by Mattias Berg
On top of that, figures out of the Bhagavad Gita. Often extreme allusions to what Robert Oppenheimer, with his interest in religions, is said to have thought during the first test of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945—code-named Trinity, like my youngest daughter. Only weeks before the invention was tested for real over Hiroshima.
The quote had spread around the world following a T.V. interview many years later, long after Oppenheimer himself had started to argue against the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons. When he revealed that he had come to think of those precise words as it became clear that the atomic bomb would actually work: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Vishnu’s words in the Gita, as he assumes his four-armed shape to persuade the Prince to do his violent duty.
And then there were images of the enemy, skeletons, demons, zombies. Many of them clearly inspired by Death on Blu’s huge mural in Niscemi, that macabre figure playing the whole nuclear weapons system like one single finely tuned instrument.
But despite all these spectacular costumes, most striking still was the sheer number of people around the M.U.O.S. base. If the number of activists gathered at Kleine Brogel had been more than one hundred thousand, here there already seemed to be twice as many. Despite the base’s remote location—and the fact that there were still some hours to go before the formal inauguration.
But the peace activists had recently got fresh wind in their sails, all around the world. Alongside their reporting on the Nuclear Weapons Scandal, C.N.N. had been covering recent developments at the U.N. General Assembly. A joint proposal by a number of smaller states to launch negotiations on a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons had, against all expectations, been adopted.
The small states’ logic was as simple as it was compelling. According to the resolution there were only two alternatives. Either nuclear weapons were not a means of combat sanctioned by the laws of war, in which case they should be forbidden under international conventions, or they should be regarded as a legitimate weapon. Which in turn meant that all states should be permitted to acquire their own nuclear weapons, on the basis that it was not for the U.N. to prescribe a fundamentally unequal world order.
None of the experts in the studio had thought that the resolution had any chance of success, despite all of that. But that a proposal for negotiations was at least adopted was in itself a victory. The first public sign of life in years from the peace movement.
Not long after that there were huge demonstrations against Britain’s proposed renewal of Trident, the new generation of nuclear weapons, its own revitalization. The seventy-five thousand who gathered in and around Trafalgar Square represented the largest nuclear weapons protest since three hundred thousand had gathered in Hyde Park more than thirty years before, in 1983, against the deployment of cruise missiles at Greenham Common.
The renewal of interest around the nuclear weapons question had persuaded even the largest American media companies to make the pilgrimage all the way to little Niscemi—and, after the ever-complicated choice between definitely appearing in a bad light sooner, or eventually doing so later, our administration seemed to have given way to pressure and approved the applications for accreditation. The sanctioned white press buses stood neatly lined up at a safe distance from the base, in fact at rather more than a safe distance.
Partly because the activists’ camp now covered an area with a radius of about half a mile, maybe more. Partly because nobody really knew how far the effects of the possible confrontation would spread.
So the scene was set. The inauguration of the fourth and final global M.U.O.S. base, the completion of our new communications system with its enormous but partly hidden potential, would most likely be the lead story in the American T.V. stations’ morning news programs, thanks to the time difference. Or rather: the violent clashes which would soon be taking place around the inauguration.
This was what Ingrid was expecting. The maximum possible focus, but in the wrong direction, that age-old magician’s trick. So that the real drama could unfold elsewhere, probably in some place deep beneath the surface of the facility.
It was now 07.49, the temperature 77.5 degrees here in the shade of the olive grove. The sun was shining mercilessly on the activists in their costumes and the defenders in their tight uniforms. The force of guards still did not seem nearly strong enough to be able to stop the activists from storming the base, did not appear to have been reinforced in any significant way. Nor could I detect any of our pursuers. Not Zafirah, who preferred to operate alone in the heat of things, but was presumably now supported by some of the President’s own most capable security staff. Not Edelweiss either—he would likely still be in Washington, directing the drama.
The pursuit had to be concluded in the same silence which had governed it for more than five months. Even those on our trail had to synchronize their actions with the movements of the crowd, as did we: both hunters and hunted, trying hard not to risk drawing the slightest attention from the media apparatus in curious attendance here, not to disclose the black hole at the heart of our organization. And thereby lend the headline “NUCLEAR WEAPONS SCANDAL” a new dimension.
Revealing that a very small group of people had so much operational power. The top secret war plan, for the most part still unapproved. The existence of an Alpha whose mandate in certain cases exceeded that of the President himself. The man with the briefcase, the nuclear football, like a pulsating red light at the very center of our group. And finally: that the two of us had been on the run together since September of the previous year.
Ingrid and I stared into the gigantic crowd, the absurd carnival. There was no sign of Sixten either. He had told her that he would not be joining us until the moment of the attack, when the tumult would start to build up. And she said that she did not want to risk arousing suspicion among those using drone images to analyze the internal structure of the mass, in case they began to follow our movements more closely, placing their digital markers on us.
She looked at her wrist-watch—and turned to me for the first time since we had arrived at the olive grove.
