The codes hung on the walls, notepads lay open and computers hummed, sombrely behind screens with rows of numbers but without having come a single step closer to a key or a solution or whatever could help them getting ahead.
He’d wasted a day. And he had a very finite supply of them.
On his desk lay all the books and papers they’d brought from his apartment. And he walked up to it, sifted through them, searching. If they’d brought everything, what he was looking for should be there too. And he rifled through essays and scraps and documents, memories of his own life that hit him one after the other, until at last he found it.
The notebook was black and its pages were white without lines or squares. It had a leather cover and a ribbon for a bookmark, and he knew perfectly well there was nothing special about it.
Or, that it shouldn’t be anything special.
If only things hadn’t been so stubbornly etched into his memory.
She.
How she stood by his bed as he pretended to wake up, how she held the parcel out towards him, disproportionately proud and with eyes glowing with anticipation. Glowing because she’d watched him working at his desk, writing notes by hand, and glowing with the pride that she’d come up with the idea herself, and spent her own money on getting to be a part of his life even when he was busy working.
She had been five and William had still been a happy man. And he’d opened the parcel, exchanging hidden glances with Christina, smiles that played in the corner of their eyes but that mustn’t be seen. She had stood behind their daughter’s back, and of course she’d already told him what Sara had bought, and of course he overacted and was much happier than the situation called for, and of course that was everything a five-year-old girl needed to bubble with joy.
And at the time, that was all it was.
It was a notebook. Nothing more. That, and wrapping paper that rustled between her pyjama-clad legs and the sheets of the double bed as Sara clambered up and hugged him, hugged him clumsily with short arms, wished him a happy birthday and beamed and was happy the way only a child can be.
That was all.
But as time passed and the distance grew it became a moment that he’d never get back.
It became the image of a life he wanted to remember but that didn’t exist, a frozen point in time that he wanted to step into and say all the things that he never got to, the things he didn’t know then but would experience later. And the image kept dangling in front of his eyes, always close and within sight but always distant and impossible to reach.
And all that in a little black book.
That’s what it represented.
Here he stood, holding it in his hand. Felt its structure, the black leather that had dried over the years. Aged. Changed. As one does.
And then, finally, he folded it open. Weighed the pen in his hand, put it to the paper.
Nothing would ever make me keep a diary.
Those were the first words he wrote.
37
The night train from Munich to Berlin left shortly before ten, right on time.
The young family who’d just checked in to their little compartment were tired but happy in spite of everything – their holiday hadn’t gone as expected, but eventually they had ended up where they wanted and got to see everyone they’d planned to see. And now they would visit Berlin for a few days before returning home.
Home. The very mention of it made them anxious.
Only three days ago they’d missed their train out of town after being caught up in the crash on the A9.
And that was bad enough for two adults. But when you’re four and seven and full of expectations, your cousins are more important than any car crash in the world. And the journey to Munich had had to be by air and it had cost them a fortune but what can you do.
While they were there, all hell broke loose. They sat in the cosy armchairs in their relatives’ warm home in front of the TV and saw their hometown reduced to ruins, twice in one day. Amsterdam had experienced the inexplicable, and they had been lucky not to be there, but that didn’t help. The knowledge of what awaited them at home, the idea that there’d be people they might never see again, all those thoughts were impossible to shake.
But children are children. And life is what happens here and now. And there was no point in dwelling on what awaited them once they got home.
Everything was an adventure, and sleeping on a train was the biggest adventure of all; with sparkling eyes they charmed their way up and down the aisle, talked to the conductor clipping their tickets, to the lady in the dining car who sold them their sweets, and to all the passengers who simply had to be informed about how exciting this trip was going to be.
Eventually the young parents had led their children back to their compartment, tired but happy and with apologetic smiles on their faces.
In their compartment, the blankets had been cool and the bunks soft.
And there, they had settled down to sleep.
Eleven hours later, at eight minutes to nine in the morning, the train would arrive at Berlin Hauptbahnhof as planned. And nothing would seem out of the ordinary, people would alight and peer into the morning light and wander off, and nobody would stop to think about the compartment where the curtains remained drawn and the door closed.
Not until almost an hour later.
When the cleaners turned their keys in the lock and stepped inside to do their job.
The operation labelled Scenario Zero had become a running joke.
They called it a staff benefit.
Of course it was merely a way of coping with the terrifying prospect, the doomsday scenario that would make the operation come into effect, the horrifying reality behind their being part of a group to be saved when the rest of humanity died.
There was nothing in the protocols that was the least bit amusing. And consequently, the only way to deal with them was with humour.
Now that the joke was a reality, it wasn’t funny any more.
