The Swarm: A Novel

by Frank Schätzing

  Li switched off the projector. ‘I’d like to thank the diplomats and the international intelligence community for enabling us to hold this summit,’ she said. ‘I know some of you will have to return home later today, but the majority of you will be our guests here for the next few weeks. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the same conditions of confidentiality apply to us all. Our work and our findings must be kept under wraps. It’s in the interest of all our governments.’

  She paused.

  ‘As for the scientists, please rest assured that we’ll be doing everything in our power to help you. From now on we would ask you to use only the laptops provided. There are Internet connections all over the hotel - in the bar, in your rooms, in the health club - so you’ll be able to log on no matter where you are. Transatlantic communication is up and running again. The hotel roof is covered with satellite dishes and everything’s back in business. Telephone calls, faxes, email and Internet et cetera will all go via the NATO III satellites. They’re normally reserved for communication between the NATO governments, but now they’re at your disposal too. We’ve built in a closed network, a secretus in secretum, which only members of the working party will be able to access. You can use it to communicate with each other and to view confidential data. To get in, you’ll need a personal password, which you’ll be given once you’ve signed your non-disclosure forms.’

  She looked at them sternly. ‘Please take it as read that the password should not be shared with unauthorised individuals. Once you’ve logged in, you’ll have access to recon and Earth observation satellites, to data from NOAA and from SOSUS, to archived and current telemetric material, and to the CIA and NSA’s databases on international terrorism, bio-weaponry and gene technology. We’ve given you summaries of our current capabilities in terms of deep-sea technology, and you’ll also find geological and geochemical information. There are catalogues of different organisms, deep-sea charts courtesy of the navy and, of course, all the details of today’s presentation, including the stats and figures. New developments will be forwarded to you immediately and automatically. We’ll keep you informed, and we expect you to do the same.’

  Li smiled encouragingly at her audience. ‘Good luck to you all. In two days’ time we’ll meet again, same time, same place. If anyone needs to compare notes before then, Major Peak and I are available for consultation at any time.’

  Vanderbilt raised his eyebrows. ‘I hope you’ll be a good girl and tell everything to Uncle Jack,’ he said softly, so that only she could hear.

  ‘Just remember,’ she said, as she packed up her things, ‘I’m your superior.’

  ‘I’m sorry, honey, you can’t have heard right. We’re partners now, equals.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Not intellectually…’

  She left the room.

  Johanson

  Most of the crowd headed for the bar, but Johanson didn’t feel like joining them. Maybe it would have been a good opportunity to get to know a few people, but he had other things on his mind.

  He’d barely made it inside his suite when there was a knock on the door. Weaver walked in without waiting for an answer.

  ‘You should give an old man the chance to put on his corset before you burst in like that,’ said Johanson. ‘I wouldn’t want to shatter your illusions.’

  He picked up his laptop and wandered around the cosily furnished sitting room, looking for the modem. Weaver opened the minibar and helped herself to a Coke. ‘Above the desk,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, so it is.’ Johanson plugged in the laptop and booted it up.

  Weaver watched over his shoulder. ‘What do you think of the terrorism theory?’ she asked.

  ‘Makes no sense.’

  ‘That’s what I thought too.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised by the CIA’s schizophrenia.’ Johanson clicked on a series of icons. ‘They’re trained to think like that. And Vanderbilt was right about one thing: scientists do tend to forget that people don’t operate with the reliability of natural laws.’

  Weaver leaned over and auburn curls cascaded over her face. She pushed them back. ‘You’ve got to tell them, Sigur.’

  ‘Tell them what?’

  ‘About your theory.’

  Johanson double-clicked on an icon and entered his password: Chateau Disaster 000 550899-XK/0. ‘Ta-ra ta-ra,’ he hummed. ‘Welcome to Wonderland.’

  Nice password, he thought. A castle populated by scientists, intelligence operatives and soldiers, all trying to save the world from monsters, floods and catastrophic climate change. Chateau Disaster was exactly right.

