The Gomorrah Gambit Read online

  The campus appears to be under military occupation. Everywhere Azi looks, uniformed men and women are dashing in knots, like soldier ants dismantling a rival nest. His own gun-toting escorts, wearing far beefier combat gear than anything he saw in Europe, push him forcefully onto a metal bench, then leap out and slam the door of the van behind them. Azi is within a high-tech tomb, its windowless inner surfaces grooved and bulging above two long benches. He breathes for what feels like the first time since he exited the data center. Around him, the van shifts into motion.

  It’s only then that Azi notices a man sitting opposite him, staring mildly at the metal-plated ceiling. The man is Odi, and he is handcuffed to the floor by a thick chain. Azi hurtles into speech.

  “Munira, she was here. I think her real name’s Amira Dewan. She came out, just before us. Did they get her?”

  “I think not. Breathe, Azi. Focus.” Odi’s eyes are alight with urgency. “Do you know where she is going? What did you find?”

  “Shit, shit…they can hear me, right? Can you hear me?” Azi starts banging on the wall, his voice rising over the impacts. “She shot us, tried to drown us. She was manipulating everything, behind the scenes. She must have been based close to here, within half an hour’s drive. She mentioned a giant marble bathtub. A hotel? She was dressed expensively. She looked like…someone else.”

  Azi looks at Odi, taking in both the handcuffs and some extensive bruises masking half of his face. With an effort, he shifts gears.

  “It looks like you and Yacine enjoyed your diversion.”

  Odi flashes a smile, showing a missing front tooth. “Oh, the Americans relished our surprises. Hence these new bracelets. Was it worth it?”

  Azi nods. “I found proof.” He raises his voice. “Do you hear me? On this laptop, proof of everything we were trying to tell you. And you need to pay attention, because the news isn’t good.”

  He waits an instant, then turns to Odi with a whisper. “So what the hell is this, the van, everything?”

  “This?” Odi whispers back. “It’s a mobile office, enhanced interrogation center and rendition facilitator. In Europe, we’d be in a Portakabin handcuffed to a radiator. Now, you have their attention. Look.”

  Azi looks. To his astonishment, the wall at the front of the van is splitting in two, exposing a screen stretching almost from floor to ceiling. At the same time, a panel in front of him glides open, revealing a shallow tray and network cable.

  Azi wakes the laptop, connects it, and starts talking.

  “Okay, here. These are logs for the woman you knew as Munira: every recent thing she’s done via Gomorrah. She was running the show. And the private darknet was a trap all along. All the amazing, irresistible bad shit that’s on the marketplace—it’s there to pull in the users. Then someone behind the scenes pulls the strings. Like she did for the Islamic Republic: delivered everything she promised, then betrayed them.”

  He dashes through screen after screen of data.

  “Here’s what really matters. She gave up the names of most of the terrorists in Europe. But she kept some secret. These names, these identities. Whatever you think is happening right now, these people are the key to it.”

  At this, the huge screen at the front of the van comes to life. It’s divided into segments, mixing body camera and surveillance footage with status updates, showing fragmentary glimpses of European countryside, the inside of armored cars and police vehicles, a series of bland-looking official rooms—and a selection of men in civilian clothes, trussed and captured, alongside labeled caches of weapons and crated equipment.

  Odi gestures in explanation. “These are feeds, from across Europe. The jihadis we already knew about, the takedowns.”

  Azi consults the status feeds, cross-referencing with his screen, light-headed. What was Amira’s plan? She deliberately betrayed fifty Islamists, knowing it would put half a continent on high alert, knowing it would expose Gomorrah’s capabilities. Why tip off the world? The only possible reason, he thinks with a shudder, is that it was all a gambit—and that the true game is being won somewhere else. Where are the ones she didn’t betray?

  Azi keeps digging through the data. The names and addresses of this second, secret contingent are all German. Gradually, what he’s looking at starts to tell its story.

