by Dan Sehlberg
Paul was silent for a moment, weighing the risks. David held his breath.
‘Sure. Every banana republic comes to big brother for help eventually.’
David ignored this comment.
‘Does big brother happen to have a telex?’
‘A what?’
‘Forget it. You’ll receive an email in a few minutes.’
Flight ET703, above Algeria
This time, Samir knew that he would never again return to France, the country that had been his homeland in his teens. When he was fifteen, his family had fled the civil war in Lebanon and sought asylum in France. Thanks to his father’s resolve, the family had managed to get over the shock of moving to another country and adapt to their new world. His parents had maintained their Shia Muslim identities while simultaneously adapting to French daily life and, as far as possible, to French culture. For Samir’s part, the move to France meant something important: unlimited access to computers.
He had always loved computers, but in Beirut his access had been limited and he’d had to sit at his father’s law office, tapping at their old IBM. It was the only computer in the office, and his constant use of it annoyed the other lawyers. Sometimes his friends had popped up and invited him along for soccer, wrestling, or dancing. With time, these visits became more sporadic. Several of his friends became engaged or enlisted in the army. He had lived a different life, symbolically framed by the square monitor at the dusty law office. When he came to France, everything changed. The family was placed in a suburb of Toulouse, in a graffiti-covered concrete jungle. Everyday life must have been difficult for the others, but for him integration posed no problem. Quite the opposite. There were more computers in France — at school, at his parents’ jobs, even in his friends’ homes. Samir’s talents developed quickly, and it wasn’t long before his teachers noticed his talents. When he turned twenty-one he received a scholarship that allowed him to go to the US and study at MIT, the world’s foremost technical school. His father called the law office in Beirut and bellowed that their little freeloader was on his way to becoming the next Bill Gates.
MIT extended his year at the school to a full Master’s degree in computer programming. After that, he was offered the opportunity to have his Ph.D. studies paid for if he taught as well. He met Nadim just after that at a wedding in Beirut. They stayed in the U.S. for almost ten years. His doctoral dissertation ended up being about computer viruses, and the more he studied the subject, the more interesting it became. Three years later, he was an expert in the field. But all of this was before the catastrophe.
Samir sleepily looked up at the dark-skinned flight attendant. She had asked him something.
‘What?’
‘Would you like a glass of champagne?’ She smiled and held out a glass. He shook his head and asked instead for an extra blanket. He was always cold on planes.
It was almost empty in business class — just a few passengers reading, watching TV, or having quiet conversations. There was an air of calm in the cabin. France was already many hours behind him. He had been planning to stay considerably longer. The others had left several days ago, but he had stayed, along with Melah as-Dullah, to make the last preparations before Mona was activated. Samir liked to be alone when he worked, and the apartment had been full of activity toward the end. He was sure that Ahmad Waizy had left Melah there more as a guard than as an assistant for him. Samir was now the property of Hezbollah, and couldn’t be left alone. They had a great deal invested in him. Melah had been quiet and discreet. But, as with Ahmad, there was something snakelike about him.
The apartment they had rented was a nice one. It was close to the beach, yet still in the middle of the city. They could come and go unnoticed, without attracting attention — at least, that’s what they had thought. It turned out that it was sheer luck he wasn’t sitting at the police station right now. Or dead. He had been out buying newspapers on Promenade des Anglais when he’d seen the police cars and cordons outside his building. Heart pounding, he had kept walking, and fumbled out a text message to Ahmad.
After his encounter with the police force, he had wandered around on back streets and through alleys, jostling with tourists and tripping over baby carriages, menu boards, and street musicians. Somehow, he had finally found his way to Galeries Lafayette. He needed clothes. All he had were the ones he was wearing: a pair of worn jeans, sandals, and a faded red T-shirt that said ‘Nice dans mon coeur.’ — ‘Nice in my heart.’ He had a credit card and passport on him. Ahmad’s orders had been clear: do not go anywhere without your phone, credit card, and passport. But would the credit card work? Was his identity known to the police? Time and time again he had looked at his phone, waiting for an answer from Ahmad. Where would he run? He chose clothes at Lafayette that were as neutral as possible — two pairs of pants and a few pullovers and polo shirts. Were they already circulating pictures of him? Would they be watching the airports? He cursed himself for not having been more careful. He’d left a heap of scrapped computers in the bathtub. The most important thing was that the hard drives couldn’t be salvaged; he had made sure of that himself.
The text that arrived as he was on his way out of the department store contained a transfer destination, a time, a flight number, and a final destination. He was going to Somaliland. Oh, God. He had never been to Africa. Why there? Wasn’t there a civil war there? He needed a fast and stable internet connection. Was there such a thing in Somaliland?
Of course, Ahmad had thought of this. It would all work out. The Israelis already knew about parts of the operation; Sinon kept Ahmad updated on everything that went on in the cabinet and in the Knesset. After the chaos in Nice, they had to split up the group. Caution was the key to success. They had been spread out all over the world, so Samir had no idea where the others were. Maybe the Mossad already had his name. And maybe Melah had been imprisoned in Nice. How much did Melah really know? Would he talk?
