by Marc Elsberg
With long strides he crossed the car park, zipping up his fly with fevered fingers. Behind him he heard the two of them calling out.
‘Stop! Stay where you are!’
Not a chance. Manzano was a practised runner. Whether he could outrun trained policemen remained to be seen. The blood pounded so violently in his ears that he barely heard the shouts. He had to get off the street. One of them was sure to try to head him off in the car. His feet barely seemed to touch the ground. He scoured the street for a place to turn off.
Another yell that he didn’t catch. He dashed down a side street, knowing in an instant that this was a mistake. He had to take the next street. Behind him the racing footfalls of his pursuers. He couldn’t make out if it was one or two. By now his breath was trying to drown out his heartbeat. He felt the sweat on his forehead. A car engine roared. Up ahead was a yard, surrounded by a fence taller than a man, with a hedgerow. A few steps more, he leapt as high as he could and just cleared the fence. Behind him: squealing brakes and cursing. Manzano ran towards the building, a large mansion. The windows were dark. He ran around the side, the yard in front of him was also surrounded by a hedge and a fence. With a mighty jump he managed to grab the top of the fence. He hauled himself up, swung his legs over and dropped neatly onto the pavement. Gasping for breath, he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this pace up much longer.
Another shout. So he hadn’t shaken them off then. On the contrary, the voice sounded very close. Manzano couldn’t catch the words. There was a sudden bang. He kept running along the side street. Up ahead another junction. Another bang. He felt a dull pain in his right thigh. He stumbled, kept running. He was slowing down. Suddenly he was slammed from behind and thrown to the ground. Before Manzano could defend himself his arms were painfully twisted behind him. He felt a blunt object in his back. Metal clicking, then he felt the cold handcuffs snap closed around his wrists.
‘You jerk,’ he heard the man panting for breath behind him. ‘I thought you had some sense.’
Manzano felt hands travelling down his legs.
‘Let’s see the damage.’
Only now did he become aware of the pain. His right thigh was burning, as if someone were holding a red-hot iron against it.
Berlin, Germany
‘There is not even the faintest sign,’ the NATO general conceded. Each of the conference room’s ten monitors was split in four, at least one face looked out from each screen. The heads of state of most EU countries, or their foreign ministers; six NATO generals, patched in from headquarters in Brussels; and the president of the United States. Behind them sat members of their various crisis teams.
‘But the extent of the attacks – surely only nation-states have the necessary resources at their disposal,’ said the general.
‘Who would be capable of such a thing?’ asked the US president.
‘According to our assessments, around three dozen nations have built up capacities for cyber attacks in the past few years. Many of these have now been hit: France, Great Britain, other European countries and the USA. In addition, allied nations such as Israel or Japan.’
‘So who is being considered?’
‘Our information tells us that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India and South Africa could be capable.’
‘I would consider India and South Africa allies,’ the British prime minister objected.
‘Initial diplomatic aid – to the USA as well – has come from many nations. The offers come from almost every state mentioned, with the exception of North Korea and Iran.’
‘For as long as we’re in the dark about what’s behind this, we must concentrate on the needs of the population,’ said the German chancellor.
‘The attack on the USA demands that we rethink the coordination of international aid. Aid personnel in the United States that were mobilized for Europe will now be deployed within the US itself,’ said the US president.
‘The question is, how do we handle the remaining offers of help?’ asked the Italian president. ‘Do we want to accept Chinese or Russian aid when we’re unsure of their culpability? Maybe we’re already at war with Russia or China and we just don’t know it? More saboteurs could be smuggled in alongside relief forces.’
Is he paranoid, Michelsen asked herself, am I too naive? Surely we have to take all the help we can get!
The defence minister, who also held the office of vice chancellor, pressed the button to mute the microphone so that the other participants in the video conference couldn’t hear what he had to say.