  “Odi, is anything big happening in the far east of Germany that a bunch of counter-terrorism experts might be asked to protect? Given that the biggest terrorist operation in living memory is apparently being foiled elsewhere at this very moment.”

  Odi slowly nods. “You remember our good friends from the Defiance party? Tomi’s biggest ever speech is starting, very soon. In the city where he grew up, where he founded the party: Görlitz. Crowds, press, party elite.”

  Azi sits up, electrified. “That’s it. There are four heavily armored vans. They’re in the possession of jihadis with all the documentation needed to identify themselves as members of Interpol’s Counter-Terrorism Centre. That’s her plan.” He clasps his hands together, as if applauding the apocalypse. “She put the continent on high alert, she let us think we knew it all. Then she arranged extra security for the biggest political rally of the year—only this particular security contingent is about to do God knows what. Assassinate Tomi, destroy the city, blow several thousand people to pieces. All of the above.”

  Azi stops speaking, as if he can’t quite believe the words coming out of his mouth.

  Then, across the width of the van’s vast screen, camera after camera starts to turn blank.

  Fifty

  The van grinds to a halt. Azi remains hunched over the laptop as the double doors at the back creak open. Half the feeds within the screen at the front of the van are now blank, turning it into a chessboard of lost signals.

  Three suited men step up, two of whom are escorting a black-clad woman. The third approaches Odi, gingerly releases his cuffs, then retreats. The woman is Anna, which may explain why the men beside her look as though they’ve been asked to handle Hannibal Lecter’s grumpy older sister.

  With a nod, the three men retreat into a featureless concrete bunker, heft in a crate of supplies, then close the van’s doors behind them.

  Odi rips open the supply crate and thrusts what turn out to be warm cans of Sprite into each of their hands. Then he and Anna squeeze onto the long metal bench beside Azi, granting them all a clear view of both the laptop and the giant screen’s mosaic. It’s almost blank now, its feeds riddled with static. Anna looks as though she hasn’t slept in a long time, but her voice crackles with energy.

  “I came from Europe under…unusual circumstances. I was relieved of operational oversight. But as of now they are relying upon us, largely because everything that we have learned—everything that has happened so far—is unprecedented. Take me through it, Azi.”

  Azi gulps his warm, cloying drink, realizing as he does how much his body needs it—how close he is to the limit.

  “You heard, in the van? The terrorists you’ve been tracking since Sigma’s first leak, they were a diversion. The Interpol men heading to the continent’s biggest political rally are the ones that matter. Paid-up, tooled-up, highly trained members of the Islamic Republic, sitting on a ton of explosives. I’m assuming you guys are poised to blow the living shit out of them. Right?”

  Anna bows her head.

  “We are trying to contact authorities in the area, but we are having little success. Almost all official communications are down, as are most local internet and cellphone services. None of which should be possible. Yet it’s of a piece with the control Gomorrah has exerted elsewhere.”

  She pauses. “Which leaves us with the most important question of all. Why? Given that level of power, what possible advantage can this bring that they don’t already have? What are they poised to achieve?”

  Azi’s mind hurtles through the turmoil, hunting for sense. Every angle shows only a system ripped to shreds: identity databases, policing and intelligence, terrorism and trafficking
, Gomorrah itself. By the end of today, there’ll be nothing left that those on either side of the law can trust. Then he sees it.

  “Fear, chaos, entropy, that’s what they want. Total loss of confidence in existing systems. Add a war of civilizations into the mix and it means opportunity. For someone, or something. Whoever is behind Gomorrah wants to step into the vacuum. The pattern is chaos.”

  Odi is muttering under his breath.

  “The program for the reconstruction is determined by the magnitude of the distress crippling our political, moral and economic life. March 1933. A new law forged in the fires of crisis. Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich. The Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich. Granting absolute power.”

  “Who to?”

  “A man who knew what can be bought with blood. The chancellor of Germany. Adolf Hitler.”

  Azi has heard enough. “It’s not going to happen. We can stop this! Fight fire with fire, faith with faith. That’s what you told me. If there’s a Defiance party rally then there’s also going to be a counter-demonstration, right?”

