Sign of the Cross(5)
Nick Dial was an American, and that made him very unpopular in certain parts of the globe. So did his career. He ran the newly formed Homicide Division at Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization), the largest international crime-fighting organization in the world, which meant he dealt with death all over the globe.
Simply put, he coordinated the flow of information between police departments anytime a murder investigation crossed national boundaries. All told he was in charge of 179 different countries – filled with billions of people and dozens of languages – yet had a budget that was dwarfed by an American school district.
One of the biggest misconceptions about Interpol is their role in stopping crime. They rarely send agents to investigate a case. Instead they have local offices called National Central Bureaus in all the member countries, and the NCBs monitor their territory and report pertinent information to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France. From there the facts are entered into a central database that can be accessed via the Interpol’s computer network. Fingerprints, DNA, terrorist updates, the works. All of it available twenty-four hours a day.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t always enough. Sometimes the head of a division (Drugs, Counterfeiting, Terrorism, etc.) was forced to hop on a plane and take control of a case. Possibly to cut through red tape. Or to handle a border dispute. Or to deal with the media. All the things that Nick Dial hated to do. He figured in his line of work the only thing that really mattered was justice. Correcting a wrong in the fairest way possible. That was his motto, the creed that he lived by. He figured if he did that, then all the other bullshit would take care of itself.
Dial arrived in Helsingør in the late afternoon. He didn’t know much about the case – other than someone had been crucified and the president of Interpol wanted him there – but that was the way he preferred it. He liked forming conclusions based on personal observations, instead of relying on secondhand information.
Most investigators would’ve rushed to examine the body, but that wasn’t the way Dial worked. He preferred to understand his surroundings before he dealt with the crime, especially when he was in an unfamiliar country. If the murder had been committed in France, he would’ve gone right to the corpse because he had lived there for the past ten years and knew how French people thought.
But here, he was a little unsure of the landscape. He needed to understand Denmark – and Danes in general – before he could understand the crime. So instead of studying the victim, Dial headed down a long corridor and searched for someone to talk to. Not to interrogate, but someone to chat with. Someone to give him the lay of the land. It took three attempts until he found someone who spoke English.
‘Excuse me,’ he said as he flashed his Interpol badge. ‘May I ask you a few questions?’
The man nodded, half intimidated by Dial’s credentials and half by his stare. Dial was in his early forties and had a face that looked like it was chiseled out of granite. Clean lines, thick cheekbones, green eyes. Short black hair with just a hint of gray. Not overly handsome, yet manly as hell. Black stubble covered his features even though it wasn’t enough to conceal his chin. His massive, movie-star chin. It sat at the bottom of his face like a tribute to Kirk Douglas.
‘So, what’s a guy have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?’
The man smiled and led Dial into a tiny office. Work schedules and pictures of Kronborg decorated the walls. A metal desk sat in the corner. Dial took a seat just inside the door and was handed a mug of coffee. ‘So, I take it you work here?’
‘For over forty years. I’m the senior tour guide.’
Dial grinned. He had hit the jackpot. ‘You know, I’ve traveled all over the world to every continent on the globe, but I’ve never seen a country like this. Denmark is simply gorgeous.’
The man beamed with pride. ‘It’s the best-kept secret in Europe.’
‘Well, if I promise to keep my mouth shut, will you tell me about it?’
Their conversation went on for ten minutes, filled with the facts and figures about the area. Dial spoke every once in a while, gently steering the conversation in the direction he wanted, but for the most part kept quiet. ‘Out of curiosity,’ he asked, ‘what type of tourists do you get?’
‘Mostly people between the ages of forty and sixty, equal mix of men and women. Though we tend to get a lot of students during the school year.’
‘What about nationalities? Are most of your tourists from Denmark?’
He shook his head. ‘Just the opposite. Most of them are from the surrounding countries. Sweden, Germany, Austria, Norway. We get a lot of Brits because of Shakespeare.’