Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late

by Marc Elsberg

  ‘We have assumed the worst possible case scenario,’ Dienhof began. ‘Namely that our products could in fact be to blame for the problems experienced by the power plants. These products are based on basic modules, some of which we have developed ourselves, but also on standard modules – protocols, basically, which today are used regularly, for example on the Internet.’ Dienhof accompanied his presentation with gestures, pointing at the drawings on the flip chart. ‘On this basis, however, we develop custom-built solutions for every customer. This means, logically speaking, that for an error or a deliberate manipulation affecting so many power plants, we must first look in one of the basic modules.’

  ‘Could be somewhere else, though, too,’ one of Hartlandt’s men interrupted.

  ‘In theory, yes, but in practice, unlikely. So what we must ask ourselves is, who develops them, or, who among us has write access to the basic module? This was the first group that came under focus for us.’

  ‘Write access?’ Hartlandt interrupted him. ‘Does that mean that only these people can alter the basic module?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Dienhof affirmed. ‘Nowadays it isn’t the case that the power plants get the system from us and then never hear from us again. These products are hugely complex and are constantly being improved. So companies are always receiving updates to their software. Here, too, we naturally have a particularly interesting group of employees, namely those who have direct access to the producers’ systems already in operation. It goes without saying that both these employees and the update procedure itself are subject to the most rigorous security standards. A general security standard within our company is the strict separation of staff in different units such as development, quality inspection and customer service. A software developer isn’t permitted to be one of the inspectors, or one of those who end up implementing it on behalf of the customers. In order to get a bug through to the customers, someone would have to write it so ingeniously that the inspectors and their instruments wouldn’t spot it … or we have an error in the authorization system for the source code archive.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Hartlandt.

  ‘Only certain individuals are permitted to alter the source code. Each of these changes must be checked and signed off by others.’

  ‘But if you had an error in this system …’

  ‘… then a developer could smuggle a program code past the inspectors. I consider that to be out of the question, however.’

  A lot of ifs and buts, thought Hartlandt. Clearly Mr Dienhof could not entertain the thought that the responsibility for this mess could rest with his company.

  ‘It’s a good start,’ Hartlandt said encouragingly. ‘But what if it wasn’t just one person operating alone?’

  ‘No, I think we’re looking for an individual, one who can alter the routines that are used by all programs. After our research into the access administration of the source code archives, we were only able to determine three people who fit that bill. The first is Hermann Dragenau, our chief architect. Alongside his program design activities, he can also make adjustments within the standard libraries.’

  Hartlandt recalled the name from his search for absent employees. ‘He’s on vacation in Bali,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the information we have, too. The second is Bernd Wallis. He is skiing in Switzerland; we haven’t been able to reach him either. The third is Alfred Tornau. He was on the list of people who couldn’t make it to work since the outages. You didn’t find him at home, however, and he couldn’t be located anywhere else, if I understand correctly.’

  ‘We’re still searching for him and a few others,’ answered Hartlandt. ‘Let me see if I have this straight: we have three people who are under suspicion; one is in Bali, the other’s in Switzerland and the third has disappeared. Well, that’s great news.’

  The Hague, Netherlands

  Bollard stuck another pin into the map of Europe. After the Germans had called that morning he had passed the information along to all the liaison officers present to make further inquiries in their home countries. By midday reports had come in from Spain, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Poland. In Spain, a case of arson had been reported at a substation, along with two blown towers; in France, four towers had fallen; and two each in the Netherlands, Italy and Poland. Still, each country stressed that the information was preliminary and possibly incomplete, as they had only skeletal teams to investigate. For every sabotaged facility he stuck a pin in the board.

  ‘New information just in from Germany,’ said Bollard. ‘The ruling of arson in Lübeck was rescinded, and the transmission towers in the north were also downed by natural causes, apparently. That casts doubt on Berlin’s theory that the saboteur was following an east–west route. At the same time, we have another possible arson in southern Bavaria and a downed tower in eastern Saxony-Anhalt.’

  ‘Don’t we have to assume that someone is driving across Europe, disabling substations and transmission towers?’ queried the Dutch officer.

  ‘That would take a lot of troops,’ said Bollard.

  The ringing of a radio telephone interrupted their deliberations. When Bollard picked up, it was Hartlandt on the other end of the line. ‘I’ve been trying to get through to you for an hour.’

  At first Bollard couldn’t believe Hartlandt’s account. The Italian had been shot while attempting to escape and was now lying in a hospital in Düsseldorf. Hartlandt related how Manzano had stubbornly insisted that he had not been responsible for the incriminating emails from his computer. Bollard ended the call and jumped nervously to his feet.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said to his colleagues.

  The IT department was two floors down. Many of the offices here were empty too, he noted.

  The acting director, an affable Belgian who’d been on secondment to Europol for years, was in his office with one of his team, analysing data on the four monitors that stood on his desk.

  ‘Can you spare two minutes?’ asked Bollard.

  The Belgian nodded and motioned for him to come in.

