9) Ground Meat
AMBERLANDS
HEREFORDSHIRE
Six weeks condensed into snapshots, all that Alex really wanted to remember about the Meatgrinder course, which felt every bit as unpleasant as Milos' hinted at:
EXAM PAPER ONE:
Question one (Compulsory) Out line the sequence of events from 1997 to 2009 (inclusive) that led to the destruction of the previous political order in the USA; include a description of how these events were to affect general European and later world history.
'I will not handle a gun.'
'You bloody well will, little man.'
'I won't. I'm not in the Army and you can't make me.'
'You don't have a choice here.'
'I won't handle a gun.'
'You don't pass the Handgun course then you fail overall, little man.'
'I won't shoot people.'
'I'm not bloody asking you to! It's just a target in there. Now pick up the gun.'
EXAM PAPER TWO
Question two (Compulsory) Given a Lascelle constant of 0.53, use the table of indices to determine the degree of cultural compatibility between the following: I) a minor Muslim oil state and a major Muslim military state; ii) the United States and Armenia; iii) Norway and Taiwan; iv) A Northern hemisphere island state and a Southern hemisphere island state.
"In the Field Training Exercise you will be flown, blindfold, to a drop-off point at least fifty kilometres away. Your mission is then to make your way back here, within twelve hours. The police have been told about you and will therefore be trying to apprehend you. Capture means failure. Turning up after twelve hours means failure. That's all. I'd like to wish you good luck but can't because we need to fail some of you. Quotas and all that. Off you go now.'
EXAM PAPER THREE
Question 1) (Compulsory) Develop and prove, after Cattell, a dynamic model of politico-historical covalent evolution, with regard to the Indian sub-continent. You MUST include and explain: I) Moghul domination ii) European penetration iii) English domination iv) Partition v0 Religious division (contemporary) vi) Economic division (historical).
"You will find various objects in front of you. Some are of potential use, others are not. Make your selection. You will have forty-five seconds to open the lock in front of you when I stop talking. Go!"
EXAM PAPER FOUR
Question 1) (Compulsory) Use the Revell method to decrypt this input: 11100 10 1001 0110100 101 1 1 1001 110 101 011 101001 101 10110 101 10110 1 10 1 1010101 11001 1011 1 1 101 01 10
"Right. Of the twenty originals there are twelve of you left. Congratulations. From here it gets harder. Oh, you can laugh, but I'm telling the truth. You've now got to put into practice the basic lesson you've learnt, which is a lot harder than it sounds, believe me. What you will be don't is acting as observers in an exercise conducted by UNION staff. You will be assessed according to results. I notice you're not laughing now!"
PRO FORMA:
DEAR: Mr Petrovic
YOU HAVE FORMALLY PASSED THE ENTRY PROCEDURE UNDERTAKEN AT AMBERLAND. YOU HAVE NOW FORMALLY BEEN INDUCTED INTO THE UNION ARM OF THE FEDERATED CONCORDAT. AS A RESULT OF THIS YOU ARE ALLLOWED ONE WEEK PRE-COMMENCEMENT LEAVE. AFTER THIS TIME HAS ELAPSED YOU WILL PRESENT YOURSELF TO THE ADDRESS OVERLEAF. YOUR COVER IDENTITY HAS BEEN PREPARED AND WILL BE FORWARDED TO YOU WITHIN FORTY EIGHT HOURS. FOR THE TIME BEING YOU WILL MAINTAIN THAT YOU ARE BEING GIVEN A PUNITIVE TRANSFER TO MJO AT SOUTH LONDON SORTING OFFICE
Alex slept for almost twenty-four hours, as the backlog of adrenaline withdrawal, mental and physical taxation, anxiety and excitement all claimed him.
When waking a stream of hypnagogic images ran themselves past his inner eye. He twisted comfortably underneath the duvet, feeling an absence, an element missing.
Work! That was it, he missed work and the comfortable, boring routine it brought. That had been replaced by the insecurity of UNION and the excitement (or promise) of a job that did not consists of endless pen-pushing.
10) Low Times
HOLDING CELL 101
POLIZEI PLATZ OST
HAMBURG
OCTOBER
In an exchange agreement, the German Bundespolizei took into custody persons remanded for appearance in the civil or criminal courts when these persons were members of the Federated Concordat. This came about due to limited detention space available to the FedCon in Germany; it also made remand less arbitrary. The Bundespolizei were amenable about the arrangement since there existed a considerable financial incentive and they could 'maximise' prison space by filling those cells empty of DUR citizens.
This, then, was the reason for Lothar being incarcerated in the cells in Hamburg. He'd been separated from Peiter, cuffed, jacketed, yoked and stuck into a police people-wagon. He shared the space with six other unfortunates; a couple of drunks who still flared up at each other, a druggie, two Pax activists with scalp wounds that bled messily over the seats and lastly an obese, unshaven man who bleated continually about not meaning to hit his wife, not this time anyway. Lothar sullenly surveyed them all, cursing silently that either he or Peiter ever listened to that woman and her suggestions. Silently cursed, because the cops had a nasty habit of recording everything you said and using it out of context in prosecutions.
After an interminable journey, swaying uncomfortably in darkness, all seven occupants of the "happy-cart" fell over as it braked. The rear door swung open and all seven were manhandled out; sleazy neon lights overhead showed an anonymous entrance door, outside of which stood a plain-clothes detective and two uniformed cops, both of whom cradled shock-sticks.
For a minute Lothar felt he ought to try the plea he made earlier in an unsuccessful attempt to get away from the legal clutches of FedCon; he had plaintively stated that he wasn't "one of them", couldn't the nice police arrest him and forget about FedCon? To which the answer had been no, he'd been caught on FedCon turf so they could do pretty much what they wanted with him.
'Inside, you lot. Stand in the entrance hall. No, not you,' said the detective, holding back the wife-hitter. The others filed in and Lothar could hear one of the uniformed cops speaking; '… lesson for you. Like to hit women, do you?' and then came the static thud of shock-sticks for aching seconds. Those things hurt, too, really hurt in the hands of anyone adept in their use. The three cops reappeared with their twitching, spasming prisoner.
One of the trio winked at Lothar.
'Resisting arrest,' he said.
They took Lothar down to an old, well-used cell with harsh lights, a stinking toilet and a rigid bed. Mutant hissing came from a decrepit wall-speaker, it's armour grille devoid of paint after years of futile, vengeful attacks.
Bad though it undoubtedly was, Lothar had seen worse as a youthful soccer hooligan when he'd briefly witnessed the splendours of a Polish jail from the inside.
He sat down.
'Prisoner blah blah blah seventy-nine,' droned the wall-speaker in unintelligible tones. 'You are being detained under Protocol Eighty of the Concordat's Judicial Proposal. You are to be detained in this … ahem, no sugar … this facility until a representative of the Concordat arrives to take custody of you.'
His heart nearly stopped. The Fed! Jesus Christ Almighty, not them again. He'd imagined that he had slipped from their notice. Although all holding cells were soundproofed, years of hard use resulted in a deterioration in their anechoic quality. So police walking up and down the corridor outside 101 heard a dim, forlorn wailing coming from the cell.
Lothar was screaming.
'Newsflash! This just in: terrorist saboteurs of the Northern Anarchist Coalition have claimed responsibility in destroying the aircraft carrying members of the Dutch royal family as it returned from an official engagement to Greenland. At least ten members of the family are missing, presumed dead. More details in the hourly bulletin -'
The FedCon psychologist snapped his fingers and the news channel abruptly and obediently choked itself off. He wasn't a monarchist, not at all. What about the crew on that plane; didn't they deserve a passing mention? A few royal parasites less wouldn't harm the world but their underlings ought to at least get a mention.
