by Marc Elsberg
The cell door sprang open with a loud clank. Sophia was the first to notice, as she was the only one not trying to get a glimpse out the window of the courtyard.
She grabbed Shannon.
‘They’re opening up!’ she cried and pulled the American out into the hallway. They were almost trampled by the others. They ran with the crowd to the stairwell, stopping only at the entrance to the courtyard. The shooting had stopped. Hundreds of men were flooding towards the exit from the men’s cell blocks. Smoke was rising, flames leapt out of the windows.
‘Shall we wait till they’re gone?’ asked Shannon. ‘Hundreds of men on a rampage, hardened criminals among them …’
‘No,’ replied Sophia. ‘In the chaos no one will notice us. Come on!’
They started running, Sophia prayed there would be no more shooting.
They reached the large gate without incident. It was open. The escapees were spreading out on to the street in all directions.
‘Where are we?’ panted Shannon, jogging alongside Sophia.
‘On the outskirts of town,’ answered Sophia.
‘And now?’
‘Let’s make sure we get home safely. The police won’t be so quick to look for us there. They’ve got bigger game to catch.’
The Hague, Netherlands
Hartlandt had a hard time hearing Bollard over the satellite phone. He had returned to Ratingen while the GSG 9 set about digging through more of the saboteurs’ storehouses.
‘We’ve identified the men,’ he said. ‘Mercenaries. A South African, a Russian and a Ukrainian. Turned up in the databanks of several intelligence agencies. One of them was recently in Iraq working for Blackwater, the other two had been there earlier.’
‘Have you questioned the survivor yet?’ asked Bollard.
‘No. He was hit by twelve bullets. Three of them in the brain. We won’t get a thing out of him.’
‘Did you come up with anything else?’
‘We found a map in the car showing the route they’d planned, the attack targets and the way stations. But there were no communication devices. Intelligence agencies are analysing the men’s histories, including their financial records. Personally, I would pay guys like that in cash, but you know what they say: “Follow the money”. With luck, it will lead us somewhere.’
Brussels, Belgium
Manzano limped through the streets as quickly as his leg allowed. In the distance he heard the sirens of police cars. During the first minutes of his escape, pure instinct had guided his actions. Now his senses were slowly returning. The first thing he needed was a place to hide, then he had to try to find an Internet connection where he could look more closely at the RESET site. He weighed up his options. He didn’t know a soul in the city, except for Sophia Angström. Had the women been able to break out? He hadn’t even thought about it till now.
He had to try to find them. He’d memorized Sophia’s address from the business card she’d given him. All he had to do now was to find someone who could tell him how to get there. And some form of transport, in case Sophia’s apartment was too far away. He rattled every bicycle that he could find chained to railings or street signs. After a few tries he found one whose owner had been careless enough to leave it unlocked.
The Hague, Netherlands
As she had done the previous days, Marie had waited in vain at the food distribution site for the lorry carrying supplies. In the end, even the price gougers and black-market traders had been forced to flee from the angry crowd. The speakers on the square had succeeded in inciting the mob to vent their anger at those responsible, namely the politicians. The masses had been set in motion as slowly and inexorably as a mudslide after a dam break. Feeling a confused mixture of fascination, anger and curiosity, Marie had let herself be swept along all the way to the Binnenhof, the seat of the Dutch parliament.
On the way through the city, more people had joined the procession. She estimated that thousands filled the square, chanting as they arrived. A few police officers tried to stop them but were simply shoved aside. The crowd was so large that the complex’s giant inner courtyard couldn’t contain them. They spilled out into surrounding streets, all the way to the seat of the second chamber on the opposite side. Marie had been a student when she attended her last demonstration, and that was only to provoke her parents. She felt uneasy among these loud, disgruntled people, and yet strangely secure within this large, warm, moving organism. Both worried and fearless, she could feel its energy pass into her. She didn’t go so far as to join in the screaming. Though she remained intent on keeping her distance, as the fury of the mob around her grew she began to feel something primitive within her responding to their cries …
Berlin, Germany
‘We have further indications that China is behind the attack,’ announced the NATO general from the screen. Behind him, Michelsen sensed the buzz of activity in the NATO crisis team’s command centre.