  ‘I’d prefer to discuss this in the hall,’ said Bollard, gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb. The Belgian shot him a hostile look, but Bollard had planted himself outside the door and made it clear that he would wait there as long as it took for the other man to follow.

  ‘What’s this about?’ demanded the Belgian.

  Bollard closed the door behind him and ushered him along the hall where they couldn’t be heard, before telling him about Manzano, the emails and the Italian’s accusations.

  ‘Bullshit!’ the Belgian exclaimed.

  ‘These saboteurs have crippled the power grids of two of the biggest economies in the world. How can you be so sure they haven’t found their way in here too?’

  ‘Because our system employs state-of-the-art security!’

  ‘So did the others, supposedly. Listen, we both know that there’s no such thing as an absolutely secure network. And I am also aware that there have been successful attempts to infiltrate our networks—’

  ‘But only in peripheral sectors!’

  ‘And if it turns out you’re wrong and they have breached our security – would you rather be the one who discovered it or the man who buried his head in the sand while someone observed and manipulated us via our own system?’ Bollard locked eyes with the Belgian, gave him enough time to consider, but not enough for an answer. ‘If that is what’s happening,’ he continued, ‘would they notice once you start looking for signs of a breach?’

  ‘Depends how we go about it,’ groused the Belgian. ‘But I’ve nowhere near the number of people for what you’re suggesting. Half my team have stopped showing up. The rest are near collapse.’

  ‘As are we all. And now we’ve got our backs up against the wall.’

  Düsseldorf, Germany

  Manzano woke from the burning pain in his thigh. He had no clue how long he had slept; for a long moment he didn’t even know where the hell he was. But th
e pain quickly brought the events flooding back into his mind.

  Pohlen was still sitting at the foot of his bed.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘How long did I sleep?’

  ‘Over two hours. It’s seven o’clock.’

  ‘The doctor never came back?’

  ‘No.’

  Manzano remembered why he was in Düsseldorf in the first place. He couldn’t let these policemen get the better of him!

  ‘I have to go to the toilet.’

  ‘Can you walk?’

  Manzano tried to lift his legs off the bed. His right thigh protested bitterly. He propped himself up, determined to stand. He declined Pohlen’s helping hand.

  The dark hallway was in chaos. Beds were still being pushed towards the exit. People were shouting in confusion; whimpers, moans and cries of pain punctuated the din. Manzano could not spot a single hospital uniform.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘They’re evacuating the hospital,’ said Pohlen.

  By the time they made it to the toilets, Manzano noticed that his leg was hurting less. He decided to continue limping conspicuously. It might come in handy if Pohlen thought he was incapable of walking. When he’d finished using the toilet, Manzano suggested, ‘Let’s go to the emergency ward and look for the doctor.’

  Manzano limped along. Under an abandoned bed he found crutches that had been tossed aside.

  ‘I could use those,’ he said to Pohlen.

  The BKA man bent down, handed them to Manzano.

  Word of the evacuation had apparently got around. The waiting room of the emergency ward was deserted, as was the room where he had been treated.

  ‘You’re not going to find him,’ said Pohlen. ‘But you seem to be doing better anyway.’

  ‘What next?’

  ‘We wait for the car that Hartlandt’s sending for us. Then you’re going to jail.’

  Under no circumstances was Manzano planning on ending up in a German jail. ‘I think there are some painkillers under there,’ he pointed to the lowest shelf of a tall storage unit. ‘Could you grab them for me?’

  Pohlen bent down. ‘Where?’

  Manzano hooked the handles of the crutches around the two supporting poles of the metal unit and yanked hard. The whole thing came crashing down on Pohlen, burying him. Manzano pulled the crutches free, shut the door smartly behind him and crossed the waiting room as nonchalantly as possible. Behind him, he could hear Pohlen shouting and cursing and trying to extricate himself. Even with the crutches, every step sent an excruciating jolt of pain from his thigh to his brain, interfering with his efforts to work out where he needed to go.

  But when he made it to the hallway, where the people continued to push towards the exit, he had an idea.

  From her hiding place, a recess behind a door, Shannon watched as Manzano stepped out of the emergency ward, looked nervously around, limped down the corridor against the flow of fleeing patients and finally disappeared down a side passageway. She was about to run after him when his guard appeared, running from the emergency ward. Shannon held her breath as the policeman hesitated for a moment to scan the corridor, then pushed his way through the mass of people towards the exit. Only when he was out of sight did she abandon her hiding place to follow Manzano. She knocked into people, who pushed and shoved her out of their way, until finally she reached the end of the wall where Manzano had vanished around a corner.

  The Italian was gone.

  It was dark in the room. Manzano could walk over to the window with no danger of being seen, even from outside. He gazed down at the open space in front of the hospital: people were running this way and that, illuminated by the flashing blue lights of the ambulances. With no lifts in operation, getting to the sixth floor had been a daunting prospect, but once he’d figured out how to climb stairs on crutches, he had managed it in a matter of minutes. It seemed his plan was working. Despite the poor lighting, he spotted the gangly policeman looking for him. Then he saw a second man making his way through the crowd, his gait totally different from everyone else’s. Hartlandt. To ease the stabbing pain in his leg, he pulled a plastic chair over to the window and sat down. Now he could keep vigil on the street. He hoped he could still sense danger in the darkness. Soon, if the doctor had been right, the remaining lights in the building would go out. Then he would be completely alone.

