Hurt World One and the Zombie Rats (6 page)

‘The purchaser must not be allowed to get
away with blowing up our magno-chopper. Such defiance would reflect
very badly on the Stamford brand.’

Sunil was still hardly enthused. ‘It is a
matter for the local police. Or, if you ask nicely, perhaps the CIA
would get involved - depending on whose missile was used. They are
funny like that.’

Tiber did not appreciate that she wasn’t
being offered any kind of refreshment. Even for the United Nations,
denying an executive hospitality was disrespectful.

Sunil leaned forward accusingly. ‘Let me tell
you why I think you’ve chosen to come here. The local police are
easily paid off but it’s a classic case of getting what you pay
for. The CIA, on the other hand, is far less controllable and much
more likely to go deeper than you would find palatable. Dr Gustav
Fall, for example, is a licensed scientist in a few remote corners
of the world, but in the United States he is banned from working or
even stepping foot on its territory - something to do with his
willingness to sell deadly biological agents to whomever and
wherever.’

Tiber frowned. ‘It is the purchaser who fired
the missile. She is the one with the blood on her hands.’

‘Well, who is she?’

‘We are not sure. And she clearly does not
want us to know. In fact, Hopital believes she destroyed the
magno-chopper purely to keep her identity a secret. You see, he had
her scent captured by a signature dog. Do you know what that
means?’

Sunil shrugged vaguely.

‘You can try to change your identity in all
sorts of ways, but you can never change your scent.’

‘Is that so?’ murmured Sunil
indifferently.

‘Now of course since the attack, we have done
our best to identify the purchaser. We have facial imaging and
voice recognition tools to help and we have come up with a
candidate: a poacher named Mas.

Sunil froze with the name. ‘You have captured
her scent?’

‘Yes, which makes our dog quite valuable,
doesn’t it? There are no legal obligations for us to hand him over
and we would never consider doing it for the CIA or anyone else for
that matter – except the United Nations. With your record of kind
treatment of animals, we could be sure that Blast would be in good
hands.’

Sunil was still staring blankly.

‘You better not waste time,’ said Tiber.
‘Blast was badly injured in the crash. She is currently in the
hands of the local vets in Guatemalan City and is not expected to
survive. With such rudimentary care, why would she be? You have a
very narrow window of opportunity. Get a good vet to keep Blast
alive and a good lawyer to keep Hopital out of jail. In return,
you’ll have a play at one of the world’s most wanted
criminals.’

Sunil shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’

‘I suggest you go wake up whoever needs to be
woken up to make the decision. I’ll wait here.’

Sunil lifted himself out of his chair. ‘The
people who will make the decision,’ he muttered on his way to the
door, ‘are not the type to sleep.’

*

‘It’s Fall I want. If our job is to let
people feel safer in their beds at night, then taking Fall down
would be the perfect night cap.’

The curt voice belonged to a colonel of the
United Nation’s Peace Keeper Strike Force: Colonel Smithers. He
stood tall with a flat forehead, large ears and a bent nose, and
upon his dark khaki uniform he was wearing the medals garnered from
a distinguished thirty years of service. He was addressing a small
gathering of the top tier of the United Nation’s decision makers.
The round table at which they sat was the same polished grey steel
as the walls. The view from the Central Command Tower took in the
sprawling lights of New York stretching out to the blackness of the
harbour in a beautiful display that had the nearby cloud bank
brightly aglow. Smithers, however, had been a soldier too long to
be caught up in the romance of views. His gaze honed in on Oanh
Kim, the Chief of Lawyers. ‘Is there scope to go after Fall in all
of this?’

Kim, a stout middle aged woman shrugged. ‘I
doubt it. He was not practicing in countries where he is
banned.’

‘The civilised world,’ Smithers shot back

‘And through the Stamford Transaction
Facilitators he has compiled with all his legal obligations in this
particular scenario.’

‘Which does not include declaring what
exactly was in that canister he sold to our renegade killer?’

‘No,’ said Kim flatly. ‘Compounds for
scientific purposes is all he has to say.’

‘But Fall hasn’t been banned for selling
watered down cough drops. His specialty is lethal biological
agents.’

‘I’m sorry. As the seller in this incident,
he has done nothing inherently wrong. It is only the purchaser with
a case to answer.’

