Ron was a curious character; he certainly did not look the part of a policeman, more like a techno-freak.
"He used to be a hacker, one of the good ones. Well---"
Taken aback, I blurted, "A good hacker? I thought they were all considered outlaws, whether they hack into systems for gain or just for fun."
"Officially, all hackers are leeches on society, but unofficially, it's a case of the lesser of two evils. We use the good hackers, those who do it for fun, to help us catch the real criminals. Bounty hunters, that's how we see them; instead of on the street, they clear the Internet for us."
"Yes, but why use them at all?"
She sighed. "As I was saying, Ron and people like him have skills that we have neither the budget nor the time to train policemen with. We hire the best ones we find, blackmail the more reluctant ones with prison sentences. However, Ron was a walkover; as you can see, he loves his job. With us, he can roam the Internet with the latest technology and complete immunity from prosecution."
Maria had already finished her coffee, and appeared to be waiting for me. I gulped down the last few drops, and we returned to the TMC.
***
Lyens had left the room to answer a call of nature, and Pierre had returned to his desk outside the TMC. Ron had finally cracked the bulletin board operator. He called in a favour from a colleague in the country where the BBS was situated. A threatening phone call later, he was able to give Ron the Internet address of the next link in the chain to the OPA computer. Without so much as a breather, Ron got back to business, rubbing his hands together, and grinning like the Mad Hatter. In the past intense few minutes, Ron had narrowed the search to Europe, calling in favours on three continents. Minutes ago, he had had a stroke of luck that had brought it down to one country, Belgium.
The Internet skills of the OPA were astounding. Even Ron was impressed. They had leapfrogged from site to site, from country to country, and from continent to continent. They had wrapped the call four times around the globe, using two hundred and sixty one mail servers. All this to send a call from this country.
Ron had performed what seemed, to me, like a minor miracle. He had shrunk the possible calling areas to three cities: Antwerp, Liege and this one, the one we were trying to free of traffic, the one the OPA had selected for their operation, Brussels.
I had a sneaking suspicion that if we ever traced them, which I doubted, we would find the call had originated not many miles away, somewhere out there in Brussels itself. No offence to Ron, but the OPA hacker always appeared a step ahead of him, despite his hard work. I think he realised this too, because he was getting very edgy. In any case, he never got any further.
They called us again. This time we would see what they had up their sleeves:
"Dear me, you fell for our little joke. Pity it was a recorded message timed to go off at a specific time. Once you locate the originating call site, send in your troops, you'll find nothing, I'm afraid to say. I trust you have confirmed the existence of fifteen crashed trucks, the trains and so on."
Maria pointed out to me that the Internet address of this message was not the same as the one for the first message.
"Which brings me to my next point. That was just to see how you'd react. Wrong move. Now you will pay the consequences..."
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* * *
Chapter Eleven
10.09 a.m. (2 hours 20 minutes to OPA deadline)
From far off, we heard a deep, growling rumble. At first, I thought it was thunder off in the distance, but then the floor began to tremble, as if a heavy truck had gone past. Keyboards rattled and windows quivered, producing the only sounds in the sudden silence. All of us froze in mid-movement, afraid to even twitch. For some reason, I had ended up facing the side of the Internet PC, where Patrick had left his mug of coffee, stone cold by now.
Abruptly, the room lurched sideways, and anything not tied down was thrown about wildly. Pens rolled off desks, and loose papers fluttered. All I could see was Patrick's cup buffeted by unseen forces. It shuffled and spun towards the edge of the desk, spraying drops here and there. Teetering for a fraction of a second on the edge, it somersaulted into Ron's lap, staining his trouser leg. Those of us standing reeled about like a bunch of drunkards, the others held onto their desks to steady themselves.
Slowly, the quake faded away, the keyboards quieted, and utter silence took hold of the TMC, but still nobody stirred. For all we knew, we could have experienced the precursor to a much stronger shock wave. Dreading the follow-up quake, yet fervently hoping it would not arrive, I decided that we could hardly stay like this all day.
