by Marc Elsberg
‘What’d you run into?’ she asked, gesturing towards the stitches on his forehead.
‘Crashed my car when the traffic lights went out.’
‘Do you work at Europol?’
‘I work for Europol. Bollard brought me in.’
‘What for?’
‘What network do you work for?’
‘CNN.’ She showed him her ID.
‘Do they not have people here?’ Manzano asked.
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘And how do you report without power? How do you get your material to the network? How do you get it on television? Apart from the fact that hardly anybody can still watch television.’
‘They can outside of Europe,’ she countered. ‘I put the stories up online. So long as parts of the Internet are still working.’
‘Which won’t be the case for long,’ said Manzano. He looked around as if he were worried about being watched. None of the other guests showed any interest in them. He lowered his voice. ‘I only got here yesterday myself. I’m not permitted to speak about what I’m doing here, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement.’ He flashed her a grin. ‘But nobody can forbid me to talk about what I discovered before I got here.’
After he finished, Shannon could barely stay in her seat.
‘Why haven’t people been informed about this?’ she whispered.
‘The authorities are afraid that it would cause mass panic.’
‘But people have a right to know!’
‘Journalists always say that to justify their actions.’
‘We can discuss journalistic ethics some other time. Besides, you didn’t tell me this so I could keep my mouth shut.’
‘No.’
‘You’ve got an Internet connection in your room. May I use it?’
‘That won’t be necessary. The whole hotel has Wi-Fi. The hotel has a direct connection to the Internet’s backbone because it’s often used by Europol’s guests and diplomats. You just have to ask the receptionist for a code.’
‘And he’ll ask if I’m a guest with a room number.’
‘Give him mine.’
‘Aren’t you afraid they’ll throw you out?’
‘They want something from me, not the other way around.’
‘After this, maybe not.’
‘Let me worry about that.’
‘Do you agree with them – about mass panic?’
‘Interesting concept,’ he replied. ‘To cause a panic across an entire continent … Do you believe it?’
Shannon hesitated. A journalist got a chance at a story like this exactly once in a lifetime, if at all.
‘I think we underestimate the public,’ she answered finally. ‘This isn’t some trashy disaster movie, there’s been barely any unrest or looting so far. People are helping one another, they’re being peaceful.’
‘They’ve still got food in the pantry.’
‘You know what? I think the news of a hostile sabotage of the power grid will cause people to pull even closer together. After all, against a common enemy, you have to stick together.’
‘You would make a great propaganda minister.’
‘We couldn’t hear what they were saying,’ the policeman told Bollard. ‘There was too much background noise.’
Lost in thought, Bollard gazed at the laptop screen that showed the images from the camera in Manzano’s room. The Italian was sitting on his bed, his laptop in front of him. He appeared to be working.
‘Where is she now?’
‘Downstairs in the restaurant, with her laptop. Writing.’
Bollard’s thoughts wandered. He still hadn’t managed to reach his parents. Neither the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nor the French authorities had issued any updates on the situation at the Saint-Laurent nuclear reactor. He forced himself to concentrate.
‘And naturally we don’t know what she’s writing, either.’
‘Luc is working on finding out right now. He’s tapping into the Wi-Fi.’
Bollard stood up.
‘Keep me updated.’
Shannon reached the Paris bureau via its satellite connection.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard.
I’m sitting on the mother lode here. For me to be able to keep going, the network’s got to take over the costs for accommodation and supply a rental car. Assuming I can get one.
OK, came the answer. And Laplante added details of the company credit card. Good work, Lauren.
Shannon pumped her fist in triumph. She strode over to the front desk.
It took the receptionist a few minutes before he was able to make a short phone call. He laid a hand on the mouthpiece and asked her, ‘This is the only company I could get through to and they’ve got one car left. It’s not cheap, though.’
‘How much?’
‘A hundred and fifty euros. Per day.’
‘What is it, a Ferrari?’
‘A Porsche.’
Shannon shrugged her shoulders. Laplante would flip.
‘All right.’
‘And you have to pay cash.’
Shannon stiffened. Laplante wouldn’t flip quite yet. If she wanted to get the car, she’d have to dip into her own cash reserves to pay for it.
And so what if she did! What did it matter now!
An hour later she was putting the key into the ignition of a silver sports car with bright stripes down the sides, like a racing car. Gingerly she tried out the clutch and the gearstick. The engine roared. The employee at the rental car company watched her with alarm. Before he could change his mind, she gave him a wave and rolled out of the garage.
On the way back to the hotel, she kept the hot rod in check as she negotiated the traffic.
She knocked on Manzano’s door. When he answered, she confessed, ‘I have a problem. I need to stay in The Hague overnight, but there’s not a room to be had in the entire city. And so I thought, since you’ve already helped me out, maybe …’
‘What? That you could hide out with me?’
‘I don’t know anybody else.’
‘What about your neighbours’ son-in-law, Monsieur Bollard?’
‘He won’t speak to me.’
