Schwingen and a troop of SPD grandees including the prime minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which includes Bonn, Cologne and much of the old Ruhr coal and steel belt, filed onto the stage. They held brief speeches lauding Gutman, and the crowd applauded dutifully. Gutman didn’t hear what they were saying. He was fighting not to be overwhelmed by the sensation that this was his last chance to salvage his campaign, to restore his chances, to fulfil his life’s dream. He shook his head and tried to focus.
It was 6.50. The introductions were over. Everyone was looking at him. Birgit, the assembled leadership of the SPD, the crowd. The whole of Germany, the whole of Europe. He nodded and smiled and strode up to the microphone. His throat was dry. It always was before speeches. A large glass of still water was waiting for him. He took deep gulps. It calmed him.
A silence descended on the square that grew more oppressive with each second.
“My dear comrades, my fellow Germans.” He spoke softly but authoritatively, like a doctor asking the parents of a sick child to sit down and listen.
“I decided to stand for the chancellorship of the Federal Republic because I wanted to help steer our fatherland towards a good future. I wanted to help make sure that everyone in this country, regardless of their background, their social status, their colour or their creed could get access to the finest education in the world, and could shape a bright future for themselves and their loved ones.”
“I wanted to help turn this century into OUR century, to replace the shadows of our past with a bright light of tolerance, peace, freedom and respect, a light that radiates hope to people all over the world. I wanted us to apply the bitter lessons we have learned to help create a fairer, safer, more mulitilateral world.”
Heise frowned. They’d given up on the speech text and Gutman told him he was going to “go out there, open my mouth and see what comes out.” What was he up to? He kept repeating “wanted to” in the past tense. Was he throwing in the towel? Ditching the election to spend more time with his family?
“I wanted us to integrate our millions of immigrants and to help them realise their vast potential for their own good and the good of the nation.
“I wanted to help ensure that “Made in Germany” will remain a respected, admired stamp of quality the world over, and that we continue to invent, develop and manufacture the finest goods in the world.
“I wanted us to stop being afraid of the future!” The words echoed around the square.
“I wanted” … applause erupted from the enclosure in front of him and spread across the square. He held out both hands, and the clapping stopped. The square fell silent again, so silent that he could hear the chugging of barges on the Rhine.
“I wanted Germans to be able to stand up and say ‘I am proud to be a German’ without fear of being labelled as a racist or a Nazi. I wanted to strike fear into the hearts of that tiny minority of people in this country who victimise others for being different. I wanted to scare off those who think they can change our society by threatening our democratic system and way of life.”
Somewhere in the crowd a football claxon sounded. A group of students started chanting “Rudi! Rudi!”
“I wanted to reform our health system so that everyone gets the best possible treatment, regardless of their bank account. I wanted to slash greenhouse emissions by 50 percent more than Europe has pledged, I wanted this glorious, luscious land of mountains and valleys and rivers and castles and fertile plains to be the greenest in the world, I wanted our engineers to be at the forefront of developing environmental technology, I wanted people all over the world to point at us and say, ‘You see, that is how we’re going to save our planet!’”
Gutman paused and took a deep breath.
“Did you want those things as well?”
A cry of “Jaaaa!” reverberated round the square.
“Do you still want those things?”
The Yes was deafening.
“Then vote for my party, the SPD, vote for me on Sunday!”
Gutman crashed his fist onto the lectern. “We must not let the enemies of liberty scare us into denying ourselves our free choice! We’ve seen that happen before in our country. It must never happen again. It will never happen again!”
Gutman’s voice was failing him. He’d only been speaking for a few minutes but he’d said all there was to say.
Thunderous applause swept the square. Heise smiled. Clever man. Germany hadn’t seen an orator like this in a long time. He might just have rescued his campaign with that short address. He had challenged the nation to show courage, ignore the terrorists and vote for him.
Gutman beckoned Birgit over. The “Rudi!” chants kept coming, thousands of hands began clapping rhythmically. He strode to the front of the stage with Birgit, held up his hands and beamed as he scanned the crowd. Maybe. Just maybe, I’m still in with a chance. He turned and stepped back towards the lectern. Birgit was behind him. She said something, but he couldn’t hear it and just nodded. They turned and started to walk towards the side of the stage.
An instant later, a white flash blinded him, and something smashed into his back with the force of a truck.
The explosion tore through the VIP area with an ear-splitting, roaring rip that shook the square like an earthquake. Hundreds of windows burst simultaneously with a deafening, tinkling crash. Seconds later, chairs and barriers hurled into the air by the force of the blast clattered back down to the ground. Bodies and torn limbs hit the cobblestones with wet thwacks. Then, for an instant, there was a stunned calm, interrupted only by the ringing of car alarms set off by the shockwave. It was followed seconds later by a cacophony of terrified screams and roars of pain. The canvas awning of the stage was ablaze. The bomb obliterated Chhadat and the three people next to him, and devastated the platform where Gutman had been speaking.