‘And if what is in the canister is as
dangerous as you make out,’ chimed in the Sergeant for Public
Order, ‘that should be a priority.’

Smithers frowned. ‘We only have limited
resources and this alleged transgressor has not been on our radar
at all. He flicked through the files looking for the shot of Mas
taken by the Stamford surveillance cameras. ‘What’s her name
again?’

‘Mas,’ said Sunil. ‘A poacher. She
specialises in abducting and smuggling animals, illegal breeding
and assassinating government sanctioned predators.’

Smithers’ frown deepened. ‘What does that
mean? Can you assassinate an animal? And what was that other thing?
Kidnapping pets?’ He shook his head bemusedly. ‘The Strike Force
doesn’t have time for this.’

‘I have time,’ came a voice from across the
table.

All eyes moved to Gwen Renaissance, the
Director of the Hurt World Agency. She was part Chilean and part
Peruvian and it showed in her rich black hair, deep hazel eyes and
dark olive skin. She had been brought in from outside the United
Nations to lead the Hurt World by the Secretary General himself and
the details of her background had been locked away in a secure
vault. The rumours and speculation, however, were plentiful and
ranged from spy networks to military special forces. With these
came suspicion and wariness, but also begrudging respect. There was
nothing about her intense demeanor to indicate she did not know
what she was doing.

‘And I’ll want the dog too,’ she said. ‘I
have a vet in mind who will give it a fighting a chance of
recovery.’ She turned to the baby-faced Officer for Emergency
Finances. ‘It won’t be cheap. Funds will need to be released.’

‘All Hurt World operations require a court
order,’ voiced the officer. ‘Nothing can be done until that has
been granted.’

Renaissance needed to swallow her anger. ‘The
reward for Mas is one million new dollars. An advance on that would
be a useful start.’

Colonel Smithers half-suppressed a chuckle.
‘Are you sure that wouldn’t be a tad premature? If the files are
accurate, the Hurt World has had operations against her in the
past. Something to do with the Cobra X species if my memory serves
me correctly. It didn’t end well on that occasion, did it?’

Renaissance pursed her lips and said
nothing.

The one person at the table with a position
high enough to know who Renaissance really was cleared his throat
to speak. ‘The Hurt World’s mandate is to act against crimes that
will directly be of hurt to humankind,’ said the US Special Envoy,
Kalp Falno. ‘I would be interested to know what crime you perceive
that to be.’ He scratched his salt and pepper beard and his
striking green eyes settled on Renaissance.

‘I will assert that it is a Hurt World Five
case,’ Renaissance replied.

‘Hurt World Level Five is reserved for the
crime of genocide,’ murmured Falno doubtfully.

‘That’s right. And without knowing exactly
what was in that canister, the threat of genocide cannot be
discounted.’

‘It is quite an assumption considering we are
dealing with a canary smuggler. Perhaps the canister contains bird
seeds.’

‘Mas’s mere presence proves it is bigger than
that.’

‘She can’t be that good.’

‘Stamford TF make their living by roughing
people around and we saw how Mas dealt with them. Do you really
think they would be coming to us for help if they thought they
could extract retribution themselves?’

‘We are the United Nations. We do not have
retribution as part of our charter.’

‘True enough.’ Renaissance paused. ‘But you
had better accept that Mas is worth ignoring that. She is running
wild and unchecked and in possession of a chemical compound made by
a mad doctor who cannot legally come within ten thousand kilometres
of New York. Our only possible path to her is a dying dog in
Guatemala. So, we need to make a decision now.’ She eyed each
person at the table in turn. ‘We take her on or we let the moment
slip and find out the hard way what that canister really
contained.’

‘I will be happy to make the application for
the court order,’ said the Chief of Lawyers.

‘Thank you,’ replied Renaissance. ‘The
disposition is being worked on at this very moment.’

‘A unit of the Peace Keepers Strike Force
will be placed on standby,’ said Smithers in a conciliatory
tone.

The US Special Envoy nodded his blessing. ‘I
suppose the United Nations needs people who dream bad and have the
courage to assume the nightmares are real. Very well, Renaissance,
let’s see if the judge grants you the opportunity to pursue this
particular one into the light of day.’

