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.