Ahmad had booked Samir to Rome on Alitalia, and from there to Ethiopia on Ethiopian Airlines. Once he got to Addis Ababa, he would transfer to a smaller airline and fly east to Berbera in Somaliland. He had no idea what awaited him there — a fast internet connection, with any luck.
The night was dark outside the oval window. It is he who makes the stars for you, that you may guide yourselves, with their help, through the dark spaces of land and sea. Allah is wise and does nothing without a purpose. But what was Allah thinking when he took back such a little servant? So suddenly? Samir hadn’t had the chance to close her eyes or kiss her cheeks. He struggled to retain the memory of her. He could see her before him, but realised in despair that it was the same image as in the only picture he had left, the black-and-white picture where she was riding a camel. He would have done anything for a better picture of her, in colour. Now he remembered her in black and white — the copy, not the original. A short quote popped into his head: ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe.’ — ‘This is not a pipe.’ There was no pipe — just Magritte’s image, two-dimensional and static. It was the same with Mona. Ceci n’est pas une fille. How had she smelled? What had her laugh sounded like? He was losing vital details.
Hezbollah had contacted him shortly after he and Nadim had moved back to Lebanon. They had tried to convince him to create a virus. Samir had said no. He had friends in Israel, and the war was something abstract and unreal to him. Through his work with Banque du Liban, he instead had the opportunity to create stability through the country’s own banking system — something that suited him better. He was no soldier. But that was then; now he was part of them. Above all, he was not part of anything else. Whatever good you send forth for your souls before you, you shall find it with Allah: for Allah sees well what you do. Allah knew what Mona looked like. She would get her smile back. But before he went to his women, he would avenge them.
Samir tried to find a reasonably comfortable position in the airplane seat. The thought
of revenge gave him no satisfaction. Somewhere inside he knew that it was not what Nadim would have wanted. But he had made a promise to his murdered daughter. What could be more holy? Qisas. Revenge. Life for life. By now, the cabin was quiet, except for the rush from the air conditioning and the distant roar of the engines. He browsed through the playlist on his iPod, found Satie, lowered the volume, and let himself be enveloped in Lent et douloureux. He missed his little girl terribly.
Stockholm, Sweden
The world exploded around him. Or within him. Fireworks in sparkling colours detonated in the dense darkness, tossing him forward, headlong. Thousands of square meteorites flew around him, through him. He was falling through a gigantic kaleidoscope. There was no sound, no wind. The meteorites had colourful patterns, which seemed somehow familiar. He fought to regain control. He had to slow himself down. He focused on breathing. In and out. In and out. He fell, but more slowly, floating through a sparkling universe. He realised that these weren’t meteorites. They were websites. The familiar patterns were graphics on websites. He recognised the start pages of Aftonbladet, KTH, MIT, and iTunes. The internet. He floated on through a silent, immense, endless internet. Unchecked laughter filled him, and he happily stretched out his hands to grab the passing sites. His hands fumbled in the air, empty, as he sat there in his office with the hair trailing from the helmet, and his face almost completely hidden by the black glasses. It took some time to understand how to navigate, but gradually he figured it out. He caught sites, popped into sub-pages, minimised banners, and browsed through links — all with the power of his thoughts. He tried to move the finger to the address bar at the top of the hitta.se search engine. The field turned blue. He thought of di.se, the Dagens Industri site, and watched in amazement as the address came up in the active field. The page turned pink, and that day’s paper blossomed before him. As usual, Investor was complaining about price-to-book ratios. He laughed and sent the site away in order to dive down into KTH’s homepage, which was floating beneath him. He was becoming more nimble, getting better and better at Mind Surfing. A spot of purple gel glowed next to the keyboard in the otherwise dark room.
Berbera, Somaliland
Above ground it was nearly fifty degrees, but where he sat, ten metres underground, it was considerably cooler. Samir was trying to concentrate on Mona’s receptivity protection, but he couldn’t stop sneaking glances at the scorpion that was slowly walking across the enormous cement floor. The dry, stuffy air brought with it a stench that was nearly unbearable. He needed to get some fresh air. He stood up, stiff after many hours in the same position. The scrape of the chair echoed through the empty room. The ceiling was over seven metres high. He walked through the room and came to a long corridor that was also made entirely of concrete. In one corner lay old beer cans and rags. Here the air was full of exhaust from the old diesel generator that hummed in one of the storage cabinets. It generated enough electricity to illuminate the corridor, the work area, and the smaller room where he slept for a few hours every day. Most importantly, it provided power for the computer.
He approached a steel ladder at the end of the corridor. The sign on the wall was in Russian. He began the climb upward, which he found difficult — it had been a long time since he was in shape. He was thin and gaunt, with matted hair and an unkempt beard, but his shell was unimportant. The ladder led him to ground level. He surfaced into a small concrete structure where the sun shone in through broken windows. He stepped over the shards of glass on the floor, and opened the rusty steel door. The heat and the light were like a punch in the face, and at first he couldn’t see anything. He was standing near the middle of a long, straight road. On the other side were several low, concrete buildings, and a narrow track ran along the road. The area was an old Soviet missile base — a footprint from the Cold War. The Soviet navy had kept its missiles here. Now, thirty-five years later, the base was nothing more than a deserted concrete grave. The missiles were gone, just like the Soviet Union. The area was blocked off by a rusty barbed-wire fence. The only thing that might have suggested the place was back in use was a satellite dish on the roof of the radar building. But no one would notice something like that. They had used an old dish that looked like just another worn-out Soviet relic.
