Incarna

70 - NATO

Day 12: Lubeck - North Germany

“Can we trust him,” asked Thorsten as they watched Al-Latif follow the path through their garden down to the river bank where his boat was moored at their jetty.

“Probably not,” Florian mused, “but it’s better to have your enemies where you can see them!”

“Huh, you men,” Sieglinde scoffed. “He is off to meet his family at Hansa-World theme park. They’ve booked  in for three days, with all his children, and his two wives!” She looked at Florian waiting for her husband to comprehend what she was saying.

He frowned and looked at her blankly. Sigi shook her head at him, “Ach, you high functioning types, why did I ever marry you?” Thorsten made some sort of stifled laugh that sounded more like a snort. Sigi glared at him and he shrugged at her. “Well, come on Hansa World, really?”

Sigi ignored him. If there had been robots and re-enacted battles or buxom wenches serving the beer he’d have got a job there, but as it was she was stuck with the viking nerd. Sigi turned back to FLorian, “His family will be driving this. He has sons from both wives, they are both independently wealthy with degrees. He is the male arab figure head, but they are the power!”

Florian turned back to where they could just see Abn boarding his motor cruiser for the short cruise down the Trave and along the coast to the Hansa Park Resort at Sierksdorf. “Well then, we have two days to do our follow up analysis and prepare to secure his fortune. Florian looked at the disk in his hand. The man’s entire future lay in there if Florian was to believe everything that Abn had said, and they would receive 10 percent if they could make him disappear, so to speak!

He handed the disk to Sigi, “it’s all yours then my love, our combined futures!” Sigi took the disk and walked across to a separate desk with no cables leading to it from the floor conduits. One medium sized desktop computer sat there. Every disk that came to them first went to the Taster as they nicknamed the sacrificial machine. Thorsten built them himself and they contained programs that scanned at hyper speed for any piece of software of any sort or length that was out of the ordinary. These were walled off and then analysed for their structure. Once this was done they were released back into the normal startup process and their progress tracked and analysed.

Florian had devised the High Altar detection system to analyse then back track to its source any virus, worm, bot or segment that the Taster was being infected with. They lost a few machines to particularly nasty programs but the method had proved itself over and over and they were just behind Max Parrish now in their ability to Track and BackHack as Thorsten called it. He was a Backhacker, proud of it and very well paid for it!

“All clear!” Sigi said after a few minutes and she gave Florian a big smile. “You like him already huh?” he mused. She screwed up her eyes and shrugged, “I think he is honestly very scared, and this trip to Hansa World is just a cover. They are ready to run, and he has picked you to run to. There are probably hundreds of very wealthy people across the world now wondering what is going to happen next. This Incarna thing have put the wind up everyone who has something to hide and we have a first mover advantage now with Abn giving us this opportunity!”

Florian frowned and came and stood next to his wife and read some of the data starting to compile on screen. “You see it as an opportunity?” “Oh come on Herr Berg …” called Thorsten from the kitchenette where he’d retreated to give Sigi time to have her say.

“What is this, pick on Florian day? What am I missing now?” Sigi stood up and touched her hand to his face, “my dearest husband, if this is not an opportunity then all Abn’s millions will go to waste!” Florian frowned, “I’m just very aware that he is a complicating factor that may become more trouble than it is worth!”

“You’re the one who shook his hand boss!”  “Well I hope I was not too hasty then …”

Thorsten picked up his headset and answered their private line then turned to Florian. “Strasbourg, it’s Colm.”

Florian picked up his headset. “Florian, yah. Today, that’s a day early. Okay, I’ll go and wait for his call. Yah, danke Colm.” He turned to Sigi. Thorsten stood at his workstation waiting to be briefed.

“The Canadians have arrived already. Coutu wants to talk straight away, so I’ll leave you two, to follow on from Abn’s visit and I’ll sort out the latest Five Eyes directives ...” Sigi tilted her head and frowned at him, “I don’t like it when you get that look on your face, what is it?”

“I just hope NATO and Berlin doesn’t take on too much for us and it conflicts with our new projects. It maybe that we have to extricate ourselves form the Five Eyes Contract so we can expand our operations and keep up with Parrish and his damned Jaeger International.”

“Sounds good to me boss,” broke in Thorsten. “Government contracts always give me the creeps and I like what the Incarna are doing!” Florian smiled, “... I hired you because I thought you would be a good stable influence on me!” “Yeah right boss!” added Thorsten then he mumbled something in Danish that Florian couldn’t make out. He kissed Sigi who was copying data from Abn’s disk and setting up a timetable and deadlines.

Florian walked to the right side of their Operations Room and went through the door next to the kitchinette. The door closed with a dull thud, reminding Florian of the shielding that was in this room. This was his office and no radiation from anything penetrated these walls and floor and ceiling. Everything came and went by fibre optic cable and nothing left the room without Florian’s triple redundancy security sign off.

The light for his comm blinked as the screen came alive with the image of his Canadian Five Eyes counterpart. “Dan Coutu, good to see to you. A quick flight I gather! Ah you’re desk bound, too bad. Sam Obomsawin, my liason okay. Yah de file looks goodt. Should arrive this afternoon, ser gut, yah, danke. Auf wiedersein!”

Florian brought up his right hand to his mouth as his left tapped off the connection. Another observer to pander to. This was becoming far too complicated, still his file was excellent and he would make a great field operative. The results of the ops at the first Intervention site should be coming through soon. His latest report from the Bundeswehr was that the Luftwaffe had flown in to retrieve one of the Australian's LAVs and the Bundeswehr  now had their own teams on the ground as well.

What it must be like to be there first hand, he pondered Perhaps I could get a linkup to one of the new drones the Aussies are using. It would at least give him some sense of what this was all about, out there where it had begun!