  More icons appeared on the screen. Johanson studied the titles of the folders and whistled softly. ‘My God, we really have got access to the satellites.’

  ‘Seriously? Can we guide them?’

  ‘Hardly. You can download the data, though. Look, GOES-W and GOES-E…the entire NOAA fleet’s on here. And see this one? It’s QuikSCAT - not bad either. And all the Lacrosse satellites too - that means they’ve really bitten the bullet, if they’ve let us have these. And over here we’ve got SAR-Lupe, it—’

  ‘I get the picture. You can come back down to earth. Surely they haven’t really given us unrestricted access to state information and intelligence resources?’

  ‘Of course not. We’ve got access to whatever they’d like us to see.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Vanderbilt what you think?’

  ‘It’s too soon.’

  ‘We don’t have much time, Sigur.’

  Johanson shook his head. ‘People like Li and Vanderbilt need convincing. They want hard facts, not conjecture.’

  ‘We’ve got hard facts!’

  ‘The timing was all wrong. Today was their moment of glory. They’d put together all that information and turned it into an all-singing, all-dancing catastrophe fest. Vanderbilt had the chance to pull his big fat Arabian rabbit out of the hat, and did you see him? He was proud of it, for God’s sake. If I’d said anything it would have sounded like a challenge. I want them to start doubting their neat little theory of their own accord, and that’ll happen sooner than you think.’

  ‘OK.’ Weaver nodded. ‘How certain are you?’

  ‘Of my theory?’

  ‘I mean, you are still certain, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sure. But after today we’re going to have to find a way of convincing the American intelligence service that it’s wrong.’ Johanson looked at his screen. ‘In any case, I get the feeling Vanderbilt’s not that important. Li’s the one we need to work on. From what I’ve seen, I bet she does what she wants, regardless.’

  Li

  Her first priority was to get on the treadmill. She set the speed to nine kilometres per hour, and settled into a comfortable trot. It was time to call the White House. Two minutes later the voice of the President sounded in her headphones. ‘Jude! Good to hear from you. How’re you doing?’

  ‘I’m running right now.’

  ‘You’re running. Good Lord, Jude, you’re the best. You’re an example to us all - except me, of course.’ He gave a chummy guffaw. ‘You’re too sporty for my liking. Well, did the presentation go to plan?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And did you tell them our suspicions?’

  ‘Regrettably, sir, they’re now aware of what Vanderbilt suspects.’

  The President was still chuckling. ‘Oh, Jude, you’ve got to stop this vendetta against Vanderbilt.’

  ‘He’s an asshole.’

  ‘But he’s good at his job. Besides, I’m not asking you to marry him.’

  ‘If it made America safer,’ Li said irritably, ‘I’d marry him right away. But nothing could induce me to agree with him.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I mean, would you have picked today to start parading your suspicions? There’s no evidence yet for the terrorism hypothesis, and now it’s at the forefront of their minds. We wanted the scientists to come up with a theory, not go chasing after one.’<
br />
  There was silence. Li could hear the President thinking it over. He didn’t like people taking matters into their own hands, and Vanderbilt had done just that.

  ‘You’re right, Jude. It would have been better to keep it to ourselves.’

  ‘I quite agree, sir.’

  ‘Good. Have a word with him about it.’

  ‘Oh, no, sir, you should have a word with him. He won’t listen to me.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll talk to him later, then.’

  Li smiled to herself. ‘Listen, er, I don’t want Jack getting into trouble…’ she added dutifully.

  ‘Sure. No problem. But enough about him. Tell me about your scholarly panopticon. Are the scientists up to the job? Any thoughts so far?’

  ‘They’re all highly qualified.’

  ‘Does anyone stand out?’

  ‘A Norwegian. Sigur Johanson. He’s a molecular biologist - marine science, of course. I’m not sure what’s so special about him, but he’s got his own way of looking at things.’

  The President called to someone in the room. Li upped the speed on the treadmill.