Anyway, news of disasters with aircraft reminded him of his subject, Mister Lothar Hellman. Signs of severe trauma there, made worse by incarceration and years of past drug abuse. So; why the state of utter panic whenever he came into contact with the friendly Fed? It could be, of course, that Mister Hellman killed his companion Theo and then constructed a fabulation to salve his conscience and ease the memory.
He sighed. Time, in a matter of doubt, to turn to the Oracle. This particular oracle happened to be an Omax 1500, state-of-the-art German technology, with a Russian Ouspensky software package, at least 10,000 case histories indexed and cross-referenced and using this a puzzled mind-mapper could find answers to most questions.
Not all answers to all questions. Perhaps guidelines defined it better. They ought to be guidelines, thought the psychologist, because Mister Hellman's symptoms certainly didn't fit into typical case profiles.
11) Of Rats and Rain
SEPTEMBER
THE WARRENS
SHEFFIELD
Being a probationer, Alex needed to serve for the full duration of an operation, under an experienced eye. There didn't appear to be any criteria about what kind of operation probationers got assigned to. Police, traffic, Customs Control, FedCon or any other entity. In recognition of his past sins, Alex found himself in one of the less salubrious zones: The Warrens, in Sheffield.
The housing projects of the 1960's and the past century had long outlasted their useful life, rotting away from within as vermin and environment gnawed away at them. They had been demolished in the Civic Initiative Action of the early twenty-first century, the vacant ground then being allocated to various local projects before the Accelerated Housing Program began building. AHP was intended to provide relatively low-cost, relatively high-quality accommodation; the deck access design should have lasted for fifty years with a safety factor of fifty per cent. Now, however, they were old before their time. Patched-up, frangible, subject to a hundred forms of fabric fatigue, they now existed to house the underclass who moved into what became known as "The Warrens".
They were not unique to any one city; Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, London, all had areas of urban blight where crime and poverty were endemic, either as cause or effect or both.
Alex, as part of an ongoing police monitoring operation, run locally, came to replace a FedCon liaison officer who wanted to go on holiday (some holiday, in Alex's opinion - a month on the moon!).
Yorkshire people spoke oddly, to Alex, long used to the tones of the Home Counties. Yorkshire people spoke with a thick accent, strange dialect, slang that didn't seem English. The Sheffield sense of humour was unusual, too; dry and cutting. Like a saw.
The police made an effort to look after Alex when he arrived, bunking him down in their private quarters and giving him all sorts of goodies - periodicals, reference works, anachronistic 2-D pictures of pre-CIA Sheffield, glossaries and annotated reports. They wanted him to be well informed. Incidentally, the sheer amount of information Alex would have to ingest meant he would have to be intellectually able in addition to being physically capable. They also wished him to be adept at social monitoring, so they partnered him with an experience officer as an instructor and guide. From on high came an order to carefully monitor the monitor, as a favour to FedCon, a favour that could be traded in future for a return favour (such as access to Internal Net, FIDO or even PolSat). They didn't want their assignee to come to harm, so he got an anti-harm suit; they wanted him to harm others if necessary, so they gave him a gun (which he never removed from his station locker).
'That,' said Sergeant Barnes, 'is a drop.'
Alex glanced from the corner of his eye at the police officer. Of course it was a drop. Any sheer fall of over thirty metres could be called "a drop".
The pair were at mid-point of a walkway between two tenement blocks on the outskirts of The Warrens, where things got bad but not too bad, certainly not too bad for an assigned monitor. Merely murders, assaults, spectra of drugs offences, robbery, vandalism, plus innumerable other crimes.
'Oi, Sarge, fuck off and die you fucker!' chorused a flock of children no older than five, running past them. Barnes ignored them, so Alex ignored them too.
'Just playing,' explained Sergeant Barnes. ' When things are bad they throw poison darts.'
Oh great, thought Alex, no stones, just a curare cocktail on a spike. Don't let things get bad while I'm here!
The escorting policeman, noticing his charges scepticism, turned to explain: when the weather became hot, tempers ran ragged and the sporadic viciousness of daily life became pandemic. When the weather was cold or wet or both simultaneously it became much easier.
To return to the drop: it acted as the temporary deposit for illegal pharmaceuticals, left by a courier for another courier to collect. And why there? Because at the junction of two pre-fabricated slabs a small nick had been made, allowing a fine wire to dangle over the side from a little retaining toggle, at the end of which a small bag could be hung. Ergo, a drop. This time, nothing there.
On they went. People walking past stopped talking to stare sullenly at them, creating an unpleasant feeling that reminded Alex of his time in Kosovo. Sergeant Barnes was able to point out a lot of the onlookers with a précis of their involvement with the forces of the law: that was Irwin Moore, brother of Karl, who was currently doing seven years penal servitude in Wandsworth; she was Lisa Nixon, suspected of carrying for the Bacon brothers; that was Jolly James, no fixed abode, chronic alcoholic and petty thief; that was Peter Morrisey, out on bail for car theft (sixth time); Claire Heaney, who had beaten him over the head with a spike shoe end and who frequently did the same with her children; Simon Clarke, suspected of carrying and of killing ("no proof yet but we're working on it").
A whole compendium of offences. There was also a confounding factor present; when criminals went out for their constitutionals, non-criminals went indoors and stayed there, so an uninitiated onlooker may have gained a rather biased perception.
Barnes pointed out a thin wire strung between two tenement decks, easily a hundred metres from block to block.
'See that? Pirate radio antenna. The kids club together for the hardware, then they hire William Tell. He puts up the aerial and they broadcast until the BPI comes along and does them.'
"William Tell", it transpired, was a local with a crossbow, who could shoot a wire connected to a bolt across the gaps between buildings and thus create an aerial. Never arrested, he remained only a nick-name. The police didn't worry much; broadcasting kept a certain fraction of the local youth occupied, away from more nefarious pursuits. Pirate radio stations were like weeds anyway, get rid of one and another two sprang up to fill the airwave gap.
They descended a stairway, sixteen flights with refuse heaped rotting in every stairwell, because the refuse chutes broke years ago and the council collection service was erratic. Once at the bottom they walked out into the open, away from the sides of the tenement blocks. The tip was, either stay under the walkway or keep well clear of it, because if you were only a few metres of it horizontally then a large and heavy object might be propelled over the balcony to descend on your head. Like a wardrobe. Or a concrete paving slab.
Alex looked around and about, up and down, not only looking but seeing. In a pressure-cooker estate like this all you could do was expect the worst from people and be surprised if they didn't all turn out so. Barnes confirmed these unspoken thoughts by pointing out a few locals who were criminals, the offspring of criminals who were themselves the offspring of criminals. People like them never reformed; perpetual recidivists, they only persisted in what they saw as normal behaviour.
The twosome paused. On either side rose the tenements, great artificial cliffs stained with ancient bird droppings, where graffiti had been chiselled into the walls with power drills. Voices called like lost birds between the cliff faces as neighbours called to each other, no words distinguishable, just tones. The duo detoured into a vast recess in Block Fifteen, even danker and gloomier than the rest of the block, an access and service point for the ventilation and air conditioning ducts. Giant corroded pipes ran the width of the recess (ten metres or so in breadth), kinked and knuckled to allow council engineers access, not that they actually ever came any more.
The reason they detoured was so Sergeant Barnes could light up; not illegal or contra-regulations but it made him more human to any observers and he didn't want that.
Alex sat atop a pipe while Barnes smoked.
'I wouldn't do that,' said the policeman, amused.
'Oh. Why not?'
'Because there's some right queer creatures living in those ducts. Cockroaches and the like.'