‘I have to agree with the Italian president,’ he said to the chancellor. ‘There is a certain risk present.’ He released the button. The chancellor raised an eyebrow, Michelsen could see him pondering the argument.
‘According to the information I’ve received,’ said the Swedish head of state, ‘the first aid flights out of Russia are scheduled for the day after tomorrow, Saturday. The first truck convoys and rail transports are also due to set out then. Planes bringing aid from the Chinese are expected as of Sunday. I recommend that, for the time being, we push ahead with the preparations. Should we gain any new intelligence by the time the transports actually begin, we’ll still be in a position to stop them.’
Thank God for common sense, thought Michelsen, stealing a look at the defence minister.
Düsseldorf, Germany
Three ambulances were parked outside the hospital. Two bulkily dressed figures were pushing a wheeled stretcher out of the building. On second glance, Manzano could see that a patient was lying under the sheet. A half-full IV pouch swung from the metal arm above his head. A young man dressed in white ran along behind and gestured excitedly with his hands. The two pushing the bed shook their heads and kept pushing their load in the direction of the street. Eventually the man in white gave up, made a rude hand gesture and hurried back into the hospital.
Hartlandt drove past the strange troupe and parked behind one of the ambulances.
‘Can you walk a few steps?’
Manzano shot him a furious look. It probably wouldn’t be too difficult but why should he cooperate with someone who considered him a terrorist and shot him in the leg?
‘No!’
Hartlandt disappeared through the hospital entrance without a word. His colleague watched Manzano’s every move. Manzano’s hands were bound behind his back, the pounding in his leg was extremely painful.
Hartlandt came back with a wheelchair. ‘Sit in this.’
Manzano obeyed reluctantly. Hartlandt pushed him into the building. His colleague didn’t budge from Manzano’s side.
They had barely passed through the entrance when the smell hit him. It was overwhelming. Even though it wasn’t much warmer here than it was outside, the place stank of decay and faeces, laced with traces of disinfectant.
In the reception area, beds with patients in them were being moved around by men and women who didn’t look like nurses. There was mass confusion, though Manzano thought he could detect a general move towards the exit.
Hartlandt pushed him down a hallway. Beds occupied by the sick and injured were lined up along the walls. Some were silent, others groaned or whimpered. There was a figure standing among them, more likely a visitor than a doctor. The temperature was still way below normal room temperature. Except for the white-clad man outside, Manzano still hadn’t seen any hospital staff.
Finally they reached the emergency ward. Every one of the chairs in the waiting area was occupied. Hartlandt took out his ID and showed it to the admitting nurse.
‘Gunshot wound,’ he announced. Manzano’s German wasn’t particularly good, but he could still follow the conversation. Two semesters as a student in Berlin, a year with a German girlfriend and years of trips – albeit not completely legal ones – inside the systems of German companies were paying off. ‘We need a doctor immediately.’
The nurse was unmoved.
‘You can see for yourself what’s going on here. I have to tell people we can�
��t treat them. The hospital should have been evacuated a long time ago. But do you think anybody is listening to me? Are you listening to me?’
‘Now you listen to me,’ Hartlandt insisted. ‘I need a doctor right now. Do I have to mention national security before you go get somebody?’
She scowled and disappeared.
There were at least fifty people in the waiting area. A woman was trying to calm her wailing little boy. An old man sitting on a chair was leaning against his wife, his face as white as chalk, his eyelids fluttering. She whispered something to him over and over, stroked his cheek. Another woman was lying in her chair, her head tilted back, her skin waxen, one arm raised to chest height, the end of it a stump of once-white gauze, drenched in blood, under which there had to be a hand. Manzano looked away. He stared at the wall instead.
‘What’s going on here? Who do you think you are?’
Behind Manzano the nurse had reappeared, with her a man in his mid-forties carrying the usual doctor’s implements in a coat that was no longer entirely white. There were dark bags beneath his eyes, his face hadn’t seen a razor in days.
