That was what he’d said to her on the gravel yard outside the garage, and then he’d taken her by the shoulders, locking her eyes:
‘Your friend with the plane. How quickly can we get to him?’
‘If we leave now we could arrive before it gets light.’
‘Good. I need to get to Sweden. They don’t know what they’re fighting against.’
Then he took her hand again, and pulled her with him back towards the building, as if to remind them both that the sands were running out for them, that they’d already stood there for too long.
‘Right now, he said without turning around, ‘the whole planet is searching for a terror cell that’s behind all this. A group of people–hackers, activists, possibly even a country–using the internet to wreak havoc. The problem is that they’ve got it wrong. The terrorist cell isn’t using the internet.’
He glanced over his shoulder.
‘It is the internet.’
57
The first helicopter landed just after midnight. The seats behind the pilot were occupied by newly woken men and women, jeans and suits side by side, stares fixed on design drawings and circuit diagrams and compendia. Ahead of them lay Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station, nestled like a cuckoo chick on the sleepy coastline. Great cubes of steel and concrete stood surrounding a huge white reactor dome, drilled into the dunes like a giant golf ball by an equally large water hazard just between the sea and the moors.
Nothing showed from the outside. The off-white walls gave no more away than did the black waves lapping on the rocky shore, or the seabirds scared by the helicopters and flocking off along the coast. On the inside, though, the atomic particles were spinning in a dance that kept going faster.
As the helicopters landed, their passengers knew it was only a matter of time before a meltdown occurred. They ducked under chopping rotors, rushed into control rooms and data halls, past the staff in white overalls and name badges, one of which identified Liv McKenna.
She stood there watching as the technicians spread throughout the building, communicating via headsets and walkie-talkies, fighting to restart the systems and regain control of the processes. All she could do was daydream herself away to musical notes, to tender cello fingers and silly student revues, and to friends who she only now realised how much she missed. To a time when it had all been so simple, when everyone stood on the threshold of life, with the future ahead of them.
Now she wondered whether there would even be a future.
Mark Winslow had never seen Defence Secretary Anthony Higgs in anything other than suit and tie. Standing by the window of his large office, the man now was wearing a pair of shapeless jeans. His shirt was crumpled, as though he’d slept in it. His hair was all over the place, like a panic-stricken crowd being evacuated from a marketplace. He looked, quite simply, like a human, and Winslow wasn’t used to that.
‘I asked a question,’ Higgs said without looking up. ‘I have a room full of journalists waiting down there. They want information. Shall I go and tell them that I don’t have the foggiest what’s going on?’
‘No one knows a thing,’ Winslow said. ‘I just spoke to Sedgwick—’
‘And why doesn’t Sedgwick know? Isn’t that the whole point of all this business? Isn’t that what I just approved?’
‘I only know what he told me,’ Winslow replied. ‘The only thing they’ve been able to establish is that the attacks look identical to previous ones. All over the world, completely simultaneous. And then a few seconds later’–he nodded at the TV: the black night, the illuminated globe that was Sizewell B’s reactor, just an hour’s drive away–‘well, you know what happened.’
Higgs gave Winslow a long stare.
‘You do realise what this is, don’t you?’
‘Is?’
‘We didn’t back down. They warned us, time and time again they warned us, and we wouldn’t budge. And now–now here we are.’ He elaborated through clenched teeth. ‘This is blackmail. That’s what this is about. And the biggest irony of all is that we can’t trace who is doing it.’
‘Technically it’s hardly blackmail if we haven’t received any demands.’
‘We already know what they want. Why would they issue demands?’
He turned around with his back to the windowsill and threw his hands up.
‘The very second we activate Floodgate. At that exact same second, this happens. Could it be any clearer?’ He answered his own question with a shake of the head. ‘They want to force us to retreat. Whoever they are. And they’re not going to give up until we do.’
They stood in silence for a couple of seconds. Watched the TV, saw the helicopters hover around the power stations.
‘Higgs?’ said Winslow. ‘What if we actually did?’
‘Did what?’
‘What if we actually backed down?’
Higgs blinked slowly.
‘And your proposal is–what, exactly? That we dismantle the most important intelligence tool that we have ever developed?’ He tipped his head towards the window, his voice now soft and tired and with no fight left in it. ‘Is that what you want me to say on television? That I’m acceding to the terrorists’ demands?’
‘You won’t be acceding to anything,’ Winslow said calmly. ‘Because what you are dismantling has never even existed. There is no documentation that acknowledges Floodgate’s existence. Since day one, it’s been a top-secret project. Throughout the planning phase, development, even the construction process. The fact that it was then mothballed so as not to offend public opinion, and that we then continued with it anyway, is something that you know, I know, and Sedgwick knows. And who else?’
‘What are you trying to say, Winslow?’
‘I’m saying you can cancel it whenever you like. Right now. No one is going to accuse you of giving in–because no one is going to find out that there was ever anything to dismantle.’
Higgs’s voice became brittle.
‘You’ve forgotten why we are doing this.’
