by Marc Elsberg
‘But you were already a wise old man, is that it?’ Shannon retorted. Manzano fired a look at her, trying to get her to stop.
But Pucao seemed to enjoy the discussion. Perhaps he liked having an audience. ‘You have no idea what a war is,’ Pucao lectured Shannon. ‘In Latin America, the USA and Europe used their puppet terror regimes to lead brutal campaigns with hundreds of thousands of victims. Later it was the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, instruments of established nations, formed to keep the competition small in so-called developing countries. A similar thing happened in the Arab countries. That’s why the people eventually rose up. Only in Europe and North America was the suffering not great enough for the uprising, for the change towards something better. Now it is. That’s why we can’t stop too early. We’ve got to push through, then everything will change.’
Pucao checked how Sophia’s bindings were holding.
‘Do you actually hear what you’re saying?’ asked the Swede. She was obviously feeling braver now. ‘You sound exactly like the people you claim to be attacking. Feeble-minded slogans about the sacrifice that’s necessary to make it to paradise, about purification through fire, painful measures before everything gets better …’
They had to sit on the couch.
‘Bring me a cord for yourself, too,’ Pucao ordered Shannon.
‘People are dying out there!’
‘And that’s terrible, horrible, but it can’t be avoided. It’s like a hijacked plane that you have to shoot down so that something worse doesn’t happen. A few have to die so that many can be saved.’
‘You piece of shit!’ yelled Shannon. ‘You’re not the one who has to make the decision to shoot it down, you’re the hijacker!’
‘He’s crazy,’ Sophia whispered to Manzano.
Pucao pulled the cords tight around Shannon’s wrists and pushed her towards the others. ‘I’m hoping I don’t have to gag you. More screaming like that and you all die immediately.’
Be reasonable now, Manzano wanted to say, but he knew it would be useless to appeal to the reason of such people.
‘Don’t worry,’ Shannon spat back, ‘I’ve talked to you enough.’
Pucao ignored the remark, sat down at the computer, studied the data. Manzano thought feverishly about what he could do.
‘Bastard,’ whispered Pucao, abruptly turning back to them. ‘You never learned, did you? Not a thing. Not even after you got shot by the police.’
Manzano felt the anger rising within him, knew that it was the wrong moment to lose his composure.
‘You’re well informed,’ he said instead, deliberately calm.
‘We were watching the whole time. Long enough, anyway …’ he corrected himself. For a moment he stared off into nothingness. ‘How did you find us?’ he said finally.
Manzano considered for a moment whether he should tell him the truth. The man before him was, like all megalomaniacs, a hopeless narcissist. The slightest criticism could set him off.
‘Did you plant the emails on my computer?’
‘I wrote them,’ said Pucao. ‘Somebody else loaded them on there.’
‘Well written,’ replied Manzano. ‘The police fell for them. But the guy who put them on my computer directly from your central communications server? Him you should fire.’
Pucao hissed something in Spanish that Manzano didn’t understand. It sounded like a curse.
‘And while you’re at it, everyone else who was in charge of server security,’ Manzano went on. ‘Hard to find good people, eh?’
‘Enough!’ Pucao made a dismissive gesture. ‘Do you think I don’t know what you’re trying to do? You think you can butter me up?’
‘We’d be happy to call you names, too,’ Shannon offered coldly. ‘Really, I’d much prefer it. You goddamn madman!’
Pucao smiled.
‘This conversation bores me. Say goodbye to one another. I’m sorry that you were all here, really I only came for Piero. You were a real pain in the ass, you know that?’
‘I’ve been getting that a lot lately.’
Pucao stepped towards the couch from behind, the knife in his hand. He reached for Sophia’s hair.
