by Marc Elsberg
The chancellor returned the foreign minister’s look with a blank expression. ‘Hopefully, the finance minister can tell you that.’
Istanbul, Turkey
‘What kind of block-code is it? What happens if it doesn’t get entered?’ asked Bollard. Leaning across the table, he propped himself up with one arm, tapped the index finger of his free hand on the printout.
‘I already said that I don’t know,’ answered the suspect, one of the captured Frenchmen. Bollard was glad of the opportunity to converse in his mother tongue, but it infuriated him that one of his countrymen should have played a part in the attack.
‘Listen,’ Bollard hissed, so quietly that the cameras recording them wouldn’t pick up what he said, and grabbed the guy by the collar. ‘If the power goes out somewhere in Europe or the US and more people die because you won’t tell me what this block-code is for, then I can do things differently. Very differently. And it won’t just be sleep you’ll be losing.’ Bollard knew he could be taken to court for making threats like that, but his anger had got the better of him. He pushed himself away from the man, tried to compose himself.
‘You can’t do that,’ the young man protested. ‘You can’t threaten me with torture.’
‘Threaten you? Who’s threatening you?’
‘You are! That’s a human rights violation!’
Bollard leaned towards him again, their foreheads almost touching now.
‘You want to tell me about human rights? Millions of people have starved to death. Died of thirst, of exposure, of radiation sickness, untreated diseases. Did these people have no rights? What is the block-code for?’
‘I really don’t know,’ the man insisted. His face was pale, sweat beading on his upper lip. This Frenchman hadn’t been trained for rough interrogations. He would surely break down eventually. Bollard wondered how long it would take, how far he would have to go.
And what if, at the end of it all, the guy really didn’t know anything?
Berlin, Germany
‘The good news is,’ the state secretary for finance commenced his presentation, ‘most banks are open again. The supply of cash for the population is, for the time being, secure. The less good news is that, to prevent bank runs, withdrawals will be limited to one hundred and fifty euros per person per day until further notice. The European markets will remain closed until the middle of next week, as will markets in the United States. The technology is ready for use, but traders need time to digest the new developments. European and American indices have lost around seventy per cent of their total value since the crisis began. Despite the European Central Bank flooding the market, the euro tanked. As a result, oil and gas imports became prohibitively expensive – although things eased a little when the US was attacked. That made imports somewhat cheaper again, since oil and gas are accounted for in dollars. Thankfully, our strategic oil and other fuel reserves are sufficient to last for several more months, and price increases will only take effect several months from now, since the prices in most cases are based on long-term contracts.’
He paused to draw breath. ‘In a few months, Germany will no longer be able to service its loans or to pay state employees and pensions. Many European nations will be confronted with this problem significantly sooner. As a result, the international financial markets are facing collapse. It is incumbent on those in the political arena to prevent the worst. Possible scenarios are to be presented and discussed in’ – he looked at his wristwatch – ‘four hours, at a video conference between the heads of state of the G20 nations, representatives of the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.’
Paris, France
The train ride from Orléans to Paris took for ever and it was well after midday by the time they arrived. Annette and the Bollards waited at the taxi rank, together with a few dozen other travellers. When a cab finally appeared, pushing and shoving broke out among those waiting in line. Two more cars arrived. They bore no taxi sign, but stopped nevertheless, one of them right in front of Vincent. The driver rolled down the window. ‘Where to?’
Annette told him the address.
‘A hundred and fifty euros,’ the man demanded.
‘That’s …’ Annette began, but then restrained herself. It was five times the normal fare.
‘Fine,’ she said with a hardened expression.
‘Half in advance,’ demanded the man and stuck his hand out.
Annette placed the cash in the man’s grimy hand.
‘Where are you coming from?’ the driver asked, curious, as he sped off.
‘Orléans,’ Annette answered curtly. She had no interest in conversing with the price gouger.
‘I thought that was a restricted area,’ he said. ‘That’s what they reckoned on the news.’
The streets were even dirtier than in Orléans, with bloated animal carcasses in the gutters. Here too it was mostly troop transports and armoured vehicles driving past, though the speedometer showed eighty kilometres per hour. The driver laughed. ‘Well, things aren’t much better for us here in Paris!’
Annette hated him for his presumptuousness, but now she had to ask, ‘Why’s that?’
‘A cloud from the power plant that blew up down there is supposed to have carried over to us. It’s not so bad though, the authorities are saying.’ He shrugged. ‘The next rain washed it away again, so there’s no more danger. Or at least, that’s what they claim.’ He made a gesture as if he were tossing it aside. ‘Personally, I’d rather just go ahead and believe it. If I don’t, I’ll worry myself to death.’
Annette said nothing. She ran a hand through her hair, almost casually, then secretly inspected her hand, front and back.
‘Is there anything else you need?’ the man continued cheerily. ‘Food? Drinks? I can get things for you. It’s not easy these days, finding stuff.’
‘Thanks, but no,’ Annette answered stiffly.
In front of her building she paid him the balance of his overpriced fare and took note of the licence plate. As soon as she opened the door to her family apartment, her heart swelled with fear and joy. ‘Finally!’