The orders were given at an impromptu meeting. The entire staff was there, from commanders to guards to medical personnel, fifty-four people gathering in the parliament, the air fizzing with nerves.
Everyone knew what the announcement would be.
And even so, the news created stress and confusion and raised hands and thousands of questions. It didn’t matter how long anyone had worked for the Organisation, three years or thirty or anything in between, the things that were happening were huge and terrifying and paralysing. Scenario Zero had entered its first phase. And that was the final proof they had lost control.
The orders were tailored to each individual.
And there was no time to waste.
Assets were to be gathered and packed, provisions and medicine and work material.
Personal belongings were to be sorted and selected, their space would be limited but nobody knew what awaited them, and if they were to survive without going crazy they needed some connection to their old lives. Nobody knew how long they’d be away, and if they managed to avoid the pandemic it would all be for nothing if they suffered mental collapse in the process.
Connors had written the manual. And in theory, he’d been proud of it. But in reality he stood in the blue parliament in front of everyone else, ran through the orders and wished that he didn’t have to.
Around him everyone listened.
Everyone, except for the infected, those who lay in their beds and who’d be left behind when everyone else was gone.
And except for the two civilians.
It was a shame, but that was the way he’d written the protocols.
And as much as he hated it, there was nothing to be done.
Because if reality were logical and obvious one wouldn’t need to write scenarios in advance.
When the meeting was over, the work began. The stressful and nervous process of putting the plan into action.
Guards. Medical staff. Researchers and commanders.
They al
l prepared.
Packed and ran and hurried around.
Fumbled and scurried and followed protocol.
Worked with the knowledge of inescapable terror hanging over them.
And the joke about employee benefits had ceased to be funny.
Saul Watkins was a thin man, but he hadn’t always been.
His jacket hung across his chest. Underneath it a shirt was loosely draped over his shoulders, tucked into trousers that had a significantly larger circumference than his waist, everything gathered by a belt until his trousers hung in folds like wrinkled curtains in the home of a deceased relative. He looked as if he’d been washed at the wrong temperature, and that he was the only one who hadn’t noticed.
He’d lost weight. A lot, and in a short time. He looked like a man who’d endured something that had taken its toll on his health.
Which was exactly what had happened.
Saul Watkins turned off from the tree-lined avenue and cut across the open area in front of the parliament building, crossed the yellow lawns toward the footbridge and the ultra-modern building across the river.
He was out in the open, and completely visible. Which was intentional.
If he was being followed, they couldn’t miss him.
But on the other hand, he would also see them.
It would be virtually impossible to tail him across the open space, in between the buildings and out on to the next, impossible without him noticing.
He stopped on the bridge. Watched the thin ice trying to cover the surface but breaking and cracking open somewhere else as it did. He gazed at the water, his face full of sorrows and pondering, a sad widower taking a walk in search of some new meaning in life.
But on the inside, his mind was on high alert. He searched for faces he recognised, men who stood alone or walked aimlessly or seemed to be waiting for nothing at all. Men like the ones who had appeared outside his home, those who’d watched his front door and who simply had to be connected to everything else that had happened, he just didn’t know how and he was afraid to find out.
Her postcards had kept coming for a long time.
They were short and plain, there was no doubt that someone else read them and made sure she only wrote what she was allowed to, but all the same they were from her and that gave him some comfort. He missed her terribly, but she said she was doing well and what more could he ask for.
Then they stopped coming.
And then they appeared.
The men. In their cars. They waited outside his house, didn’t follow him when he left his home in the morning, but they’d be sitting there when he came home at night. As if they were looking for someone else, but why should they be?
Then, one day, they weren’t there. And shortly after, he received the news.
His wife had died in an accident.
And the cars on the street were gone, but it was too implausible to assume they had stopped watching him. They were around somewhere, he refused to believe otherwise, and the thin white envelope that had arrived at his office had left him more convinced than ever that he was a pawn in a game he didn’t understand, a game he was desperate to get out of as soon as humanly possible.
He stood on the bridge, watched the ice grow and crack, and eventually he decided that nobody was following him. He straightened up, carried on across the river, over to the glass structure on the other side.
In his pocket he had the note from the thin envelope.
All he wanted was to get rid of it.
Something was happening, and he didn’t know what, only that it scared him and that he didn’t want any part of it.
He hoped the two men who’d contacted him from their car en route from Amsterdam might be able to help him with that.
38
Night travelled across the globe, just as it always did. But for those who had waited, and who saw what was happening, it was one of the longest nights of their lives.
In different corners of different offices in different countries, men and occasional women paced nervously, alone behind different closed doors but with the same international news on TV screens in front of them. And none of them knew everything, but they were all capable of putting two and two together.
