“Oh”
“Well it was founded by three Cooperatives, you know,” she told him.
Anselm shook his head, “I didn’t.”
“They all signed on before the project got off the ground,” she said. “A recycling group, a power coop, and an Agro-coop. The idea was that the three together covered all the bases that could be explored in the project.”
Anselm nodded, mind rushing ahead of the conversation. Seven or eight hundred people would have to be employed officially, and that meant that they probably were all recorded on the national database. Since they were working within the confines of a power plant, unless Anselm was mistaken, they would have had to run print checks on all of them. The thing was, fingerprints weren’t the fool proof thing they used to be. Modern career criminals were growing into the times, learning to adapt to a world that was constantly adapting to itself. A polymer spray could obliterate fingerprints on a person’s hand for up to four days by filling in the ridgelines and blocking the oils that left traceable prints.
More sophisticated types were able to mold new prints, using fractal equations to create prints almost as unique as the DNA derived real deal. Those types were still quite rare, but were also growing in frequency. And the real nasty types often left prints of other real people on the scene, either to actively frame the person who’s identity they had stolen, or simply too muddy the police investigation.
So a cursory background check made by the owners of the power plant could be fooled easily enough, especially if these people had been at the cutting edge of criminal science a few years earlier before more stringent checks may have been put into action.
Of course, that assumed that more stringent checks were put into action. The Tower was a power plant, so some form of background check was mandatory, unless Anselm was very much mistaken in his knowledge of Australian law. However, there was no dangerous materials on site, and certainly nothing anyone would expect to attract terrorism, so maybe the checks weren’t as tight as other power plants that contained little things like nuclear materials.
“Probably isn’t as tight.”
“What”
Anselm started, looking over at Gwen. “Huh”
“What you said, what were you talking about”
Anselm’s mind raced as he backed up and realized that he’d spoke aloud. He grinned, chagrined by the slip, “Sorry, I was thinking aloud. I was just considering what kind of background checks the Tower owners would have made.”
“Oh.” Gwen nodded, frowning. “I’m pretty sure that they had to run all the standard background checks.”
“Facial Topography”
The Inspector frowned, shaking her head. “I doubt it.”
Anselm nodded, he’d expected that much. Facial Topography had very much became the tool of choice for law enforcement over the past decade or so, much like fingerprint analysis was in the earlier part of the twentieth century, and DNA was in the latter.
It was possible to `spoof’ a Facial Topography scan, but only by changing your appearance noticeably. Something that was much easier to notice than a spray-on polymer coating your fingers. DNA, of course, still provided final confirmation though.
“Can we get access to the Tower Employee database”
Gwen shrugged, “We can ask.”
Anselm smiled and nodded.
Of course they could ask.
And if they were told no, well Anselm had one or two tricks up his sleeve, or rather hanging on his belt, that weren’t taught in any regular police academy.
The visual spectrum scan of the Tower complex yielded no additional information than Joshua already had in his rather sparse briefing, but the enhanced spectrum pictures were another matter altogether.
There was a more extensive underground presence beneath the tower complex than the blueprints filed with the Australian government indicated, including one segment that appeared to be heavily shielded.
That was an item of concern to Joshua, since there could be just about anything in that section of underground tunnels. Overhead radiation sweeps from the N-SAT scans had yielded nothing of import, a few tiny hits from where Joshua knew the hospital would be, but certainly nothing weapons grade.
There were few reasons, however, to have a complex of tunnels quite so heavily shielded, especially under a power plant that generated no emissions, nor any radiation. So it seemed likely that Raymond was here for a reason, and that reason wasn’t the tower. It was under the tower.
Which meant that some on-site intel was going to be needed for the team when it arrived from state-side.
Joshua sighed, drawing his Colt from under the pillow of his bed. He looked at the weapon for a long moment, trying to decide what to do with it.
He’d have to check out the tunnels for himself, that was a given.
After a long moment Joshua stashed the gun back under his pillow and instead drew out a loud, garish shirt that screamed `tourist’. If he got caught, he’d try to bluff his way out.
A few hours, then he’d go. Chances were that even terrorists would be tied to the solar clock, and they’d be a little off their game once the sun went down, even if they were underground and couldn’t see it.
Joshua looked over at the pillow where his pistol was hidden, itching to slide it into his belt under his shirt, but shook his head.
If they found him, they’d search him. If they found that gun, it would be game over.
He’d have better luck with just the ugly shirt.
He hoped.
I’m too old for this cowboy shit.
“The police have requested access to the tower employee database, Amir.”
Abdallah Amir groaned slightly, shaking his head. “It’s that damned Interpol Agent.”
Director Jacob nodded in agreement, “he must have forwarded the request through the local PD.”
Abdallah snorted in derision, “of course he did. Do you really believe that the Shanty town Police would ask for something like that from the project That’s most certainly Gunnar’s work. What did you say”
“That we had to respect our employees’ privacy of course.” Jacob said grimly, “however I believe that he will look for a warrant.”
Abdallah nodded, “of course he will. However, there is only one sitting Judge in the Shanties, and we own him.We have time, but its growing short, Jacob. He’ll go for a bench warrant from Sydney, if he must.”
“I agree, Amir,” Jacob replied. “What would you like done”
“Contact our people inside the Australian government try to have it delayed,” Abdallah said after a moment. “We only need three days.”
Three days.
It wasn’t too much to ask, Abdallah thought to himself.
Just three days.
Surely God, if he truly favored the cause, would grant him that.
It was truly remarkable, Abdallah supposed, how quickly a plan could unravel with the introduction of one single random element.
Elsewhere the `random element’ was looking over a file while he waited for his local `partner’ to return. The Tower project was a stupendous piece of engineering, Anselm knew, but he’d never really looked into how stupendous a feat it really was.
It dwarfed any other human construct ever built, by almost a factor of two. Even the Liberty Plaza in New York, easily the number two construct, was much shorter than the Tower. Of course, Liberty Plaza was actually used as office buildings, so the design was much more complicated and incorporated a great deal of work that the Tower, which was basically just a tube of cement, steel, and Carbon Fiber, didn’t have.
The thermal updraft created by the tower was a great deal more powerful than the original plans had calculated, though not so much in their math as in the real world effect. The eddies that wove around the pillar of warm air had altered the numbers on the mathematicians in ways they hadn’t expected. Indeed, the Tower had become one of the leading centers of Meteorology as many Universities and Laboratories sent people to its location to study the effect of the enormous funnel that pumped air up into the upper levels of the atmosphere.