by Marc Elsberg
‘Those bastards,’ yelled Bondoni. ‘My beautiful car. That guy better not have put a dent in the front!’
Berlin, Germany
Michelsen had suggested a change of venue and the minister had given his approval. Instead of a conference room in the ministry, they had rented a room for the short term in the building next door. The law practice that occupied the premises had closed on account of the power outage, hardly surprising given that the temperature in the building had fallen to twelve degrees. Under her suit trousers Michelsen wore fine thermal leggings.
Even from the fourth-floor window she could make out the confusion of the companies’ executives as they got out of the car and looked for the address. They were received below by an official who would open the door for them and show them the way to the fourth floor. Without the lift, unfortunately. Handshakes in the conference room. The new arrivals took their coats off. Some of them still had beads of sweat on their brows from the climb. After a few minutes, everyone was seated.
One of the company bosses who looked to be in better shape – Michelsen recognized him as the CEO of E.ON – began to rub his hands as if he were trying to warm them. The climb hadn’t made him sweat, so he was the first to feel the cold.
When the interior minister stepped inside, everyone stood up.
‘Gentlemen,’ he greeted the guests, ‘please, sit.’
‘We chose a somewhat unusual venue for our meeting today. Unfortunately, due to the lack of power, I can’t offer you any coffee or tea. And I must ask you to save using the toilet for another time and for a place where you can find running water and wastewater disposal.’
Now the minister took his seat as well.
‘I’d like for us to be continually reminded during this meeting of what close to sixty million German citizens have been going through for the past twenty-four hours.’
Surreptitiously Michelsen observed the dignitaries’ reaction. Most maintained detached expressions of interest. Only one man’s mouth twitched for a moment into a fleeting, derisive grin.
‘Emergency personnel are working at the limits of their capacities. We can’t ask for any help from abroad, because they’re going through the same thing. You are responsible for this. And I’m damned tired of the excuses.’
He subjected each of his guests to a piercing look. ‘It’s time for you to tell me what’s going on. Do we need to declare a countrywide state of emergency?’
Michelsen studied the faces. Had the CEOs made some arrangement among themselves? Probably. That meant they had a strategy too. Or had they been divided? If that was the case, everyone was now waiting for someone to be the first to come out of hiding. There were furtive glances up and down the table. She saw a resolute-looking man in his mid-fifties, with grey hair parted to the left, stiffen almost imperceptibly. Curd Heffgen was head of one of the largest transmission grid operators.
‘I admit,’ began Heffgen, ‘that we haven’t yet managed to re-synchronize sizeable areas of the grid …’
Bravo, thought Michelsen, he doesn’t just hold his helmet up on a pole, he sticks his whole head out. We’ll see where the shells land.
‘Which among other things,’ he continued, ‘is due to the fact that sizeable areas of the grid are currently offline. And it hasn’t been possible for us on the regional level either. The frequency in the few areas that are online is too unstable.’
What do I mean, bravo? Michelsen reconsidered. The man was merely giving his ‘It’s not our fault’ an elegant lead-in to take the edge off.
‘Perhaps one of my colleagues from the electricity producers can explain things.’ Heffgen leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest to signal that he had said enough. And now he was passing the buck. Who would take it next?
‘Herr von Balsdorff, perhaps?’ the minister prompted.
The man addressed, somewhat overweight and with skin showing the open pores of a smoker, nervously ran his tongue over his lips.
‘Um. There are more problems with the power plants than expected, even in such a case as this,’ he explained. ‘None of us has ever been confronted with a situation of this kind. The test scenarios had assumed outage rates of up to thirty per cent. In reality it’s more than twice that. We’re still looking into—’
‘Are you trying to tell us,’ the interior minister cut him off, his voice dangerously quiet, ‘that you still cannot guarantee the re-establishment of base-level supply in the coming hours?’
