by Marc Elsberg
‘And now can you translate it so that we also know what’s going according to plan?’
‘To do that, we’d have to read more of the thread. Maybe then we’ll find out more.’
He scrolled down, hundreds of lines appeared.
‘Wow, they’ve been talking for a long time. Ah, it looks like they start here.’
Manzano scrolled up again.
‘That’s interesting. There’s a date at the beginning of every new discussion. For the first one it was Monday the third …’
‘But the third wasn’t a Monday.’
‘Right. For the last conversation, it’s Sunday the tenth.’
‘Today is Sunday,’ said Shannon.
‘But again, not the tenth,’ Sophia added.
‘Wait, wait!’ cried Manzano. ‘Let me do the maths here!’
He counted silently.
‘The power went out on Friday of last week. From then up to today that’s …’
‘Ten days,’ Shannon finished his thought.
‘The calendar for this chat begins on day zero of the blackout.’
‘Then this thread would be from this morning.’
‘If our guess is right.’
‘We still don’t know what it is they’re talking about.’
Manzano closed the thread, returned to the original list.
‘All manner of discussions are being carried out here.’
‘Apropos discussions,’ said a deep voice from the door. ‘The police would very much like to speak with you.’
Sophia jumped. In the door stood Nagy, leader of the MIC; behind him three meatheads in dark security guard uniforms and the curious colleague from earlier. Before Sophia could say a word, they had barged into the room. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Manzano frantically type something on the keyboard and then close the laptop. The next moment one of the uniformed men grabbed him, another reached for the American journalist. They pulled their arms behind their backs with such force that Shannon let out a yell.
‘What are these two doing here?’ Nagy asked in an icy voice. ‘They are not employees in our IT department.’
‘No!’ cried Manzano. ‘But I’ve just—’
The security man behind Manzano’s back pulled upwards on the Italian’s arm and he went quiet, his face twisted in pain.
Sophia was speechless. When Manzano had turned up in front of her that afternoon she had been happy to see him again, despite his ragged appearance; happier than she had admitted to herself in the moment. ‘This man was the first to lead Europol and every one of us to the true cause of the blackout,’ she said, and noticed that as she spoke her voice was shaky. This uncertainty – it wasn’t like her. Sophia tried to make her voice more firm. ‘A few minutes ago he discovered a communications portal used by the attackers.’
Even as she was saying the words the blood flooded back into her face at the thought that Manzano might have known about this website the whole time. Had he put on a show for her?
Nagy gave the two security guards a sign. The two of them led Manzano and Shannon out.
‘Listen, Mr Nagy,’ said Sophia. ‘This is, I believe it’s really, very …’
Nagy nodded at the remaining security man.
‘… important.’ Sophia went quiet as the man grabbed her roughly by the arm.
‘Tell it to the police,’ said Nagy.
EC 155, Bavaria, Germany
The ground troops had radioed with info on the route. By the time the EC 155 had reached the stretch of road, it was getting dark. They were flying high enough that the targets wouldn’t be able to hear the helicopter. Through the night-vision goggles mounted on his helmet, Hartlandt searched the country road for the vehicle, the road winding its way below them like a narrow footpath. He was now wearing his bulletproof vest.
‘I have them,’ announced the co-pilot. ‘One o’clock, approximately two hundred metres.’
‘Drop altitude,’ ordered the commander.
Now everything had to play out with the greatest precision. The pilots had to bring their aircraft to street level within a matter of seconds, so that the sound of their motors wouldn’t give their quarry too much advanced warning.
Hartlandt saw the road growing quickly larger and sighted the other helicopter as well as it executed the same manoeuvre. He flipped up the night-vision goggles.
When they were still about sixty metres above the van, the pilots turned on the spotlights. The vehicle was immediately bathed in a dazzling circle of light.
Hartlandt watched it slow down abruptly while the helicopters continued to dive. His stomach dropped for a second when the pilot finally levelled out a few metres above the ground and behind the vehicle. The other helicopter had blocked the road in front, its light shining directly into the van. The brake lights flashed red, then the vehicle started to reverse, making such an expert turn that it swung a full one hundred and eighty degrees and was now speeding right towards them.
Their pilot stood his ground and almost set the runners down on the road. The van braked so sharply that the front end pitched downward, then the doors were flung open. In the glaring light of the van’s headlights the GSG 9 men jumped out of the helicopter.
Hartlandt felt the hard tarmac under his boots.
Muzzle flashes flared up next to the van. He dived off the road and crawled out of the range of the headlights.
‘Don’t shoot!’ he shouted. ‘Cease fire.’
Through the speaker in his helmet he heard the short, sharp orders of the commander.
The lights of the van had been shot up by then, the helicopters’ spotlights bathed the bullet-riddled vehicle in glaring light. A body lay motionless next to the passenger door. Members of the team from the other helicopter were kneeling at the rear of the van, taking cover. One of them crawled over to the man lying flat out on the ground, kicked his gun to one side, quickly felt his body for more weapons; others secured the vehicle from the side.