‘Well, sure,’ grumbled Michelsen. ‘People are quick to find proof when they need it – like weapons of mass destruction …’
The general hadn’t heard her, but the defence minister threw her a withering look.
‘Wars have certainly been started for lesser reasons,’ remarked the NATO general. ‘China has been working intensely for at least a decade to infiltrate the IT systems of Western states and corporations.’
‘The motive continues to be a mystery to me,’ the interior minister spoke up. ‘The world economy has long been so closely interconnected that bringing Europe and the USA to the brink of ruin would only have devastating consequences for the rest of the world.’
For the first time since the beginning of the discussion, the general moved more than his face. He leaned towards the camera.
‘Look, Mr Chancellor, I’m a soldier of the old school, but even I have come to realize that the wars of the future aren’t necessarily going to be fought with rifles, tanks or fighter jets. They’ll be fought the way we’re seeing now. We cannot – no, we must not – wait for someone to take the first shot at us or drop the first bombs on our cities. The enemy isn’t going to do it. That’s because he no longer needs to. He can destroy us while sitting behind his desk ten thousand kilometres away. Do you understand? The first blow has been dealt! The enemy doesn’t need nuclear weapons – they’ve turned our nuclear power facilities on us. The first meltdown has already laid waste to parts of France. It’s only a matter of time before we see more. At least we can still prevent these if we take immediate action. And I’m not talking about launching nuclear missiles at Beijing,’ he explained. ‘We too command the means of modern warfare. As the first step, it would be conceivable to respond in kind: by cutting off power to certain key cities.’
‘Who has that capability?’ asked the interior minister.
‘Do you think the militaries of the West have been asleep these past years?’ asked the NATO general. ‘Look, Mr Chancellor, the one thing you’re not going to see in this conflict is a smoking gun. But if you step outside the door you’ll see that the shot has been fired. And it has seriously wounded us. Let’s start shooting back before we bleed to death.’
Brussels, Belgium
Sophia parked the stolen bike against the five-storey apartment building, Shannon leaned hers next to it.
Sophia lived on the top floor. As soon as they were in the apartment, she turned all four locks twice.
They both looked a sight. Sweaty, covered in soot, their hair frazzled.
‘Come with me,’ Sophia said. In the bathroom she handed Shannon a few individually wrapped wet wipes. ‘This’ll have to do, sorry.’
Shannon cleaned herself as best she could. At least she could get the dirt off her face and hands. She even had a wet wipe left over for her underarms and neck.
In the kitchen, Sophia opened a packet of bread, set honey on the table, a bottle of water.
‘I’ve got corned beef, too, if you’d like some meat with your breakfast,’ she offered.
‘Th
anks, but this is plenty.’
‘You met Piero in The Hague?’
Shannon told the story, how she had sought out Bollard and in doing so had come across Manzano. She still had a feeling that Sophia was interested in the Italian, so she kept quiet about the fact that she had shared a room with him.
‘How did things play out over the past few days?’ Shannon asked finally. ‘I’m sure you must have a good overall sense of it.’
‘Is this the journalist coming out again?’
Shannon shrugged. ‘It’s not like I can get anything on the air at the moment.’
‘We have no overview of the situation,’ said Sophia. ‘Most means of communication have failed, leaving the authorities with no telephone, no official radio, a little military and amateur radio, a few satellite connections. The only links still functioning are those between the national crisis centres, but each country has a fragmented sense of what’s going on out there. Black markets are flourishing, public structures and institutions are being dissolved by private initiatives or parallel structures, the police and military can no longer maintain public safety. People are starting to take the law into their own hands. Since Spain fell, there have been military coups in Portugal and Greece. In France they’re contending with a meltdown at a nuclear plant, the same in the Czech Republic, and conditions are critical at a dozen more facilities across Europe. There have been accidents at industrial facilities, particularly chemical factories, some of which have claimed dozens if not hundreds of victims, and caused severe damage to the environment. But here, too, we lack precise information. It’s impossible to be sure of the scale of the devastation. Those few areas which still have a power supply have been overrun with refugees.’