Taking my courage in both hands, I tentatively swivelled my head to survey the scene. All phones, bar one, were off the hook. Sheets and pens littered the floor. The coffee from Ron's leg had formed a puddle in the carpet.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some movement. Martin was trying to stretch his leg without moving his foot. He looked like an athlete in a photo finish, chest puffed up, head down and one leg behind him. He could not have looked more ridiculous if he had tried. Come to think of it, we all did. Standing still is not the best way to survive an earthquake; hitting the ground at the first sign and staying there is. Under a table or some other solid piece of furniture, if possible. And, in any case, our city had never been prone to earthquakes.
Feeling a complete fool, I broke the spell. I walked unsteadily up to Ron, and patted him on the back. He coughed. That started a spurt of sighs and murmurs. Then someone, I am not sure who, pointed at the screen, and shouted, "Look!"
We all did. The OPA were taking up the conversation where they had left it off. Even bigger and redder characters had replaced the ones of the last message:
"Poor Castell building, such a fine, modern construction. Twenty-two stories of concrete and glass. You have less than 2 hours and a half to respond positively to our demands."
Quickest off the mark, I placed a call to Blue Eye security. Their phone line was busy, so I grabbed the videophone receiver and dialled.
A round, tanned face, attached to a thick neck stuck in a tight collar appeared before me. Across the breast the guard bore his nametag, which announced him to be Jean-Paul. On my request, he checked the cameras on the Chaussee de Louvain, but for some reason they were malfunctioning.
Taking the Bourgmestre's prerogative, I ordered him up to the top floor of their building to see what had happened in the city. I would have done the same myself had the transport authority building not been barely four floors high. The one housing Blue Eye security not only was situated in the city centre itself, but was the third tallest edifice in the city.
Those few minutes of waiting were the longest I have ever experienced. I had plenty of time to imagine nightmare scenarios, but none of them prepared me for the ghastly truth. Jean-Paul's face jerked back into view of the video camera, white as a sheet. His mouth opened, and a feeble croak reached my ears.
"Sorry, Jean-Paul. I didn't quite catch that."
"The Castell building has collapsed; it's been turned into rubble. From what I can see, it didn't fall straight, either; it hit two other buildings on the way down, and it's crushed the traffic on surrounding roads, in particular, Chaussee de Louvain. The shock wave blew out the windows on all adjacent office blocks. And I cannot even see the road because of the dust."
***
Raymond opened his eyes carefully. The air was thick with dust that floated away from him, carried by a slight wind. The ringing in his ears worried him. It had been a thunderous bang. He raised two fingers to his ears, and clicked them together, but failed to hear anything. When he tried to sit up, a lancing pain in his back reminded him to check for broken bones. It did not take long to ascertain that, apart from a few bruises and the pulled muscle in his back, he was uninjured. That fact allayed the fear he was experiencing.
He had left the Madou tower behind him, and started down the Chaussee de Louvain, another main road linking both in
ner and outer ring roads. Barely three minutes ago, he had walked round the corner when it had happened. An ear-splitting noise had assailed him. He had felt himself being lifted up and thrown savagely backwards. Before he had had time to understand what was going on, his short flight was brutally stopped by the bricks of the wall behind him. He was not sure, but he might have fainted then, although it could not have been for long. He distinctly remembered collapsing to the pavement and closing his eyes, as a rapidly expanding cloud of dust had blown towards him. Now, some of the dust in the air was settling lightly on the pavement around him.
Enough self-pity, he admonished himself silently.
Gingerly, he got to his feet. The pain in his back returned, stronger than before. It nearly brought him to his knees, but he stretched his arm to the wall, and leaned on it for a while. By the time the pain had receded to just a twinge, the air had cleared a little, but it was as dark as during early evening. A thick cloud of dust hung above the road. Unable to believe what his eyes were transmitting to his brain, he looked around at the devastation before him.