Heise could feel warm blood trickling from his left ear. There was a blackened body amid the mangle of boards and scaffolding. He couldn’t hear anything. Becker was lying beneath the stage. His eyes were open. There was blood seeping out of his mouth. A female bodyguard who had been standing at the foot of the stage had lost both legs. Heise recoiled. Where was Gutman? Where was the candidate?
The façade of the town hall was blackened and chipped with debris. Panic erupted all around as thousands of people broke into a stampede to get out of the square. Inside the VIP enclosure, people covered in blood tripped and scrambled over chairs and iron fences. Heise gasped at the sight. People were getting trampled. He could see a fat ambulanceman lumbering towards the remains of the stage. He turned and saw a headless body. It made him want to vomit. He fainted.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Berlin, 7.12 p.m.
Carver saw the live television coverage go blank on all four channels that carried the speech live. Within minutes, reports of a major incident were coming through. Ludmilla was on a press trip there. She would have been close. He rang her number. No answer.
Plough rang, sounding unusually flustered. “This looks like a big one. Is Gutman dead? We’re holding the front page.”
The mobile phone network in Bonn had broken down. After an hour, the police announced that at least 10 people were dead. Soon after that the figure was revised up to at least 18. No word on Gutman. Hundreds of people were injured. The stampede had killed more people than the blast.
Carver’s body was aching from the fight in Sastrow. His cheek was swollen and his stab wound kept seeping blood into the bandage. He went to the kitchen, brewed up some tea and popped more painkillers.
Renner rang. “The bastards got him.”
“Is he dead?”
“No information yet. I can’t believe they got in there with a fucking bomb. It’s pathetic. I’ll come over.”
A few minutes later, the SPD party headquarters issued a statement. Gutman had survived with just lacerations. Among the dead were Gutman’s spokesman Heinrich Becker and the prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. Gutman’s w
ife Birgit was injured, no word on how seriously.
Renner monitored TV, radio and websites and fed information to Carver, who phoned it through to London. There was no time to write it down. This was a dictation job. The next TV bulletin quoted unnamed “security sources” as saying there were indications that the bomb was a suicide attack. Minutes later, the news came that the Revengers of Allah had claimed responsibility. Their message ended with the warning: “Germans will continue to bleed, and the Zionist will run out of luck.”
Carver’s phone rang. It was Ludmilla. “I was in cafe on edge of the square listening to his speech,” she said, her voice trembling. “The window broke. I got covered in it. There were dead bodies. Frank, it was terrible.” She burst into tears.
“Are you hurt?”
“I got cut. I’ll be OK. I’m in hospital waiting to see a doctor. Frank …”
“Yes?”
“Are we still OK, Frank? Are you angry with me?” Her voice choked. “I didn’t tell anyone about your meeting with Stasi spy. I swear, Frank!”
“I believe you,” Carver said. “Don’t worry about that. Is there anything you need?”
“No, my darling. I’m coming back tonight. We can talk then.”
Carver walked back into the office. Renner shot him a quizzical look.
“Who was that?”
“Ludmilla Janowski, Polish freelancer.”
“And you two are …”
“Sort of.”
“Does she know anything about our thing?”
Carver shook his head. “So what do we do now? We’ve got no proof, nothing. Just a cryptic post-it note and anonymous testimony about a dodgy handover of gemstones.”
“I can just about get my head around Tietjen being behind the other attacks,” Renner considered. “But a suicide bomber? I don’t get it. Neo-Nazis doing a suicide bombing? Doesn’t fit somehow. Who’s going to believe us this was Nazis? I mean, I’m not sure even I believe this was Nazis!”
Carver dreaded the next few hourss. The Chronicle would be screaming for the standard coverage of a terrorist attack. What did eyewitnesses see? Who were the victims? Who was the bomber? Did he get training in an Afghan training camp? Or was he just radicalized by scouring Islamic websites in his bedroom in some German housing estate? ‘He was a quiet boy, kept himself to himself, said neighbours.’ Next, he’d have to write about the crackdown. Even more security. Homegrown Terrorism. Muslim immigrant population under heightened scrutiny. No more minarets, burn those headscarves!
The election was redundant, even if they went ahead with it now. By what margin would Chancellor Müller win? Ten points? Fifteen? Absolute majority? Tietjen might even start rising again in the polls. As if Wewelsburg never happened!
Simon Hertz, the head of the Jewish Council, issued a statement insisting that Germany’s Islamic community condemn the bombing. “This atrocity is a shocking attack not only on the Jewish community, but on our democratic, open way of life,” he told a scrum of TV cameras in Berlin. “This government cannot tolerate this provocation by Islamist terrorists on German soil.”
Within the hour, the Council of Muslims in Germany had issued a stern rebuff accusing Hertz of prejudicing the investigation.
The FNP came out with a statement calling for the internment of all potentially violent Islamists in Germany. The right wing of Müller’s conservatives said police must be given new powers to shoot terrorists on sight and called for the army to be deployed to help protect public areas.