Von Balsdorff gave the minister a pained look. ‘We’ve got every employee available hard at work. But for our part we cannot make a guarantee.’ He bit his lip.
‘And the rest of you, gentlemen?’ the minister asked the group.
Embarrassed shaking of heads.
A feeling began to take hold of Michelsen, a feeling she had last felt a few years earlier, when two police officers had knocked on her door to break the news that her parents had been killed in a car crash. In the others’ faces she could see that they too had slowly begun to catch on. Despite the temperature in the room she broke into a sweat, and her heart began to beat in her throat.
Ischgl, Austria
Relieved and impatient, Sophia took in the snow-covered mountains that rose up all around them. So close to their destination, the girls were in high spirits and spoke longingly of baths, proper toilets, hot water, clean, warm beds, an evening in front of the fire. As they wound slowly up the mountain, they fell silent, eagerly scanning the foothills for a sign of their destination. Ten minutes later, they spotted a cluster of cosy little wooden houses huddled together on a steep slope, smoke rising from the chimneys. They parked in the small car park and headed to the closest cabin, which had a ‘Reception’ sign over the door.
Inside, a young woman in uniform greeted them and led them between the cabins over narrow paths strewn with salt to one at the lower edge of the group. The view across the valley and the mountains was stupendous.
‘Unfortunately, we too have been hit by the power outage,’ said the woman. ‘There’s no electric light or running water in the cabins, the heat isn’t working.’ Sophia, Fleur, Lara and Chloé exchanged looks of profound disappointment.
‘However,’ the woman quickly added, ‘we will be doing everything we can to make your stay as pleasant as possible.’
She unlocked the door and let them step inside. A narrow hallway opened into a simple but comfy living area with a rustic seating area and a tile oven.
She led them on into a tiny kitchen. ‘The stove in the kitchen can also be lit with wood – and we’ve plenty of it. I don’t know if you want to do any cooking yourselves, but in any case for the time being you can also melt snow here, and heat water for a bath.’ She laughed. ‘And there’s certainly enough of it outside. It’s just like the old times! Authentic, right?’
She grew serious again and showed them the two small bedrooms, which they reached by means of a narrow, steep wooden staircase to the first floor. ‘Here is the bathroom. Have a look. We’ve already set pails out so you can fill the bathtub with snow and top it off with hot water.’ When she saw the sceptical looks on her guests’ faces, she added, ‘You will of course be receiving a discount for these inconveniences. Despite all the unpleasantness, you can even use the sauna cabin, which I’ll show you in a moment, and the restaurant cabin, as both can be operated with wood fires.’ They were standing in the living room again. The woman gave them a big smile. ‘And I hope that tomorrow you will be able to enjoy the full comfort of your lodgings as normal. Incidentally, there is a working telephone at reception, in case you can’t get any service on your mobile devices.’
She showed them the sauna and restaurant. Afterwards they got their bags and settled in.
‘Who gets to take the first bath?’
They flipped a coin. Fleur got lucky. She jumped up and down like a child.
‘First milking cows, then hauling buckets of snow,’ grumbled Chloé.
‘Let’s just look at it as an adventure,’ So
phia said smartly and set about carrying pails of snow inside.
Ischgl, Austria
It was already dark by the time Manzano and Bondoni arrived. After they had explained to the friendly woman at reception who it was they were looking for, she led them to the cabin.
‘Dad! What are you doing here? And you, Piero?’
Manzano had met Lara, albeit briefly, during her visits to her father. He got along well with her.
‘Come in! What did you do to your forehead?’ she asked, leaning in to inspect Manzano’s stitches.
‘A little accident,’ he said, as a flash of memory overtook him – the image of the girl in the passenger seat, her mouth bubbling with blood.
A second woman appeared in the hallway. She, too, appeared to be in her mid-to-late thirties. She was taller than Lara, thin, with long, straight dark hair that contrasted strikingly with her blue eyes. Lara introduced her as Chloé Terbanten.