His gaze moved up the line of immobile vehicles, stranded in the road. They had all turned a uniform colour, a kind of faded grey-brown where the dust had settled. Further down the road, the line of cars stopped abruptly. In its place was a cracked concrete wall about ten metres high. From the top of the wall protruded some steel bars, like those found in buildings.
Raymond sucked in air as he realised that it was just that. A building had taken the place of the cars in the middle of the road. He looked to the sides of the concrete wall, and saw that he should have realised sooner what had happened. From the building on one side, right across the road and up to the building on the other side, lay a jumble of tortured concrete slabs, broken glass and lots of metal. He could see metal railings, metal sheets, and even metal bars separated from the walls they had been designed to reinforce. Just beyond the rubble, he saw a gap on one side, and realised that a whole building had apparently fallen over, across the road and onto the traffic jam.
Mesmerised, he walked towards the wreckage. His ears had stopped hurting him, and he imagined his hearing was coming back. At first, a faint noise reached him, then as he got closer he was able to discern what it was.
Someone was screaming.
He followed the sound, cautiously stepping over debris and scrabbling across loose, gravel-sized pieces of concrete. Ahead of him, a large slab of concrete, strangely still intact, lay at an angle. It seemed to Raymond that the screaming was coming from underneath it.
He placed one hand on the concrete, and swung his head down. The first thing he noticed was the blood gently trickling through the dust. In the ridiculously small space left between the slab of concrete and the road was what might, once, have been considered a car.
The tires had burst, probably on impact. The roof of the car had caved in. The windows had shattered, littering the road with small bits of Plexiglas. The passenger side of the car was, by Raymond's estimation, about six centimetres high now. The screaming came from the driver's side.
He knelt down and crawled around the smashed headlight. The driver's door had been wrenched off its top hinge, and bent backward until it lay on the road. The driver did not look very healthy. The man was soaked in his own blood that spurted from one head wound and three gashes in his chest. His legs were still in the car, but his body was twisted sideways across the damaged door.
Raymond crawled nearer. The urgency of the situation wrested the feeling of horror to the back of his mind. With no conscious thought to hinder his actions, he pulled his shirt off, and ripped it into several strips. The first one he tied around the injured man's head, making sure it was tightly pressed against the wound. He used a second strand of his shirt to gently wipe the blood away from the chest. Having removed bits of shrapnel from two of the wounds, he secured more pieces of cloth on them by tying a shirt-sleeve around the torso.
The injured man had stopped moaning, and Raymond thought he had passed out, but the eyes were still open, riveted on him. For a moment he imagined he saw a look of gratefulness cross the man's face, and Raymond felt a sudden pang of sympathy.
"Don't worry. You're going to be ok. We'll get you out of here," he said, trying to think of something to add. He patted his pockets, as if to find inspiration, until his hands passed over the hard bulge of his GSM. Surprisingly, apart from a crack in the casing, it was intact. When he called the emergency services, someone answered after only the third ring.
***
Nys rushed back in. "Hugh! What the hell was that? Hugh?"
Frozen by what Jean-Paul had just said, I stared blankly at his face on the video screen. Later, I learned that no one in the TMC had moved for five minutes until Nys entered.
It was Jean-Paul who brought me back to reality. He tapped the video screen gently, then waved at me. "Hugh, I think someone wants to talk to you."
"Hmm?"
"Behind you." As I feebly followed his pointing finger, Nys's worried face slowly came into view.
"Hugh, what's the matter with you?" he yelled at me.
"Hmm?"
"Snap out of it, man." Reaching out an arm towards me, he shouted, "What's going on?"
I could barely gather the energy to speak, but I managed somehow to mutter, "Get Lyens to call the Bourgmestre."
"Bourgmestre Gaultier?" spluttered Nys incredulously.