He ran one hand through his hair, unaware that this just made it look even more unruly, and raised his other hand towards the window, all the dots of light outside.
‘Do you see that out there? Do you know what that is? That is society. Millions of people who go to work every day, pick the kids up from school, go to the theatre, get the tube. People who want to keep on doing all that, without having to defend themselves. Without ever having to think about how fantastic it actually is that all of those things are possible.’ Winslow nodded. It was a speech he’d heard before, and of course there were no comebacks. ‘All it takes is for one little group to want to destroy all that. A single little group, and then we’re left with a society that cannot be healed. Floodgate exists to find those people. Not to read Granny’s emails, not to see what sites you look at in your spare time. It exists to make the world a safer place.’
‘And how do you think that’s working out?’ Winslow looked demonstratively towards the television.
Higgs answered with a sigh. ‘Your advice then, is to give in to the terrorists?’
‘No. But my opinion is that if we have the chance to get them to release the nuclear power stations, then we should take it.’
‘Okay,’ said Higgs. ‘Thank you for that.’ He moved away from the windowsill, stopped with his hand on the door handle.
‘That is not the course of action we will be taking. But thank you.’
58
The images on Palmgren’s laptop struck such fear into Christina that she could sense the taste of blood in her mouth. They were sitting in his kitchen among token Christmas decorations, side by side on the long bench, surrounded by the hyacinth scent from the wilting Christmas bouquet in front of them. The laptop displayed photos that had been wired around the globe as she and Strandell had struggled their way through the night, interspersed with headlines from her own newspaper and hundreds of competitors. In Christina’s stomach, that teenage terror hung colder and hollower than
ever.
‘Sabotage’ wrote someone. ‘Virus’ said another. ‘Terrorism’ featured in all of them.
Tetrapak was the first one to break the silence.
‘It’s connected.’
‘What?’ said Palmgren. ‘What is, and with what?’
Tetrapak attempted to formulate his response, failed to find the words, and instead pulled his electronic equipment towards him.
‘The things that are happening,’ he said, gesturing towards the window, ‘they are connected to… this.’
He started up his computer, gave a brief version of the explanation he’d given Christina and Beatrice in the newsroom, about the shortwave frequencies, the ones that had lain dormant for years and then come to life. He showed the long lists of sound files, played the tuneless chant of digits that he’d recorded from the shortwave band, and then the short bursts of screeching data that had replaced them.
When his presentation was over and the screeching code disappeared, Palmgren was the first to break the silence. ‘With all due respect,’ he said. ‘I understand that you have given this a lot of consideration. I don’t think, however, that any of us would be well served by focusing our efforts on the wrong things.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Tetrapak.
‘What’s happening out there is down to hypermodern security systems. It’s the largest electronic attack we have ever seen. I have great difficulty imagining what it might have to do with an obsolete technology that hasn’t been used for twenty years.’
Tetrapak’s eyes narrowed.
‘What you have difficulty imagining might not necessarily have any bearing on what is actually happening. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Forgive me for being so direct,’ Palmgren said. ‘But how am I to know that what you are playing even comes from the frequencies you are talking about?’
‘Are you accusing me of lying?’
‘No. I am simply asking how I am supposed to know that you’re not.’
Tetrapak stood up, in between bench and table, fury causing the words to back up deep in his throat, leaving him wagging a threatening finger but without any words to accompany it.
Instead, he returned to the box. He dug out the portable shortwave radio, muttering irritation as he attached it to the car battery at the bottom, and then, from the tangle of cables and wires, he pulled out a thin, homemade wire aerial. He attached it to a large suction cup, with deliberate exasperated movements, and finally stuck it forcefully to one of Palmgren’s windows.
‘You can call me many things,’ he said. ‘You can call me madman. Tinfoil hat. You can call me Tetrapak, I know that everyone does.’ He sat down again, checked that everything was properly connected, and gave Palmgren an icy stare across the table. ‘But liar? No one calls me a liar!’ And with that he switched on the radio.
The kitchen filled with noise.
Tetrapak looked up, totally stunned. However he’d intended to prove his statements, this wasn’t it. Where he had expected to find perhaps a few short blasts of data, if he was lucky enough, he found a wall of sound. Suddenly, and with no warning, it was as if the airwaves were overflowing with data, and the short, fleeting modem tones had soared into an endless swell of strident noise.
When, a few seconds later, it occurred to Tetrapak to change frequency–and then to keep on changing it–he found the same thing up and down the band. It streamed out from everywhere, from the frequencies where the lifeless voices had recited their digits, from channels that had been silent for decades, the same type of unrelenting noise kept echoing around the gloomy kitchen like an unsettling, haunted concert, played out of tune. Eventually Christina barked at him to turn it off.
‘What was that?’ Palmgren said after a silent interval.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tetrapak. ‘I’ve been monitoring these frequencies for almost six months. But this? This is something else. And if you are going to try and tell me that it’s a coincidence, for this to be happening at the same time as all that…’ he gestured from his computer towards Palmgren’s and back again. ‘You must see that too,’ he said. And this time, there was no resistance from anybody.