‘An emergency,’ explained Hartlandt, ‘and a priority case.’
‘And tell me, please, why?’
Hartlandt held up his ID. ‘Because he might be one of the people responsible for the situation we’re all sitting in …’
Manzano thought he misheard. Was this crazy idiot turning him into a scapegoat in front of everybody here?
‘All the more reason not to treat him!’ snorted the doctor.
‘Hippocrates would’ve been proud of you,’ remarked Hartlandt. ‘But it might be that your patient here can also help us to solve the problem. First, however, I need him with a stable pulse and no blood poisoning or infection.’
The doctor grumbled under his breath, then he said to Hartlandt, ‘Come with me.’
He led the way to a small examination room and pointed at a table.
‘What is this?’ asked the doctor when he saw the handcuffs. ‘Take them off. I can’t treat him like this.’
Hartlandt undid the cuffs.
The doctor cut away the bandage Hartlandt had applied, then Manzano’s trouser leg. He explored the wound, was careful in touching it; still Manzano couldn’t help but cry out in pain.
‘No tragedy here,’ the doctor concluded. ‘There’s only one problem. We’re out of anaesthetic. Do you want to—’
‘Do it,’ Hartlandt interrupted him.
‘I’ll disinfect first,’ said the doctor, tipping a bottle of liquid onto a piece of gauze and dabbing at the wound. Manzano let out a howl.
‘This is a nightmare,’ said the doctor. ‘I feel like I’m in the Thirty Years’ War, giving the wounded a bottle of schnapps before sawing off their leg.’
Manzano closed his eyes and hoped that he would pass out. His body didn’t oblige.
‘Well?’ asked the doctor.
Manzano took a deep breath, answered in English. ‘Get it out.’
‘Sure thing. Grit your teeth. Or better still’ – he put a bandage in Manzano’s hand – ‘bite down on this.’
He poured disinfectant onto another piece of gauze and used it to wipe a set of forceps. ‘We don’t have any sterile instruments left,’ he explained with a shrug.
Someone stabbed a burning spear through Manzano’s thigh and rooted around in his flesh. Manzano heard an animal sound, pushing its way out of the depths, a drawn-out muffled howl. Only when he ran out of breath did he realize that it had come from him. His lungs gave out on him. He tried to sit up, but Hartlandt pressed down on his shoulders, his colleague leaned on his knees, together they held him to the table.
From the corners of his teared-up eyes, Manzano saw the doctor hold the forceps up to his face. Something bloody was caught between the tips.
‘Well now, we’ve got it.’
He tossed the bullet into a waste bin.
‘Now I’ve got to sew it up. That won’t hurt as much.’
What could possibly hurt now? thought Manzano, breaking into a fresh sweat. I should really take a deep breath, he remembered, then everything went dark.
Paris, France
Laplante pointed the camera at James Turner, who had positioned himself in front of an industrial building. And all the while, Laplante cursed Shannon for clearing off and leaving him with this jerk. Behind Turner, the occasional lone figure or small group of people emerged from the darkness of a giant doorway, carrying large packages.
‘I’m standing in front of the main storage facility of a large food company south of Paris. Since the moment the doors were forced open earlier tonight, people have been taking whatever they can find inside.’
Turner approached a group of looters and stood in their way. They carried plastic bags brimming with something that Laplante, as cameraman, couldn’t identify.
‘What have you got there?’ asked Turner.
‘None of your goddamn business,’ answered one of the men, pushing Turner out of the way.
The journalist steadied himself, kept his composure.
‘As you can see, people are already on edge. On the sixth day of the power outage, not counting the brief and only partial restoration on day two, the people of Paris have been doing without just about everything. The news that a radioactive cloud from Saint-Laurent could reach the city has made the mood much worse. Which brings us to our main topic.’
Turner pulled the device, which he had been carrying with him since their brief trip down to Saint-Laurent, out of the belt of his coat.