The air here was stale, though the foulest smells had stayed outside for now. She put down her suitcase and went to the telephone, looking so familiar on the hall table. The line was dead. She went to the computer in Bertrand’s study – her heart constricted as she perused his shelves, the unfinished novel he had left face down in their hurry to depart. The Bollards followed her. Since her daughter had moved to The Hague with their grandchildren, even Annette had mastered the latest means of communication. She turned on the computer, opened Skype and clicked on her daughter’s name. After a few seconds the slightly pixelated face of Marie appeared on the screen. Tears welled in Annette’s eyes. Through the microphone she heard Marie calling out, ‘Kids! Come here! Grandma and Grandpa are calling!’ Her daughter turned back to the screen. ‘My God, Maman, am I happy to see you! Where’s Papa?’
Istanbul, Turkey
‘François? François! Are you still there?’
As if through gauze, Bollard heard Marie’s voice coming from the computer. He stared into the monitor. The thin, pale face of his wife was swimming. Bollard fought back the tears.
‘He …’ her voice broke, ‘he’s got to be … dug up again. So he can be buried in Paris.’
She repeated it for the second time. The fact had her almost as shaken as the news of her father’s death itself.
‘I … I’m so sorry,’ answered Bollard in a thick voice. ‘I have to go now. Take care of yourselves. We’ll see each other soon. I love you all.’
For a few seconds Bollard sat there without moving. He pictured his children, Marie. He had to get home. He was the one who had sent her parents there, imagining they would be safe in the idyllic hills along the Loire. For an instant he saw himself as a young boy, chasing a butterfly over a field in front of the Chateau de Chambord. Never again could he return to his childhood home. Nor would Bernadette a
nd Georges ever play there again.
He jumped up, walked to the interrogation rooms, stormed into the first one he saw. Two American officers were putting one of the Greeks through the mill. Dark sweat stains showed on his shirt under his armpits and collar, his lips were quivering.
Ignoring the Americans, Bollard grabbed the Greek by the collar and yanked him off the chair.
Hoarsely he whispered, ‘A few days ago my father-in-law died near Saint-Laurent. Heart attack. Nobody could get help. Saint-Laurent – you know what happened there?’
The Greek stared at him, eyes wide. He didn’t dare move. Of course he knew.
‘My parents,’ Bollard continued, breathing heavily, ‘were forced to leave the house my family has lived in for generations. It was my childhood home. My children loved the place. Now none of us will ever be able to go there again.’
He pressed the knuckles of his fist against the man’s throat, smelled his fear. ‘Do you know what it feels like?’ Bollard went on. ‘Do you know what it’s like when you realize that you’re going to die, in agony, and no one is going to help you?’
He could sense that the Greek was about to pass out on him, but he tightened his grip. The man’s eyes began to swim, filling with tears. ‘The block-code,’ Bollard asked, his voice low, ‘the one that has to be sent every forty-eight hours. What’s it there for? What does it prevent? How much time do we have left? Speak up, you smug piece of shit!’
The man’s entire body was shaking, the tears flowed down his round cheeks.
‘I … don’t know,’ he whimpered. ‘I really don’t know!’
Brussels, Belgium
He hurried over to the young receptionist. ‘Which room is Piero Manzano in?’ he demanded, laying his hands on the desk.
The receptionist immediately set about looking it up on the computer. ‘Room 512,’ he said, smiling.
It was so easy when you acted with confidence.
‘So there are still a few of them,’ determined Manzano.
‘What?’ asked Shannon, who never stopped filming.
‘Somewhat regular logs on static IPs.’
Manzano pointed to some of the network addresses. Shannon and Sophia leaned over his shoulders, Bondoni moved his chair closer to see better.
‘This one, this one and this one we know. They belong to the headquarters in Mexico City.’
He called Christopoulos in The Hague over the video chat program. After a few seconds, Bollard’s colleague answered.
‘I’ve got a list of IP addresses here,’ explained Manzano. ‘I need a comparison as soon as possible, of these ones and the ones where we already know what’s behind them.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
It was a blessing, thought Manzano, that the Internet connection was working without a hitch again. So long as the electricity was flowing.
‘I wouldn’t always send the block-command right at the last minute,’ he said, thinking out loud. ‘There’d be a risk I might forget to do it.’
‘Plus,’ Shannon added, ‘several people have to be able to send it. In case they lose one of them.’
‘If we’d been sitting in their headquarters, in charge of blocking the trigger,’ Sophia joined in with the thinking aloud, ‘what would we have done?’
‘I would have sent the command at a particular time each day,’ Shannon offered her opinion. ‘To be on the safe side.’
‘Why have the blocker at all?’ asked Bondoni. ‘If without it all that happens is you trigger another power outage, which is what the jerks wanted anyway.’
‘It’s so that they wouldn’t waste ammo when they didn’t need to,’ said Manzano. ‘The block-code stops the time bombs in the electric system from going off and leading to a blackout. But so long as the power is out anyway, you don’t need the time bombs. They’re intended for the very situation in which we now find ourselves: the grids are up and running again, the attackers have had the plug pulled on them. If the time bombs activate new malicious programs now, the whole thing starts over again from the beginning.’