Manzano jumped up. After a moment of shock in which no one had moved, including the surprised Pucao, the others followed. ‘Together!’ shouted Manzano. He hurtled forward and rammed his head with all his might into the man’s side. Pucao stumbled, fell to the floor behind the couch, caught himself. Instead of running away, Bondoni kicked him in the knee with all his strength. Pucao buckled. Manzano had got up off the couch – not so easy with his hands tied – climbed over the back and knocked Pucao in the shoulder with his hip. Together they fell backwards against the wall, Manzano felt a burning pain in his chest. Pucao was hit from behind with a nasty kick between the legs from Shannon. As Pucao doubled over, Manzano saw the knife in his hand, the blade bloodied to the hilt. Shannon kicked Pucao again. Manzano couldn’t breathe, but kept going all the same and threw himself with all his weight at Pucao, so that they fell to the ground together. Manzano saw Sophia’s foot land on Pucao’s face, right next to his own; blood spurted out of the Spaniard’s busted lip. Manzano struggled to stand up, got to his knees. Pucao’s shirt was soaked in blood. While Sophia kept on kicking Pucao, Manzano dropped on him with both knees.
‘The knife!’ Manzano panted. ‘Where’s the knife?’ He was dizzy. He couldn’t spot it in Pucao’s hands, which he held around his head in defence.
‘Here,’ said Bondoni, who was holding it in his bound hands and using it to cut Shannon’s bindings.
Manzano kneeled hard on Pucao. He wasn’t moving any more. The newly freed Shannon had placed a foot on his head and was putting her entire bodyweight behind it. She cut off Bondoni’s and Sophia’s cords, then Manzano’s. With the rest of the cord she tied Pucao’s wrists and ankles together. He was bleeding from a wound on his lips and a cut over his eyes. His eyelids fluttered, he was breathing heavily, his eyes opened and closed.
‘Too many mistakes,’ groaned Manzano and pressed his hand against the left side of his chest, where he had crashed against Pucao. He must have broken a rib. ‘Especially for someone as infallible as you.’
He went to the computer. His vision went dark, he stumbled, caught himself. Ten more minutes. Where was the command? Here. Send it. Hopefully that was the right code. Where was all this blood on the keyboard coming from? Hopefully he had done everything right. The screen swam before his eyes. Video-chat window. Christopoulos.
‘Yeah?’
Breathlessly he said, ‘I sent you an IP address and a block-code. I think that’s what I was looking for.’ Why couldn’t he breathe?
‘What the hell happened to you?’ cried Christopoulos.
Instead of an answer Manzano said, ‘Check it anyway. Please. Fast. Right now.’ His head almost fell on the table. He shot up, muttered hoarsely, ‘We’ve only got nine minutes left.’
‘What?’
‘Just do it!’
‘Piero!’ Sophia screamed. She rushed over to him, Shannon came right after. Sophia felt his chest, where blood was gushing from a cut under his ripped shirt. She pressed her hand on it.
Pain overtook Manzano, he felt himself sliding feebly out of the chair into Shannon’s hands. He grew cold. Sophia bent over him and Manzano looked up at her. Why this panic in her eyes? As if from far away he heard her calling his name, over and over again, quieter and quieter. All he wanted was to sleep, just to sleep. He closed his eyes. Would Christopoulos get it done in time?
Cold. Sleep.
Day 19 – Wednesday
Paris, France
A sea of flashbulbs greeted Bollard when he entered the arrivals hall. He stopped, had to shield his eyes with his hand, and wondered which celebrity they were expecting.
‘Monsieur Bollard! Monsieur! Monsieur Bollard!’ The journalists thrust microphones in front of his face, bombarded him with questions, not one of which could he make out amid all the noise. Bollard sp
read his arms out protectively in front of the children. Bernadette skipped past him, laughing into the cameras and finally – to Bollard’s horror – sticking her tongue out at them. The journalists flashed away all the more eagerly, but many were laughing, too, and that eased Bollard’s tension. How did the reporters know about his arrival, and why were they even interested?