"Cockroach" did it. Alex leapt down, his bottom tingling with alarm. To him, "cockroach" meant the Balkan variety, a monster that hissed, bit and flew with equal facility. Many families in Eastern Europe kept a trained pet rat to deal with them. Th Greater London Cockroach didn't measure up to it's cousin but it remained a nasty little beast. All the tenement blocks were infested with them. Also, there were winged ants, a thing called a silverfish totally unknown to Alex, plus earwigs, beetles and wasps.
'Why can't they get rid of them?' asked the tourist.
Ah, explained Barnes. To get rid meant having to fumigate, and to fumigate properly the interstices of the whole block needed to be gassed, a major operation that council purse-strings limited to an annual event. Even then, the target vermin over generations had developed a tolerance to chemical agents and many survived the gas attack. Within a month there would be as many little guests in residence in each household as there had been pre-operation.
'What we could do with, really, is a terrier bred down to about four or five inches long. You don't acquire tolerance to a bloody Jack Russell!'
"Terrier", "inches" and "Jack Russell" were unfamiliar to the Serb but he followed his companions line of thought anyway.
'What you need is a trained rat.'
'Pardon! A trained rat!'
'Yes. I am surprised you never heard of them. We used to keep one at home for the Brontejowa - uh, that is, the cockroaches. Lots of people do. They eat them right up. These blocks could do with a whole pack of them.'
Barnes nodded slowly and thoughtfully.
'You have an idea there.' A note went into his personal greenscreen and the two carried on. Once out of the tenement's shadow bright sunlight warmed their spirits and bodies the instant the sun came out from behind the clouds.
Every five minutes they needed to check in with Despatch Control to prove they were still alive and unharmed by giving their names and numbers. This acted almost like a barometer of how tense the Warrens were; if times between the checks were twenty minutes you could guarantee it was a cold, wet, miserable day with all the wrongdoers sensibly indoors; when the check-ins sidled down to forty-five seconds a mob riot would be imminent, guns and beer bottles full of home-made napalm. Five minutes could be described as the tense side of normal.
They warmed up for a few minutes. Barnes called in. Despatch spoke back to him in their impenetrable crackle-and-hiss, from which Alex could discern absolutely nothing. Perhaps a few years of duty in the Warrens listening to urgent chatter filtered through a handset of dubious quality enhanced hearing.
Their next route led into the very heart (still, not beating) of the Warrens; a square mile in the English measure, consisting of scrubby grass patches and dirt where a set of playing fields once existed.
'Odd,' commented Barnes, not explaining why. He called up Despatch Control. Alex took a good look around and saw nothing pleasant yet nothing out of place. There were grimy tenements on all sides, spotted with mould and rust; an ancient rusted relic (once a car) lay not far away, dead for years and rusting into obscurity; at dead centre of the barren grass stood a collection of pre-fab huts slotted together in the fashion of a child's building kit, surrounded by a high fence.
'I take it that we are going there?'
Barnes said nothing, just gradually increased his pace so his partner found that he had to make longer strides to keep up. Alex wondered what the game was. There didn't seem to be anyone around to threaten them.
In fact, as the staff at the station informed him later, the apparent absence of people gave cause for concern to any experienced watcher. Normally, as far as things around the Warrens ever approached normal, hordes of children played football on the Wreck, as the bare land was known; older children drove bikes across it, chased each other across it and watched adults trek across it to the police station to make out complaints, fulfil bail conditions, keep probation appointments.
Yet now there were no people present at all.
So why are we one notch short of running? Wondered Alex again. While they jogged on, Barnes threw quick glances from side to side, rapid cautious looks that made Alex peer closely in the direction of his associate's gaze. All around, the tenements seemed empty, but in the ground level garages - weren't those things moving in a few of them? People, maybe. Staying-out-of-sight people, people Plotting Unpleasant Things, maybe.
In front of them lay the pre-fab police station, surrounded by a three-metre fence topped by rusty razor wire. A thoughtful person already held the gate open in readiness for them and stood holding the gate and a four-kilo padlock, ready to shut it all up again. They beckoned urgently in a come-here gesture.
'Run!' they shouted.
Alex perversely looked to see what they would be running from, since he already knew where he'd be running to. He saw a mob of youths. Footballs and frisbees were gone, replaced by knives and nailed clubs. Clearly these sportsmen were now playing a different game today: Hunt the Policeman.Both policeman and probationer raced the last fifty metres like rabbits, into the palisaded station, hearing with mutual mixed feelings the gate rolling shut behind them. True, they were in and safe but they were also stuck in the station. They would have to wait until the helicopter arrived with canisters of pepper gas and aerosol anaesthetic. An unpleasant way to spend the weekend. Alex waited in the canteen, expecting gangs of riot police to arrive, coerce him into donning protective gear and make sorties against the assembled youngsters thirsting for blood and action outside. Shit, it felt as bad as conscription again. That itself had been abysmally awful, two years sitting in barracks being shouted at by loud-mouthed morons in uniform, with periods of standing on street corners armed with batons and shields: "Duties in Support of the State".
'What we really need,' said Barnes, ' is a spell of bad weather. 'Just our luck we've got an Indian summer. No chance of what we want.'
'Summer Indian?' asked Alex, unfamiliar with the idiom.
12)
HAMBURG
MEDICAL ANNEXE
POLIZEI PLAZA OST
Once again the FedCon psychologist dropped himself into an over-stuffed armchair, but since the last time he had learnt to put a cover on his coffee cup. No spillage.
'Hello there,' said the other staffroom resident, a doctor. 'Tough morning, hmm?'
'Ja - sorry, yes, yes it has been,' replied the psychologist , reverting to his native Dutch for a second. 'I am getting nowhere with Subject Hellman. Very odd, very strange.'
The other man became professionally curious.
'Oh yes? The one I tested samples for -'
The Dutchman looked chidingly at his companion.
'Ethics, ethics…'
'Sorry. Hmm. Well, whoever I did those tests for had ingested one hell of a lot of drugs in the past. You should have seen the spectrograph - came out like a reference chart of illegal drugs.'
'But nothing chemically appropriate, really.'
'What do you mean by that?'
Careful not to mention names, the psychologist explained that the subject in question -
'Oh, damn it,' he grumbled, ' enough of this silly behaviour. Here's a transcript.'
WHAT FOLLOWS IS A VERBATIM ACCOUNT AS GIVEN BY THE UNDERSIGNED, GIVEN FREELY AND WITHOUT DURESS. THIS TRANSCRIPT IS DERIVED FROM TAPE RECORDS OF 21ST INST.
SUBJECT: Is it on? Yeah? Oh, right. Uh, my name is - what? Oh. Yeah, okay, I'll remember. No name. Um. It was back in the summer, beginning of June I think, the seventh or eighth. No, it was the eighth. I remember now, we - Theo and me, that's who I mean - oh shit should I have said his name? Well anyway we were doing a tour in Germany. No, no, a tour is when you do courier work for drug gangs, you know, carrying for them. you go from one place to another and they give you a per centage. Anyway we were down near Munich, a place called Bergen near an airstrip. Ah, we were sleeping rough in a wood, after we'd been dropping acid and tripping. It was good because you could lie on your back and watch the jets coming in to land and take off. Ah - yeah, well like I said we used to watch the jets coming down or going up. Then we heard this one coming in low, but it wasn't making the right noise, like the engines had failed, yeah? It was like a whistling - I know, like those dive-bombers you see in old war films. Theo and me both got up to see what was going on with it and this jet just went smack! Right into the fucking ground, blew itself to bits. Loads of bits, they were all flying all over the place. I ducked but Theo just stood there staring. Then he, uh, what was it - oh yeah he said - ah! - well he said to me "It's absolutely un-fucking-believable, it's not blown up any more." That's pretty much what he said.
SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 10 SECONDS
Can I have a glass of water? Nothing stronger? Just a thought. Right, well, okay, I looked up where Theo was pointing and this jet that had exploded was putting itself back together. No lie, I swear. All the bits sort of floated back together and they weren't burnt of twisted or anything. When it stopped it looked like it never crashed at all. It just sat there in a crater all of its own.
SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 30 SECONDS
Ah, Theo and me looked at each other at the same time and I could tell he was thinking what I was thinking as well - are we tripping out or what! So I said "did you see that crashed jet go back together again" and he said "yes" so I knew it couldn't be a hallucination because we both saw the same thing at the same time. Well, Theo decided to go and see what this thing was, so he walked out of the wood. And then this guy got out of the cockpit and climbed down. The pilot. Surprised me to see that, somehow I didn't think there'd be anyone in the jet. He was poking around the wheels - it had it's wheels down you see - and he had his back to us so he didn't see Theo coming at him. Me, I didn't want to have anything to do with it, it gave me a weird feeling, fucking gooseflesh, right? I mean, I've seen strange things before but this - I don't know, it felt wrong, sort of. You don't expect to see things like that when you're straight, man. Suddenly this guy heard Theo, who was about ten metres away and he turns round and shoots him. Just like that. Bang. Then he looked around and kept on shooting because he didn't see any witnesses. That did it for me, I legged it out of there. I don't mind telling you I was just about crapping myself before that psycho got out of his fucking death-jet. Shooting Theo, I couldn't take that. It felt like being in the middle of the worst trip ever except it was real life. So I got as far from Munich as fast as I could and ever since then I've tried to keep well clear of the Fed. It was a FedCon jet, you see, with that great big sign of theirs on the side. I never trusted them before and now …
DEBRIEFER: Did the jet crash? Maybe you hallucinated it.
SUBJECT: It left a fucking great crater! Of course it crashed! I know the difference between real life and imagination and being on a trip. And he killed Theo - d'you think I imagined that? No way. It's no wonder I kept well away from you lot, is it! That bitch in Hamburg dropped us right in it, I'd never have gone near that warehouse if I'd known it was FedCon. Is there any chance of being sent back to the police?
SUBJECT PAUSED FOR 2 MINUTES
SUBJECT: That's it. That's all. You want me to take the lie test, I will. But there's something fucking weird going on in the world if things like that go on. You get me?
END END END
After his companion finished reading the psychologist took back the transcript and shrugged.
'We gave him the Taunus test and guess what? He passed. So he believes what he told us, at the least.'
'What do you think happened?'
'Ah! Good question. Along the lines of: subject Lothar being on a drug trip, murders his friend and subsequently forms a confabulation to avoid confronting it.'
There were holes large enough to drive a truck through in that theory, however.
13) Small Needle, Large Haystack
SOUTH LONDON SORTING OFFICE
SPETEMBER
Alex ended up being escorted through the underground tunnels again. This time it came about because he had no idea of how to get to the debriefing room, and this time he had only one escort who behaved in a relatively deferential manner. Alas, this time there was no slivovitz bottle; the room used was an improvement on Milos' cubby-hole, being a bland office suite like a million others Alex had seen or moved through. The presence of a gun rack on a wall spoiled the nature of the illusion. He stared distrustfully, first at the weapons, then at - surprise surprise - Milos, who greeted him with a sneeze.
'Good day. Sit, sit. Excuse my cold. Don't come too close.'
'Is this another disorientation exercise?'
'No. No, you passed your trial by fire and I'm here to give you an assignment. What do you think of that?'
Very little, really, said Alex to himself.
'Ah, very good. What am I doing, counting cars on a city-centre by-pass? Census checks? Helping old people to cross the road?'
If the psychologist had been listening, he could have told Milos to pile on the consequences of assignment.
'You're being sent in at what they call the deep end. Take this, it's your document wallet. Full instructions are inside, but if you want a précis … Okay. You will be official UNION second-line members accompanying the DRU police, since the Fed have been implicated in a possible crime, at the FedCon Research Germany facility. Near Bergen, if you know it. Your documents and disks state that you are working for the Mandated Judicial Overview so kindly bear that in mind. You are not a spy or a secret agent or a superman, you're an MJO member of the Fed. Behave accordingly. And before you leave, make out a shortlist of all your contacts in Greece. Names, addresses, occupations, relatives, the lot, okay?'
Such a request did not come unexpectedly but the timing did. Alex fondly imagined that he would be given time to sit down and discuss exactly who he ought to include and who he ought to leave out. Now he was told flatly to include everyone he ever met in Greece, which came to a suprisingly small number when totalled up.
Milos sneezed again, looking sourly at Alex, who slowly wrote names on a greenscreen, pausing every few seconds to pensively suck his cheek. When he finished, the other leaned forward.
'Yes?' asked Alex, expecting either a question or a statement.
'When you were trapped inside the police fort, in Sheffield, was it your idea about the rain?'
In fact it had been Sergeant Barnes who stated that "rain was the best policeman" and the sentiment appealed to him so much that Alex found a quiet corner, used UNION priority codes and his TACT and put through a request to Logistics -
- who came up with the goods an hour later with a cloud-seeder laying and spraying halogen crystals to the north of Sheffield, up-wind in a complicated dispersal pattern. Within another hour the downpour began. Slowly the besiegers dispersed, wet and depressed after a long wait to see if the clouds would disappear. Amongst the mob numbers had been a conscientious shadow, keeping an eye on his charge, which was how he came to be suffering from a cold.
Net result: nobody hurt, siege ended, a new (but expensive) method of crowd control instigated. And Alex was able to depart without having to don riot gear or baton charge hordes of youths, which he felt justifiably smug about. As for the initiative shown, Milos report, the cloud-seeder log and Sheffield police reports all went into UNION files via one route or another, passing through electronic filters until they reached a storage bin: notice had been taken.
'Now,' said Milos. 'You weapon issue. I believe you have a problem of some kind with this?'
Which happened to be quite wide of the truth, since Milos knew from exhaustive study that Alex detested guns.
'Well,' he continued, 'I'm afraid it's in the Contract, which you signed. All UNION members to carry a weapon for self-defence.' He gestured to the wall rack that housed a variety of hand-held weapons, both lethal and non-lethal. 'The only thing they don't do is specify what you choose.'
Alex felt uncomfortable. The temptation, of course, was to grab the nearest device and leave, but a shrill non-verbal alarm told him not to.
Eventually he selected a silvery, pencil-sized tube with a tapered end and on-off switch, very plain and functional compared to some of the high-tec cannons on display.
'That!' exclaimed Milos. 'Oh, well.' "That" referred to Alex's weapon, a Zap Gun, an electrical discharge side-arm that incapacitated in a non-fatal manner, just so long as the target wasn't too old or too young or too ill or the possessor of a cardiac condition. Zap Guns had been fashionable a decade ago, until people discovered how short a range they had, five metres on a good day being their absolute limit. Nor were they terribly accurate.
'When do I go to Germany?'
Milos checked his wristwatch.
'Not long. About twenty minutes.'
Alex looked up suddenly from signing his Receipt of Ordnance Issued form. How long?
'Did you say twenty -'
'Yes.'
A whole train of thoughts ran through Alex's mind and into each other. Twenty minutes? What about his flat? And the car? Come to that, what about tickets? And he didn't speak German, either. Visas? Currency? If he was on the UNION payroll when did his account get a credit? Would it still be the end of the month? Wait!
