Anselm nodded, sighing thoughtfully.
“Were you serious You’re going to investigate everyone in the city”
He nodded again, “That’s right. We’ll use ever CPU cycle from every computer we can link to if we have to, but we need to know how many terrorists we’re dealing with.or at least as close as we can come.”
“But.everyone” She looked stunned by the very concept. “That’s.”
“Incredible Insane Huge,” Anselm supplied.
“Wrong.” She said, with finality. “It’s an invasion of privacy.it’s.”
“It might just save the lives of the innocent,” He told her, “And with millions of lives on the line.They can charge me with Invasion of Digital Privacy if I live. I’m going to start with municipal government, emergency services, criminal records, and I should have thought of this before but also the PD.”
Gwen’s eyes widened, “What!”
“You heard me,” He told her grimly, his hand dropping to his hip. “I’m sorry Gwen, but as of right now, I’m not taking anything for granted.”
She glared at him, her eyes burning darkly. “You can be a real bastard, you know that”
He nodded in agreement, “Yeah. I know. So before we get to the intrusive part, you have anything you’d like to tell me, Gwen”
She said nothing, just thumped down into the guest chair of her own office, and glared at the man who had taken over her desk.
“Amir, It’s Ryan Emmerson.”
“Ah, Chief Emmerson. Do you have any news for me”
“The Interpol Agent has issued a request for local help. He has the names of thirty people he wants arrested, and he knows that you have a biological weapon, Amir.”
“Unfortunate. This is what I need you to do, Chief Emmerson.Contact your people and have them prepare for tomorrow. I’ll handle the Interpol Agent, Ryan. Where is he”
“He and Gwen Dougal are at the station.”
“Perfect.”
“Satisfied”
Anselm ignored the acerbic tone coming from Gwendolen Dougal and merely nodded, “Yeah. I am.”
She pursed her lips, uncertain whether to take that as any sort of concession, but knowing that his lack of challenging reply was even more frustrating. The background check had just come back on her, and as she’d fully known the facial topography scan of the Interpol and CIA databases had come back clean.
Anselm didn’t apologize; however, he merely queued up the rest of the police department, along with the emergency services personnel, medical staff of the tower, and local government, and set them to searching.
“You don’t have a warrant for that.” She hissed, eyes flashing again.
“Given the situation, I don’t think it’s going to matter.” He replied.
“It’s inadmissible in a court of law!”
“You should read up on the Acts of Terror amendments to the British, Canadian, US, and yes even the Australian constitutions, charters, and whatever else. Terrorists don’t have the same rights under law as citizens.” Anselm replied grimly, “Hell, if we actually arrest anyone, they’ll probably be handed over to military tribunals anyway.”
Gwen grimaced, looking away. She had actually forgotten about that, not having had to invoke those particular changes in Australian and international law at any point in her career. After the 9/11 incident in the United States, the various bombings in London, a release of Anthrax in downtown Ottawa, and the destruction of a three block radius from a small nuclear device in Kyoto Japan, new and extremely harsh international treaties had been written, or in some cases rewritten, to basically strip terrorists of practically all normal rights they may have enjoyed under law.
Those laws had been, and still was in fact, under near constant attack by human rights organizations since 2008 when they had been signed. Only the rash of bombings in 2013 had prevented them from being revoked in Australia at that time, in fact, after a series of expose reports on the abuse of those laws had been aired.
The abuses hadn’t stopped, and the laws were again coming under increasing attacks in the public eye.
Gwen grimaced as she realized that those attacks were likely to again be derailed, Abdallah’s actions here at the tower would fuel the defenders of the new treaties for years to come.
Anselm, reading her face, misunderstood the source of the grimace, though not by much.
“I know,” He said, “those treaties haven’t always been used by the best people, or for the best reasons, but this situation is exactly why they were signed in the first place.”
That point was the bare truth, she had to concede, though Gwen also had to wonder exactly how often did a group of terrorists actually get organized enough to pull something like this off. The proponents of the laws would say that once was too much, and to be honest even she couldn’t argue with that, but the entire situation still left a bad taste in her mouth.
“I don’t like it.” She said aloud, finally speaking.
“If you did,” Anselm shrugged, “You’d be the wrong kind of person to carry that badge.”
She snorted at the clichd phrase, expressing her thoughts on his statement. “That’s the sort of bullshit people like us used to allow those damned treaties to be signed in the first place, Gunnar, and you know it. It’s nothing by self-comforting bullshit so we can sleep at night and not have nightmares about what we’re turning our world into.”
“This isn’t the time or place for this argument.” He snapped back, “I don’t really approve of all the amendments to the laws myself, but they’re there right now and by god I’m going to use them.”
“That’s the problem, right there.”
Anselm grimaced, but finally ignored her, knowing that it wasn’t an argument that they were going to resolve any time soon. The hell of it was that he agreed with her, the laws were subject to abuse, and probably shouldn’t have been enacted. The fact that they were was out of his control, however, and he had to work with what he was given. Besides, if it would save the lives of eighty thousand people, let alone millions, he’d sign a deal with the devil himself.
A voice, somewhere in the back of his mind, whispered nastily as that thought passed through his head.
The road to hell.
Anselm ignored it, turning his focus back to the task at hand, and went back to work.
“I need a status report to brief the President, Natalie. What’s going on in Australia”
Natalie Cyr looked up as the DCI stepped into her office and she tilted her head ironically, “Why hello, Carl. Nice to see you, How’s the wife and kids”
He scowled humorously at her, but didn’t say anything.
She sighed after a second, then nodded tiredly. “My team is airborne, they’ll rendezvous with the Reagan Carrier Group in eight hours.”
“Alright, good. What about the situation on site”
“It’s not good,” She told him seriously. “We have over thirty confirmed terrorists at the Tower now, and the number is likely to rise. Interpol will have one of the START teams there tomorrow, but the locals are likely to be outnumbered even so.”
The Director of Central Intelligence closed his eyes, tilting his head as he grimaced.
“It’s not that bad, Carl,” She told him tightly, “But it’s bad. On the up side, they are working against time even as much as we are. They have to hold that tower for a week to achieve the worst case effect that they’re after, but even a few hours could result in a lot of fatalities.”
“If they have to hold it for a week, they can’t win.” Carl Severson said, looking perplexed. “Even we could have a full Marine Expeditionary Force on their doorstep inside of five days. The Australians will roll right over them.”