Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late

by Marc Elsberg

  ‘Is it difficult?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Milking. Is it difficult to learn?’

  Milan, Italy

  Completely frozen through, Manzano reached Via Piero della Francesca. It had taken him three hours, walking from one side of the city to the other in old shoes that he hadn’t got round to replacing. He fantasized about a hot shower. Instead, he stepped through the door to find it was about ten degrees in his apartment. At least my food will keep even without the refrigerator, he thought. He kept his coat on. He was just bemoaning the fact he couldn’t even make himself an espresso when there was a knock at his door. Old man Bondoni.

  ‘And you’re completely sure?’

  Manzano told him where he had been.

  ‘I’m sure somebody is tampering with the power grid. I know I’m not exactly an expert, but to me it looks as though somebody deactivated all the meters at once, causing an abrupt spike in frequency throughout the power grid. That resulted in a chain reaction, till finally nothing was working. Who am I supposed to go to now?’

  ‘Well, if nobody in Italy will listen to you, you have to try somewhere else.’

  ‘Fantastic idea,’ scoffed Manzano. ‘And who was it you had in mind? The US president?’

  ‘The European Union.’

  ‘Wonderful! Sounds really promising.’

  ‘Why don’t you try listening to me for a second instead of poking fun? Think about it! Who do we know on the payroll up there?’

  Slowly it dawned on Manzano what Bondoni was getting at.

  ‘Your daughter. So what are we waiting for?’

  Bondoni put on a pained face.

  ‘Lara is off skiing in Austria. Tyrol. Ischgl. She gave me the address. Just in case.’

  ‘I’ve been there.’ Manzano thought for a moment. ‘Do you still have a few of those jerrycans that you’re always filling up when the prices are low?’ he asked.

  A wrinkle formed between Bondoni’s eyebrows. ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your Autobianchi’s tank is pretty full?’

  ‘I think so. But …’ Bondoni caught on. He started wagging a finger excitedly, as if he were warning a naughty child off playing a mean trick. ‘No. No. Absolutely not. You’re nuts!’

  ‘Have you got a better idea?’ He grinned at Bondoni. ‘Or anything better to do? It’ll take us four, five hours. Best of all’ – he flicked the collar of Bondoni’s coat – ‘the car’s got a heater.’

  Farm Near Dornbirn, Austria

  ‘Ah, that is magnificent!’ Chloé leaned against the tile stove in the farmhouse. Sophia sat with the others at a long wooden table, enjoying the food that the farmer’s wife had set out so generously. Rye bread, butter, cheese, speck. A glass of fresh milk to wash it all down. Everyone dug in eagerly, though Sophia noticed Fleur leaving her milk, still warm from the cow, untouched. It was pungent stuff, and she was having a hard time lifting the glass herself.

  With their fractured German, they made conversation with those who lived in the house and others who had come to help out, joining in with the laughter at their clumsy milking. The farmer imitated their inexpert technique with his knobby fingers, clutching his belly with mirth. Then they discussed how they should get on their way.

  ‘How much further is it?’ the farmer asked.

  ‘Maybe an hour, about sixty kilometres,’ said Sophia.

  ‘Ten litres ought to be enough for your car. I’ve got a full tank and can give you some from mine.’

  ‘That would be great! We’ll pay you for it, of course.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said the man, the same plain look on his face. ‘Four euros per litre.’

  Sophia swallowed. That was more than double the normal price. She shared a look with Lara. They were thinking the same thing: don’t get upset now. Supply and demand have nothing to do with what is just or fair. They would have fuel to continue their journey, that was the main thing.

