“Excellent.” She turns her back on you: not being rude, just taking a call from higher up the totem pole.
“Inspector Kavanaugh, shouldn’t you—”
“Hold it.” You beckon Kemal back towards the staircase. “We have a connection. Are you ready to follow it?”
“John Christie. Yes? And the next person on his list is . . .”
“Our friend Mr. Hussein.”
Kemal is two steps ahead of you on the stairs, hurrying on down. You charge after him. “You think Christie is a fixer. For whoever is trying to stop ATHENA from arranging fatal accidents for netcrime nodes.”
“Whoever, or whatever.” You’re finding breath hard as you descend past the third floor. “I’m going to call Dickie. Let him know.” Your phone dials as you take the stairs two at a time. “Inspector—”
Dickie’s voice buzzes like a rusty dalek: “—eport. What’s BZZT situation?”
“Positive ID, the victim is MacDonald. Need the doorway-camera footage to be sure, but I believe the perpetrator is this Christie character. Preliminary ICIU legwork on MacDonald shows a relational connection to another person of interest, Anwar Hussein. I’m on my way there stat. Requesting backup.”
For a miracle, the voice channel is able to overcome the lack of bandwidth. “Backup? What for?”
“I believe our murderer is tidying up loose ends relating to BABYLON.” The full story will have to wait for a briefing room and a dog and pony show. “I think Hussein’s life is in danger, and I’ll be wanting a protective-custody order. Worst case, I may be walking in on another homicide scene.”
“You—” Even over the phone, you hear Dickie’s brain crunch into a different gear. “Roger.” Old-school, very old-school. “Okay, I’ll notify South Side Control that you’re in play and put someone onto the paper trail for—isna Hussein on probation? That’s a quick-and-dirty option if you need it. Call me when you get somewhere.”
“Thanks. Bye,” you gasp as you crunch down the final steps from first floor to ground, and stumble out into the lobby. Then it’s a quick march through the gaping doorway and out to your car, which is still sitting right where you immobilized it.
“This never happens,” you say as you drop into the driver’s seat and throw Anwar Hussein’s home address at the car’s autopilot.
“Never give an honest cop a clean lead?” Kemal pulls his door shut and belts up.
“Yes, that. We’ll end up breaking up a kid’s birthday party or something. Just you see.” You stab your finger on the blues button, and the light bar starts strobing. The car beeps at you impatiently to put your seat belt on: As soon as you click it into place, the engine turns over, and the car spins in a tight U-turn, then floors the accelerator. With the blue lights flashing, the safety governor is off and the BMW’s autopilot is a better driver than you’ll ever be. It howls along Causewayside, swerving around startled jay-walkers, takes the Cameron Toll roundabout with siren blaring and tyres screeching, then launches itself towards Gilmerton like a guided missile. As the moving map homes in on the destination, you kill the siren and lights with one shaking finger. It’s like running into a wall of marshmallows: The autopilot brakes so hard you’re thrown against the seat belt as it drops back below the speed limit.
“Was that strictly necessary?”
“I really hope not.” Getting the speeding tickets rescinded is a royal pain in the arse if you can’t show due cause. As the car slows and turns into a side street, your specs show you a stack of records hanging over one particular house. It’s not a particularly posh manor, being one element of an English-style terrace row, but it’s got a garden of sorts and three stories and a Velux window up top: You wouldn’t have pegged this particular rodent as being the kind to afford an actual manse of his own, especially after the proceeds of crime inquiry, but appearances can be deceptive. And you’re certainly not in routine working territory, the big sinkhole estates like Craigmillar or Granton, much less the inner-city night-life battle zones.
The car stops. You get on the line to the control room. “DI Kavanaugh and Inspector Aslan here. We’ve got an intelligence lead to Hussein, Anwar”—you drop in his tag—“and are on-site attempting to gain entry to his residence. Stand-by backup request, over and hold.” You keep the connection open.
You get out and walk up the pavement to the front door with the red geomarker twirling over it. Kemal is right behind you. “I think something is not right,” he says quietly. You follow his finger to the front door. It’s ajar.