‘I need to borrow your phone.’
Christina looked at Palmgren from her spot on the sofa. It was late, she had an editorial team that was bound to be wondering where on earth she’d got to, and presumably a number of superiors wondering the same thing in louder voices. Her phone lay somewhere in the woods in Bromma without its battery, sending any calls straight to her voicemail, and meanwhile, she was sitting in a kitchen in Saltsjöbaden being no use to anyone.
None of that she said out loud, but Palmgren nodded back, excused himself briefly and strode out of the kitchen.
There was a grunt from Tetrapak: ‘So you’re planning to let them find us all over again?’
‘I need to speak to the newsroom. They need me.’
‘Are you sure about that? Because as far as I can tell they’re getting on just fine without you.’
He gestured towards the computer. And he was right of course, yet she still couldn’t help but be provoked by it—
‘You know that you’re being bugged,’ he said, cutting her off before she had a chance to respond. ‘And the choice is yours. But does it really feel like a good idea to give yourself away again?’
‘They can’t know that I’m here. Palmgren’s phone is secure.’
‘How do you know that?’ he said. ‘How do you know that the newspaper isn’t being monitored, just waiting for you to call so that they can track you down again?’
Christina bit her lip.
‘The world is under terrorist attack,’ she said. ‘And you think I should just sit and watch it happen?’
‘Isn’t that the definition of what a journalist does?’
That hurt. Christina felt rage swell inside her, her hands grasp ever tighter on thin air, clenched fists of ice that would like nothing more than to stand up and smack him in the mouth.
She didn’t though. It wasn’t Tetrapak she was angry with, it was everything else: the powerlessness, the fear, this paranoid sensation of being observed, and the frustration of not being able to wave anything off as nonsense.
‘I don’t know you,’ he said finally, ‘but I do know journalists. And what you need to be doing right now is putting it together, creating news, not just writing about them after the fact. You should find out what’s going on, who’s behind it and whether it can be stopped. You won’t do any of that sitting in front of a computer in an office.’
The interchange tailed off, and they sat in silence until Palmgren came back into the room bearing his phone in one hand and an opaque plastic folder in the other. He sat down facing them, passing the phone to Christina as he did so. She took it, but held it, couldn’t decide.
‘There’s one more thing you should know,’ she said instead. Leaned in towards Palmgren. ‘About a man called Michal Piotrowski.’ In short, matter-of-fact sentences, she told him about the man who had probably sent William the emails, who also happened to be their daughter’s biological father, and who had been the reason for William’s trip to Warsaw.
Palmgren listened without interrupting, and when Christina continued she did so with a voice that expected to jar on its listeners.
‘The CD that Sara had,’ she said. ‘There are two more.’
She saw Palmgren freeze up on the other side of the table.
‘Where?’ he asked.
‘We’ve got them here,’ she told him. ‘That’s not what matters though. What matters is the fact that we can’t do anything with them.’
She explained how she’d come across the disc in the car by Kaknäs Tower. How she’d taken it to Strandell’s, and how he had turned out to have one too. And lastly she told him about the call from William, and his realisation that the CDs contained a message that could only be accessed by having all three of them, and when she was done, Palmgren sat motionless for several seconds.
‘I thought I asked you to
make sure I was first to know,’ he said.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ When he didn’t respond, she continued: ‘I haven’t written a word about this. I’ve been digging, I’ve found this, and now I’m here. That was what you asked of me.’
‘And what would you like me to do for you now?’
‘We need the third disc.’ She saw him hesitate. ‘And by we,’ she said, ‘I mean us. Swedish Armed Forces, you, me, all of us. We need it to understand what’s going on—’
‘We don’t have it,’ he said before she’d finished speaking.
‘I know. But it must be somewhere. At some point between the café and Central Station she got rid of it, and it must be possible to see where she went along the way. Cameras, witnesses, what do I know. You must be able to work out where she’d been. Right?’
Palmgren looked down as she spoke. His hands were already placed carefully on the folder in front of him, as though he was protecting it from something. Or perhaps as though he was trying to protect someone else from it?
‘Yes and no,’ he said apologetically. Stopped himself, started over. ‘I want you to know that I only received this material last night. I was waiting for a chance to give it to you.’
‘Give what?’ she asked sharply.
‘She had a mobile phone on her.’
‘You said she didn’t have anything. At the hospital, when I asked you. You said she had nothing on her.’
‘I said she didn’t have a CD. That was what you asked me, and that’s what I told you. They had though taken her phone and…’ He fell quiet, drumming his fingers on the folder. ‘Before you get your hopes up that this might lead somewhere,’ he said, ‘let me explain. We’ve been looking for the CD too. The problem is that during the power cut, for several hours, there were no tracks to follow. No masts able to register her phone. Basically all public cameras off line. She could have been anywhere.’
He lifted his arms and thrust the folder over to her.
‘I’ve been trying to work out how to say this.’
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