  ‘I spoke to the Norwegian foreign minister earlier,’ he said. ‘They’re at their wits’ end. I mean, they’re pleased about the EU initiative, but it seems to me that they’d be a good deal happier if the US came on board. The Germans think the same - they want to pool our know-how and so on. They’re calling for an international commission with a proper mandate that would unite our capabilities.’

  ‘Who do they have in mind to run it?’

  ‘A UN-led committee, according to the German chancellor.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I see…’

  ‘Not a bad idea, I thought.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a good one.’ Li paused. ‘Only didn’t you say recently that the UN had never had such an ineffectual secretary general as the present incumbent? It was at that embassy reception three weeks ago, and then we came under fire from all the usual corners. Do you remember?’

  ‘Hell, yes. They were so darned pompous about it. Well, I can’t help it if he’s a pussy. It’s just the truth. But what’s your point, Jude?’

  ‘I was just saying.’

  ‘Come on, out with it! What’s the alternative?’

  ‘You mean the alternative to being led by a committee including dozens of Middle Eastern delegates?’

  The President went quiet. ‘I guess we could lead it,’ he said in the end.

  Li waited before she spoke, as though she needed time to think. ‘That’s an excellent idea, sir.’

  ‘But then we get lumbered with the whole world’s problems - again. Sickening, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, we’d be stuck with them anyway. We’re the only superpower, and if we want things to stay that way, we’ll have to keep taking the lead. Besides, bad times are good times for the powerful.’

  ‘You and your Chinese proverbs,’ said the President. ‘Well, they’re not going to hand it to us on a plate. We’ll have a tough time convincing them that we, of all people, should head an international commission. Imagine the reaction from the Arabs! Not to mention China and North Korea. Oh, that reminds me. I took a look at your files on the scientists. One looks Asian. I thought we said no Asians and no Arabs.’

  ‘Asian? Which one?’

  ‘Oh, something funny-sounding, like Wakawaka or—’

  ‘You mean Leon Anawak. Did you read his CV?’

  ‘No, I only flipped through.’

  ‘He’s not Asian.’ Li increased the speed to twelve kilometres per hour. ‘I’m the most Asian person in Whistler by some margin.’

  The President laughed. ‘Oh, Jude, you could be from Mars for all I care. I’d still back you all the way. Darned shame that you can’t come over and watch the game. We’re going out to the ranch - assuming nothing comes up. Barbecued spare ribs. My wife’s got them marinating already.’

  ‘Next time, sir,’ Li said heartily.

  They chatted for a bit about baseball. Li didn’t push the idea that the US should lead the global coalition. Within forty-eight hours, he’d believe he’d thought of it himself. It was enough to plant the suggestion.

  At the end of the conversation, she carried on running for a while. Then she sat down at the grand piano, her body still dripping with sweat, and lifted her hands to the keyboard. She focused.

  A few seconds later, Mozart’s Piano Sonata in G Major was flowing from her fingers.

  KH-12

  Like perfume on the breeze, the strains of Li’s piano-playing carried through the corridors on the ninth floor of Chateau Whistler and floated out of the half-open window into the outside air. At a hundred metres above ground-level, the sound waves fanned out in concentric ripples. At the highest point of the hotel, in the fairy-tale turret perched at the top, anyone with sharp ears would have heard the music, albeit faintly. Beyond the gabled roof, though, the waves began to disperse. A hundred metres higher up, they had merged with numerous other sound waves and, as the altitude increased, the noises fell silent. A kilometre above ground, a number of sounds could still be heard: car engines starting, propeller planes droning past, and the chime of bells from the Presbyterian church in Whistler village, whose otherwise bustling streets now formed part of the exclusion zone. Finally, at an altitude of two kilometres, the whirring noise of the military choppers - the Chateau’s main link to the outside world - gradually started to fade.

  Viewed from that height, the hotel was still clearly visible to the naked eye, nestled among acres of forest rising gently to the west. Furrowed snow glistened on the nearby mountain ridges. Ludwig II could only have dreamed of such a place.

  Higher up in the atmosphere, the sounds from below petered out altogether.