Someone screams inside, a shriek of inarticulate terror. It only lasts a second before it’s cut off sharply.
Kemal is past you in a hurry as you hit the phone again: “Backup now! Violent incident in progress!” Then you’re after him as he shoulderbarges the door and charges up the stairs. There’s a moment of confusion as you take in the scene—living room off to one side, kitchen off to another, staircase in front, Kemal’s legs punching the treads—then Kemal is coming back down the stairs, arse over tit, tumbling loosely. You shout “police!” as someone else comes down with him, lands boot first on top of Kemal, and launches himself at you.
You brace for the impact, fists raised—he’s a big man, vaguely familiar from your lifelog video as you held the door, leaving Appleton Tower—bingo—you try to block but he can outreach you and he’s swinging a wheelie-bag in one hand. He knocks you head first into the kitchen. Things are vague: You try to get your hands up and someone is nagging something in your ear about backup but the door is open and the man is gone.
You gasp for breath for a few seconds, then get back online. “Control, we have an incident. Violent offender, 195, hundred kilos, carrying a suitcase. Attacked two officers, fleeing the scene.” Whatever the scene is. You push yourself up and stumble into the hall. Your head aches painfully. Kemal is lying limp at the bottom of the stairs. “Ambulance needed on scene, officer down.” You lean over him long enough to confirm he’s breathing, then take the stairs.
“Target is the man on the staircase?” asks Control.
“Who else?” You bite back an impolite suggestion. That’s why I was sending you my real-time video feed, idiot. “I’m searching the scene. Pass it to airborne, unable to maintain hot pursuit on foot right now.” Read: Kemal is stirring but won’t be chasing anyone for the next few days, and as for yourself, you feel like you’ve been kicked in the head.
“Roger, calling airborne assets now,” says Control. “Backup arriving by car, estimated two minutes away.”
You hear something from up the next flight of stairs. Panting, you climb them and find Anwar lying on the floor. There’s something yellow in his mouth, and he’s turning blue. Writhing. You realize his hands and feet are tied: the yellow thing—he’s choking on it. For the next double-handful of seconds, you’re busy kneeling down and tugging at it frantically. When it comes free he gasps for breath in deep whooping intakes of breath. His eyes are rolling. You drop the yellow rubber duck and watch as it expands, then look around. You see bedroom doors to either side, a trapdoor with a ladder coming down from the ceiling, and a noose dangling in the solitary sunbeam that slants through the trap and puddles on the perennial victim, lying panting on the floor.
The last handful of dominoes click into place on the board.
You dive down the staircase just as Kemal is sitting up, holding his head. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ve called an ambulance.”
“Don’t need—” He sounds vague.
You hold up a hand. “How many fingers?” He squints at you. “Ambulance, Kemal. Understand?”
He nods, then winces. “Is Hussein—”
“Still alive.” Not for much longer if we hadn’t hurried. It’s a very strange feeling, and a rare one, to know you’ve just directly saved someone’s life: almost counterbalanced by the gnawing fear that by not giving hot pursuit, you may have let a murderer slip through your fingers. You hit the phone again. “Control, Kavanaugh here. The absconder in Gilmerton is on foot and dang
erous. Provisional identification as alias John Christie, real name unknown. He may be armed, and he’s wanted for murder and attempted murder, repeat, murder and attempted murder.” He was going to hang Anwar. Fake a suicide. Wasn’t he? The MO is different from MacDonald, but Christie clearly isn’t a regular spree killer. He has no history: He’s like a nightmare that stepped out of nowhere, just as the BABYLON killings began. Which is yet another coincidence to consider at length. Is he here to tie up loose ends, or is he a loose end in his own right? “Cross-reference to the Appleton Tower murder: This is probably the same perp.”
“Control here, please hold.” Blue FLASH alerts begin to scroll up your CopSpace log, going out to every soul on the police net within a couple of kilometres. Seconds later, you hear sirens in the distance. “I’m proceeding with that, Inspector. Is there a warrant?”
“Real-time response.” The paper-work mountain that’s about to hit you would cause your desk to collapse if it wasn’t entirely digital. You begin to climb the stairs to the second floor: “We have an ABH and attempted murder victim here; please confirm second ambulance.”