  Shannon searched one room after the other, but gave up before she’d even finished the ground floor. The building was too big. She would never find the guy here. Maybe he’d slipped out of the hospital in all the confusion. For a while she stood and watched the mass exodus, then she gave up and stepped into the throng, letting herself be carried out of the building. Once she was clear, she looked back one last time, hesitated. Then she ran to the side street where she had parked the Porsche in a no-parking zone.

  ‘Help!’

  Manzano didn’t know how long he had been sitting at the window. The area in front of the hospital was almost empty. Now the only light came from the half-moon. Had he been imagining things?

  ‘Help!’ The voice was very faint, as if it came from far away. Slowly Manzano felt his way down the dark hallway, using his crutches to check there were no obstacles in his path. He listened. Maybe his mind had been playing tricks. Then he heard another sound. At the end of the corridor, a weak shaft of light filtered through the gap below a door. Limping clumsily towards it, he passed several open doors. From one of them came the stink of decay and faeces. After a pause, he hobbled into the room and in the darkness came close to falling over a bed. He bent over to peer at the face resting on the pillow. It belonged to an old person, Manzano couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. Bones covered by paper-thin skin, eyes closed, open mouth. No movement.

  Where are the staff? he asked himself. Maybe over where the light was coming from?

  Cautiously, he left the room and made his way towards the light.

  The door was ajar. He could make out voices. His German wasn’t perfect, but he could pick out a few scraps of conversation.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ pleaded a man’s voice.

  ‘We have to,’ answered a woman.

  Someone was sobbing.

  ‘I didn’t become a nurse to do something like this,’ said the man.

  ‘Nor I a doctor,’ the woman responded. ‘But they’re going to die in the next few hours or days, even with optimal care. None of them will survive being moved, let alone the cold and lack of facilities at the shelter. To leave them here means subjecting them to unnecessary suffering. They’ll starve, go thirsty and freeze to death, slowly, lying in their own excrement. Is that what you want?’

  The man was crying now.

  ‘Besides, how are we supposed to get them downstairs with no lifts working? Do you think you can carry a five-hundred-pound patient down the stairs?’

  A shudder ran through Manzano’s body as it dawned on him what was going on.

  ‘Don’t think for a moment that this is something I want to do,’ the doctor continued. Manzano heard the quiver in her voice.

  The nurse’s response was to sob louder.

  ‘None of the patients is conscious,’ said the doctor. ‘They won’t feel a thing.’

  Who was it calling for help, then, Manzano asked himself. Had the two of them not heard? He broke into a sweat.

  ‘I’m going now,’ the doctor declared, her voice thick. Manzano moved away from the wall and hurried as best he could into the room directly across the hallway from the one where the elderly patient lay. He didn’t dare close the door, for fear of arousing suspicion. As he pressed himself against the wall next to the door frame, footsteps sounded in the hallway.

  ‘Wait!’ said the nurse.

  ‘Please,’ whispered the doctor, ‘I have to—’

  ‘You shouldn’t have to go through this alone,’ the nurse cut her off, his voice firmer now. ‘And these poor people shouldn’t have to either.’

  Manzano heard the
soft squeaking of their rubber soles as they went into the room across the hall. Cautiously he peered around the corner. They were carrying torches, so he could see them as they approached the bed. The doctor, a tall woman with shoulder-length hair, placed her torch on the bed so that the light was cast on to the wall. The nurse, a thin young man, placed himself at the side of the bed, took the patient’s frail hand and began stroking it. As he did so, the doctor took out a syringe. She removed the tube from the IV bag, stuck the needle of the syringe into it and injected the medicine. Then she reconnected the tube to the bag. The nurse continued to stroke the patient’s hand. The doctor bent over the patient and gently caressed her face, over and over. As she did so, she whispered something that Manzano was too far away to hear. He stood in the doorway, transfixed, as if the blood had frozen in his veins.

  The doctor stood up and thanked the nurse, who nodded wordlessly, not letting go of the dead woman’s hand.

  She picked up her torch, and for a moment the beam of light passed right over Manzano’s face.

  Manzano jumped back, hoping they hadn’t seen him. Across the hall he heard a whisper, then steps in his direction.

  Harsh light blinded him, he closed his eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ the nurse’s voice was close to cracking. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Manzano opened his eyes, held his hand in front of his face and stammered, in English, ‘The light. Please.’

  ‘You speak English?’ demanded the doctor. ‘What are you doing here? Where are you from?’

  ‘Italy,’ he answered. They had guessed he understood German fairly well and had listened in on their conversation.

  The doctor fixed Manzano with a look.

  ‘You saw us, didn’t you?’

  Manzano nodded. ‘I think you’re doing the right thing,’ he whispered in English.