He hadn't reckoned on the power of the Green Card and it's motile coded hologram. A flunkey presented him with one of his own suitcases packed with a sensible assortment of clothing and accoutrements; the same flunkey assured him that the flat was secure ("and by now probably bugged as well" added Alex to himself), the car parked and yes, his wages would be paid in at the end of the month. Also with the documents presented by Milos there happened to be a one year déclassé passport and a German credit card. The passport he would keep, the credit card to be returned on completion of the mission. Although not informed of it, he guessed that a close eye would be kept on the card's usage and any abuse would mean curtailment, or punishment and since he was now in UNION the punishment would probably be pretty severe
'Yes, very efficient but I still don't speak German,' he lamented to a flunkey, Milos and an escort when all four moved along the trackless corridors.
'Take this TACT that I just happen to have for issue to you, there's a translation channel on it somewhere. Anyway, they all speak English, don't they?'
Outside South London's geodesic sprawl stood a Logistics utility car with a bored driver at the wheel. Alex climbed up to the cab alongside the driver. They both looked at each other for a long second.
'Stansted. Terminal Three please.'
The driver idly selected a gear and turned the car around in it's own length.
'Short stay? Long stay? Overnight?' she asked.
'Short stay,' replied Alex. Very short stay, he felt like adding.
Whilst they motored on he broke the seal on his document package. As yet he didn't know anything about his flight - which carrier, which gate it left from, which German airport would be the destination nor how long it would take to get there. There were no tickets enclosed in the package so by deduction the carrier would be from Logistics.
This is all a bit of a mess, he mused. At least when I fly to Greece I have enough time to prepare for it. Maybe they threw me in to see how I coped with it. Maybe, maybe, maybe; perhaps their interest is in my reactions and not how well I carry out the task. Shit! How paranoid can you get! Neil would love this, wouldn't he, and what was the name of that woman he said fancied me? Damn, I can't remember her name; she ought to get a telling-off for sticking a name and address in my pocket. Oh! That's right, I could ask to see that - or will it be restricted access because it's evidence?
'Terminal Three, Short Stay. Have a good one, friend.'
The instant he departed the car, a stewardess in a micro-dress appeared. She looked alien; plastic surgery had rendered her face perfectly symmetrical and she wore the latest fad in opaque make up.
'Mister Petrovic of the Judicial Overview? Pleased to meet you, please follow me. We are departing on a special Logistics charter leaving from Gate Twenty Three. Do you need assistance with your luggage? Then follow me.'
Alex found it difficult to keep his eyes off the woman's behind as she led the way for him, not least because he swore that she had an advertising sticker on her left buttock.
They passed through a metal-detector frame that pinged when Alex crossed the threshold. A bored guard ambled over, saw the Green Card, nodded and returned to his station. Great, Alex commented silently. What if this one's a counterfeit as well?
After following the stewardess along corridors playing bland muzack they eventually left the terminal building and crossed the concrete apron to a waiting Logistics jet. It was a Mini-Mover adapted for passengers with a button-in compartment that sported a bar, a sixty-channel television, reclining seats and personal quadro stereos. Alex found himself to be the only passenger on the aircraft. Initially he thought he was being spoiled but the stewardess informed him that they were merely taking the aircraft to Austria and he would be dropped off at a refuelling point en route.
Refraining from drink, he dropped off to sleep nevertheless, awaking only when the aircraft pitched into it's descent for the airport at Munich.
His buttock-marked stewardess once again escorted him to a cab and another taciturn driver whisked him away. It all felt curiously anti-climactic, with no sense of having crossed any international boundary. Only street signs in German actually showed that they were in a foreign country, those and the neon signs. Of which there were few, becoming fewer as they drove, since RSFG was located well outside Munich in the countryside.
The darkness of this same countryside was broken by occasional spots of light until they approached RSFG, which was an enormous sprawling site, well illuminated by light towers along the perimeter fence. It took ten minutes to get through to the lobby building and the reception desk, where he wearily dropped his case. A receptionist looked blankly at him when he waved his Green Card.
A large brown hand descended on his shoulder from behind, making him jump and turn suddenly.
'Hello,' said Olukaside.
'Ah. Hello,' replied Alex, staring a little. Who was this?
'I'm the Field Officer for this Double Digit,' announced Olukaside.
Alex nodded, a little overawed by the tall Nigerian. It was implicit that both were UNION members even though this was never mentioned.
RSFG, long used to putting up visitors, had an accommodation room for the two; as the lesser person Alex got a smaller room and smaller bed and consoled himself that Olukaside needed a long bed to make sure his legs didn't dangle. The Nigerian felt almost elated at residing once more on terra firma; spartan conditions might be at RSFG but they were better than those aboard that flying antique, the Iceberg.
Next morning brought a piercing alarm call for Alex, C# sustained for twenty seconds. He crawled out of bed and dressed in the creaseproof coveralls packed for him. Milos had insisted on giving him a special forearm holster for his electrical weapon that chafed, so he stuck it in an empty pencil pocket. Then he clipped his TACT unit onto his belt and the Green Card in the receiver slot. Then a quick wipe of a third-hand earlink monitor and he was ready. So was Olukaside. The Nigerian waited outside Alex's room smoking a roll-up of something that smelt vile. Alex felt his nostrils twitch in affront.
'Good morning - ah, dijen dobrey? If you want to have breakfast, follow me.'
Olukaside knew RSFG well, and led Alex straight to the canteen, past the impressive environs of the complex, all bright white plastic, chrome fittings and strip lights. The overall effect of this design certainly gave the impression of clinical efficiency and it lacked for nothing in the cuisine department either. Alex ordered hot stuffed croissants with ersatz coffee, food still defiantly unknown in Britain despite the Channel Tunnel.
Olukaside ate a meal of scrambled eggs made with tomato and onion, then downed a bowl of muesli, two rounds of toast and ersatz orange juice. Then he lit up one of his disgusting little cheroots and puffed away with great satisfaction.
'Excuse me, do you have to smoke that bloody awful stuff?' asked Alex, irritated.
Olukaside raised his eyebrows. Not polite.
'But of course. No smoking where I've been on duty.'
'Does it have to be so disgusting? You could fumigate with it,' commented the Serb, drily.
'Um! Well I like it and it's cheap. Russian herbal tobacco, so it isn't covered by anti-smoking laws. Machorka, they call it. You never heard of it?'
'We in Yugoslavia are not known for smoking garden weeds.'
That made Olukaside laugh. He refused to get even slightly annoyed at his companions jibing, instead assuring him that when they started working the cigarettes would stay in his pocket.
Work began around a table with portable greenscreens lying upon it. A pompous German psychologist introduced himself, then a uniformed policeman. First to speak was the policeman, in accented but clear English.
'You people are, ah, here at the request of Doctor Festinger, to carry out an investigation into a murder he believes may have taken place. You are needed because the, ah, offence, if actual, will have taken place on Federated Concordat territory.
'Available to you will be an Utility vehicle and a portable electronic snout, and you will also have one ground sensor unit each.'
Satisfied, the speaker sat down. Next came Doctor Festinger.
'Ah, yes. We are reasonably certain that a person has been killed, a German transient called Theo Blum. His killer is in German police custody at present, but we need a body for forensic purposes and to make a case against the killer. The killer was obviously under the influence of drugs - read this transcript and you'll see why - but his testimony as validated by Taunus Testing bears up in one respect; he firmly believes that Blum is dead. So, then, do we. But a body is needed. Which is where you come in, thank you.'
Alex turned to look at Olukaside. This was it? A general purpose dogsbody - or dog, come to that - purely out to locate a rotting corpse. After reading the transcript he shook his head in disbelief; they were dealing with a pair of dosed-up, full time junk artists one of whom had indeed murdered the other.
'Where do we start looking?' asked Alex, in a tone that masterfully mixed disdain with resignation.
The policeman coughed into one hand.
'Ah. That is, we don't know. Merely that "it" happened in small wood.'
Both UNION members expressed exasperation at this news since RSFG's estate was immense and included innumerable small woods. Alex read the transcript again and had an idea. He almost failed to voice it, thinking that the police would have considered it already.
