Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late

by Marc Elsberg

  Bollard stared at the monitor. The terrorists hadn’t been wrong in their online conversations: Manzano thought like them. That, or after everything he had gone through, he was completely paranoid.

  ‘The first time I went on RESET, I ran across a thread in which there was talk of a back door,’ Manzano continued. ‘Why bother with a back door when you’re already inside?’

  ‘So you can get in when everyone thinks that the systems are secure again …’ Bollard finished Manzano’s thought.

  ‘There’s no way I’m the first to think of something like this,’ said Manzano. ‘Has there been any sign of Pucao, Yusuf and von Ansen?’

  Bollard shook his head, then answered with a question of his own. ‘You think there’s more to come?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered the Italian. ‘Right now, I’m headed to Brussels. I’ll check in again from there.’

  The screen went blank. Bollard gave a sigh and tried calling his contact at the French Red Cross again.

  ‘François,’ the wrinkled face greeted him. ‘I’m sorry, we haven’t found your parents and in-laws yet.’

  Orléans, France

  ‘No!’ a soldier called out to a few people further ahead, loud enough that Annette and Vincent could also hear. ‘No one is allowed back into the restricted zone!’

  ‘But where are we supposed to go?’ someone called out.

  ‘You need to stay here!’ declared the soldier.

  ‘Christ, I’m not staying here for another second,’ Annette shouted to her companions above the noise.

  Vincent didn’t answer. In his eyes she could see the terrible fear of never again being allowed to return home.

  ‘It’s only a hundred and thirty kilometres to Paris! There has to be some way for us to get there. If the power is back on, they can pump fuel again – maybe we can take a taxi or rent a car. I’ll pay any price. Or maybe the trains are running.’

  Vincent shook his head doubtfully.

  ‘It’s got to be a damn sight more pleasant in our apartment than it is here!’ she screamed. She had automatically said ‘our’, she noticed. She still couldn’t get used to the fact that Bertrand was no longer alive. Perhaps it was because she had yet to grieve properly; she’d been afraid to give in to the urge to cry uncontrollably, fearing that once she started she would never be able to stop.

  ‘Celeste and you, you’ll both come with me, of course,’ she shouted, trying to stay strong though she wanted to crack into a thousand pieces. ‘You’ll stay with us – with me – until you can go back to your home.’

  Brussels, Belgium

  Laughing, Manzano hugged the old man.

  ‘I’ve never been to Brussels,’ Bondoni announced with a grin. ‘So I thought, now’s the time.’ He clapped Manzano on the shoulder. ‘You look bad, my boy! Is it true what I’m hearing? That you beat the terrorists pretty much single-handed?’

  ‘I never even came close to them,’ Manzano replied. He hugged Bondoni’s daughter too. Lara was sharing the luxury suite in the hotel until the water in her apartment was running again.

  ‘Your friends all got back safely?’

  ‘Not a scratch on them.’

  ‘May I introduce you to Antonio Salvi?’ said Bondoni and pushed forward a thin man with even thinner hair. He had been standing back. ‘His network is paying for all of this’ – he gestured around the room – ‘the flight from Innsbruck too. He’d like to do a story on me. Somehow he found out that it was my old car that got you to Ischgl, where you …’

  Berlin, Germany

  The city seemed alien to Michelsen somehow. Advertising billboards, shop names and company logos were lit up on most of the buildings’ façades, but on the streets below bags of rubbish were stacked high on the pavements. Many had been torn open, leaving packaging and rotting food pouring out on to the street.

  Up ahead, she saw the ribs of an animal carcass, jutting several metres high between two wrecked cars.

  It was too big to have been a cow.

  ‘The remains of one of the elephants from the zoo,’ the driver explained, unfazed. ‘A lot of animals have escaped in the last few days.’

  As she stepped out of the car she felt a few cold drops of rain land on her cheeks. She found her way between the stinking piles of rubbish and climbed the steps to her building.

  Her apartment was cold and clammy, and there was a stale smell in the air. She could already tell that she wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. A shiver ran through her and then the tears came.

  Brussels, Belgium

  Sophia knew she was laughing too much and too loudly, but after the fifth glass of wine she really didn’t care. Fleur, Chloé, Lara and Shannon wouldn’t notice. They’d knocked back a fair few themselves.

  The hotel had been able to reopen quickly. Most importantly, the alcohol reserves hadn’t been depleted during the blackout. So here they were, Fleur and the Italian reporter propping up the bar, while the others danced. Sophia wasn’t surprised that people were so cheerful, downing the contents of their glasses as if nothing had happened. Today they wanted to party away the fear, the suffering, the death and despair of the past weeks.

  Manzano observed them. ‘I’d like to dance now myself,’ he said, and emptied his glass. ‘But I feel so tired. Like Lara’s dad. I’m becoming an old man.’

  ‘I’m going to head out too,’ Sophia replied, and noticed how dizzy she was as she slipped off the barstool. She gave Fleur a light tap on the shoulder and waved to the Italian journalist.

  On the way through the hotel lobby, Manzano said, ‘I have to apologize again for what I pulled you into. I … didn’t know where else I could have gone.’