“You wouldn’t like to call Aina again, my treasure?”
I took out the cell phone, saw that I had five missed calls from her number. Called my own number, let the engaged tone ring for a certain length of time.
“No answer and no voicemail,” I said.
“Then it probably wasn’t anything important, my treasure.”
When eventually the sun fell on the olive grove she took the last of Jesús María’s preparations out of her own combat pack. The final remnant of that woman’s jet-black humor. Without a word I put on the full beard, the curly black wig and the torn brown shift made of homespun cloth. Realized what she was trying to get at—even though I knew that from the outside I would look no different from all the other martyrs around the perimeter of the base.
It was my mother who told me the whole story, long before I was old enough to understand the detail. She always emphasized that she had been thinking of Erasmus of Rotterdam when deciding on my name, the great European humanist, the symbol for an entirely new world: he who disputed the issue of free will with Martin Luther. But she also told me the colorful story of St Erasmus, who had been born in 240 and died in 303, one of the many victims of the Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians. And it was my mother who first told me that the saint’s symbol was a windlass and that he was martyred by having his intestines slowly wound up on one. As time went on I became almost obsessed with the grim fate of the saint. And Jesús María had put his symbol onto my outfit, elegantly but discreetly. On the lower part of my top, level with my intestines, there was a small windlass embroidered in blood-red thread against the brown of the fabric.
Ingrid scrutinized me, my look yet again entirely new, as if she were trying to get to the bottom of something. I had to look away. At that she put on her own simple outfit, on top of her general combat gear. It looked exactly the same as
in Belgium: a white nightshirt cut off above the knees so as not to inhibit movement, blond wig, crown of light in her hair which she would cast off before we went in. Allowed ourselves to be washed along in the big wave of activists, before moving off on our mission once inside the gates.
I could see almost thirty more Lucias along the base’s perimeter fence, without even having to pick up my field glasses. In all probability the most common of all the ensembles being worn by the activists. So there was little risk that anybody would connect Ingrid to the incident inside Kleine Brogel, that inexplicable electrical fault, the sudden smoke at the base.
According to legend, St Lucia came from Syracuse—a hundred miles to the south-east from here, and died just one year after Saint Erasmus. After her torture, Lucia ended up as a prostitute in a brothel. In due course she too, according to the typically convoluted myth, had both boiling oil poured over her and a sword pierce her throat, surviving both. Only when somebody nevertheless gave her the last rites, was she able to be at peace and leave this mortal coil.
Ingrid picked up what looked like a normal lighter and lit the candles before placing the crown on her head, although it was hard to see the flames in the bright sunlight. There was a slight smell of crude rubber or oil. The candles did not blow out even when the wind gusted in the olive grove. They were probably made with some special agent, some chemical witch’s brew.
Then she led us out from the treeline, traversing the slope down toward the installations. None of the security guards who had mingled with the activists made any move to obstruct our way as we took our place by the sign which said “MARTYRS FOR PEACE”.
The crowd grew by the minute. Normal people, those who were curious, family members, full-blown idealists who had taken the day off from their jobs in the village or perhaps didn’t have one in this depopulated area. Global peace activists from far away, with well-worn routines from scores of similar demonstrations. Thanks to the costumes it was as hard as ever to distinguish the professionals from the amateurs. Streamers with the “No M.U.O.S.” message were hanging on the fence surrounding the establishment, like strings of white glue binding it all together, while none of the guards made any move, vastly outnumbered as they were. Gradually the activists inched forward. The mass’ slow landslide.
I then heard a dull roar, first thinking that it must be thunder from some distance away, the normal climax of a scirocco. I looked up at the clear-blue sky—and saw that it was filled with drones from Sigonella.
After that the all-terrain buses arrived, together with the airborne convoy. The Marine One helicopter was escorted by about ten others from the H.M.X.1 squadron in Quantico, Virginia. The special forces troops streamed out of the buses, made straight for the gates, where they lined up in full readiness. The dark bellowing of thousands of soldiers with their adrenaline pumping, even before anything had started to happen. The lighter yelling from the protesters, by now surely closer to three hundred thousand.
Through the field glasses I saw the doors of Marine One opening and our new Secretary of Defense step out. If it really was him—and not just a double. Dropped into the ceremony to mark how important the installations were, the entire M.U.O.S. system, while the real Secretary stayed in Washington to plan our strategy for responding to the developing crisis in Crimea.
He had a Carrier at his side. A dummy, for the sake of appearances, as was the briefcase in the Carrier’s hand. The apparatus which, according to Ingrid, would now have lost all meaning as it was decoupled from the system.
Then came another dull sound from all around us, of people rather than machines. The enormous mass divided, like the Red Sea, while a small figure in a devil’s mask made his way slowly but determinedly toward the gates.
“Blu,” Ingrid said.
I watched his progress: a Messiah being urged on by people thumping him enthusiastically on the back, lifting him up through the crowds. Even twelve-year-old Unity knew about him, had talked about his work. How he made his breakthrough in the suburbs of Bologna and had then wandered all over the world like a ghost. Never more than one mural, or exhibition, at a time in any one place. Identity unknown, computer not connected to the internet, all the necessary measures taken to avoid being traced. His face always in different masks.