‘Now for what’s become our obligatory measurement report,’ he announced solemnly. ‘With this dosimeter I can determine the current radiation level.’
He raised the device into the air.
‘What we have here is a small digital instrument, not the clicking things you know from the movies. They are, however, calibrated so that, upon detecting critical or dangerous dosages, they emit an alarm …’
A loud beeping interrupted Turner’s performance. Confused, he looked up at the little box above his head before it dawned on him that, in order to read it, he had to bring it back down to eye level.
Laplante zoomed in on his face, which showed first bewilderment, then disbelief and finally horror.
He raised the device up in the air again, waved it to one side, then the other, took a few steps forward. Laplante followed his movements. In the background more looters crept past.
Turner held the little box in front of the lens. ‘Zero point two microsieverts per hour!’ he proclaimed. ‘That’s double what is classified as an acceptable dose! The cloud has reached Paris!’
Düsseldorf, Germany
‘Wake up, we’re done.’
Manzano needed a moment to get his bearings. He lay on his back, felt a stabbing pain in his thigh. Three faces were peering down at him. Then he remembered.
‘Not a bad way to do it,’ said the unshaven doctor. ‘This way you didn’t feel me stitch up the wound.’
‘How … how long was I …?’
‘Two minutes. Now you stay here for a few more hours for observation. Then everybody must leave the building, no matter what.’
‘Why?’ asked Hartlandt.
The doctor took Manzano by the arm and pulled him up to sitting. ‘The backup power supply has been on reserve since the day before yesterday,’ he explained. With Hartlandt’s help, he hoisted Manzano back into the wheelchair. ‘We won’t be getting any more fuel,’ he continued as they left the examination room, ‘since there’s not enough available for all the hospitals in Düsseldorf. Now we have to look at how we’re going to get rid of our patients. Tonight the lights are going out here, literally.’
‘Shouldn’t we go and find somewhere else right away?’
‘He needs to rest a few hours. Besides, you won’t find any room in the few hospitals that are still open. They need the beds and staff for more severe cases.’
‘Hey, I got shot,’ Manzano said, his voice weak.
/> ‘That was nothing. Believe me, you don’t want to know what kinds of operations I’ve had to carry out without anaesthesia in the past few hours. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any pain medication,’ said the doctor. ‘Used it up a long time ago. You’re going to feel that wound for the next couple of days.’ He put two packets in Manzano’s hand. ‘Here, now at least you’ve got an antibiotic. In case you get an infection. Maybe it’ll help. Best thing would be for you to sleep a little.’
Without another word he turned and walked away.
‘All right then,’ Hartlandt said to his colleague, ‘find the gentleman a bed. I could use one myself. But I’m headed back to Talaefer. I’ll return later or send a car.’
Then he pushed his way down the corridor and outside.
Manzano watched until he was gone.
‘What’s your name, anyway?’ Manzano asked his guard. ‘Seeing as how we’ve got to spend the next few hours together …’
‘Helmut Pohlen,’ the man answered.
‘All right then, Helmut Pohlen, let’s find me a bed.’
Shannon waited a few minutes. When Manzano and his guard didn’t come back out of the room, she crept closer to the door. Then she knocked quietly and opened it without waiting to be invited. The room was so tiny that Manzano’s bed completely filled it.
The Italian seemed to be sleeping. His guard jumped when he saw Shannon peering inside. But she had already seen what she was looking for: there was neither a window nor another exit in here.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, and closed the door again.
She walked stealthily down the hall, looking for a secret spot from which to watch the exit to Manzano’s sick quarters.
What the hell had the Italian done to make them shoot him?
Ratingen, Germany
Dienhof stood in front of a flip chart on which diagrams had been drawn. Pictograms of buildings that were connected to one another by lines. Aside from him and Hartlandt, only Wickley, Hartlandt’s colleagues, another Talaefer executive under whose purview matters of security fell, the chief security officer and the company’s head of human resources were present.