by Marc Elsberg
The petrol station was in darkness. The lights they’d seen turned out to belong to the cars queuing for the pumps, their headlights casting bright spots on the front of the building. Here and there, beams of light darted back and forth in the night – torches, probably. Leaving the headlights on, they got out.
Immediately Sophia felt the cold penetrate her jeans and sweater. The car ahead of them had a German licence plate. She spoke the language better than the others, so she went forward and asked what was happening.
‘Power’s out,’ explained the driver through the half-open window.
She then approached a man in overalls standing by one of the pumps. He gave the same answer.
‘So we can’t get petrol here?’ she asked, beginning to panic a little.
‘The pumps are powered by electricity from the grid. Until it comes back on, we can’t get the fuel up from the underground tanks.’
‘Don’t you have backup power?’
‘Nope.’ He shrugged in apology. ‘It should be back on any moment, though.’
‘How long is it going to be?’ asked Sophia, glancing back at the long line of waiting cars and the restaurant’s packed-out car park, also in darkness. A travelling Friday before a week of winter holidays.
‘Maybe fifteen minutes.’ Not a hope, thought Sophia as she made her way back to the others. Chloé, having reached the same conclusion, pounded her hand on the roof of the car and yelled ‘Get in, guys. Let’s go find the next service station!’
Berlin, Germany
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
The interior minister stood before the screen; a tall man with a red face, thinning hair and a thunderous expression. He had probably been pulled out of a gala dinner, judging by his tuxedo. Frauke Michelsen couldn’t remember ever having seen him in the Interior Ministry’s incident room. Probably because she was rarely there herself. Tonight the room was full. Civil servants, information technology specialists, federal police, public security, as well as crisis management and civil protection; Michelsen knew more or less all of them.
Helge Brockhorst from the Joint Federal and State Information and Command Centre in Bonn could be seen on the screen. ‘It’s not that simple.’
Wrong answer, thought Michelsen.
‘With your permission, Minister,’ State Secretary Holger Rhess spoke up. ‘Perhaps Mr Bädersdorf here can shed some light on matters for you.’ Michelsen groaned inwardly. Bädersdorf had worked for the German Association of Energy and Water Industries for years, until eventually the lobbyists had succeeded in installing him within the ministry itself.
‘Imagine the power grid as a human circulatory system,’ Bädersdorf explained. ‘Perhaps with the difference that instead of one heart, there are several. These are the power plants. From the power plants, electricity is distributed to the rest of the country, like blood being carried around the body, only instead of blood vessels it relies on power lines. High-voltage power lines are the main arteries, transporting large quantities across broad stretches; then there are cables with average voltage, which transport the energy further to the regional networks, which then distribute to the individual end receivers – the latter are the capillaries that bring blood to every cell.’
As he spoke, he tapped on the relevant parts of his body. This wasn’t the first time he had delivered this particular lecture, and Michelsen had to acknowledge, without envy, that it wasn’t a bad analogy.
‘Pivotal here are two aspects. First: in order to keep the grid stable, a consistent frequency must be maintained. We can compare that to blood pressure in a human person. If it gets too high or too low, we keel over. That’s unfortunately what has happened with the power grid.
‘Second: you can’t really store power. Like blood, it must flow continuously. The quantity needed varies dramatically throughout the course of the day; so in the same way that the heart has to beat faster if a person suddenly breaks into a run, power plants must deliver more energy at times of peak demand. Either that, or additional power plants must be brought online. Make sense so far?’
He looked around the room and received several nods. The interior minister, however, was frowning. ‘Yes, yes, but how does that explain what’s happening across Europe? I thought the German power grid was secure?’
‘It is – in principle,’ answered the lobbyist, as Michelsen secretly dubbed him. ‘That can be demonstrated by the fact that Germany was one of the last countries to lose its power supply and one of the first to start bringing individual regions back online. But the German grid is not an island within Europe.’
He tapped away at the keyboard on his computer and the large projection screen came to life, displaying a map of Europe that was covered with a thick network of coloured lines.
‘This is a map of European power grids. As you can see, they are tightly interconnected.’
The image on the wall changed into a blue graphic on which symbols for power plants, transformer stations, factories and houses were connected by a network of lines.
‘In days gone by, national energy providers both generated power and distributed it. They also managed each aspect of the supply chain. Through the liberalization of the energy market, however, this structure has fundamentally changed. Today there are, on the one hand, those who generate power …’
The power plant in the graphic changed from blue to red.
‘And on the other, there are those who operate the grid.’
The connection lines in the graphic turned green.
‘Completing the circuit between them, so to speak, there are now additionally’ – in the loop appeared another building symbol with a euro sign – ‘energy exchanges. Here, power generators and power traders negotiate prices. The power supply therefore consists today of many different players, who in a case such as the one we have before us must first coordinate with one another.’
Michelsen felt obliged to expand on his remarks. ‘And their foremost concern is not optimally supplying energy to the population and to industry, but rather securing a profit. That means bringing many different interests together under one roof. And, in the event of a crisis, doing so within minutes.