The cabin seemed small, but snug. In the living room a cosy fire crackled in an open hearth. On the bench that ran along two of the walls a third woman was sitting with her feet propped up. When Manzano and Bondoni entered, she stood up politely. Like Chloé, she was tall, but her curves were visible even beneath the thick Nordic-print ski sweater she wore. She had a cute, upturned nose with a sprinkling of freckles, and her blonde hair was cut in a chin-length bob. Her blue eyes seemed to shine. They peered briefly at his forehead, but their owner didn’t ask. I could start to like it here, thought Manzano, the three women crowding around him.
‘Sophia Angström,’ said Lara Bondoni. ‘The Swedish member of our quartet. The fourth, our Dutchwoman, is still upstairs in the bathtub.’
‘You have hot water?’ cried Bondoni. ‘And a bathtub?’
His daughter let out a laugh. ‘Only if we work hard for it. Don’t tell me you two came here from Milan for a hot bath.’
Brussels, Belgium
Terry Bilback hadn’t felt this happy to be at work in a long while. His office was warm, the toilet flushed, there was hot water. The lights, the computers, the Internet and even the coffee machine – they all worked. Not like in his overpriced two-room apartment in the suburbs, which he couldn’t get to in any case because there was no public transport.
His happy mood didn’t last long. Like his colleagues in the European Union’s Monitoring and Information Centre, MIC for short, he had counted on the power outage being over soon. Instead it had dragged on, and with each passing hour the situation seemed to be getting worse. What had started as a trickle of reports and requests for help from member countries was turning into a flood.
The MIC was staffed around the clock by thirty officials from various nations and had three areas of responsibility. First, it served as a continent-wide communications centre. In the event of a catastrophe, requests for help and offers of assistance from all member nations were channelled via the MIC. Second, it kept member states and the general public informed about current activities and interventions. Third, the MIC was tasked with coordinating assistance measures, which included sending experts to affected areas.
His phone rang. Something it had been doing all day. He didn’t recognize the number. An Austrian country code.
‘Hello, Terry! It’s Sophia.’
‘Sophia, did you make it all right?’
Sophia laughed. ‘With a few difficulties, but that’s not why I’m calling. Listen, I’ve just heard a strange story. We’re not the right people to deal with it – I’m guessing that would be Europol. But I don’t have the number with me.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘The best person to tell you that is the friend of a friend I’m here on vacation with. His name is Piero Manzano, he’s an Italian programmer and he’s turned up something rather disturbing …’
The Hague, Netherlands
François Bollard stood at his living-room window and looked out at the falling rain. It was slowly getting dark. The lawn was hidden beneath an array of buckets, bowls, pots, glasses, mugs, plastic containers, soup dishes – every last container they could lay their hands on. He watched the raindrops splashing off the hard surfaces. Behind him, the kids were playing happily together for once. His wife sat reading by candlelight on the couch. A fire was burning in the open hearth. It was the only room in the house that was comfortably warm. The prospect of a two-year stint abroad, living and working in a city that seemed to symbolize Europe and its administration, had always appealed to him, and the reality had more than lived up to expectations. Bollard and his wife and their two children lived fifteen minutes from the sea, in a charming nineteenth-century house with steep staircases and a wood-panelled interior. The children attended the international school, his wife worked as a translator. They’d been living the good life – until now, at least. Bollard went out into the hallway and put on his rubber boots and rain jacket. In the garden he took a large bucket and emptied seven almost-full containers into it, then set them back out. He took the bucket into the bathroom on the second floor and emptied it into the quarter-full bathtub. Then he put it back in the yard and went to join his wife inside.
‘Can’t you find a backup generator for us somewhere?’ asked Marie.
‘Europol doesn’t have any, at least not for employees’ private use.’
His wife sighed. ‘This isn’t right. The power should’ve come back by now.’
‘One would think,’ said Bollard.