‘And in the United States?’
‘You have family over there?’
Shannon nodded.
‘It doesn’t look much better. The same drama, but a few days behind us, since the blackout started later.’
There was a knock at the door.
Shannon’s heart shot up into her throat. ‘Who’s that?’ she whispered.
‘No idea,’ Sophia whispered back. ‘Maybe my neighbour.’
‘What about the police?’
‘Would they knock?’
Paris, France
‘We’ve reset almost all the computers in the grid control room,’ Blanchard explained to Tollé, the aide to the French president – the one person in the place who wasn’t sleep-deprived and malodorous.
‘Does that mean,’ said Tollé, ‘that you can monitor the flow of electricity in the grids again?’
‘In theory, yes,’ answered Proctet. ‘We were also able to get the majority of the servers that control grid operation functional again. Starting tomorrow morning, we’ll begin rebuilding the first small grids. If we’re successful, we’ll keep expanding over the course of the day.’
‘And why wouldn’t you be successful?’
‘The systems, the processes. They’re complex. And they’re dependent on various factors.’
‘Where do the problems lie? Is there anything we can do? You only have to say the word.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Blanchard, ‘you cannot make the necessary amount of reactive power available, nor can you accelerate the grid-building process without causing more problems. At this stage, the power plants must run in unfavourable operating conditions that they can only maintain for a few hours. On top of that, it’s hard to determine how many users one can connect in order to keep the grid stable. There’s also the possibility that automatic protective mechanisms will be triggered, which will entail load-shedding, shutting generators off and so on. For example, switching on transformers that have lain idle can result in bottlenecking; on top of that, the Ferranti effect can activate excess voltage triggers – need I go on? In short: none of it is simple, and unfortunately you can’t help us.’
Tollé nodded, as if he had understood everything but didn’t know what to say.
Blanchard relished the moment, but then Tollé spoiled it by saying, ‘So I can tell the president that the power supply is going to return?’
The Hague, Netherlands
When the first plumes of smoke rose up from a corner of the Binnenhof, the crowd fell into a frenzy. Flames billowed from windows on the second floor and soon enveloped the building in smoke. Marie stood trapped at the back of the square, the statue of William I rising before her. The noise had taken on a new timbre. In place of the rhythmic, pounding slogans there was fevered, confused shouting, interspersed with fearful screams. Marie now felt an ever stronger pressure from behind, but the streets around the square were too narrow and too packed for anyone to get away. Ghastly images of people getting trampled, crushed, suffocated, raced through her head, and she could not suppress the rising panic in her chest. As the adrenaline coursed through her veins, all she could do was allow herself to be swept along with the flow. How could she have let herself get carried away like this? The children needed her.
Brussels, Belgium
‘I have to get on to this site!’ cried Manzano.
He was, at least, on better form than before. Half an hour ago, when Sophia had opened the door, he had simply stood there staring at them. Bloodshot eyes in a blackened face.
‘Every time I see you, you look worse than the last time!’ Sophia had found herself saying. She had spent the worst night of her life because of him, but the joy of seeing him alive outweighed any anger.
He had arrived at her apartment by bicycle. With the help of a few wet wipes, some soap and a precious half-bottle of water, they had cleaned him up as best they could.
The three of them could only guess why the guards had opened the cells. Probably fear. The fear of having to answer for the deaths of hundreds of prisoners by fire.
‘I don’t have any Internet here, obviously,’ said Sophia.
‘Then I’ve got to get into your office.’
Sophia thought she had misheard him.