Then came the signal from the other side of the van. ‘Secure.’
Hartlandt jumped up and ran to the van.
‘One target dead,’ announced a voice in Hartlandt’s helmet.
The man on the road looked dead all right. His torso and his head had been hit by several bullets, only about half of his face was still recognizable. Furious, Hartlandt went around the front of the van to the other side. The officers did not have a choice, the men in the van had begun exchanging fire. To neutralize the targets without killing them was impossible. Next to the front left tyre lay a second man with a dark complexion, he too was dead. The third had been fired on in a field a few metres away. Next to him kneeled two police officers, and a third rushed over with first aid. Like his comrades, the man had been hit several times. Hartlandt would have described his facial features as typically Mediterranean, but at that moment he could barely tell the colour of his close-cropped hair.
Part of the attack squad had carefully opened the back doors. Inside they found dozens of canisters and boxes. Hartlandt spotted lighter fluid and explosives. Inside a bulky box were stored food and sleeping bags. To judge from the amount of food they were carrying, they must have been close to the end of their trip or near a base with supplies.
A second team was going through the driver’s cabin. Two laptops – they would have to take a close look at them. A well-worn road map of central Europe was the first interesting find. The saboteurs’ route was indicated on it in purple marker. The route had two more legs through Germany, then led across Austria towards Hungary and further on to Croatia, where the map ended. There were three kinds of symbols to be found along the line. Hartlandt had quickly deciphered them.
‘These are substations,’ he explained, pointing at small squares, the northernmost of which was in Denmark, the next at the first German target, Lübeck. ‘They set these on fire. The triangles indicate the transmission towers. These ones between Bremen and Cloppenburg, for example, have been blown up already. As for the places that are marked
with a circle, we don’t have any reports of sabotage for them. I’m guessing that’s where they stashed their food and munitions.’
‘So far we haven’t found any phones or other communication devices,’ said one of the men.
‘They don’t need any,’ said Hartlandt. ‘As soon as they’d set their route, they could act independently. Shield the rest of the troops.’
‘Here’s a second map,’ said one of the men, his face covered up. He unfolded a less ragged road map – the purple line led all the way to Greece.
Out of the corner of his eye Hartlandt watched the officers struggling to save the life of one of the terrorists. He hoped to God they didn’t lose him.
Brussels, Belgium
The women were packed into a small bus in front of the police station, the men into a larger one with bars on the windows. Four armed police officers escorted them. They had to stick their legs into leg irons attached to bars under the seats. The police checked them over and clamped them shut.
Like a hardened criminal, thought Manzano. He stared through the window bars at the dark façades of buildings passing in the darkness. The only vehicles he could see were the military’s armed cars; and only a couple of soldiers standing around in the street. They carried torches or lanterns, or had lights on their helmets. Like in a disaster movie, he thought.
Near Nuremberg, Germany
Standing in the middle of a field illuminated by the helicopter’s spotlight was a shack. It measured maybe seven square metres, guessed Hartlandt. The pilot set the helicopter down a few metres away. The runners had barely touched the ground when Hartlandt and the GSG 9 special unit men jumped out into the cold. They sprinted towards the shack, ducking under the beating rotors.
The helicopter’s engine grew quieter. When the men got closer to the shack, they began to tread cautiously. They pushed a cable with a tiny camera and a light mounted on it through the gap under the door. On the monitor that displayed images from the camera, Hartlandt saw an empty interior, a floor strewn with straw. The officer with the remote turned the camera towards the inside of the door and inspected it.
‘Secure,’ he confirmed.
Two men broke the door down with a battering ram. Their bright torches lit up only an empty interior. They pushed the layer of straw aside with their feet. One of the policemen stamped down harder.
‘There’s something under here.’
It was a door, built into the floor.
The officer let down the small mobile eye. Hartlandt spotted white plastic packets to the left, canisters on the right. In between sat three packs of tinned goods wrapped in clear tape.
The cameraman gave the OK to break the door open. Crouching low, two of the men carefully sliced through the white plastic, inspected the contents.
‘Plastic explosive,’ said one. ‘Unmarked. An analysis will show what it is exactly.’
In the canisters they found diesel.
‘Explosives, fuel, food,’ the commander summed up. ‘Nothing else here.’
‘No phone or radio,’ said Hartlandt.
‘No. Looks like this would have been their next stop. The trail ends here for now.’
Brussels, Belgium
The bus stopped in front of a barely lit building. Still has power, thought Manzano. An imposing iron gate opened, the bus drove into a large courtyard. The smaller bus with the women followed. The courtyard was bordered by four four-storey outbuildings, the façades bathed in a gloomy yellow light from lamps set at regular intervals. The women’s bus turned off to the left, the men’s bus drove straight on, through a large gate. Behind it a cordon of armed police officers awaited them. The escort officers opened the leg irons, shouted at the prisoners; the men stood up, Manzano followed. They left the bus and were led down a long passageway. At the end of it more officers were waiting in front of a tall double door. It opened on to a giant, gloomy hall, a beastly stench pressing out from it. They were driven forward, and the doors slammed shut behind them with a resounding clang.