The phone rang and Bollard hurried to the hall to pick it up. The caller turned out to be a Dane working the weekend shift, who wanted to put him through to a British colleague who had received a call from an Italian in Austria. Bollard was still processing this information when there was a click and a British voice came down the line. He introduced himself as Terry Bilback from MIC, and then launched into a bizarre account about rogue codes in Italian electric meters. Bollard listened attentively, then asked for a name and phone number so he could speak to this Italian himself.
Ischgl, Austria
Manzano hung up.
‘And?’ Sophia asked him as he joined them all in front of the reception cabin’s log-burning stove.
‘That was someone from Europol,’ he explained. ‘He says he’ll inform the Italian and Swedish authorities.’
‘I hope he doesn’t go through official channels,’ Fleur spoke up. ‘If he does, we’ll be huddling round fires like cavemen for weeks.’ Manzano’s brief discussion with the French officer from Europol about the possible consequences of his discovery had left him more troubled than ever. Pushing the thought aside, he forced a smile and asked, ‘Do I get something to drink too?’
Lara handed him a mug of something steaming and sweet. ‘We’ve managed to get you two accommodation in one of the empty cabins. It’s got to be cosier than your freezing-cold apartments,’ she laughed, clinking her mug against his.
Manzano drank and hoped that the alcohol would drive away his dark forebodings.
‘Now tell me again exactly where it is you work,’ he said to Sophia. ‘You seem to have some very useful connections.’
The Hague, Netherlands
As soon as he ended the phone call, Bollard put his rain jacket back on, then stuck his head round the living-room door.
‘I have to go into the office for a bit.’
‘On a Saturday night?’ Marie looked up anxiously, trying to read his face in the dim light. If he was needed urgently, she knew it must mean trouble. ‘Should I be worried?’
‘No,’ he lied. The journey through the darkened streets to Europol HQ in the Statenkwartier took him ten minutes. He strode through the corridors to one of the few offices with a light on, where he found Dag Arnsby, the Dane who had put the call through to him. ‘I need everything you have on an Italian called Piero Manzano.’
Arnsby typed in the name.
‘Is this him?’ asked Arnsby. An image filled the monitor: a middle-aged man with sharp features, a prominent chin, thin nose, short brown hair, brown eyes, pale complexion.
&nb
sp; Bollard nodded for him to scroll down, then skimmed the profile, reading aloud, ‘Piero Manzano. Hundred eighty-seven centimetres, sixty-eight kilos, forty-three years old, programmer. Former member of a group of Italian hackers that infiltrated the computer systems of companies and state institutions in order to expose security deficiencies. One conviction in the late nineties, though most of the charges were dropped. Popped up at a number of demonstrations in connection with the “Mani Pulite” investigation. Briefly detained in 2001 at the G8 protests in Genoa.’ The massive riots that took place during the meeting of the world’s eight most influential government leaders had been met with extreme brutality by some members of the Italian police force. One demonstrator had been shot dead, hundreds more were injured, some seriously; a number of officers were subsequently convicted by the courts, though many more escaped censure thanks to the lapsed statute of limitations.
‘So he comes from that world,’ said Bollard, who looked upon activists, particularly those to the left of the spectrum, with scepticism.
‘Officially he works as a freelance IT consultant. Unofficially, the Italian authorities suspect he’s still up to his old tricks, but they haven’t been able to pin anything on him. Looks like he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to malicious codes,’ said Arnsby.
‘It would seem so. He’s given me some tips to pass on to the Italian power companies. Apparently they should start by checking the logs for their routers – whatever that means.’
‘If he’s telling the truth, does that mean what I think it means?’
‘I wouldn’t want to spread panic unnecessarily,’ said Bollard, who had spent the short drive to the office running through every possible scenario. ‘But so far it doesn’t sound good. Not good at all.’
‘You mean if someone in Italy can infiltrate the power grid, manipulate and shut it down, then he can pull the same stunt elsewhere.’