Yet he had painted two murals specifically here in Niscemi, in the same place, for the first time in his career. Once Blu had arrived at—or rather been led all the way to—the main gate, he turned around and shouted something which I could not hear. At that, a long line of women wearing black dresses and shawls started moving. They too were allowed to make their way through the crowds to the front line of activists. There they spread out along the wide expanse of the circle. Silence fell over the scene, a sort of collective gathering of breath.
Ingrid checked her watch and I did the same: time 12.51, temperature 96.4 degrees in the burning sun. The sweat was already itching under my clothes. She turned her eyes to me, still in her magical burning crown of light, with that look.
“Now it starts, St Erasmus,” she said, with expectation in her voice.
As if we were at the movies. Or watching a classical tragedy.
6.12
It began with Blu climbing to the very top of the fence. Securing himself with his feet and starting to wave his arms. He was a master at parkour, a seasoned urban explorer, accustomed to finding his way in everywhere to access the perfect painting surface. Through my field glasses I observed the soldiers studying him, their bodies tensed and ready, trying to decide whether he was holding any form of weapon. But in the end they just let him sit there and wave in his devil mask: a bad strategic decision.
Because it looked as if what Blu was doing was conducting events—which turned out to be the case. With his long arms and eloquent hands he set the whole course of events in motion.
The dark humming rose from the women in black, who, maybe inspired by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, were perhaps campaigning for the health of their children and grandchildren after the warnings about the risks posed by the parabolic antennae. The sound spread through the gathering, in a widening circle by the perimeter fence, dull and rhythmic like the chorus in a Greek drama. Only when it had reached all the way back to me and Ingrid, somewhere in the middle of the crowd, could I distinguish the two words. Even my Italian was good enough for that: I remembered the phrases from my mother’s obsession with opera. The message could hardly be plainer.
“Maledetto, Malefatto,” the crowd chanted, over and again.
“A cursed and evil construction,” Ingrid muttered to herself, or perhaps to me.
Yet the show had to go on: the Defense Secretary’s speech, the inauguration, the authorities’ own manifestation. At precisely 1300 hours the fireworks started, just to demonstrate that we had the ability to put on light shows which could be seen even when the sun was at its zenith here in Sicily. Then it was the turn of the Secretary, just as the last ear-shattering explosions were fading away, at exactly ten after.
He played his role perfectly, pretended not to notice the women’s dull refrain now coursing rapidly throughout the immense crowd. The security troops stood still as the drones hovered above our heads.
The Secretary, or his double, said just what was expected of him. Played to his strengths. Empty phrases for the media about global security and addressing the terrorist threat. M.U.O.S. not only making it possible to co-ordinate global military forces, but also radically increasing each individual soldier’s possibility of survival during complex operations.
This was not what the activists wanted to hear. The ability to wage war more easily, anywhere on the earth’s surface. The new communications technology as the spearhead of something that nobody could yet oversee—and with the worrying side-effects of the powerful antennae.
Yet the answer from the crowd cannot have been what was expected. No furious booing, shrieks or howls, as at Kleine Brogel. Just that continuing dull, dark chant, the two words, four syllabl
es each, rhythmic and foreboding. Ma-le-de-tto . . . Ma-le-fa-tto . . . Ma-le-de-tto . . .
Until the chorus suddenly stopped, at exactly the same time as the Secretary reached the end of his speech. That was the signal. And Blu jumping back down onto the ground outside the fence.
As he stood in front of the specially trained troops, our hardest-drilled forces, I did not need the field glasses to make out their fear, despite the machine guns at their chests and the high-tech armor covering them. You could tell from their postures, the theater of the body. How they recoiled before that little man with his only weapon a devil’s mask. How the soldiers themselves put on their masks, folded down the riot helmet visors, assumed their roles.
And then everything let go. The collective energy of the hundreds of thousands of activists was like a small nuclear charge. An ear-shattering roar of abuse and exaltation. A triumphant primal scream rising from the plain straight up toward the drones in the sky.
And if it had not been clear to me which strategy the military would be adopting when the time came, it became very obvious as soon as the special forces commanders stepped to one side—so that Blu could be the first of us all to get into the base.
Because a crowd of that size heading in one direction is a force of nature which cannot be resisted, unless one is prepared to use a level of violence which would be enough to turn public opinion very hostile. We had learned to measure the power of the crowd in terms of an equivalence with herds of buffalo, goods trains or steamrollers: calculating what Edelweiss called the Onslaught Effect.
As the front rows poured through the gates, thoughts of other historical processes from our times flashed through my mind. The fall of the Berlin Wall, perhaps the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Arab Spring. Events where the odds faced had been at least as high. Where one party had had such a hold on power, the arms were as unequally divided, the security forces both organized and strong. But where the undercurrents had been almost as impossible to foresee.