The corridor outside the flat had transitioned immediately into close-down mode. The night watchman was sitting on a plastic chair facing the metal grate and the East Kruv urban gaggle outside, watching a Lebanese soap opera on his phone. The tinny rattle of melodrama spilled from his phone speakers and ominously echoed throughout the empty, soda-can speckled corridor.

The watchman gave him an absent wave as Cihangir opened out the grate himself and slipped out. He was probably wondering why someone in the Police would want to keep living here.

Getting into the nondescript black Kia and pushing gently into the busy road outside, he wondered the same thing. There was a genuine desire to move out when they had just gotten married but before the baby was born. At least, he thought there had been. He wove through slow, tricked out Camaros and Chargers, suspensions tuned low to the ground and local dialect hip-hop booming out of them.

He began to feel the usual feelings he tried to supress every time he got out of the house past curfew. He remembered when nightclubs were illicit things, done surreptitiously and out of sight. Now, you could see the neon from a mile away and rich children would drive, as they were doing then, well into the night, their liberation anthems blaring. Transform the city into one ripe for the taking. The night belonged to the vampires. He wondered if the kids knew that anymore.

He also wondered if he had been born a prude.

The little Chinese Bluetooth panel he had fitted onto his dashboard began to beep. 'Boss' it read in digital loops around the screen. He pushed the accept button.

"Kartal, we need you to come back over. Emergency," Tyador said, his voice deathly quiet and subdued.

"Yeah, Dernig called me. I'm like five minutes away from the City Centre. What's going on?"

"Just come over. Head straight to the war room." He hung up.

Cihangir slowed in front of a traffic light and smoked his last allotted cigarette for the day. A cool breeze hit him when he rolled down the window and he frowned. There hadn't been anything worthy enough of worry in the Damyan crime scene in recent months. Especially for Sub-Commissioner Tasimov. He wondered why they called him and his Subby for this, if it was something genuinely beyond Complaint of Taking Sr. 234 or some trite khat homicide somewhere.

Traffic nearly deadened when he got close to the City Center. It would be okay to get a house somewhere here, he thought. It would also be okay for pigs to fly and phages to drink cranberry juice. The best they'd be able to afford, even after the promotion, would be somewhere in the first periphery where the clubs and khat were. And he didn't think he'd be able to raise a daughter there.

He parked in the empty Politsiya Headquarters parking lot and got into the elevator, riding it up to the third floor. Almost all the lights were off, except for the one leading to the smallest and most secure conference room.

Mikkel, the usual Internal Security officer was stationed in front of the door, magnetic scanner primed and ready. Two hefty looking Military Police, probably Manuel's men, stood on either side of him.

"CP Kartal," Mikkel said. "I'll need your ID for verification." His tone was unusually grave, a lot of it probably to seem officious in front of MP. But, Cihangir guessed, there was something hysteric underpinning that.

He had to hand over his pager and cellphone before they let him through. He could hear voices bouncing through the corridor, the door to the conference room slightly ajar. He knocked and eased it open, peering in. Lieutenant Ramira of MP was sitting with a subordinate of hers, looking very frazzled and typing violently into a battered looking laptop. CIC Vykter and Tasimov were sitting next to each other, their heads huddled together. Subby Dernig was standing in the corner, looking lost. Manual sat at the head of the round table, smoking quietly. It hadn't been his first cigarette, Cihangir guessed. The room was thick with the smell of Pall Malls. Most of the additional lights were turned off. It seemed far too illicit for his comfort.

"What I'm worried about is the fucking media. Do you know how quiet it's been for the past year? The local guys are just waiting to lap something like this up and- wait, who the fuck is he?" CIC Vycter was pointing right at him with a pen he had just been chewing. Cihangir could see a little blob of saliva patter onto the table from it.

"This is Kartal. Chief of South Kruv Quadrant. I'm sure he's pleased to make your acquaintance. Get in." Tasimov gave him a tired smile.

"South Quadrant? Who gives a shit about South Quadrant? Wait, these guys were travelling through Kruv Satellites."

Cihangir got in and pushed the door back to its original position. Ramira didn't even look up at him. Dernig nodded, as ecstatic as a college kid finding someone he knew at a strange party. Manuel was looking at him intently through a cloud of smoke, dim light bouncing off his smooth, bald head.

"Yeah, they were," Tasimov told Vycter. "I think Petit Jordan was their last stop before the fence."

Something sank inside Cihangir. "Sir?" he asked, looking at Tasimov.

Tyador shook his head and tossed him a standard report dossier. He flipped through it.

"Shit," he said finally. "No."

"Yes, I'm afraid," Vycter said. "We have to make some sort of decision fast."

"Certainly." Manuel got up. "Now that we're allhere, certainly. But before this discussion goes forward any further, I'd liketo remind everyone that the priority here is not saving these people. Thepriority, is dealing with this without another international scandal."