  Now only jet planes taking to the skies or coming into land could still be heard. Seen from an altitude of ten kilometres, the Chateau blurred into the landscape. Charter planes left white trails in the air, and the horizon curved. Low-lying banks of cloud stood out against the bright blue sky like snow plains and icebergs, the vapour conjuring an illusion of firm ground. Another five or ten kilometres further up, the noise of supersonic jets cut through the thinning atmosphere. The troposphere was governed by the whims of the weather, but further up, the stratosphere was home to the ozone layer, which screened out ultraviolet light. The temperature increased. At that altitude, the clouds were just ethereal wisps, shimmering like mother-of-pearl. Silvery weather balloons shone in the sunlight, sparking reports of UFO sightings below. In 1962 an American recon plane had stolen through the silent skies twenty kilometres above ground to photograph Soviet warheads in Cuba. Because of the extreme altitude, the pilot of the legendary U-2 had been forced to wear a spacesuit. It had been one of the most daring flights of all time, and had taken place in a deep-blue sky that opened into the vastness of space.

  At an altitude of eighty kilometres, the interwoven streaks of individual noctilucent clouds glistened in the light. It was minus 113°C. Up here the only sign of human presence was the rare sight of a passing spaceship as it took off or landed. The deep-blue gave way to blue-black. This was the realm of the heathen gods, unmasked by modern science as polar aurorae and glowing meteorites. The thermosphere had given rise to more myths and legends than any other feature of the physical environment. In reality it was an unsuitable home for divinities or for any form of life at all. Gamma and X-rays poured in from above. The thermosphere extended for hundreds of kilometres, but gas molecules were few and far between.

  There were other things to see, though.

  Travelling at 28,000 kilometres per hour, the nearest satellites orbited the Earth at an altitude of 150 kilometres. By their very nature they were mainly recon satellites, positioned at the minimum possible distance from the ground. Eighty kilometres above them the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission gathered land-elevation data from the Earth’s surface to create a twenty-first-century planetary map. At relatively low altitudes such as these, the atmosphere was dense enough to slow the satellites, making them reliant
on the occasional injection of fuel to keep them in orbit. Three hundred kilometres above the Earth there was no need for fuel. The centrifugal force and the force of gravity balanced each other out, and the satellite’s orbit was stable. The skies began to fill.

  The satellites circled the Earth like cars on a network of highways, passing over and under each other. The higher the altitude, the denser the traffic. At 500 kilometres, two elegant little satellites called Champ and Grace monitored the Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields. Six hundred kilometres above the polar regions, ICESat measured lightwave reflections from the Earth’s surface, allowing scientists to track changes in the icecaps. Seventy kilometres above that, three state-of-the-art US Army Lacrosse satellites orbited the Earth, scanning its surface with high-resolution radar. At an altitude of 700 kilometres, NASA’s Landsat satellites observed the land and coastal regions, acquiring data on advancing and retreating glaciers, mapping the growth of forests and the formation of pack ice, and providing accurate charts of the Earth’s surface temperature. SeaWiFS, on the other hand, used optical scanning and infrared to keep tabs on the build-up of algae in the oceans. At 850 kilometres above ground, NOAA’s satellites had made themselves at home in a sun-synchronous orbit, with numerous meterological satellites circling the planet, passing close to both poles. The bustle of satellites encroached high into the magnetosphere, where cosmic and solar particles were bundled into two radiation belts, known as the Van Allen Belt - a phenomenon that had developed a life of its own in the media. For many Americans the Van Allen Belt was proof positive that the moon landings had never happened. In fact, even respected scientists had cast doubt on whether the astronauts in the spaceship would have been sufficiently protected to pass through the band of lethal radiation and survive. In satellite terminology, though, space was simply divided into LEO, Low Earth Orbit, then Middle Earth Orbit, used by numerous satellites, including the GPS constellation at 20,000 kilometres above ground; and then finally Geostationary Orbit, where the satellites - primarily Intelsats, used for international communication - kept pace with the Earth at an altitude of 35,888 kilometres.