'Bergen-op-Gauss figures in these reports, doesn't it? Can we take it that they were on the flight path for it?'
Ollukaside nodded and added an idea of his own.
'What we need - what we want - are the weather reports for those days -'
'June seventh and eighth,' added Alex.
'Yes. Weather reports, cloud base, wind speed and direction. All these factors. From these we can find out the likely paths of an aircraft flying in the vicinity on those days, compared to flight paths filed at Bergen.'
'We could eliminate any wood not on a flight path!' concluded Alex triumphantly. Thus they could narrow the search. That was the theory. As for the practice …
When they had both examined hard copies of weather reports forwarded from the Weather Institute in Munich, it became possible to plot two flight paths used on June seventh and eighth, instead of nine possible ones. They then suffered a considerable delay until a clued-up lab assistant produced a map that included Bergen-op-Gauss and outlying woods to a distance of ten kilometres. Both printouts were superimposed and copied, one in large format, one in reduced size for ease of carriage.
'Let us go and search,' decided Olukaside.
A grey cloud-laden sky greeted them with spasmodic rain when they ventured out (perhaps because of this none of their German counterparts came to see them off). Their Yute came in day-glo orange, chipped and scarred to reveal matt green underneath, doubtless Bundeswehr surplus. One of the balloon tyres displayed the large patch that denoted an old accident; what annoyed Olukaside was the absence of a canopy for their vehicle, since that meant they would get wet.
'They could have given us a newer one,' he grumbled to Alex, dumping a conical case in the cargo space. He took up the smaller boxes that held their "ground sniffer units" and stuck one in each jacket pocket. He further decided not to allow Alex to drive the six-wheeler, getting in and behind the steering wheel himself.
'Off we go,' he proclaimed, squeezing the throttle trigger. A mistake. Although the bodywork of the Yute was badly worn, the engine was in perfect condition and it kicked in powerfully enough to take the front wheels up in the air.
'Hey!' snapped the anxious passenger as his teeth came together involuntarily with a loud "clack". 'Careful!'
The driver headed north at full throttle and paid scant regard to previously travelled tracks, making lumps of turf and mud fly off the wheels as they lurched along at high speed.
Alex checked the smaller map in his possession. Nearly up to Wood One. Good. Surveying all the other numerous copses possibly concealing corpses, he felt a slightly smug glow having eliminated so many of them. Smugness rapidly dimmed when the duo started their search, using a grid overlapping one of their large-scale maps. Alex, being the junior, got to carry the electronic snout, which was awkward and tended to tip forward when the holder's wrist grew weak. Using a snout like this meant a searcher could locate a buried body via thermal differentials and confirm a finding with the highly sensitive but short-ranged ground units.
If there actually was a body to find. An hour of searching yielded nothing more than a decomposed rabbit. They had been persistently rained on and were acquiring great cakes of mud on their boots, making them waddle comically.
'Forget Wood One, okay?' decided Olukaside. 'Let's just sit a minute. This is a lot slower than I thought it would be. Are you tired?'
'A bit,' admitted Alex. 'More bored than tired, really. I don't mind carrying on if there's a body to find but what if there's nothing?'
'Lots of paperwork.'
'And if there is a body?'
'Paperwork again, but more of it. We can't win.'
Alex went over what he'd been told about site surveillance at RSFG. There wasn't any, except of the actual buildings, thanks to strict German rules about electronic snooping. If an intruder got through the perimeter fence then they had to hike for kilometres over the countryside to get anywhere near the complex, and Polsat kept beady electronic eyes on the landscape. Unfortunately for the two searchers, the disks for the time in question were long erased and might not even have shown up a target as small as two men on foot without equipment. Damn civil liberties, cursed the Serb idly.
Wood Number Two happened to be a blank also, eventually. They tramped back to their transport again, splashing into a stream on the way to clean their boots. Wood Number Three was empty of corpses, as were Woods Four and Five. They retreated back to RSFG to eat a warming dinner, then solemnly set out again for Wood Number Six. Alex spent the time silently wondering why there was such a low level of confidence about finding a body.
'They should have brought in a dog,' he complained to Olukaside when they climbed out of the Yute.
'What!' exclaimed his partner. 'Do you know how much they cost! I saw this on the news last week - there are only twelve left -' and he broke off to point to a small jet approaching Bergen-op-Gauss, flying directly over them. 'Well, that proves we're still on the flight path, I suppose.'
The end of the day saw no success at any location, and the two wet, muddy and tired men returned for eight hours sleep. Alex went to bed convinced that the police didn't really expect any body to be found and had managed to palm off the job of looking for a non-existent body to UNION, specifically himself and Olukaside. The Nigerian seemed to be a lot more patient than Alex, proven by his cheery greeting the following morning and devouring of an equally large breakfast.
Off they went on their trek again, drawing a blank at Woods Nine, Ten and Eleven, a procedure that took them all day and put a dent even in Olukaside's optimism. They began again the next morning and things changed at Wood Twelve.
Ping! Went the electronic snout, loudly, making Alex jump in surprise. A pair of lights atop the unit flashed. Olukaside stayed silent. Alex peered into the scope attachment with one eye, having got the trick of looking at the real landscape with the other eye. The false-colour image in the scope showed a long yellow blur in a frame of red and yellow blobs; his weather eye merely saw grass dotted with a few flowers.
'Ah, Mister Olukaside. Will you test this with your sniffer? We have a trace here but I don't know what it is.'
The Other man pressed his probe against the indicated area of ground and waited. Ten minutes later they compared the probe's reading against a baseline graph on the case.
This trace, according to x over y, was three months old. Alex counted weeks backward in his head and came to the first week in June, approximately. So, it was old enough to be the decomposing body; the microbe count and emission traces corresponded with a decomposing body; the trace was large enough to be a rotting body.
It was a decomposing body.
Olukaside called back to RSFG on his TACT, placing a Most Urgent priority on it, yet still had to wait twenty minutes before anyone acknowledged the call. Alex, standing well clear of the TACT, could still hear the policeman's exclamation from the TACT's speaker.
'Where are we? Designated Wood Twelve, the one near the pond. Yes, a pond. You'll see the Yute, anyway. Oh, don't worry about that. I want to keep my breakfast down.'
The duo packed up their equipment and sat in their vehicle, waiting for the expected entourage to arrive. Which it did eventually, led by a jet copter flying very low. Alex noticed a great pregnant bulge in the belly of the aircraft and realised it denoted a larger and more sophisticated version of the electronic snout he had been carrying about. Soon after the aircraft arrived they were joined by a small fleet of vehicles equally composed of Bundespolizei and RSFG. The whole of Wood Twelve, festooned with tape, became off-limits whilst forensic staff busied themselves with protective plastic sheets. Inspector Dieter came over to see the successful Double Digit team and offered his congratulations to them.
'I am very, ah, surprised. I did not think that your, ah, search would reveal anything. But you do not have the correct area.'
At first Alex thought the policeman meant they had strayed away from the flight path plan, so he showed their position on the map to Dieter, who tutted and shook his head, concerned in a self-important manner about saving face over a minor detail.
'No, this is not correct. There is no pond.'
'Yes there is, look -' began Alex, pausing when he saw Dieter had turned and walked away. Ignorant shit, thought the Serb, you didn't expect us to find anything, it embarrassed you when we did so you get snotty over a pond. He jumped out of the Yute and threw stones into the pond, just to prove a point.
Later that night Alex and Olukaside both attended the rapidly convened post-mortem. The remains taken out of Wood Twelve were well decomposed and smelt appalling, but what really made Alex feel ill were the carefully bagged wildlife specimens arrayed on a lab table, all taken from the corpse. They moved.