  ‘I didn’t have to bring you into the office with me,’ she replied. ‘But I’m glad that I did.’

  ‘Can you get a taxi?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure. The petrol stations are pumping again, even if the water pipes in my building aren’t yet.’ She giggled. ‘But I’m used to it by now.’

  ‘You can shower at my place,’ Manzano offered with a grin. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘You’re just trying to lure me to your room.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They had reached the hotel exit. There were, in fact, a few taxis waiting out front. They held each other tightly and then kissed. Sophia felt his hands rubbing her back, her shoulders. Then her hands were on his hips, and on the skin of his neck. Holding each other close, they walked quickly to the lift, ignoring the other guests’ amused looks. They spilled out into the hallway on the third floor, where Manzano fumbled the key card out of his trousers and opened the door to his room. He gave her a gentle push, Sophia turned to pull him after her, her hands caressed him under his sweater, he slipped his hands under her blouse and on to her breasts. His hands moved softly around them. They stumbled around in the darkness, came close to falling over. Sophia caught herself, found the card still in his hand, pushed it in the slot next to the door, which completed the electric circuit in the room.

  A warm light came on with a soft click.

  ‘So long as we’ve got it,’ she whispered, lifting her head as he kissed the sides of her neck. ‘I’d like to see you.’

  His hand felt for the switch, dimmed the light till it was almost off. ‘But we should be sensible with it. I’m not such a pretty sight right now anyway.’

  She kissed his forehead gently around the scar.

  ‘That’ll get better.’

  The Hague, Netherlands

  ‘I’m afraid he checked out, sir,’ said the receptionist apologetically.

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  The receptionist looked at him, sizing him up. ‘What is it you want with him?’

  He pulled out his wallet, removed a €200 note, pushed it across the desk. ‘If you could tell me where he moved on to, I’d really appreciate it.’

  ‘You want to interview the guy – that’s it, isn’t it?’ said the receptionist. ‘You’re probably wasting your
time. We were overrun with journalists once it got out he was staying here. After a while, he made me stop putting the calls through. And then he left.’

  The receptionist’s tongue flickered from his mouth as another €200 note appeared on the desk. ‘C’mon, man, help me out here. I could really use an exclusive …’

  Day 14 – Friday

  Brussels, Belgium

  ‘Good morning,’ said Manzano, as Sophia opened her eyes. Half asleep, she blinked and squinted at him, looked around.

  ‘My hotel room,’ he explained. ‘You stayed on account of that shower.’

  ‘So I remember.’ She stretched, grabbed a sheet around her and went off to the bathroom.

  Manzano walked barefoot to the windows, pushed the curtains aside, stared out into the day. From the bathroom he heard the water running. The receptionist had explained to him that the hotel had priority when it came to the supply of, among other things, water, because it was frequented by diplomats and politicians. That was why the pipes were flowing here, while most of the homes in Brussels still had to do without.

  They dressed and went downstairs to the breakfast lounge. At the long buffet they found bread, slices of cheese and cold cuts, just one variety of each. Open packets of chocolate. Pitchers of water; tea and coffee. A handwritten sign apologized for the modest selection. They were making efforts to resume their usual high standards as soon as possible.

  ‘Good morning!’ Shannon greeted them with a big grin.

  She was sitting by herself at one of the tables, in front of her a laptop and a cup of coffee. She gave Manzano and Sophia a long look.

  ‘Good time last night?’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘So good, I have no idea how long we danced.’

  ‘Where’s Bondoni?’

  ‘Probably still asleep.’

  With fast fingers she typed something on the computer.

  ‘Sorry, an email. I’ve got to get going in a second. Have either of you heard from Bollard?’ She gave them both another look. ‘That’ll be a no then. I guess you had more exciting things to do, right?’

  Manzano was irritated by her insinuations. ‘I need my breakfast.’

  Shannon closed her computer and jumped up. ‘You’ll keep me in the loop if there’s any news from Bollard, OK?’

  And she was gone.

  Manzano took a deep breath. ‘Hard to believe the energy,’ he remarked.

  Sophia put her long arm around Manzano’s thickening waist.

  ‘Let’s get ourselves some fuel too,’ she suggested, and pulled him over to the coffee pots.

  Istanbul, Turkey

  Bollard watched through the two-way mirror as the Japanese suspect was questioned. The man seemed calm, composed, despite having only been allowed to sleep for two hours since his capture. Like the others, he had demonstrated from the start that he spoke English perfectly.

  When he had shown up in the list of suspects, it had caused some surprise among the civilians assisting the investigation. Japanese terrorists? Bollard had reminded them of a couple of historical incidents, for example the poison gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo sect in the Tokyo subway in 1995 and the massacre at Tel Aviv airport in 1972.

  Across six rooms, they were interrogating seven men and one woman. Three of them had come away with gunshot wounds; they were placed under medical supervision and the interrogations were kept brief.

  On the morning after the operation, representatives from several European intelligence agencies and the CIA had arrived. Alternating with the Turkish officers, they quizzed the attackers. None of them denied taking part in the attack – quite the opposite – but they refused to reveal anything about their methods.