Hussein is sitting up, leaning against the wall beside an open bedroom door. There are children’s toys scattered on the floor, an unmade bed. His eyes are half-closed. After a moment, you clock that he’s weeping quietly.
You squat down in front of him. “Mr. Hussein. Anwar.” He shows no sign of noticing, which is probably no surprise: Probably in shock, you figure. You bring up the check-list, tell your specs to run a body-temperature scan, but he’s not looking particularly cold, and his respiration’s within spitting distance of normal. “Can you talk to me?”
His shoulders shake. “The man who was here.” Body posture: utter desolation. “Who is he?”
Hussein shudders. “Colonel Datka’s man.”
Who? You focus. “Colonel who?”
“Said he worked for Colonel Datka.”
Right . . . “Who is Colonel Datka?”
Anwar takes a deep breath and looks at you. “I am the honorary consul of the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan. Was. Told him I’d resigned, but he wouldn’t listen. Colonel Datka works for Kyrgyzstan. Police, or spy, or something. The bad man. Calls himself Christie, came to take some papers from me—another passport. Says he’s Peter Manuel. Left his suitcase with me.”
Suitcase? This is making less and less sense, but in your experience these things seldom do when they begin to unravel. “What about the suitcase?” you ask, hoping this is going somewhere.
“Bibi opened it.” He closes his eyes. “Then she left me.” His shoulders shake again. “She thought I would have something like that! The shame.”
“Hang on a minute,” you tell him. Then you open a voice channel back to ICIU. “Moxie? Can you run a search for me? Multiple names: Colonel Datka, Kyrgyzstan. Issyk-Kulistan. Then Peter Manuel, alternate identity, John Christie.”
Sirens getting louder, then cut off abruptly. Voices downstairs.
“I’m looking, skipper. How do you spell those?”
“How should I know? Try soundex.” You look at Anwar, who is snuffling damply into his moustache. Bibi is his wife? But if he was also hanging out with Adam MacDonald on a gay hookup site . . . “It’s related to BABYLON and the Appleton Tower killing, and you can dial it up to eleven. I’m going to put you on hold now.”
You turn back to your victim: “It’s going to be alright, Anwar. There’s an ambulance coming, and we’d like to ask you some more questions. While Christie or Manuel or whoever is on the run, we’re going to want to keep you in protective custody. Do you understand? Christie was . . .” You nod towards the trap-door. “Wasn’t he?”
Hussein’s expression would be enough for you, even before he opens his mouth. “He was going to kill me!” he says, his voice rising to a squeak.
“Right after your wife left you,” you point out, wincing at a twinge from your headache. Anwar just raised a very interesting point, and one that suggests a significant difference in planning between this and the scene back at Appleton Tower: “Been working up to this for a while, hasn’t he?”
Anwar nods. “Well, tell you what. After the ambulance crew check you out, you can come down to the station and tell me all about it. Then we’ll find somewhere safe for you to stay”—most likely a station cell, but you don’t want to frighten him right now—“until we’ve caught Christie.”
Then there is a thudding of boots on stairs as your backup finally arrives, and you breathe a sigh of relief.
It’s nearly all over, you think. And then it is.
FELIX: Hummingbird
The phone rings for you in midafternoon.
It’s a particularly grotesque piece of Pakistani alabaster, carved into the semblance of a gilt-trimmed putto clutching a handset. It was barfed up from the Internet by a back-street fabber in a Sindhi market town. One of its legs has been broken and inexpertly glued back into place using epoxy resin—typical of this stupid stuffy government office.
You reach across the desk and answer it. “Felix.”
“Sir? Please confirm—” It’s the duty officer in the operations centre. You go through the challenge-response routine. “Sir, beg to report that the Hummingbird has flown.”
“Excellent.” You put the phone down and stand up, then go through into the next room. “We’re on, boys.”
(This network is unable to monitor subsequent events.)