  Ybbs-Persenbeug, Austria

  Calm and unrelenting, the Danube wound its way through the landscape. It had finally stopped snowing and the fields on either side of the river were covered in a blanket of white, dotted with the occasional farmhouse and the leafless skeletons of trees. Oberstätter’s gaze followed the swirling water as he took another drag on his cigarette and pondered the events of the last twenty-four hours. He and his team had been at the plant the whole time, staying on even after the night shift came in to relieve them and making do with a couple of hours’ sleep on makeshift beds. They had tried again and again to get the power plant started up, and every time their efforts had been brought to a halt by a system alert warning of some malfunctioning component – a different one each time. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they had to abort the restart while a team went to inspect the relevant component, they had yet to find a single problem with the machinery. Oberstätter stamped out his cigarette, deposited it into the ashtray and went into the control booth.

  ‘It’s got to be the software,’ he told the shift leader.

  ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ he said. ‘Problem is, where do we begin?’

  All manner of programs were put to use in a power plant. The most complicated were the so-called Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems. SCADA systems had a wide range of applications, from industrial manufacturing processes to the management of airports, corporate headquarters, shopping centres and space stations. They made it possible for a handful of people to pilot a gigantic oil tanker across the ocean, for a few dozen workers to operate an automobile factory and for millions of travellers to take off and land at airports all over the world.

  ‘No idea. The SCADA systems were exhaustively tested before they were installed. Anyway, far as I know, we can’t access the system directly. I reckon we should start with the PCs.’

  The shift leader stared through the giant glass windows into the machine room. Oberstätter knew what was playing out in his head. If he decided to suspend the attempts to restart until they had looked over the software, days could go by before the power plant was producing electricity again. In the end, it was down to the operator to make the decision.

  ‘Hopefully, nobody’s planted anything like Stuxnet on us,’ said Oberstätter.

  ‘You don’t joke about things like that.’

  ‘Wasn’t a joke.’

  The malicious virus had caused uproar in autumn 2010 when an Iranian nuclear facility was targeted.

  ‘Well, it’s pointless to carry on when we keep having to abort,’ Oberstätter’s superior said finally. ‘We’re stopping the resuscitation attempts. I’ll notify headquarters.’

  Ratingen, Germany

  There were only a few vehicles scattered across the wide expanse of the car park, but still more than usual for a Saturday in February. Gusts of wind swept over the whisper-thin covering of snow, churning up puffs of white and leaving behind grey tarmac. In this bare winter landscape, the ten-storey glass-and-concrete cube seemed almost forlorn. Atop the building the large blue letters of the logo jutted into the grey sky: Talaefer AG. Lights shone in a few windows.

  James Wickley parked the SLS Roadster and made his way to the entrance on the ground floor. The building was equipped with diesel-powered backup generators, which meant he’d still be able to use the lift and his office on the top floor would be heated. As soon as he reached the office he threw his coat over a chair and started up his computer. Son of a diplomat, Wickley considered himself a citizen of the world: born in Bath, raised in London, Singapore and Washington, educated at Cambridge and Harvard. And as chief executive officer of Talaefer AG, he saw himself as the vanguard of a brave new world, thanks to his company’s innovations in the field of ‘Smart Grids’.

  For the last four years he’d been predicting the end of the old order, whereby large, centralized energy producers generated electricity and distributed it across interlinked international grids. The system had functioned by pre
dicting demand for power and meeting that demand with hydroelectric, coal and nuclear plants that delivered power constantly, with peak-time assistance from more flexible thermal (primarily natural gas-fired) plants.

  In Wickley’s vision of the future, power would be supplied by a multitude of small entities harvesting electricity from unreliable sources like the sun or wind, or even capturing energy generated by individuals walking, thanks to micro-power plants in the soles of shoes. Classic grids were incapable of managing countless small, independent and unpredictable electricity providers. Already, the growing number of wind and solar power facilities presented a threat to grid stability. Circumstances would become completely uncontrollable if in the future every household, every individual even, were to become a mini-power plant, generating electricity and sending its excess output into the grid. Smart Grids would get round this problem by linking together all the micro generators to form virtual power plants, with countless high-speed sensors at every possible point in the grid to measure power quality and voltage in real time. Users would receive Smart Meters; in accordance with European Union guidelines, large parts of Europe would be retrofitted by 2020.