Overhead, a video camera on an extensor arm, with a scavenger mike attached, came down to film the remains, programmed to keep a maintain a consistent view whatever the investigating surgeon did. Her first action was to open up the skull with a sonic saw, creating a horrendous buzzing that set everyone's teeth on edge and also creating the evil stink of burnt bone.
The German spoke to herself about her progress and findings, quiet asides in German that were picked up by the microphones for playback later that day.
The post-mortem's post-mortem was attended by both UNION agents, Dieter, Festinger, the surgeon and a software technician. They congregated in a nondescript room that possessed table full of exhibits, a large-scale wall map and a television screen. The surgeon stood up to talk first, cradling a pointer.
'Good morning,' she said in English. 'I am Doctor Franck, as you already know and I will begin by describing what I found last night. The proceedings will be officially recorded for the police files. If you have a question please ask straight away, there is no need to wait.
'The body was that of a male, aged about twenty three, Caucasian, one metre forty in height, approximately seventy kilos in weight. These facts correspond roughly with the description of Leo Blum that we have. His dental charts have not arrived yet and there are no police tissue samples to cross-match with, but we have Renovator to work with. Anyway, we shall go on.' She motioned to the software technician.
"Renovator" had a faintly familiar ring to it, having been mentioned during Alex's training and whilst with the Sheffield police; this would be the first time he experienced it in action.
First on the monitor was the flensed skull of the victim, bleached bone denuded of all flesh. The Renovator program began: a web of muscles formed over the bare skull, glistening and wet, with a touch of poetic licence. A stark mask, made more grotesque by the sudden appearance of two eyeballs in the empty sockets. Areas of fat filled in, then a final covering of flesh to produce a face. With a flourish the software technician produced a coloured hard copy. A good likeness of Theo Blum when compared to a driving licence photograph, more closely descriptive than a series of forensic measurements.
Next the surgeon moved on to the cause of death.
'The victim suffered death due to multiple gunshot wounds, eighteen in total. We took out eighteen bullets from the body, nine Squash-head and nine armour-piercing. From powder traces and the single flesh burn identifiable on the remaining skin I would say that the fist shot, direct to the head, has to be the immediately fatal one. It was a Squash-head bullet, thus tissue-quake and hydrostatic shock probably pulped most of the left hemisphere, killing him instantly. The other seventeen bullets were superfluous. You cannot recover from a skull full of jelly where a brain should be.'
Dieter nodded in a self-satisfied manner to himself.
The software tehcnie moved over to a wall map and took the pointer from Doctor Franck.
'Using a flouroscope, infra-red filters and a microbial census, we located a trail of bloodspots on the earth and grass, leading back from the burial site towards the pond. The killing therefore took place at or near the pond.'
'What kind of weapon?' asked Olukaside.
'A fourteen point five millimetre - that's fifty-five in old calibre - handgun, probably an M77 with caseless ammunition. They hold up to twenty rounds. We're waiting for a forensics report on the rounds taken from the body.'
'Have you looked for the weapon?'
'Of course! Including the pond. No traces of the weapon anywhere.'
Another point occurred to Alex about the burial. That body had been carefully hidden, so as to leave no indication that a grave existed; the sod had been cut with a knife, the earth taken from underneath scattered over a wide area to disguise the excavation, Theo's body dumped and covered with lots of earth, the turves carefully replaced. Not that Alex had very much experience of murders, yet the killing had been very precise with none of the usual random sloppiness that transpired when such crimes occurred. Could they perhaps be dealing with a person used to killing? Conversely, how possible could it be that a drugged-up lowlife would abruptly shoot his friend, nor by accident either with so many holes; carry or drag the body hundreds of metres to a wood, showing a sensible caution; construct an expertly-made grave - and then run away to Hamburg and confess it all once they were arrested. Lothar didn't have a gun on his person when arrested, nor was there one in the docklands squat he'd been living in, nor did Pieter ever mention his fellow criminal having carried a gun. Lothar the guilty party? Didn't seem likely. In fact it seemed wildly inconsistent, a bizarre alternation of behaviours. Dieter, however, felt assured that they possessed enough evidence to charge Lothar; as for inconsistencies - remember, they were dealing with one of the drug sub-culture who probably didn't know what his own name was at the time of the murder.
The group adjourned for lunch. Alex ate listlessly, not really interested in what went into his digestive system since his mind wandered elsewhere. He didn't feel happy with the direction their post-mortem was taking -could it be possible that a third man had been present with Lothar, a third man who helped to commit the offence?
'We need a new lever to work with,' he offered to Olukaside.
'Right.'
'I'm going to see that software technie again.'
'Right.' Then: 'What for?'
Alex tapped the side of his nose.
'If you want dirt, start at the bottom.'
Olukaside frowned, wondering if he was the butt of some strange Slavic joke.
The software technician present at the post-mortem looked less than happy to be disturbed at lunch but he was flattered by the attention. As Alex suspected, there had originally been more to the forensic examination than had been presented to the Double Digit team. The discussion proved to be his first use of the TACT unit's translation function and he found it to be accurate, if a little slow.
'How sure are you that a gun of this type - Em Seven Seven - is the murder weapon?'
'Oh - quite certain. Not positive one hundred per cent, mind you, but fairly certain. We don't have the relevant database here, you see, so the information needs to go to the Bundespolizei and back again once it gets approved. Takes a while.'
'Hmm. Are they common, these guns? That is, could they be traced -'
'Huh! I shouldn't think so, there's thousands of them in the SENATOR armies. M77's aren't exactly common, but they aren't rare. You couldn't trace this one, not easily.'
'If it is one.'
Feeling his veracity to be in question, the technie bristled. He pushed his seat back from the lunch table and looked round at his fellow technicians.
'Hey, you want to make certain? Go shoot a few practice bullets from one and compare their signatures. Won't be the same, of course, but they will be similar, close enough to see if there really is a connection. Now go away and let me eat my lunch in peace.'
Alex did just that, being literal. He went to Olukaside and asked for permission to follow his idea.
'Fine, just don't go annoying our hosts.' He carried on eating. For such a tall, thin man he could certainly put away a lot of fodder without trace.
Alex borrowed an M7 from a "flexible" security guard, upon producing his Green Card, and managed to browbeat a technie into producing a pair of ear-protectors and a bucket of sand. Then he prowled around the bright shiny corridors of RSFG until a suitable empty room presented itself. Setting the fire bucket against the wall in a corner, he took up the firing stance as taught during the Meatgrinder.
'Everything alright? Oh! Goodness!' came a voice from behind him.
Alex turned around quickly. He looked, unknown to him, rather threatening from the rear; a man wearing ear-protectors, with a bulky TACT unit clipped to his belt, carrying a pistol and with a Zap Gun sticking out of one boot.
The Asian woman in the doorway looked alarmed, as well she might.
'Hello! Just a ballistics test. Nothing to worry about.' He smiled winningly (he hoped) and the woman ran off, either due to alarm or satisfaction.
Trying to remember old instructions, Alex fired twice into the sand-filled bucket, twin colossal explosions in the confined space that impinged even with his ear-protectors set to exclude everything. Then he carried the bucket off to a laboratory. To find the bullets meant sand-sieving, then it was off to collect one of the evidential bullets and compare it in a stereoscope with a sand-bucket one.
They were congruent. Not identical obviously since two different guns had been used, but similar. Therefore, the gun used had indeed been an M77. Alex felt faintly foolish, having expended a lot of effort to prove what they already knew. He tutted mentally; if this investigation had been carried out by the Bundespolizei, if FedCon hadn't insisted on keeping jurisdiction on it's own territory, they could have known positively about those bullets form the start. Very dog in the manger.