  ‘How much do you get paid to lock us up and torture us here?’ the Japanese man asked his interrogator.

  ‘You aren’t being tortured.’

  ‘Sleep deprivation is torture.’

  ‘We have a lot of pressing questions. As soon as you’ve answered them, you get to sleep.’

  ‘Can you afford a Rolls-Royce on your salary?’

  The man led the conversation like a corporate recruiter, thought Bollard.

  The Turkish officer was unmoved. ‘We’re not here to discuss my salary.’

  ‘On the contrary, that’s exactly why we are here,’ the Japanese man replied coolly. ‘Because your bosses can afford fancy cars, and their paymasters can afford a whole fleet of cars that cost more than your apartment. While you’re down here, doing the dirty work, they sit in their mansions. They don’t wait for paradise, they treat themselves to their two-and-seventy virgins in the here and now.’

  ‘I have to disappoint you, I don’t believe in such things.’

  ‘Do you think that’s fair? That you’ve got to spend the night with someone like me while they’re out with pretty women, driving around in Ferraris?’

  ‘This is not about justice.’

  ‘Then tell me, what is it about?’

  Bollard’s laptop came out of sleep mode. Christopoulos’s face shone in the video-chat window.

  ‘Look here,’ said the Greek and entered lines of code in another window. ‘We’ve already got it in pseudocode.’

  If no block-code in the past 48 hours

  Activate phase 2

  ‘Activate what?’ asked Bollard.

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ said Christopoulos. ‘All we know is that it’s not there to activate Dragenau’s SCADA code and it’s not for the Italian or Swedish Smart Meters. And the really worrying thing is, unlike phase 1, the attack strategy requires no command in the software.’

  Brussels, Belgium

  ‘That’s exactly the command I was talking about!’ cried Manzano.

  Bollard’s face had a greenish tinge to it, but maybe that was the light. ‘There are still time bombs hidden in the systems, sleeping,’ said Manzano. ‘Instead of needing to be activated, until now they’ve been actively blocked. At least every forty-eight hours. If they’re not blocked – boom! Everything starts all over again.’

  Shannon and Sophia were peering over Manzano’s shoulder, but, like Bondoni, they kept themselves out of view of the laptop’s camera.

  ‘How long ago was the raid?’ whispered Sophia.

  Manzano counted. ‘About thirty hours,’ he whispered back.

  ‘But the block-command didn’t have to be given right before the attack,’ whispered Shannon. ‘Maybe it was already sent the day before.’

  ‘If that were the case, you’d already be reporting on the consequences,’ Manzano whispered back.

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ asked Bollard.

  ‘Get me access to the RESET databank!’ Manzano told him. ‘And we need the logs from all the devices in Istanbul and Mexico City. ASAP!’

  Berlin, Germany

  ‘It’s difficult at present to estimate the consequences for large sectors of the economy,’ began the minister for economic affairs.

  It struck Michelsen that most people in the room were looking better today. The bags under their eyes weren’t as heavy, they sat up straighter – yes, a better mood all around.

  ‘Most companies in the manufacturing industry had to suspend operations,’ said the minister. ‘Many firms will be inactive for weeks because of a lack of raw materials and supplies. There are shortfalls in the power supply. About ten per cent of power plants in operation have sustained damage; repairs may take several months. Energy-intensive branches of industry like paper, cement and aluminium manufacturing will suffer as a result. We should consider bringing recently decommissioned nuclear power plants back into operation.’

  ‘Absolutely out of the question!’ roared the state secretary for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. ‘No one will tolerate that, not after the accidents in Philippsburg and Brokdorf.’

  ‘If we don’t, German industry will suffer. And then there are the small and mid-size businesses, the backbone of the German economy. They’re facing even greater problems, bec
ause less attention is paid to them individually than to the large corporations, and they have a harder time getting finance from the banks. In order to prevent the collapse of the German economy, we must implement a rigorous development programme. Even then,’ he said darkly, ‘the question remains whether the German economy will ever again achieve its former status in the world. We can’t hope for a Marshall Plan from the US this time. They’re almost as hard hit as we are.

  ‘And we’re not the only ones who need support – our fellow EU members are in the same boat. That means many of our most important trade partners are out of the picture and will only recover slowly – if at all. And this is only the beginning. Emerging markets depend on European and American consumers; that means China, India, Brazil and others will soon be struggling with higher unemployment and social conflict, as well as political instability. And with that we lose the biggest growth markets in the world. It’s a vicious spiral. Here at home, unemployment will rise drastically without support programmes. Economists are foreseeing conditions for us that resemble those in Latin America, with a small, wealthy upper class, a disappearing middle class and the majority of the population in impoverished circumstances.’

  ‘You could of course counteract this with the appropriate political measures,’ the chancellor interjected.

  ‘If the majorities are there to support such initiatives … I fear that many people, including some in this room, are not yet aware of what far-reaching consequences this event might have.’

  ‘And where is the money for economic programmes supposed to come from?’ asked the foreign minister. ‘Most of the affected nations were already deep in debt or bankrupt.’