Nodding slightly, I grabbed the backrest of my chair, and levered myself up. I needed a coffee. A very strong, very black coffee, one in which the spoon stays upright, and in which sugar lumps sink like into mud. Nys followed me out to the coffee machine, haranguing me all the way. The first cup I downed in one gulp, and felt myself overcoming the shock as energy seeped back into my body. I lit a cigarette to calm myself down and gather my spirits.
"Why do you want me to call the Bourgmestre? What was that quake?"
Nys surprised me, I must give him that, at least. He listened intently to my explanation, then nodded and calmly went in search of a phone. I suppose the human body can take only so many shocks in one day. Nys had overreacted to several of the minor crises we had had earlier, maybe now his system was getting used to it.
***
The strain of the day was beginning to show on the faces of the people around Susan. Fortunately, someone had brought some sandwiches and drinks from one of the undamaged vehicles. He was a supplier for one of the office lunch services, and had handed out his supplies charitably.
She nibbled at her sandwich, and looked down at the crossroads. The emergency services were still hard at work. The fire brigade was hosing down the burnt-out lorry; the police were dealing with the injured that the ambulances had not been able to take.
Around her, the crowd of drivers was quiet, most of them silently eating and looking at their feet. Even the man who had saved her had closed up once their bout of hysteria had faded. Susan, however, found that the crying had been some kind of watershed. She no longer felt scared; she must have overcome her shock.
A stroll would do her good. She stood up and calmly headed down the hill, but before she reached the bottom, a young policewoman came running towards her.
"Ma'am, please return. Stay with the others."
"Yes, but when are we going to be able to get to--"
"To work? Not today, at any rate."
"Why not?"
"Please, Ma'am. Go back."
"Look, miss. I was nearly killed in that accident down there. I think I have the right to know what's going on, and why nothing is being done about us or our cars."
The policewoman glanced behind her, and saw a colleague of hers wave. "Ma'am, if I tell you what I know, will you promise to rejoin the others?"
"I suppose that's fair," Susan answered.
"Well," the policewoman took a deep breath, "this is not the only accident. All the major crossroads into the city suffered one. In addition, the city is in complete gridlock. We have been given orders to suggest you return
home any way you can."
"What about our cars?"
"Ma'am, you must realise that they are way down on our list of priorities. Could you please return now? I have to help my colleagues."
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* * *
Chapter Twelve
10.34 a.m. (1 hour 55 minutes to OPA deadline)
Lyens got through to the Bourgmestre after the first ring. He didn't have the time to breathe before she spoke.
"Lyens, what the hell was that?"
"The OPA destroyed the Castell building, Ma'am."
The Bourgmestre sighed. "Lyens, stop calling me Ma'am, it irritates me. Put me through to Sergeant Depage and that controller you were talking about."
I tried to hide behind Patrick. What with everything that had gone on, I could do without the extra hassle of sparring verbally with a Bourgmestre, in particular, one in a foul mood. Unfortunately, Lyens was having none of it, and he waved me over with frantic gestures. I sat myself in Nys's chair. No sooner had I done that, the Bourgmestre sneezed. Involuntarily, I reeled away from the screen. Realising my mistake, I smiled weakly.
"Sorry." I had spoken in English, without thinking.
Maria came to stand behind me, and placed one hand on the backrest.
The Bourgmestre answered in English and with a perfect accent, I must say. "That's quite all right. What's your name?"
"Hugh, Mrs. Bourgmestre."
"OK, Hugh. Mr. Lyens said that in your opinion, the OPA slammed this city into gridlock. Correct?"
"Yes, Mrs. Bourgmestre."
"And they now say they blew up the Castell building? Are we quite sure they did it?"
"What?" I spurted incredulously.
"Are you sure they blew it up? Has anyone checked if it was a gas leak or something?"
"How do you expect us to do that? It happened barely five minutes ago, and anyway, there's a traffic jam between here and there. Believe me, they're for real. They've got this city wrapped up pretty tightly. We don't know where they'll hit next, but the traffic jam below is likely to get flattened if we don't accede to their demands."
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