‘As yet, we don’t know the cause of the outage. But you can be sure that everyone is working towards the same goal.’
‘Why don’t you know the cause of the outage?’ asked a member of staff from the public security division.
‘The systems these days are far too complex for that to be determined immediately.’
‘How much time will it take to re-establish the supply?’ asked the state secretary.
‘According to our information, most regions should be getting power back by tomorrow morning.’
‘I hate to be the voice of doom,’ Michelsen spoke up. ‘But we’re talking about most of Europe here. The corporations have no experience whatsoever with a crisis of this magnitude.’ She took care to maintain a controlled tone. ‘I’m accountable for crisis management and civil protection. If tomorrow morning public transportation isn’t running, train stations and airports are at a standstill, offices and schools can’t be heated, telecommunications are down, and the water supply for large parts of the population cannot be guaranteed, we’re going to have a huge problem. The best thing we can do now is start preparing.’
‘How exactly will the supply be re-established?’ asked the interior minister.
Bädersdorf got in before Michelsen could speak. ‘In general, you go little by little, build up small grids around the power plants, make sure that they maintain a stable frequency, and then successively enlarge them. Then you start to join these partial grids together and to synchronize them.’
‘How long does each of these steps take?’
‘For building back up, it depends – anything from a few seconds to a few hours. At that point, the synchronization should go relatively quickly.’
‘You say regions throughout Europe have been affected,’ said the minister. ‘Are we in contact w
ith the other countries?’
‘Happening as we speak,’ confirmed Rhess.
‘Good, put a crisis team together and keep me up to date as things develop.’ The minister turned to go. ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’
Speak for yourself, thought Michelsen. For some of us it’s going to be a very long night.
Schiphol, Netherlands
Delayed.
Delayed.
Delayed.
In the past hour, the departures and arrivals boards had shown one flight after another as delayed.
‘Will it be much longer?’ asked Bernadette, her favourite doll clutched to her chest.
‘Read it yourself,’ ordered her older brother pompously. ‘It says right up there that our flight is delayed.’
‘But I can’t read.’
‘Baby,’ mocked Georges.
‘Am not!’
‘Baby! Baby!’
Bernadette started to whine. ‘Maman!’
‘That’s enough now,’ François Bollard told his children. ‘Georges, stop annoying your sister.’
‘So now it’ll be midnight before we get to Paris,’ groaned Bollard’s wife, Marie. Dark shadows had appeared under her eyes.
‘Friday night,’ said Bollard. ‘It’s not like this is the first time.’
They stood among a cluster of people craning their necks in front of the announcement boards. The new departure time was 22:00.
The long rows of seats in the waiting areas were overflowing. Those without seats were squatting on their suitcases. In the fast-food restaurants, massive queues had formed. Bollard looked around to see if he could find a quiet spot for them somewhere, but everywhere he turned there were hordes of people.
‘What’s up there now?’ asked Bernadette as the boards above them suddenly came to life.
‘Oh, great,’ Bollard heard his wife say. He looked up at the display.
Cancelled.
Cancelled.
Cancelled.
Paris, France
Lauren Shannon kept her camera trained on James Turner, CNN’s correspondent in France, as he thrust the microphone under the nose of his interviewee.
‘I’m standing here in front of the headquarters of the Paris fire department on Place Jules Renard,’ said Turner. ‘With me now is François Liscasse, général de division, head of the Brigade de sapeurs-pompiers de Paris, as the fire department is called here in the French capital.’
In the glare of the headlights, the snowflakes shone like fireflies.
Turner turned towards Liscasse.
‘Général Liscasse, Paris has been without power for more than five hours now. Has there been any information on how long the situation is going to continue?’
Despite the weather, Liscasse wore only a blue uniform. His cap made Shannon think of Charles de Gaulle, which in turn triggered a recollection that the Paris fire department was a military unit that reported to the Interior Ministry.
‘I cannot provide any information on that subject at the present time. Throughout Paris and the surrounding areas all available men have been mobilized – several thousand of them. We do after all have the largest firefighting organization in the world, after New York. The population of Paris can therefore feel secure. At the moment, we are busy freeing people caught in the Metro and in lifts. In addition, there have been many traffic accidents and a few scattered fires.’
‘Does that mean that some will have to wait until tomorrow morning to be rescued?’
‘We’re assuming that power will be back on soon. But we will free every single individual, that I guarantee.’
‘Général—’
‘Thank you. Now if you’ll excuse me, please, I must get back to work.’ Brushing off the dismissal, Turner faced the camera and intoned, ‘James Turner, Paris, on the “Night without Power”.’ As soon as he’d given Shannon the signal to cut, he pulled up the fur collar of his coat and set off in the direction of the car, calling over his shoulder, ‘It’s about time I asked these guys at the Interior Ministry a few questions. Come on, let’s drive there now.’
As Turner’s camerawoman and chauffeur, Shannon had mastered the art of weaving her way through the streets of Paris – or so she’d thought, until the traffic chaos of a few hours earlier. The situation on the roads had calmed since then, but even so it took them more than twenty minutes to cover a distance they could have walked in ten. The Rue de Miromesnil was blocked off to prevent access. Without giving it a second thought, Shannon parked in a driveway.