He spotted his parents and Marie’s mother among those who were waiting. Bernadette and Georges rushed over to the three of them and were taken in their arms. The perfect tableau. For a few seconds all the cameras turned to the reunited group. Bollard and his wife made use of the opportunity to push past the reporters.
‘Is it true that you’re being awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour?’ he heard from the pack.
‘Have all the attackers been caught?’
‘How did your family endure the weeks in The Hague?’
‘James Turner, CNN! Is it true that you’ll be leaving Europol?’
‘When will the president be meeting with you?’
‘What do you say to rumours that you’re being considered as the next interior minister?’
Bollard answered no one. With Marie by his side, he reached out his arm to touch the rest of his family. The children were talking excitedly to their grandparents. For them the death of their grandfather was far away in this moment. Bollard squeezed Marie’s arm before she hugged her mother.
Finally, security personnel arrived to help shield his family from the media scrum and escorted them out to a taxi. Only after his family had climbed into a minivan did Bollard finally turn and face the horde.
‘Thank you for the thrilling reception. But I was only one of many who ended the attackers’ mission. Direct your thanks to them. I have nothing more to say.’
He climbed in, the car drove off and the clamour of the crowd receded behind them.
Day 23 – Sunday
Milan, Italy
A cool wind whipped around the cathedral roof. The lights of the city glittered below them. On the square in front of the church, thousands of people had been protesting for days against the government, demanding better provisions. Sometimes they drowned out even the noise of traffic, which reached them only as a muffled rush.
‘Can you imagine, I’ve never been here before?’ asked Manzano.
‘Isn’t it always like that?’ said Sophia. ‘If you live somewhere, you think you can do it anytime. But you don’t do it. Only when someone comes to visit.’
The knife had opened a flesh wound in Manzano’s chest and nicked his lungs, but the injury wasn’t life-threatening. He had had to spend a few days in the hospital, which had provisionally resumed operations. After that they had stayed in Brussels. Sophia had taken time off. They had recuperated in the hotel, spoken on the phone with friends and relatives, exchanged emails, tried to find out how they had endured the two weeks of terror.
The Internet and television were working without a hitch, the media knew only one story. Jorge Pucao was still being questioned, along with his accomplices in Mexico City and Istanbul. The airport police in Ankara had arrested the fleeing Balduin von Ansen. Siti Yusuf would also be caught one day. It would take years to process their cases. Even longer to deal with the consequences.
Despite a basic supply of electricity, the general state of provisions in many regions was still poor. The accidents in the nuclear plants and chemical factories had made whole stretches of land uninhabitable and driven millions from their homes. The economy was ruined for years, a massive depression was expected. There were still no authoritative death counts; it was said there were millions, if Europe and the US were counted together. But that didn’t include long-term victims. And still it could all have been even worse. In the days after Jorge Pucao’s arrest the IT forensics experts had found the malicious program with which many grids in Europe and the US would have been shut down once more. When people learned of the perpetrators’ motives, they had been outraged, thoughts of lynching were given voice. But after a few days their anger turned on the official institutions that had failed to prevent the catastrophe and were now dragging their feet instead of re-establishing normal conditions. The unrest increased; none of the new military regimes in Portugal, Spain or Greece gave power back to the elected institutions.
Manzano wondered if in the end Pucao and his comrades had been successful after all, at least with their destructive work. He didn’t want to think of it just then. He put his arm around Sophia’s waist and enjoyed the view over the roofs, the sparkling lights under the night sky drawing down. The chanting of the crowd rose softly from below. They stood side by side, leaning against one another in silence.
In his trouser pocket, Manzano heard a loud bing. He took out his new mobile phone, read the text.
‘Lauren arrived safely in the US,’ he said.
‘I don’t think Pucao was right,’ Sophia said, gazing down at the demonstrators in the cathedral square, as small as ants.
‘Me neither. We can do it a different way, a better way.’
He let his gaze sweep over the panorama, put his arm more tightly around her waist.
‘So let’s go back down to the street and join the others.’
