“That’s not comforting,” Gwen told him dryly, glancing out of the rail car. “We’re here.”
Anselm just smiled as the monorail car slid to a smooth, nearly imperceptible, stop. “What can I say We’ve come a long way since Echelon.”
Gwen shook her head, making a rude noise as she got up. “Come on, Gunnar. I want to get this over with.”
“I thought I told you to call me Anselm” He grinned, following her off the rail car.
“That was before you got me investigated by the CIA,” She told him sourly, showing him her back as she strode down the steps to the ground, then turned toward the police station.
Anselm just laughed and followed her.
“Natalie”
Natalie Cyr hastily composed herself as she scribbled her signature on a piece of paper, then straightened and turned to greet the man standing in her door.
“Sir.” She nodded.
“I just heard about Joshua,” Carl Severson, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) said softly. “You have any hard data yet”
“Not yet,” The severe looking woman said firmly, “I ordered a full upload of the Consulate Portable he was carrying, but that will take some time.”
“Alright,” He nodded, “Let me know when it’s done. What’s the status on the team we’re dispatching to Australia”
She grimaced, shaking her head. “They’re still in California, forming up. We weren’t expecting it to come to a head so fast.”
The DCI grimaced as well, but nodded. “Alright. Get them in the air. I don’t care if you don’t have a full team yet, fill out their ranks from the Navy if you have to, we have to have something in the area that’ll do the job.”
“Yes Sir, uh.what about SecNav”
“I’ll talk to Rob myself,” the DCI promised, “maybe find you a SEAL team or something.”
“I’ll take some of their Masters at Arms as a second choice,” She said.
“Agreed,” Carl told her, “I’ll clear it. Just get your team in the air. Whatever is going down in the Outback, I want it shut down before it becomes an Incident.”
“Sending in a team without the approval of the Australian government will turn it into an incident pretty fast, Sir.” She reminded him.
“I’ll have clearance from them before your team crosses over into Aussie territory.” He told her.
“And if you don’t”
“Then tell them to be very, very, quiet.”
“We may have a problem.”
Abdallah Amir sighed, wincing almost invisibly as the dark words were uttered, and he pushed himself away from his desk and stood up. “Very well, Jacob. Lay it out.”
“We found a glitch in the security system.”
“Oh”
“It’s not much,” Jacob stated, breathing out in frustration, “But there are digital artifacts in the image.Our system is very high definition, and we usually don’t get those artifacts.”
“And what, pray tell, does that mean”
“It may mean that someone used an infiltration program to edit themselves out of the image.” Jacob explained, “That software uses image interpolation to cover up the person as they move across the camera. That kind of software alteration tends to leave behind traces in the image that we call artifacts.”
“And there are some of these.artifacts on the security footage”
“Yes, Amir. We actually record two separate instances of these artifacts entering the lab.” Jacob paused, “And one leaving.”
Abdallah muttered a curse, smashing his hands across his desk, and sent papers cascading to the ground.
“Damn it!” He cursed again, fists clenching. “We have no more time, Jacob. The Americans, or someone, will be coming.”
“There aren’t enough people in the greenhouse to accomplish the effect we wish,” Jacob warned.
“I know that.” Abdallh shook his head, then stopped suddenly. “How many are there at any given time”
“During the day Two.perhaps three thousand workers, another three thousand visitors during peak times.” Jacob replied.
“Alright.Put out an announcement.” Abdallah said slowly, “Free food, free drinks.free anything you can think of. Get our. volunteers inside. I don’t care how.”
At the police station, Gwen flipped on the lights to her office, glancing out over the dark streets of the city, and sighed as she sat down behind her desk.
“What now” She asked finally.
Anselm shrugged, “We’ll have to wait I guess. She’ll contact us again.”
“That thing still working” Gwen nodded to the portable as Anselm shook his head and slid it onto the table.
“No, it must be locked to its owner,” He said, “Mine is.though this seems more sophisticated.”
Gwen shook her head, “Whatever. What do we do in the meantime”
“Start by checking the results of my database search,” Anselm told her, withdrawing his own portable from his pocket.
He keyed open a connection to the International Police Network, logging into the database, and requested the search results from his earlier request. The IPN was an effort by the police communities from several nations, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and several other `First World’ countries to provide easy access to advanced investigative tools to all police organizations throughout the world.
It gave easy access to Fingerprint, DNA, Facial Topography, and many other Law Enforcement tools to police forces in countries too poor to fund their own advanced labs, and to those communities within their own countries too small to do so.
It also gave roving investigators like Anselm, as well as FBI and other similar groups, the tools they needed to accomplish their jobs no matter where the investigation took them.
The networked system could do the work that normally required computing arrays and deliver it to small, affordable computer systems like Anselm’s own portable within a reasonable time frame.
Such as the thirty minutes it had taken to do a complete facial topography scan of the nearly two hundred people who worked directly for the power generation facilities of the massive tower complex. The computers relayed their data faithfully, not aware of what good, or evil, they could sometimes be reporting.
Anselm whistled low, looking at the data, and muttered a soft oath.
“What is it” Gwen asked sharply, leaning forward at her desk.
“Trouble.” He replied, shaking his head. “Big trouble.”
Gwen’s eyes narrowed, her face growing taught, “What kind Is it someone on the List”
The `List’ was the international most wanted, a gathering of some of the worst criminals the world knew at any given time. Being placed on the list generally required a body count in the triple digits, given that competition for even the top one hundred was regrettably fierce.
“That’s not it,” Anselm said, however, shaking his head. “Thankfully. Abdallah is bad enough. No, what I’m looking at is over thirty wanted terrorists here. All of them working at the Tower.”
Gwen fell back, shaking her chair with the force her back hit it, and just stared at him.
“Thirty”
Thirty. It was staggering to the officer, and she tried to place it in perspective. In any real city, her mind actually used the word `real’, thirty perpetrators would be a lot, but not unworkable. Here, in Tower City, that was almost as many police officers they had, including the part time deputies!
“I’m afraid so.” Anselm said grimly, shaking his head. He was already punching in new commands, sending out the information along with an abbreviated report. “I’m calling for backup from Sydney.”
She nodded.
There wasn’t really a choice any more. Thirty perpetrators was, perhaps, within their ability to capture, but it would actually begin to strain the holding cells they had available.