“It relates to your current case, unfortunately. We’re going to visit a warehouse in Leith,” says the head spook. “My colleagues have already instructed your SO6 to seal off the area while we raid it. You are here to witness and act as local liaison because you are already familiar with this case. My colleagues in the next car”—he nods at the vehicle immediately behind you—“are going to proceed to a collocation centre in the Gyle in order to shut down the main backbone between here and the south. The fourth car is going to visit the emergency control centre and serve a crisis note. Their job is to shut down all communications in the target area. Finally—”
“You’re going to what?” Liz explodes.
“Finally, the Royal Danish Air Force have kindly consented to let us use one of their E7C aircraft, assigned to ERRF for infowar duties and counter-terrorism support. In case the target is defended.”
By this point your jaw’s hanging open; you’ve just about forgotten the can of Mace, or your indignation about being more or less kidnapped. “What’s in the warehouse?” you ask.
Kemal—if that’s his name—leans back. Now he’s the one who looks like he’s had a sleepless night. “Your investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Nigel MacDonald, and the report of your findings in his apartment, attracted our attention. Have you identified the body in your ongoing murder investigation from the graveyard on Constitution Street yet?”
“No.” Liz looks grim. “If you know something—”
“I am sorry I cannot identify the body for you, but I can definitely assure you that it does not belong to Mr. MacDonald. And your speculation about a blacknet, possibly owned by the Moscow mafiya, has been noted.”
“You’d better explain.”
“The equipment you discovered in Mr. MacDonald’s apartment was cloned by your ICE officers. When they logged the details of what they found on NCIS, we were alerted. We cannot tell you what the equipment was for, but two similar installations have been recovered in Prague and Warsaw in the past four months. The installation appears to be operated by a non-state actor for illegal purposes—”
“Are you talking terrorism here?” Liz interrupts.
Kemal’s expression is stony. “Life would be a lot simpler if we were dealing with a cell of simple-minded religious obsessives with a grudge against the modern world. I’m afraid it may be something much worse—”
“Because this is my city you’re talking about, and I happen to have a duty to protect its inhabitants and uphold the law. Is public safety at stake? I need to know!”
“Not”—Kemal pauses as the car speeds up, hurtling uphill to merge with the morning traffic heading for the city by-pass—“hmm. That question is difficult to answer. I think it’s safe to say that there is no immediate threat, and there are no biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons involved; but failure to isolate the warehouse and impose a total communications blockade will, at the very least, allow some extremely dangerous information to escape. There is also some uncertainty as to whether the warehouse is occupied, and if so, whether the people inside it are armed. Our worst-case scenario is that we are facing a foreign Special Forces unit with emplaced defences and demolition charges—but if that’s the case, we’re fucked anyway.”
“Who’s fucked? Us? Your department?”
“No, Inspector: the European Union.”
Either the car’s air-conditioning is fierce, or your skin’s crawling. “Why are you dragging us into this, then?” you demand, your voice rising. “We’re the Polis, not Mission bloody Impossible!”
“You’re already involved, and we want to keep this as quiet as possible,” Kemal explains. “You will need these phones and glasses, please put them on immediately.”
“Why—”
“Your CopSpace has been compromised. So has your TETRA network, but at least you can dispatch backup by voice control. Please? This has already been arranged for. We need you tied into our grid before the operation commences.”
He passes you a pair of heavy, black-rimmed military spectacles and a ruggedized phone. You make eye contact with Liz, in the mirror, and she nods, minutely: You put the glasses on and boot them. There’s a brief flicker as they check your irises against their preloaded biometrics, then the world outside the BMW is drenched in unfamiliar information all the way to the horizon. You glance to your left, out to the north, where a green diamond is orbiting above the Kingdom of Fife. A quick zoom shows you that it’s real, a lumbering wide-body airliner in military grey, the knobbly outlines of high-bandwidth antennae studding its flanks like barnacles on a whale. Or at least, these goggles have been programmed to think it’s real. Once you accept someone else’s augmented reality, there’s really no telling, is there? For all you and Liz can tell until you’re plugged back into the comforting panopticon of CopSpace, this might just be some kind of elaborate live-action role-playing game.
The convoy is past the gyratory and heading towards Queensferry Road way too fast, probably racking up speeding tickets at a rate best measured in euros per second. All the traffic lights are switching to green in front of you as the steering wheel twitches from side to side: Red info bubbles above anonymous grey roadside boxes inform you that they’ve been 0wnZ0red by the Royal Danish Air Force. You rest your hand on the wheel, and it shivers like a live animal. “What do you expect to find?” asks Liz. “And who is the adversary?”
“Hopefully, just a warehouse full of servers. Maybe a satellite dish or two.” Kemal is soothing. “I’d like nothing more than for this to be a false alert. In which case, we shall make our apologies, pay our speeding fines, and be on our way without further ado.”
Liz snorts. “That’ll be the day.” She reaches for her phone: “Now I’ve got to call the chief—”
“Not until we arrive. As I said, your terrestrial trunked radio network has been penetrated.”
ELAINE: Alone in the Dome
Despite the late-night chase through the darkened streets of the New Town, you sleep like a log and awake refreshed and ready to face a new day. You spend a brisk half-hour in the health suite, then shower and hit the hotel restaurant for some breakfast. Chris and the others have cut and run back to the big smoke already: Well, tough. You’ve got Jack and his magic code to give you some leads, and you’ve got access to Hayek’s offices, which is enough to be getting on with.
You’ve still got the office suite that Chris paid for, so you go down there and start going through the backlog of office email and project notes that have been building up since last Friday, when reality got put on hold for the duration. By twenty past nine your mood is sinking, and you’re mildly annoyed when you realize that Jack is late. So you text him, and get no reply—and no delivery notification. Odd.
With Jack off-line—and therefore no access to the results of his overnight trawl—you’re at a loose end. So you go out into the mezzanine and attempt to convince the coffee machine to give you something drinkable, and while you’re waiting for the bubbling and clanking to stop, you get an incoming call. From Jack, of course.
“Where’ve you been?” you demand.
“Sorry—I had to go to the police station. I got another nastygram, this time on paper: They wanted to examine it and look for prints.”
Oops. You wince even though he can’t see you. “Oh. Where are you now?”
“Stuck in traffic, but I should be with you in about five minutes. I thought I should call ahead, though. The overnight run was mostly a success, and it found something interesting. There’s a likely-looking auction going on in one of the clearing-house sites; the stuff on sale looks to be an exact match for some of the stolen magic items. What makes it interesting is the ping latency to the current owner of the items—he’s in Glasgow. If we can get Hayek to twist Kensu’s arm into disclosing their customer contact details, we may be able to pay them a visit.”