*

The World Court, situated in Lower Manhattan,
was colloquially known as the Glass Cabbage, very much because that
was what the ten level structure resembled. It stood boldly in the
night all the same with internal and external lights blazing and
its showpiece Justice Beacon floodlight shooting ten kilometres
straight up. It was four thirty in the morning and those milling
around the foyer on ground level, waiting for whatever case had
brought them there, were looking tired and anxious. The World Court
operated on a twenty four hour schedule and there was no
favouritism given to hearing times. A good measure of the anxiety
could be attributable to the widely held belief that it was in the
early hours of the morning when judges were at their most irritable
and their sentences at their harshest. Although many of the
courtrooms were taken up with corporate and civil matters, Court 14
was dedicated to criminal cases: homicides, assaults and sexual
assaults. If the accused were individuals, they were often
presidents of companies or governments or the generals of armies.
Application 4009HW, however, was somewhat different and it had
perked Judge Furtle’s interest even if it barely showed in the
droopy, bloodshot eyes. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she said in a
commanding tone from her highchair in the direction of the United
Nation’s Chief of Lawyers. ‘You’re alleging the plaintiff is guilty
of murder because she forced the captain of the magno-chopper to
shoot the rest of the crew?’

Oahn Kim was on her feet as she addressed the
court. ‘There were not enough jetpacks to go around, Your Honor.
Stamford TF must of course bear partial responsibility for this.
Nonetheless, it was Mas’s direct assault on the vessel that
precipitated the murders. The United Nations contests she has
primary responsibility for the incident.’

Judge Furtle pulled a face. ‘An interesting
legal argument is lurking there but that is a side issue for us
today.’

‘Regrettably so,’ replied Kim, having rushed
into court at such short notice, she had not had sufficient time to
read up on the subject.

Judge Furtle glanced at the wall clock. ‘I
realise the situation must be grave to bring you out at this hour.
The United Nations are usually such good sleepers.’ She read
through the disposition on her desk once again. Then she looked up
to the crowded room of drawn out faces. ‘No doubt the matter lends
itself to lawyers quoting precedents at one another; fortunately,
we are here to consider a more tangible issue: should the
involvement of the Hurt World be warranted?’ She scanned the back
pews and sure enough there was Gwen Renaissance sitting quietly
with a calm concentration. She was there virtually without
exception whenever the Hurt World had an application before the
court. It was a signal for a presiding judge to consider the matter
carefully, for if provoked, Renaissance was on good speaking terms
with most the Presidents of the free world. Having the United
Nation’s Chief of Lawyers present the application was another
useful ally in her corner. Not quite in the same class as the
highest paid corporate lawyers, but not someone to micro-sleep in
front of either. Judge Furtle delivered her ruling looking Kim
square in the eye.

‘I’m not convinced that the world we live in
is such a dangerous place that the fate of an entire population may
be jeapordised by the transfer of a single metal canister from a
scientist of dubious integrity to a poacher without any known
associates or affiliations. If it is a disease, there are cures. If
it is a poison, there are antidotes. Weaponry might be another
matter, but Dr Gustavo is not known to dabble in such areas. And
besides, world threatening bombs are far larger. I do understand,
however, the Hurt World Agency wanting clearance to assign its best
operatives against Mas considering its past failures in this
regard.’ She looked to Renaissance to see if she had chipped any of
that calmness from her face. Disappointingly, no. ‘Unfortunately,
there are simply not enough grounds to assign Hurt World Level Five
to this incident. I must wonder, in fact, if the local police
should not be in charge of the case. That being said, the smuggling
of animals is no doubt one of the most serious crimes facing
humankind today. With more and more species being exploited and
pushed to the brink of extinction, those most involved and, dare I
say it, most skilled in exploiting this precious resource are
certainly creating pain on a global scale. The prospect, therefore,
of once again being on the trail of Mas, the notorious poacher, is
too important to ignore. The court thus grants Hurt World Level One
permission to pursue this case. The specific terms of reference are
that the signature dog named Blast is to be recovered and kept
alive at all cost and then used to locate and bring to justice the
poacher Mas. That completes the matter of 4009HW.’ Judge Furtle
stood up and the court rose in turn.