‘You must have a lot of faith in strangers,’ Manzano snorted, shaking his head. ‘Asking to share a bed with a man you don’t even know.’
‘To share the room!’
‘… which has one double bed. The sofa is too small to sleep on.’
‘I’ll stay on my side,’ promised Shannon.
‘You’d better hope you don’t snore,’ said Manzano.
Berlin, Germany
Hartlandt and his colleagues at Treptower Park had worked non-stop, sifting data from previous years while at the same time collecting, analysing and categorizing new information as it came in. Hartlandt himself was focusing on the industries that generated and distributed energy. Assisted by three colleagues, he was analysing reports from engineers on the power outage.
‘Far too many power plants are having problems starting up again,’ said one of the group. ‘As a result, not enough power is being generated and they can’t get the grids synchronized.’
‘So far we’ve had two instances of damage reported,’ Hartlandt noted. ‘Fires have destroyed multiple transformers in the Osterrönfeld and Lübeck-Bargerbrück substations.’
The man opposite Hartlandt groaned. ‘That means they’ll be out of commission for the next few months.’
But Hartlandt was no longer listening. A new message had come in. The sender, one of the large grid operators, had attached pictures.
‘Look at this,’ Hartlandt said to his colleagues. The images showed the spindly frame of a transmission tower lying on its side in a brown field, its arms sticking up awkwardly into the grey winter sky, broken wires dangling like strings torn off a gigantic marionette.
Hartlandt was convinced. ‘This tower was taken out with explosives.’
The Hague, Netherlands
‘Someone ou
t there is taking advantage of the chaos of the power outage to go after not just the software but also the hardware of the electric grid,’ Bollard announced to those gathered in the operations centre. He pointed to Spain on the map. ‘A report’s come in of another bombed transmission tower. And there may be other acts of sabotage occurring even as we speak. The grid operators and power producers don’t have enough service teams to check all facilities and line routes. So far only a small number of them have been investigated.’
‘Could it be copycats?’ someone suggested.
‘It’s possible. But it could be that someone is hell-bent on causing the most damage possible,’ Bollard said. ‘The attacks on the software might have been only the beginning. A rudimentary supply should have been up and running within a few days of the outage. But it’s a completely different prognosis when strategic infrastructure like switchgears and transmission lines are destroyed. It takes time to repair that sort of damage, which makes re-establishing the power supply more difficult.’
Ratingen, Germany
At Talaefer headquarters the heads of sales and technology, the chief of development, the director of corporate communication and four members of the media agency handling the Talaefer account had fought their way through the blackout to attend a marketing presentation. Thus far, Wickley was unimpressed with the agency’s efforts.
‘What we’re asking of people is nothing less than a paradigm shift. If we can’t win over consumers, the energy revolution will fail – and with it our chances of making a profit. We need to come up with compelling arguments to make people understand why they can no longer take energy for granted, why they’re going to have to pay more. You need to convince consumers that they stand to gain something – and this “freedom of choice” and “self-management” pitch you people keep pushing is not going to cut it.’ He waved dismissively at the bullet points projected on the wall. ‘I mean, seriously, “Earn money with your car battery” – is that the best you can—’
The text vanished. The room was suddenly plunged into darkness.
‘What now …?’
One of his co-workers wrestled with the projector’s remote control. Another jumped up and hurried to the light switches beside the door. Their button-pushing had no effect. Wickley reached for the telephone on the table, dialled his PA’s number. No ringtone. He tried again. The line was dead.
Wickley stormed out of the room. It was even darker in the hallway. He threw open the door of his office and saw his PA silhouetted against the window. She was trying to use what daylight was left to see the buttons on her telephone.
‘Nothing’s working,’ she said.
‘Light some candles, then!’
‘We don’t have any,’ she protested.
Wickley stifled a curse. The entire continent had managed to adapt to the blackout, but apparently it was beyond her capabilities.
‘Then go get some!’ he snapped, then turned and roared into the darkness, ‘Lueck – where are you, man?’
‘He’s gone down to the basement,’ a voice shouted back.
Wickley set off downstairs. After jogging down several flights he found he had lost track of which floor he was on. A door opened and someone entered the stairwell.
‘Have you seen Lueck?’ he asked.
‘For several minutes now I haven’t seen a thing,’ a woman’s voice answered.
Wickley was irritated at the woman’s nerve, until he realized that not everyone would recognize him by voice alone. And he was forced to admit to himself that he had no idea where the backup generators were located. He just kept jogging down the stairs until he could go no further. He felt for a door, opened it. The room was as black as night.
‘Lueck?’ he shouted.
No answer. Wickley called out again. At the far end of the hallway a torch beam came into view.
‘Here,’ Wickley heard. He strode to where the sound had come from.
He found Lueck, divisional head of disaster management, in a large room with claustrophobically low ceilings. It was packed full of machines, cables, pipes that seemed to vibrate in the glow of the torch. With him were two men in grey overalls with the Talaefer logo on the back.
