Inside the central command theater of Interpol Headquarters in Lyon, France, the main wall was covered by a sixty-foot digital world map.
Normally, the map flashed with hundreds of urgent crimson icons.
Bank robberies in Frankfurt, cargo container hijackings in Rotterdam, cyber-extortion schemes in Seoul, and dark-cultist raids in the Mediterranean usually kept two hundred analysts typing furiously through the night on three shifts.
Today, the room was so quiet you could hear an analyst drop a paperclip on the carpet.
Secretary-General Dupont stood before the massive display, holding a lukewarm cup of black coffee that had grown cold over an hour ago.
His reading glasses were pushed up onto his graying hair. His mouth hung slightly open as he stared at the global telemetry graph.
The global crime line did not just trend downward.
It had plummeted ninety-two point four percent in fourteen days.