She had lived in Paris for two years. The plan had been to travel the world after college, but she’d ended up here. Her intention to carry on studying journalism had also fallen by the wayside when she landed the job as camerawoman for Turner, which took up way too much of her time. Turner was an arrogant scumbag who thought he was Bob Woodward – despite the fact she was a better researcher, found better stories and had a better grasp of how to tell them, he refused to let her in front of the camera – but on the plus side she’d been around a lot and had learned loads. In her meagre free time, she made her own features and put them up on the web.
They hurried to the blockade on foot.
‘Press,’ Turner informed the police guard, flashing his credentials. ‘Step aside, please,’ was the policeman’s only response.
Shannon saw the headlights of several cars coming towards them.
Without slowing down, the cars drove past them through the small gap that had been cleared by the police officers. Shannon kept the camera on them, turned when they did, but couldn’t make out a thing behind the darkened windows.
‘Well?’ asked Turner.
‘I got the shot,’ Shannon answered. ‘Looking was your job. So who was it?’
‘No idea – too dark to see.’
Saint-Laurent-Nouan, France
‘For God’s sake!’ huffed Isabelle Marpeaux as her husband, Yves, pulled a thick jacket on over his warm sweater. ‘You work in a power plant, and here we sit, fifteen kilometres away, without electricity.’
Covered in layers of sweaters and jackets, she looked even more unshapely than usual, sitting there in the candlelight.
‘And what am I supposed to do, huh?’ he demanded.
‘It’s the same thing with the kids,’ she repeated for the umpteenth time.
She had managed to track down their son on his mobile phone an hour and a half after the power had gone out, their daughter a few minutes after that. Their son lived with his family near Orléans, their daughter in Paris. ‘I’ve been trying for ever to get through,’ she had explained, ‘but the mobile phone network …’
Marpeaux hadn’t been able to tell the children anything, except that they too were without power.
‘You can imagine how your mother is complaining.’
He closed the door behind him and left his wife there in the cold, dark house. After all the hours of nagging he’d endured, it was a relief to be getting away. Outside, his breath was a white cloud rising into a sky that was free of stars.
The Renault started without a problem. On the way, Marpeaux surfed the radio for the latest news. Many stations were silent, one or two were playing music. In the end he gave up. Looking out at the dark winter landscape of bare fields and leafless trees, it was hard to believe that he was driving through one of France’s most popular holiday destinations. When spring came, millions of tourists would flood into the region, shopping for wine and souvenirs, and hoping to catch a whiff of savoir-vivre as they ventured into the heart of France on the trail of bygone generations of aristocrats who’d inhabited the chateaux in the hills along the Loire. Marpeaux had come to the region twenty-five years ago, not for its beauty, but for a well-paid job as an engineer at the Saint-Laurent nuclear power plant.
After twenty minutes, the village of Saint-Laurent-Nouan, uncommonly dark that night, with the streetlights off and no lights on in the windows, appeared silhouetted against the sky. Behind it, lit up as if in mockery, rose the cooling to
wers of the reactor. As always, it reminded him of a giant steam-engine house, the kind they’d built in the early nineteenth century. The fundamental concept underlying the technology remained pretty much the same, as did the riverside location to allow for drawing water from the Loire; the main difference being that instead of burning wood to power the generators they relied on fissionable uranium or plutonium.
Marpeaux passed the security checkpoint at the entrance and parked the car in his usual spot. France received 80 per cent of its energy from nuclear power plants. If the news reports of the past few hours were correct and the grid had almost completely collapsed, then most of the reactors would have been shut down, thought Marpeaux. The automated mechanisms would sink the controlling rods between the fuel rods in order to bring the nuclear chain reaction to a halt – or at least, as much of a halt as possible. The reactor would continue to produce heat and would therefore need to be cooled to prevent a meltdown. Normally the cooling systems drew their energy from the grid; in the event of an outage, the emergency systems sprang into action. The facility in Saint-Laurent possessed three of these per block, each independent from the others, all fed by diesel engines, with sufficient fuel for seven days.
As he opened the door to the control booth he was greeted by a cacophony of alarms. A twenty-year veteran in the job, Marpeaux didn’t bat an eyelid. Inside, a dozen of his colleagues were calmly going about their work, monitoring screens and gauges, making adjustments. Even the less experienced members of the team had been well drilled in dealing with emergencies; during their training they’d have been through simulations of every conceivable emergency scenario.
The duty shift leader came across to greet him. ‘One of the diesels in Block 2 broke down, right at the outset.’
‘The others are running?’
‘Without any problems.’
‘Do you suppose it had anything to do with the test?’ Marpeaux asked. Three days ago they had checked over the emergency power systems and their readings had shown that one of the diesels was defective. When the engineers had gone down to examine it, they could find no problem; it appeared to be working perfectly. At the time, they’d put it down to a malfunction of the instruments used to perform the test.