He sighed and took the pistol back to the security guard.
'Thanks,' said the guard sourly and sarcastically. 'They reported an idiot with a gun running around. I better not get into trouble over this.' He popped the clip out of the handle's magazine housing. 'And you used two rounds. I have to account for these,' he said. "I have to account for these you stupid bastard" his expression added.
'Sorry.' Alex failed to sound even slightly sorry. He turned to go and realised just what he'd seen and turned back slowly.
'Just a second. Do that again, what you did with the clip.'
'You must be joking!' snapped the guard. 'No more favours.'
'
'That's what happened. They never expected to find a body. When we did they were caught by surprise, without any plans, and the forensic search didn't get properly co-ordinated.'
'And so?' replied Olukaside, not obviously impressed.
'So they checked the pond all right, but only with metal detectors. I know, because I asked Dieter. A search like that would only have shown up metal objects or objects with metal in them, right?'
'A fair definition of a gun, yes. Is this leading somewhere?'
'It is! That gun, the murder weapon, had a plastic magazine for the bullets, a plastic disposable magazine that the killer would have to load themselves, insert themselves and eject themselves.'
Olukaside's frown cleared.
'Fingerprints on the magazine. Yes, that would be a positive indicator. If there is a magazine, if there ever were any fingerprints on it and if they remain.'
Privately, Olukaside shared the bafflement that Alex felt about the killing; it bore too many tell-tales of the skilled operator to the work of a drugged-up drop-out. But who, then! A third man? That added a layer of complications.
'There may have been a third man, you see. If there were fingerprints on the magazine - not Lothar's - then that would be true.'
Again, this would raise questions. Why stand in a pond to kill Theo; who was the killer; where did they come from; why carry out such a killing?
That night, when reception improved, Olukaside transmitted his findings to the Iceberg, scrambled via his TACT unit. To his surprise an actual person answered him; Nils, who felt stunningly bored at his duty console.
'Hello ICE07, Senior Super Nils. I that who I think it is - tall, dark but not very handsome?'
'Less of that, this is an official report. We decided to re-check the actual murder site with seismic sensors and uncovered a discarded ammunition clip. This had one and a half viable prints still on it, that came from neither the suspect or victim, so a third man is now postulated, the man who actually carried out the killing. We need to run the prints to you and a full comparison run with all the collected databases.'
'What! That would take forever.'
'Sooner started, sooner finished. On with the report. There appears to be a consensus in the Bundepolizei that Lothar Hellman is the guilty party, that there are no other suspects, a position I feel they will change when this evidence is presented to them, eventually. The investigation continues.'
Olukaside signed off, then lit up one of his cigarettes for a quiet think. Being Field Officer meant writing out the report for (up the line of command and perusal) Weiss. The report could be done in one of two ways: precisely, with no intrusion of doubt, or with all the hedges he'd felt. Might as well choose the latter; Weiss knew enough to doubt a bland report and to question the reporter personally, which meant a summons to the Presence for a grilling and after a six month tour of duty the Nigerian felt no hurry to return to the cramped, smokeless, flying antique.
While his superior coded up a report, Alex went for a drink in the canteen, finding to his disgust that they only had non-alcoholic drinks on sale. Subsidised and cheap but definitely not stimulating.
Damn and shit! I wanted a drop of spirits. That was a good idea of mine, it ought to be celebrated. I bet Oyewole claims it as his. That's rank for you. Oh well, let's have some of that nice tasty German lager without any nasty alcohol.
He walked down the serving aisle to pay for his plastic stein of lager. There was no attendant at this time of night, just a scanning eye, pay slot and price indicator set into a blank metal wall. The good thing about night in the canteen was the lack of competition for tables. There were only a few night-shift workers on their coffee-breaks and not wanting to interfere, Alex sat at a separate table.
'Hey, over there!' called a woman in Serbian. 'You want to come over?' Curious, Alex trotted over with his lager. There were three people at the table, Elizabeta, Morika and Bruno. The first was Serbian, the latter two German, able to get by in English as conversation developed.
'You're the one who has been turning RSFG upside down,' stated Bruno.
'That's me. Just a nuisance from MJO.' He drank his lager. Dear me, ran the thoughts in his head, people have been talking. Training said that this wasn't supposed to happen. What to do now.
The drinkers remained relaxed and affable, simply wanting company, conversation and gossip, if available. Bruno got another round of drinks and refused to take any payment from Alex. They got around to talking about thirst, heat, then the hottest places they had ever been.
'Somalia,' stated Bruno. 'Trouble-shooting refrigeration plant. Man it was so hot there, so hot you could see the salt forming on your skin.'
'Rhodes,' said Elizabeta, not adding any details.
'Um. Let me see. Oh, I know, a day trip to Tangiers, from Gibraltar. Very very hot. Indeed,' said Morika, with emphasis.
'Nuevo Laredo. Especially with the napalm.'
For a moment the other three exchanged glances. Just who were they drinking with - a soldier?
'Were you in the army? A soldier?' asked Morika, doubtfully, thinking it a shame if he was and turned out to be as stupidly macho like every soldier under the sun, especially since he possessed such nice sad eyes.
'Ha!' retorted Alex, a touch of fire in both eyes and voice. 'Elizabeta ought to know the answer to that one. 'Course I was in the army, national conscription at eighteen. Two years.'
'I didn't like my national service but you seem to hate yours,' stated Bruno.
Alex sneered.
'It was worse than prison could be. Actually I spent time in a military prison and that was worse. A total waste of two years. When I came out they - the State, the Education Ministry, that is - had changed funding for student grants so I never got a chance to go on from college.'
'What the hell did they throw you in jail for! You don't exactly look the hardened criminal!' half-joked Bruno, for once not stating things flatly.
'Ah, yes, well, I told my commanding officer to go fuck himself and punched him on the nose, actually. He thought he could make me clean toilets by shouting at me so I shouted back. Then he hit me so I hit him back.'
That got him another round of drinks. His companions admired his moral stance. Alex, however, knew what his outburst of temper cost in the long run. He took a longer perspective now.
'Yes, I saw what armies and war does to people, in Mexico. I cannot understand why but the innocent always suffer.' Everybody nodded at this truism.
There. That was quite enough. Now he'd probably dream about the bus full of dead children or about driving a truck into the Galleria, unable to get past second gear.
Morika looked at her watch.
'To preserve life, it's a wonderful thing,' she said, looking him right in the eyes. His heart gave an extra hard beat that reverberated up and down his body because that used to be a saying of his and she had a nice smile. No, not nice, nice didn't do it justice. Alluring.
'Alluring.'
'Pardon! What did you say?'
'Uh - sorry, I spoke what I thought. I meant your smile. Oops. Am I being rude?'
'No. But if you can say that, then I have to be allowed to say that you have wonderful sad eyes.'
Bruno and Elizabeta, aware of where the conversation would lead, tactfully and quietly said goodbye and departed. After they had gone a slightly strained silence fell. Alex looked appraisingly at Morika; she was thin and tanned with a wild shock of dark hair and true, she did have an alluring smile with lips that swelled like fruit. Of course, while he studied her she studied him, seeing a man on the short side of average, with a neatly trimmed moustache, Mediterranean complexion and a pair of expressive eyes that hinted at dark depths. For a Serb he seemed to be refreshingly free from the sexist crap the men back at home came out with.
'Listen, Alex, I have a suggestion.'
'Go ahead, please.'
'Would you like a coffee?'
'Hmm? A coffee? Ah, certainly.'
He stood up first and gave a dazzling smile. Morika led the way and Alex found himself staring at her buttocks, clad in mock-denim. She turned around and frowned at him for this, but he defused the implicit criticism with another smile of such sincerity that Morika felt unable to chide him. Heart on his sleeve.