You are an old hand and do not entirely trust these modern communication tools. Hummingbird is unknown to the network. It appears to be a verbally prearranged code, though. Interior Ministry troops are deploying downstairs, loading their personal defence weapons—older AK-74s with iron sights—and climbing into ancient trucks that bellow and belch blue diesel fumes as they move out.
Trucks deploy through Bishkek, parking outside office blocks and hotels. Troops, gendarmes, police deploy inside, crowding elevators and marching up to receptionists. They maintain total communication silence—smartphones switched off or physically disabled, battle-field radios stowed back at headquarters—as they march on their targets.
(This network makes an association: The phone on Colonel Datka’s desk rang within minutes of a police officer in Scotland starting a distributed search for information about . . . Colonel Datka?)
((Evidently a trap has been sprung.))
Traffic cameras (known to the network) follow a group of trucks across town to the Erkindik Hotel. When they draw up, a platoon of special forces soldiers deploy around them—Spetsnaz anti-terrorism troops. Then a clump of officers climb down from the second-to-rearmost vehicle. Colonel Datka is among them. They enter the hotel behind a vanguard of Interior Ministry troops, two of whom disappear into the offices behind the reception desk.
(The hotel network switch goes down. The hotel primary router goes off-line. The hotel backup router goes off-line. The LTE picocells go off-line, one on each floor, followed by the LAN bridges and wifi repeaters. The fire alarm and security alarms . . . off-line. This network can no longer observe events inside the hotel, with one or two exceptions.)
(One of the exceptions is a suite on the eleventh floor. Its occupant, an American investment analyst, has brought his own satellite phone and a compact generator. His webcams, deployed around the lounge/ conference area to provide motion capture for teleconferencing, are still transmitting through a ruinously expensive thin pipe.)
((This network can monitor these transmissions.))
Mr. White is clearly not expecting company. He’s half-dressed, slouched on the sofa with an open bottle of white wine and a pad loaded with Iranian amateur pornography. When the door buzzer sounds, he jerks guiltily and looks round, then slides the pad face-down on the occasional table and goes to grab a towelling bath-robe.
The buzzer does not sound again. Instead, the door opens. “Hey, what are you—”
“Mr. White.” Colonel Datka follows his soldiers into the room. “You are under arrest.”
Mr. White
gapes dumbly. “Uh?”
“Sit down,” says the colonel. He points at the sofa. “Do not touch your pad.”
“But I, what the fuck are you, hey.” Mr. White’s eyes take in the spotty post-adolescents in uniform, their guns clenched tight in whiteknuckled fingers, their eyes determined. His movements slow abruptly. “Wait a minute. What about the contract? Are you planning on defaulting on us?”
“Sit. Down.” The colonel’s finger will not be argued with. Mr. White sits down. The colonel continues, in Kyrgyz, to his troops: “Handcuff him.”
“Hey, wait . . . ! You can’t do this!”
“I can, and I am.” The colonel watches as his men lay hands on Mr. White. “By the way, these men were selected specifically because they do not speak English.”
“You don’t want to go down this road, Felix, you really don’t. The board have a strict tit-for-tat policy in dealing with defaulters.” Mr. White swallows. “What’s the problem? Is this an attempt to up-negotiate your options?”
The colonel shakes his head. “We are terminating Issyk-Kulistan’s independence, John. With effect from tomorrow morning, once the bonds are redeemed. You, and your Operation, are going to take the fall for it. This has been decided.”
“But—the—you can’t be serious!”
“Bhaskar tells me we have sold 18 billion euros’ worth of CDOs, John.” The colonel’s smile is unspeakably smug. “Seventy-four per cent of which have been purchased by off-shore investment trusts, slush funds, sovereign-wealth funds operated by sock puppets, and for cash deals in dark alleyways. We are interestingly leveraged: The national debt of Issyk-Kulistan is less than 16 billion. And Issyk-Kulistan is not going to default. On the contrary—tomorrow, the people’s chamber of deputies will call for a repudiation of the vote for independence, which as you know was shamelessly irregular—and vote itself into liquidation. The national debt is paid down, thanks to the oversold CDOs. We will, of course, honour those derivatives that have been purchased by entities adhering to international accounting transparency standards . . .”
Rule 34 hs-2 Page 33