His video-chat window announced a caller. Christopoulos. Manzano picked up.
‘Yeah?’
‘I sent you the list of IPs. Addresses with known background are marked.’
‘Thanks.’
Manzano opened the table. More than half the lines were highlighted in yellow.
‘Good. That narrows down our selection. Let’s compare these with the results of our latest search …’
He refreshed the lists in his databank.
‘Still too many.’
He called Christopoulos again.
‘I’m sending you a list of logs,’ he told him. ‘Examine what kind of data went to each of the IPs as quickly as possible. We’re looking for a block-command.’
‘We’re working at full capacity right now,’ said Christopoulos. ‘I’m sending you access to the data. So you can look for yourself.’
‘But that might take too long!’
‘Sorry! We’re really busy over here!’
‘OK, go ahead,’ grumbled Manzano. A second later an email landed in his inbox. He logged in to the databank on which the investigators had secured all the data from the servers and computers from the two terrorist headquarters for analysis.
He checked the files that had been sent to the first addresses at the times of day on the list of IPs. He would first look at just one file per IP. It was likely that the IP had been set up exclusively for the time-bomb activation mechanism. At least, that’s how he would have done it.
Someone knocked on the door.
‘I’ll get it,’ Sophia offered.
Arduous, thought Manzano. This way, every time, he had to look first at the IP list for a time and a computer, in order to then search through its security files for the corresponding data. And dangerous. If he was right, every minute counted. From outside Manzano heard somebody call ‘room service’.
On the seventh attempt, he found something.
‘This could be it,’ said Manzano. He looked at the time when the last command had been sent.
Forty-seven hours and twenty-five minutes ago.
‘Numbers and letters,’ groused Bondoni. ‘Who can read anything in that …’
‘He can,’ said a voice behind them in English.
Manzano jumped. Sophia was standing in the doorway, a knife glinting at her throat. A man’s unruly dark hair appeared from behind her. Manzano recognized the face immediately. He had seen it often enough over the past days in Bollard’s base of operations.
Jorge Pucao shoved Sophia forward, towards Manzano. He could see the panic in her eyes. He felt his whole body tense up.
‘Ms Shannon, go get the cords from the blinds, use them to tie your friends up.’
Shannon followed the order with trembling fingers. She ripped out the cords and started tying Bondoni’s thin old hands behind his back.
‘You could always work with us,’ said Pucao to Manzano.
‘There is no “us” any more,’ replied Manzano. ‘Your comrades have been arrested.’
Pucao laughed pityingly. ‘You’re wrong – there are billions of us. People who have had enough of Western civilization with its predatory capitalism that enslaves and exploits them. We’re through with being ruled over, lied to and robbed by a small group of criminals who call themselves politicians, bankers and managers. And you, Piero – I know deep down you count yourself among the people who have had it up to here.’ He held the knife under Manzano’s nose. His voice lost its preacherly quality, took on an almost friendly tone. ‘You’re one of us. Or have you forgotten how you took to the streets against the corrupt political caste in Italy? How you fought against the injustices of globalization in Genoa? Maybe you’ve got older. Maybe you’re disillusioned. But don’t tell me that you’ve given up on your dreams.’
‘In my dreams, hundreds of thousands of people didn’t die from hunger, thirst, lack of medical care …’
‘In your dreams the
y didn’t, but they do in real life! Every day, all over the world. That’s what you were rebelling against in Genoa! That’s what you still get worked up about, even today! But only with old war buddies over a nice glass of wine.’
He looked at Manzano, added, ‘Isn’t that so?’
Manzano had to admit that Pucao had hit a sore spot. But he couldn’t worry about that now. They had to send the block-command.
‘Even if my dreams were the same as yours,’ he said. ‘My methods of realizing them are most definitely not.’
‘And that’s why nothing has ever changed,’ Pucao answered indulgently. ‘It was the same thing, even with the sixty-eighters. Protested, moved into a commune, threw stones – and today? They’re bank directors, doctors, lawyers, lobbyists for industry – anything to pay for their mansions. What did they achieve? The rich got richer, the poor poorer. Young people today are as conservative, apolitical and spineless as their grandparents. We’re destroying our environment more than ever. Do I have to keep going down the list?’
He checked the cords that Shannon had tied around Manzano’s wrists. Then he continued, ‘When and by what means did the real changes take place? When were societies actually revolutionized, new systems brought in? When did democracies oust aristocratic power and later fascism in Europe, colonial power in the USA? Only after big catastrophes. The masses at large need to experience an existential threat. Only when they have nothing left to lose but life itself are they ready to fight for a new life.’
‘That’s all nonsense! You’re just babbling!’ Shannon yelled, interrupting him. ‘What about the fall of communism in Eastern Europe? The change from military regimes to democracies in lots of countries in Latin America? Or the Arab Spring? They didn’t need world wars!’
‘Shut your mouth and keep working,’ Pucao ordered and waved the knife in her direction. ‘The fall of communism was preceded by a decades-long war throughout the world. The Cold War, remember? Oh, you were still a little girl then.’