Four fluorescent lights shone from the ceiling, flickering. Manzano could dimly make out crowded rows of metal bunkbeds. The room was teeming with people. Hundreds of us, thought Manzano grimly.
The prison guards had not issued instructions or assigned any spots. Some of the men sitting on the floor closest to the beds were murmuring to the newcomers in threatening tones.
Manzano couldn’t understand. But from their body language, he concluded it would be best not to approach.
‘No beds left,’ whispered a young man, in English.
Someone in their group seemed to know what was going on; the young man translated the essentials for Manzano.
‘Several Brussels jails were evacuated into this one, which is to say they were all thrown together in here. The cells are full to bursting. This is actually the gymnasium,’ he said. ‘There are all kinds of prisoners in here. Pickpockets, white-collar criminals, serial killers … We should act calm and do as we’re told.’
Manzano looked around for a space for himself.
Day 10 – Monday
Brussels, Belgium
Noise and shouting. Manzano opened his eyes. There was an overwhelming smell that was not the stench he recognized.
Fire.
Panicked, he struggled to stand up between the bunkbeds and immediately saw the flames, blazing two metres high in the middle of the floor. Black smoke rose to the ceiling and collected there.
Prisoners were retreating to the edges of the hall or towards the door. A few were leaping hysterically around the fire, screaming, tossing mattresses into the flames – whether to extinguish or to feed the blaze, Manzano couldn’t tell.
The smoke grew thicker, slowly sank down from the ceiling.
The only windows were about six metres high, and too narrow to squeeze through.
More prisoners rushed towards the large doors, and towards smaller exits that Manzano saw only now. They cried for help, pounded against the doors with their fists, tried to ram them or force them open with the metal bed frames.
The smoke began to scratch his throat. The prisoners coughed, held towels to their mouths and noses.
Shots rang out.
Suddenly one of the big doors was flung open. Men shoved their way through. There were more shots, barely audible over the deafening yells.
Another door sprang open, and the men dashed towards it, despite steady shooting. The smoke grew thicker inside the hall. The flames, stoked by the airflow between the doors, leapt from bed to bed, blazing ever higher.
Some options, thought Manzano: suffocate, get burned alive or get shot. Outside, however, the shots seemed to be more scattered and to come from a greater distance. He crawled on all fours beneath the black cloud to the exit, leaving the last of the madmen behind him, dancing around the flames.
Dozens of wounded or dead lay in the doorway. Manzano passed two lifeless bodies in uniform. Had the inmates killed the officers and grabbed their weapons? In the midst of the crowd he made it to the entrance of the large courtyard. Smoke from the burning gym had seeped outside. Manzano felt it irritate the back of his throat and sting his eyes. He buried his face in the crook of his elbow. Kept on going. There was no place to hide out here in the courtyard. Bullets were still raining in from all sides. He staggered forward, convinced that at any moment he’d be hit by a bullet and it would all be over.
Berlin, Germany
‘I need an update on Philippsburg,’ ordered the chancellor.
‘We’re working on it,’ a woman from the ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety assured him. ‘The latest report, an hour ago, indicated that minute amounts of radioactive steam had escaped. Yesterday we began advising the population within a five-kilometre radius not to leave their homes or emergency shelters.’
‘Do the rest of the nuclear plants at least have the supplies they need?’ barked the chancellor. The woman didn’t answer. Her hands began to shake.
‘What?
’ the chancellor asked in an empty voice.
‘It would seem there’s been a severe incident at the Brokdorf power plant on the Elbe. More precise information is not yet known.’
‘More precise information is not yet known?’ the chancellor exploded. ‘Just what do these worthless plant operators know? They have no idea who breached their IT network, why their power plants don’t work, when they can get the power running again – nothing! I want to see the CEOs of the plant operators for Philippsburg and Brokdorf here in person or on the screen, immediately!’
‘I … I’ll take care of it,’ stammered the woman.
The chancellor closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I know there is nothing you can do about it. I hope that was everything?’
The woman bit her lip.
Again the chancellor closed his eyes.
‘Go ahead, out with it.’
‘The French plant at Fessenheim on the Rhein is also reporting a serious incident resulting from undefined difficulties with the backup cooling systems.’
On the map of Europe she pointed at a spot on the German border, near Stuttgart. ‘According to the IAEA, mildly radioactive steam was let off. There is no reason to evacuate, the plant operators say. Yet. The map would envision a zone of up to twenty-five kilometres affected. Under normal circumstances that would affect almost half a million people, including Freiburg.’
‘Half a million …’ groaned the chancellor.
‘And Temelín,’ the member of staff went on. ‘It may have come to a core meltdown there, like in Saint-Laurent. The Czech authorities have started their evacuation. But the power plant lies about eighty kilometres away from the nearest German border. Plus, at present, the prevailing winds are moving northwestward. Therefore radiation will likely be carried more towards Austria.’
‘Until the wind turns,’ said the chancellor.
Brussels, Belgium