  In the meantime it appeared the collapse of the existing grid was keeping him from getting on the Internet, so Wickley abandoned his office for the large conference room where his senior management team had gathered. The night before, he had ordered that they should be here in case the power outage should continue, which indeed it had.

  ‘So far we haven’t received any feedback from operators, facility contractors, or even from individual power plants,’ announced the head of sales. ‘I’ve set up a call centre on site, in case customers require support.’

  ‘Good,’ said Wickley. ‘Are there enough technicians to handle it?’

  ‘For the time being, yes,’ replied the head of human resources.

  ‘Communication?’

  The question was directed to the chief of communications, a sharp-featured man with prematurely greying hair.

  ‘So far, no questions from the media,’ he replied. ‘I am, however, planning to have off-the-record conversations with select journalists as soon as possible. Naturally, I’ll forefront the reliability of our products as well as the high degree of competence among our software developers and engineers, particularly in regards to our projects in development.’

  ‘Excellent! The man uses his brains. And with that I come to the most important point in our discussion.’ Wickley leaned forward, letting his gaze sweep over the twenty men assembled round the conference table.

  ‘This blackout is a huge opportunity! In a few hours it will be gone – but not forgotten. I’ll make sure of it.’ He jumped up from his seat. ‘Right now, we need to drive home the message that the competition’s ideas are short-sighted, well past their sell-by. If we’re to avoid a repeat of this situation, radical innovations are essential.’ And it was his hope that those radical innovations would, over the coming decade, deliver double-digit annual growth rates for Talaefer AG. He turned to the head of sales. ‘First thing Monday morning, I want you to start setting up meetings with key policy and decision makers.’ No longer would they have to rely on luxurious ‘educational’ trips to foreign countries to woo clients and investors. Instead they would rely on presentations that highlighted the failure of the existing system and the virtues of Talaefer products. He placed both hands on the long table, leaned forward, fixed his colleagues with a penetrating look.

  ‘By Monday evening I want to see a presentation from every single department, with the blackout as the point of entry and as a key thread running throughout.’

  He could see in their faces that this wasn’t something the men had counted on. Most of them had families who were sitting at home without heat, water or means of communication, hoping their husbands and fathers would be home soon. Well, they would just have to get by without them.

  ‘Get to it, gentlemen! Let’s show the world what energy is.’

  Paris, France

  The music woke Shannon and she cursed her roommates. She got up and padded along the hallway to the bathroom in just her T-shirt and shorts. Eyes barely open, she turned on the taps – it was an old-fashioned washbasin with one hot, the other cold – splashed water on her face, washed the bad taste out of her mouth. She looked sleepily into the mirror, her wild brown hair hanging over her face.

  The water was running. She heard music. She’d used the toilet. It flushed.

  She put on her bathrobe and went into the kitchen. Marielle and Karl were having a late breakfast, French hip-hop playing on the radio. ‘Morning,’ she greeted them. ‘Power’s back on?’

  ‘Thankfully,’ said Karl.

  As she poured coffee and milk into a demitasse, Shannon recalled her fleeting glimpse of the head of Électricité de France as his limo roared into the Interior Ministry. So that meeting was all for nothing, she thought. Unless maybe he’d been summoned there, and the reprimand had had exactly the desired effect, namely getting the power back on as quickly as possible. After luxuriating in a hot shower, Shannon sat down at her laptop and uploaded material from the night before. She worked for Turner as a freelancer, which meant she could take her unused footage and use it herself. While she waited, she surfed a few news sites and checked her various social media accounts. Finally she put some footage together and added a voice-over, then posted the resulting report on YouTube. When she was done, she put on warm clothes and went shopping in the small supermarket two streets away. From what she could see, Paris had already returned to normal. She arrived back at the apartment building at the same time as her neighbour, Annette Doreuil. The elegant sixty-something had also nipped out to pick up a few groceries.