The Organisation that had contacted them.
The obscure instructions they’d received.
The years that had passed, and the task that had almost been forgotten.
And then today.
In different corners of different offices in parliaments and governmental buildings and defence headquarters, men and occasional women paced and didn’t know but could perfectly well guess.
They’d received their envelopes with numbers. And they’d opened their old instructions.
And then they had started to understand.
What had happened was just the beginning.
It was time to prepare.
And now they all waited for a phone call none of them wanted to receive.
39
‘I think they killed her,’ he said.
He looked between Leo and Albert and all the heads that moved around them, his eyes darting as if he was a bird looking for food and Berlin Hauptbahnhof was a buffet table where someone might show up at any moment and shoo him away.
Above them, steel and glass arched into a cathedral of thousands of windows, a gigantic greenhouse where people moved from shop to shop like insects between flowers as they waited for trains to come and go and take them somewhere else.
The clock showed a little after nine.
It was the beginning of the working day, and there were people everywhere.
And Saul Watkins was one of them, invisible in the crowd, one more man who’d run a few errands and decided to break for a coffee; an ordinary, invisible man, nothing to make him stand out from the crowd.
Even so, he was nervous. In fact, he was scared. And he was full of sorrow – on the plate in front of him lay a factory-made sandwich that would go uneaten, the same way every other meal had gone uneaten the past few weeks. It was a prop in a performance, nothing more, the detail that would complete the image and show that this was merely a breakfast, and that would stop him from sticking out.
He didn’t want to get involved. But on the other hand, he knew he already was.
‘Who are they?’ Albert asked.
Watkins shook his head. He didn’t know. All he could tell them was that they had employed his wife, they had come to watch his home, they had called him on his phone with a short and formal notice that his wife had died in an accident.
His wife. She was fifteen years younger than him, but nobody ever noticed, or at least during all the time they’d been married he’d never heard anyone comment on it. They were both professors, he had a doctor’s degree and she had two, they both worked at the University of Potsdam but in different disciplines. He was a scholar of humanities and literature; he knew nothing about numbers but everything about what feelings you get from eating a madeleine cake and how to describe it in as many pages as possible. And she was a theorist. Systematic and logic to the backbone. It had been unthinkable for such disparate characters to come together, and even more unthinkable that they should enjoy each other’s company. And yet they had been happily married for twenty years.
‘And then,’ he concluded. ‘Then it happened. They happened.’
There was a brief pause.
‘Theorist?’ said Albert. ‘What discipline?’
‘Advanced mathematics. Codes, ciphers. She carried on teaching at the university, but in her spare time she developed a new commercial encryption system for transferring data over the web.’ An ironic smile played about his lips but died long before it reached his eyes. ‘She taught me to say that. The only words I understand in that sentence are the prepositions.’
Albert leaned over. ‘Have you heard of a William Sandberg?’
Saul shook his head.
‘Do you think your wife could have known him? Do you know if she’s ever done any
work for any military organisation?’
‘What are you saying?’ asked Watkins. ‘Do you know who they are?’
Albert’s turn to shake his head. And Watkins peered at him:
‘So who is William Sandberg?’
Albert stopped and explained it as economically as he could. William. Janine. The letter from Janine, the one where she’d mentioned Saul’s wife. The disappearances and the dark-suited men in Amsterdam.
Saul listened and nodded. ‘They.’
And then it went quiet.
‘There are differences that puzzle me,’ Albert said after a while.
Watkins and Leo both looked at him and waited.
‘Your wife was recruited,’ he said.
‘She went voluntarily. But they kept her there against her will.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘The advantage of studying literature. You get rather good at reading between the lines.’ Another smile that didn’t arrive. And he clarified himself: ‘We had contact. Not every day, but she sent me postcards. Impersonal, brief postcards talking about the weather. Literally. And if there’s one thing we never talked about, it was weather. It meant that she was alive, but it also meant that someone was stopping her from writing what she wanted.
‘Postmarked Bern?’ said Albert.
Watkins looked up at him. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Sometimes Bern, sometimes Innsbruck, sometimes Milan. Never from the same place twice in a row. If there was a pattern, I never saw it.’
‘And everywhere, you see Alps.’
It was Leo speaking. He was already holding Christina’s phone, a map on the screen, and he pinched and dragged and moved it over the screen to find a centre point between the three locations.
‘At least it gives us something to go on. Somewhere here.’
Saul gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Which tells us exactly nothing. There, somewhere. But where?’
The moment he saw Leo’s eyes, he lowered his voice again.
Chain of Events Page 31