Bavarian governor Franz Schnauzbrunner, an ally of Chancellor Müller, demanded a ban on the construction of all new mosques in Germany. “We need to make clear to the Islamic immigrant population that this country has a culture which is Christian and Western and if they want to continue to share in our prosperity, they will need to adopt our values,” he told reporters outside the Munich headquarters of the Christian Social Union party.
Senior members of Müller’s own Christian Democratic Union party declared that multiculturalism had failed in Germany, and that the country’s future was at risk from a rapidly growing population of Muslim immigrants who had no interest in integrating themselves into society. This “sub-class,” said one irate parliamentarian, was evidently a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalism.
By midnight, there were reports that large crowds of hostile demonstrators were gathering outside mosques in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich. In Duisburg, a petrol bomb was thrown against the Merkez mosque, Germany’s biggest. In Magdeburg west of Berlin, a gang of youths threw bricks through the window of a kebab shop. In Rostock, a minor riot broke out when Turkish youths confronted some skinheads who had chased a Turkish teenager through the city centre shouting “Arabs out!”
There were growing calls for the election, just a few days away, to be postponed due to the terrorist threat.
Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Interior Ministry 11.45 p.m.
All leave was cancelled. The call came through for all regional departments of Germany’s inland intelligence service to check whether Chhadat had any contacts with people in their areas, to review their lists of Muslim radicals and to trawl Internet chat forums for Revengers of Allah sympathizers.
Stefan Schulte was so busy that he ignored the email from the phone company at first. He took a break and got himself a coffee from the machine down the hall. As he sipped the lukewarm brew, he scrolled through his mailbox and opened the message. It contained the updated list of the whereabouts of Mecklenburg’s five top neo-Nazis for the last 14 days. Not a priority, but he was about to hand over to the next shift and wanted to leave a clean deck. He glanced down the list. Wuttke had been on the road again. Stralsund, Berlin, Dresden. When did the guy find time to look after his poor pigs? He checked the dates. Stralsund figured, it coincided with the big demonstration. And Dresden? No big events in Dresden that day. He read on and sat up straight. “No way.” He banged the coffee cup down so hard that it spilt over his desk. He clicked on print, grabbed the paper and ran down the hall.
Krumnagel, his boss, didn’t look pleased to see him. “Herr Direktor. The phone tracking list came in this afternoon. It shows Sven Wuttke was in Bonn yesterday and this morning, at least until noon. Maybe longer. Noon is the cut-off point for this batch of data. I can get more recent tracking tomorrow. Maybe he was there during the bombing!”
Krumnagel looked at the list. “So were a lot of people.”
“But he was at the site of three of the attacks! Four, in fact. I checked and he was in Berlin on August 5, the day that Jewish bakery was firebombed.”
“Schulte, are you suggesting he’s a closet Islamic fanatic?”
“No. But it looks dodgy doesn’t it? I mean …”
Krumnagel sighed. “Listen.” He walked around his desk and put his arm on Schulte’s shoulder. “Wuttke’s … he’s one of us.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s an informant. He’s on our list. I recruited him myself. He’s been useful. Given us valuable tips on the networks here. His info helped us shut down the Viking Youth. He’s our top neo-Nazi informant in Mecklenburg. Get it?”
“Oh. So him being at all these attacks … he’s been there for us?”
Krumnagel shook his head. “We’ve got a job to do, Schulte. We’ve got to focus on Muslims. They’re the real threat. Not right-wing thugs. Do you honestly think our Nazis would be capable of something like this? You’ve got a lot to learn! We’ve got other priorities! Understood?”
Berlin, the Federal Chancellery, Wednesday, September 5
The German Federal Security Council consists of nine members – the chancellor, her deputy, the chief of staff and key cabinet ministers. Its task is usually confined to approving sensitive export deals such as the sale of tanks to the Middle East. Chancellor Müller convened it to coordinate the response to the Bonn terrorist attack.
They sat in the Chancellery’s incident room and listened to reports from the heads of the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), Germany’s version of
Scotland Yard, and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) – the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence service, the equivalent of Britain’s MI5, as well as the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the foreign intelligence service.
It was six a.m. on the morning after the attack. Müller had thick bags under her eyes and poured a cup of strong coffee from one of the thermos flasks on the table. She had no objection to be likened to “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher – but she lacked the former British Prime Minister’s capacity to keep going on just four hours sleep a day.
“What do we know so far?” she asked BKA President Jürgen Thiele, a highly regarded veteran cop who was just two months from retirement.
“Frau Chancellor, we know the device consisted of Semtex plastic explosive and was concealed in a leather briefcase belonging to a Jordanian journalist, Mohammed Chhadat. Herr Gutman was very lucky to survive it. We …”
Müller interrupted him with an astonished look on her face. “Excuse me? But I know Chhadat! He has interviewed me, he’s worked in Germany for many years!”
“I know, Frau Chancellor,” Thiele said. “On the face of it, it is extremely surprising. We have nothing remotely suspicious on him. No radical views, in fact he didn’t seem to have been a practicing Muslim at all. We’ve all heard of sleepers, but this … this is very strange indeed. But the bomb was in his briefcase, of that there is no doubt.”
The Jewish Candidate Page 19