When she didn’t answer, he continued, ‘That’s the only way we can investigate this site properly. Don’t you get it? We might have discovered the attackers’ communication platform! I have to gain access!’
Command Headquarters
The images first appeared on the Japanese network’s website. Its correspondent in The Hague had sent them via satellite. The Dutch parliament building was in flames.
‘It’s starting,’ one of his co-conspirators, Lekue Birabi, remarked with satisfaction. He’d first met the Nigerian during his time as a student in London. The son of a tribal chief from the Niger Delta had been in the final year of his doctoral thesis at the renowned London School of Economics and Political Science. The two had bonded from the start. Since his youth, Birabi had opposed the exploitation of the Niger Delta by the central government and multinational oil corporations.
It was back then that he, together with Birabi and a few others, had begun to develop the idea that had been sparked during their all-night discussions. Others had signed up in the years that followed. People of different backgrounds, nationalities, social classes, education; men and women, united in the same vision, the same goal. Now they had achieved their first step. The citizens of Europe and the United States had moved beyond the stage where they’d be satisfied with discussions, petitions or demonstrations. After a few days of shocked inaction and the illusion of a peaceful maintenance of the old order, events were stacking up. From Rome, Sofia, London, Berlin and many other European cities, journalists were reporting on increasingly violent attacks against public institutions. And now the same thing was happening in America.
He nodded to Birabi, who made no effort to hide his gratification. A broad smile had broken out on his face. Their fantasy construct had become reality. The uprising had commenced.
The Hague, Netherlands
‘Our cooperation with international authorities has provided us with the names of several possible accomplices of Jorge Pucao,’ Bollard informed the group. ‘There is solid eviden
ce that he has been in contact with six of them. Moreover, flight data analysis has revealed overlapping stopovers in the same locations over the past few years.’
He pulled up a photo of a black African.
‘Dr Lekue Birabi from Nigeria. You’ll find the details of his biography in the databank. There are many parallels to Jorge Pucao. Member of the middle to upper class of a developing country, politically engaged, antagonized by the ruling system, family drama, high intelligence, educated at one of the best universities in the world. On one of his several blogs, back in 2005, he wrote: “Today’s economic-political system in its current form reinforces existing power relations. History tells us that peaceful attempts at reform have fallen apart from within. Therefore one must consider a violent destruction of the system as the road to renewal.” His radicalization mirrors Pucao’s. As does his participation in various anti-G8 protests, beginning with Genoa in 2001.’
Bollard showed a world map on which locations were connected with red lines. Number combinations labelled every line, every location.
‘These are the documented trips made by Jorge Pucao, starting in 2007.’
With a click of the remote he added blue lines to the red. In some places the blue ends met up with the red.
‘These are Lekue Birabi’s trips during the same time frame. As we can see, they are frequently at the same destination at the same time. When we last checked, Birabi was living in the United States. In the autumn of 2011 he disappeared. There’s been no trace of him since then. The American authorities are currently checking over his computer, which he left behind in a storeroom. It had been carefully wiped, of course, but it was possible to recover a few files. Among other things, his email correspondence. From this it emerges that from 2007 he was in frequent contact with a certain ‘Donkun’ – who, according to IP addresses, was located wherever Pucao happened to be staying at the time. The investigators found further contacts all over the world. A number of these individuals have also disappeared and are now being investigated. Siti Yusuf, for example. From Indonesia, same age and similar CV to Pucao and Birabi; his family lost its fortune during the Asian financial crisis of the late nineties, and suffered during the subsequent unrest. Then there are two countrymen of Pucao: Elvira Gomez and Pedro Munoz, both political activists. Two Spaniards: Hernandes Sidon and Maria de Carvalles-Tendido. And the list goes on: two Italians; two Russians; a man from Uruguay; a man from the Czech Republic; three Greeks, a woman and two men; a Frenchman; an Irishman; two Americans; a Japanese man; a Finnish woman; and two Germans. Some of them are proven IT experts, like Pucao. In total, there are at the moment about fifty persons under suspicion.’