  ‘Madame Doreuil!’ she called. ‘That was some night last night, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was terrible! Our daughter and her family were supposed to be flying in from Amsterdam, but all the flights were cancelled.’

  ‘What a shame, I know how much you’ve been looking forward to seeing your grandkids.’

  The lift shuddered to a halt between two floors; a knot formed in Shannon’s stomach, but then the lift started moving again.

  ‘That’d be all we need right now.’ Annette laughed nervously. They stood in silence, watching the floors go by through the glass panes of the door until they stopped at the fifth floor. Shannon was happy to step out on to firm ground.

  Maybe now she’d take the stairs more.

  ‘Say hello to your husband for me. Hopefully your grandkids will come soon.’

  ‘I hope so too.’

  Near Bellinzona, Switzerland

  There seemed to be less traffic on the roads than usual. Bondoni had let Manzano take the wheel, and once they were out of Milan, he’d put his foot down on the accelerator and pushed the 1970 Autobianchi 112 to its limits at 140 kilometres per hour. Stowed away in the tiny boot were four jerrycans holding twenty litres each. Bondoni had turned on the radio, together they followed the news and special reports that most of the stations were carrying. They weren’t saying anything good. Europe was still largely without power.

  They were already in Switzerland, had left Lugano behind them and were headed towards Bellinzona, when the fuel gauge drifted into the red.

  ‘We have to fill up,’ said Manzano when he saw the sign for a rest area.

  Four tractor-trailers parked one after the other occupied the entire left half, to the right were three cars. Next to one of the cars a man paced back and forth, smoking. Manzano and Bondoni got out, stretched their legs. Manzano opened the boot, lifted a canister out, began to fill the tank.

  He listened to the quiet glugging of the fuel while every now and then in the background a car rushed past on the highway.

  ‘Hey! You’re like a mini tanker truck,’ a voice called out next to him and let out a hoarse laugh at its own joke. The smoker, now without his cigarette, eyed the boot of the Autobianchi with interest.

  ‘And we’ve got a long way ahead of us, too.�
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  ‘Where’s your load taking you, then?’

  ‘To Hamburg,’ Manzano lied.

  ‘Wow! That’s a long way for a purse on wheels like this.’

  Manzano had emptied the canister, closed it, put it back. As he did so he looked over the roof of the car and took note that two more men were coming towards them from the smoker’s car. Manzano liked them as little as he did their buddy. He closed the boot.

  ‘You’ll never get to Hamburg in this thing,’ said the man. ‘Wouldn’t you rather sell us a canister or two instead?’

  Manzano had the driver’s door handle in his hand, was ready to get in.

  ‘Sorry. But like I told you, we’ve got a long way to go. We need every drop for ourselves.’

  By now the smoker’s companions had reached them. One planted himself in front of the vehicle, the other headed towards Bondoni, who was about to get in on the passenger side.

  At that moment the smoker grabbed Manzano’s arm.

  ‘We need petrol,’ the man said flatly. ‘Until now I’ve asked you nicely.’

  No mistaking that. Manzano didn’t hesitate. In one hard motion he kicked the man between the legs. The guy hadn’t counted on that. He doubled over. Manzano pushed him away, the man stumbled backwards and fell onto the tarmac. Manzano jumped into the car. Bondoni took advantage of the moment of surprise and all but threw himself onto the passenger seat.

  Manzano slammed his door shut and locked it while turning the ignition key with his other hand. Outside, his attacker pulled himself to his feet. The guy in front leaned on the bonnet, as if he could stop the car that way. Manzano put the car in gear, stepped on the accelerator, then let the clutch out. The Autobianchi leapt forward, the man was flung over the bonnet into the windscreen. He rolled off to the side and took the smoker with him. Manzano moved up a gear and shot out of the exit.