselm to look up sharply.
“What”
“The American CIA may be aware of our operation now,” she told him. “As you know, they’ve been after Abdallah slightly longer then we have.”
Anselm grimaced, “Do you know for sure”
“I’m afraid not. They haven’t been forthcoming with the status of their current operations. Not even those we already know about,” she said, shaking her head. “As you’re aware, when our cases cross paths with theirs, we normally wind up in a right serious piece of trouble.”
Anselm grimaced as he nodded. He knew that, painfully so. The CIA had their own bureaucracy and set way of doing things and, as an intelligence directorate rather than a police one, they tended to hold secrecy above all else.
He supposed that it was impossible to hold it against them exactly, it was undoubtedly a survival trait in the majority of their affairs.
When they started doing police work, however, they got entirely too fancy and meddlesome for Anselm’s liking. Police work, worked best when everyone involved communicated regularly and well. Certainly that was an ideal that didn’t always happen, even under the best of circumstances, but it was the goal. When you mixed in a bunch of professional paranoiacs into the equation, everything went to hell in short order.
“Thank you for the warning. Any idea when they bumbled into this”
“Don’t know for sure if they have yet, it’s just possible,” the Director told him. “Hard to hide anything from the Americans, you know. Their signal intercepts are second to none.”
Anselm nodded, understanding quiet well. Between Echelon and newer methods of signal intercepts the American intelligence people were able to effectively listen in on pretty much anyone on the planet. That very efficiency often created more problems than it solved, of course, since they were so busy tracking and clearing harmless conversations that they routinely missed out on more sinister ones that good human intelligence would probably have reported.
Still, the CIA was well known, or at least well suspected, of listening in on Interpol internal communications, so Anselm supposed that it was inevitable they find out about Abdallah.
“Any sign that they’ve send someone”
“That’s why I mentioned it,” she told him. “Our people in Sydney believe that there might be some increased activity in the Embassy. The only thing of note that we’re aware of in Australia at the moment, is Mr. Amir.”
“Alright,” Anselm nodded. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“If the agent makes himself known to you, offer a joint operation,” she advised. “I want Mr. Amir out of circulation, and I don’t really care if the Americans do it, or we do. Not that much at any rate.”
Anselm smiled, “the Americans do have a slightly more pointed interest in Abdallah, don’t they”
“After the event in DC” The Director laughed, “I should so say. At any rate, Agent Gunnar, find me the evidence I need to get the Australian government to sign off on a joint operation.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Good luck.”
“Thank you, Madam Director,” Anselm said just as the screen faded out to the milky white color it had when not under power.
He sighed and closed his portable, turning his head to watch the greenhouse rip past.
Just what he didn’t need, another complication.
“Are they gone”
“Not yet, Amir,” Jacob said as he entered. “Though the Interpol man has left.”