‘What the hell is going on here?’ Wickley hissed, making an effort to control himself.
Lueck’s large glasses reflected the torch light as he squinted up at Wickley. His thinning hair was damp with perspiration.
‘The backup power generator is broken,’ he explained, aiming his torch at a large tank towards the back of the room.
Wickley felt a pounding at his temples. ‘We are one of the most important suppliers for the energy industry and we don’t have power! Do you understand how embarrassing that is?’ His voice rebounded off the various metal parts.
‘The backup power supply is – was – designed to run for three days. It was probably overloaded, but even if it hadn’t been, we’re almost out of diesel,’ said Lueck. ‘The installation of a long-term autonomous power system was vetoed three years ago. Cost considerations, if I remember correctly.’
The bastard had a nerve, bringing that up! Unfortunately, Wickley remembered all too well the directors’ meeting in question. Spending five million euros on a system they would probably never use had seemed like throwing money down the drain. The only executive to vote in favour was no longer working for the company. If he had been, Wickley would have fired him for not pushing the project through, regardless of the board’s resistance.
‘We need replacement parts and diesel,’ Lueck explained. ‘At the moment, we’ve no chance of securing either.’
‘Then go get portable generators!’
‘They’re all in use—’
‘Money talks, Lueck. Go wave some cash under the right noses and—’
‘They’ve been commandeered by the Technical Relief Agency for use by hospitals, emergency shelters, rescue workers …’ Lueck answered with aggravating calm.
Wickley hated Lueck for letting him run up against a wall of argument that he could not counter. Together they climbed back up the stairs.
When they opened the door to find employees milling about in the darkened lobby, he told them, ‘We’re done for today. We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow. Let’s say two o’clock. And you’ – he turned to Lueck – ‘see to it that tomorrow morning everything is up and running. Or else you won’t be seeing to anything at all at Talaefer.’
Berlin, Germany
Michelsen was drinking her fifteenth coffee of the day. The previous night, and the one before, she had barely slept. Since the chancellor had declared the state of emergency yesterday evening, she’d hardly eaten. People were packed into the operations centre. They had expanded the team significantly, recruiting every kind of expert they could find.
Michelsen spent most of her time on the phone with higher-ups from the various emergency services. In the clamour of voices, it was all she could do to hear herself speak. The Federal Agency for Technical Relief and the army had begun setting up shelters. In every major city in Germany they were fitting gymnasiums, stadiums and other suitable locations with mattresses, cots, blankets, portable sanitary facilities, basic medical supplies and foodstuffs. In the affected areas, the police were out in cars with loudspeakers calling to people to make use of the shelters. Families with children, the sick and the elderly were given priority. Many elderly people who lived alone couldn’t hear the loudspeakers or were too weak to leave their homes, especially after two days of cold, often without food and water, with no way of leaving the building with the lifts out of order. Those who didn’t have relatives or neighbours to look after them had to rely on police officers going door to door.
Meanwhile, the Relief Agency were installing backup power generators in local administration buildings, health centres and farming operations, but there simply weren’t enough to go around. And there wasn’t enough fuel to keep them running. Many hospitals were having to cancel operations because the diesel stores for their backup sy
stems had been exhausted.
With over 25 million tonnes in strategic oil reserves, the German government had sufficient stores of crude oil and petroleum products to cover demand for around ninety days. Most of the crude oil was stored in decommissioned salt mines in Lower Saxony, but the refined products were distributed across the country in above-ground tanks. This meant they didn’t require pumps to fill tankers. Their problem in the coming days wasn’t so much the amount of fuel available as the means of delivering it to where it was needed as fast as possible.
Elsewhere in Europe things were no better. While temperatures in Germany hovered around zero degrees, in Stockholm it was eighteen below. South of the Alps the temperatures were positively mild in comparison – which was no help to those battling to keep the Saint-Laurent nuclear reactor from overheating now that its cooling systems had either partially failed or failed completely, no one knew exactly. Unbeknown to the public, the IAEA in Vienna had in the meantime raised the event to International Nuclear Events Scale (INES) 2. The word was that the plant had been forced to release radioactive steam in order to lower the pressure in the reactor. Michelsen pushed away the thought that diesel shortages could lead to reactors all over Europe being forced to take similar measures. Stranded trains had left many railway lines blocked. Where the lines were open, signals and switches could only be operated by hand. Passenger services in most areas had therefore been suspended until further notice. Even in the power islands where trains were still running, there were numerous cancellations and long delays. The one bright spot was that despite the grim conditions there had been no reports of serious public order breakdowns. So far, there hadn’t been a massive rise in criminal activity, and no large-scale looting. But Michelsen wasn’t feeling too complacent on that score; communication networks were down in about 40 per cent of the country, leaving local authorities and emergency services struggling to make contact with the government’s crisis centre, so it was possible incidents were occurring that had yet to be reported. And the longer the situation continued, the more inevitable the emergence of black markets, which would further erode trust in official institutions.