Afterword and Thanks
As a thriller writer, naturally one is very happy about placement on bestseller lists, translations, and selling film rights. But, to my surprise, since the book’s publication in spring 2012 I have also been invited by numerous national and international political institutions, public and private organizations, as well as corporations, to give lectures on Blackout and to hold discussions. It has also become standard literature in many companies and administrations.
Blackout wasn’t only featured in the culture pages and on television segments focused on books but was also discussed in the economic, scientific and information technology media. In December 2012 a highly respected jury of economic journalists recognized Blackout as Germany’s ‘most thrilling topical book of the year’. Blackout was already being assigned in schools as well.
Blackout is fiction. But while I was working on the manuscript, reality caught up to my imagination more than once. For instance, my first draft in 2009 predicted a manipulation of power plant SCADA systems. At that time, even experts considered this possibility as either barely feasible or completely far-fetched – until Stuxnet was uncovered in 2010. It was the same story with the danger presented by the backup cooling systems at nuclear power plants – until the disaster in Fukushima.
Just before Christmas 2015 – three years after the first edition of Blackout – Ukraine reported the first cyber attack causing a large power outage.
In the years following 2012 other international media have also shown acute interest in the scenario, such as, in 2013, extensive documentaries running on Channel 4 in the UK and on the National Geographic channel in the USA. Also more scientific, security, military and other studies dealing with the subject have been conducted worldwide.
In doing research for this book I availed myself of a variety of sources. I spoke with experts, for example those in the energy and IT sectors, as well as with those in disaster management. They were all quite willing to provide information, but no one wanted to be credited by name. The Internet of course offers inexhaustible sources of information. Some of them I’d especially like to highlight:
Without the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and its ten thousand contributors, an author like myself would have to spend significantly longer researching for a book like this one (and before anyone asks: yes, I support Wikipedia financially).
My research was corroborated shortly before completion of the manuscript in May 2011 by the report presented by the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment (18th committee) as directed by Article 56a of the rules of procedure for the technology assessment project: ‘Endangerment and Vulnerability of Modern Societies – as seen in the example of a wide-reaching and long-lasting failure of the power supply’. I have included some of the results of this
study in this book. The report can be found on the homepage of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior under its German title: Bericht des Ausschusses für Bildung, Forschung und Technikfolgenabschätzung (18. Ausschuss) gemäß § 56a der Geschäftsordnung zum Technikfolgenabschätzung-Projekt: ‘Gefährdung und Verletzbarkeit moderner Gesellschaften – am Beispiel eines großräumigen und lang andauernden Ausfalls der Stromversorgung.’
Sheri Fink’s Pulitzer Prize-winning article from 25 August 2009 in the New York Times on the dramatic days in the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 provided inspiration for the hospital scenes.
The scenario I’ve described is one of many that are possible. The fact is, no one can predict what would happen in such an event. Since I wouldn’t like to provide instructions for a terror attack, I have left out or changed sensitive technical details. I’ve simplified the presentation of some facts for the sake of narrative and readability; for example, I have placed grid control rooms within corporate headquarters, kept telephone and Internet connections intact longer than would be probable – and various other technical details. Possible inconsistencies or inaccuracies can be traced back either to this – or to mistakes that slipped past me, for which I ask forgiveness.
I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to all sources, named and unnamed. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to write this book.
Additionally, special thanks goes to my agent Michael Gaeb and his team, who believed in the manuscript, to my editors Eléonore Delair and Kerstin von Dobschütz, as well as to my publisher, Nicola Bartels, who have helped me to make it into the book it is. I must give particular thanks to one of my anonymous helpers, who unflaggingly provided me with information, especially on the IT aspects, and even proofread the manuscript on top of that. It goes without saying that I thank my parents, for everything one can thank parents for. Finally, and ahead of all others, I thank my wife for her endless patience, her tough criticism, her countless suggestions and her continuing encouragement.