Momba Siad Barre drowsily raised a hand at him from the other side of the road. He and the other Somalis were sitting in the shadow beside the small guardhouse. Their job was to keep unwelcome visitors away. The risk of receiving any visitors, however, was small. Momba seemed to be some sort of local bandit, large and muscular, and almost completely toothless. He had explained in poor English that he was one of the pirates who took freighters hostage off the coast of Somalia. The Somalis were all armed with old Russian AK-47s, and wore cartridge belts crossed over their bare, sunken chests. The whole scene gave a theatrical impression.
Samir had never experienced this kind of heat. The temperature here varied between five degrees below Celsius and fifty above. He was tired. The long journey from Nice had been uneventful, save for landing in Berbera, which had been a near-death experience. Momba had been waiting for him in the baggage-claim area, and had silently driven him to the missile base. There he found a new computer, powerful generators, and the satellite dish. All of this conveyed a silent message from Ahmad Waizy: complete your task; finish the virus.
Samir walked along the wall and followed the rails where the missile carriers had once rolled. The ground was dusty and cracked, and there was nothing green in the vicinity. Maybe it hadn’t always been like this. The base was near the ocean. Maybe the landscape had once been fertile, but the sun was relentless, burning and parching everything. His clothes still carried the stench from the bunker. He hadn’t bathed in several days, so he was surely contributing to the smell himself.
He rounded the farthest buildings and turned back. He could see Momba following him with his eyes, and happened to think of Melah as-Dullah in Nice. The same question arose here as it had there. Was Momba here to protect him or guard him?
Mona’s resistance protection was giving him trouble, and Samir couldn’t find his notebook from Nice. It contained information he needed.
When he returned to the building that hid the ladder to the cave underneath, he stopped to piss. As he watched his urine splashing against the speckled concrete wall, he thought about his body, surprised that it still worked so well. It was impressive. He had almost completely stopped obeying its needs. It was as though his own body were mocking him by continuing to function. His heart, stubbornly pumping blood through his body, was disloyal. His lungs, expanding and contracting at the same rhythmic pace instead of collapsing, were betraying him. Before, in his old life, he had often worried about how fragile the human body was. As he had lain awake listening to Mona’s faint breaths, he had been filled with helpless anxiety over her vulnerability. He had been careful about what she ate, her exercise, her sleep. But now, when he was doing everything he could to break down his biological machinery, it seemed to be unbreakable.
He went back in through the rusty door and climbed down into the dark shaft. On his way back, he went by the corner where he slept and dug out a chocolate bar. Maybe he was hungry, or else he was feeling guilty, after all, about how he had treated his body. Standing before the computer once again, he carefully checked to make sure there were no scorpions under the table, on the chair, or in the vicinity of his work area. The whole complex was crawling with them.
He picked up his iPod and selected Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. Why didn’t the resistance protection activate? Now that Mona was practically finished, it was difficult to make adjustments. The drivers were encapsulated to make it more difficult for anti-virus software to discover the attack. He scrolled through the endless code, with Wagner’s music accompanying the symbols that flowed across the screen in hypnotic patterns. Suddenly, he stopped and zoomed in on a sequence. Then he leaned even closer to the screen and ran his fingers along a se
ries of symbols. There it was! It was a careless mistake, pure and simple. He leaned back, stared up at the ceiling in frustration, and sighed. There was no point in cursing himself. After all, this was good. He had found the error — the needle in the haystack. Sure, it was pure chance that he had found it, but still. He went into the incorrect string of code and switched the final digits around.
Mona was finished. He chewed his chocolate slowly, and reflected upon his work. Many months of toiling were over. Now all that was left was to upload the worm into TBI’s network. This would be simple, thanks to the files he had copied in Nice. Once it was inside the bank’s system, the worm would replicate and, like a living thing, spread into all the linked networks. Then, when the time was right, he would activate the virus manually via the internet.
He threw the chocolate wrapper on the floor and wiped his fingers on his pants. Then he got on the internet and opened the file server. There were the TBI files with information about the bank’s firewalls and current virus protection. It took him ten minutes to break through the firewall and inject the worm. After sending a short message to Ahmad, he shut down the computer. Silence filled the large room as the fan stopped turning.
The stench from the sewer became too much again, and he went back up the ladder. The sun was lower in the sky, and the air was cooler. The gang was still sitting beside the guardhouse. He walked over to them and nodded to Momba.
‘C’est fini … Finished.’
Momba smiled. ‘Good. Good.’
One of the men offered him a Pepsi, but he shook his head.
‘I’m going down to the ocean.’
Momba looked hesitant at first, but then smiled his toothless grin.