  “Yes.” Odi turns to Azi. “I believe someone tried to shut out the protesters, but they found a way. They always find a way.”

  Azi is shouting now. “Yes! They always find a way, because they’re like me. Hacktivists, idealists, networked citizens. Fucking mentalists, some of them, but they know how to self-organize—to find their way through the cracks. They’re our way in, don’t you see? Thanks to them we have bodies on the ground, systems Gomorrah hasn’t compromised. A human network. Where are the fake Interpol vans?”

  On cue, a map appears on the big screen alongside a selection of still images. These show a crowd thronging through picturesque streets, placards and banners populating the air, gaggles of children at the edges. Defiance party members vastly outnumber the protesters. It looks ordered, almost idyllic. Anna gestures with uncharacteristic uneasiness.

  “These are the last images we have. From half an hour ago. We have now lost most of our access. The vans were last seen approaching this street, Luisenstraße. Long, narrow, lined with shops and housing, granting vehicle access to the Untermarkt—which is the square in the middle. That’s the heart of the rally, that’s where everyone’s headed for the big speech. It’ll be starting any moment.”

  Azi looks at the map, then at Odi and Anna. They’re staring at him, expectantly. Waiting for him to speak. Taking a last sip of his drink, he gazes from the laptop to the large screen and back.

  “I’m going to get the word out. AZ has contacts—people I’ve run protest hacks with, ethical mobs in chatrooms and forums. Some of them will have beaten the blackout, I know it. And they’re a network of networks. Whatever I send, they can share it. Like a self-replicating swarm. Bringing some fucking ownage.”

  Odi and Anna are motionless. Azi has their total attention. He has the lives of God knows how many thousand people at stake. He has no clue whether this will work, whether it’s already too late, but that’s not going to stop him. Pushing down a vision of Amira’s sneer and Ad’s bleeding body, he starts to type.

  The Defiance rally is about to come under terrorist assault. Spread the word, tell the crowd. Block Luisenstraße! Four Interpol vans have been hijacked by terrorists and must be stopped. They are packed with weapons and explosives. It is an Islamist conspiracy. This is real, this is happening. The authorities are helpless. Block the streets, use anything, everything. Spread the word and flee. Be brave, be fast.

  It’s too long, Azi thinks—and it could definitely be more inspirational. But what matters is getting out the message, everywhere and anywhere, saturating every avenue of communication; every forum, feed, chatroom and hijacked device; every secure messaging account; every hashtag. This is real-time counter-terrorism. Logging in everywhere and anywhere he can, AZ spreads the word.

  Mirroring the laptop display on the big screen, Azi waits. At first there’s nothing. Then he starts to see it: a spark, then a flicker, then a conflagration of messages, responses, shares, denials, accusations. Whatever he has ignited, it’s burning with fierce virality. God only knows what the wider world will make of this. Then again, God only knows what the world will look like once this is over. Suddenly, Azi recognizes one feed in particular.

  “There! That’s a hacker I know. I remember the username. Ursus. He’s on the scene, he’s managing to stream something on a dark site—look. Here.”

  Azi clicks—and they’re looking through the lurching, granular lens of a smartphone at the edge of the Untermarkt.

  The idyll of the earlier images has shattered into chaos. Bodies scramble, grappling across each other in an effort to escape. Whoever is holding the phone is running, lunging and bellowing in German for others to follow. He sounds like a young man—little older than a teenager. Cobbles blur under his feet. He staggers over a woman who has been knocked to the ground, then an old man, their arms ineffectually shielding their faces. Shouting, screaming, beseeching voices blend together. Above the crush of bodies, a few banners still flutter at wild angles alongside what look like children, lofted by a sea of hands. It takes Azi a moment to realize what’s going on. The crowd have heard his message. They’re trying to send the youngest to safety.

  Then, at one corner of the screen, something else appears: a television news van lurching forwards through pedestrians, smashing its way through bollards. In a detonation of broken glass, it comes to rest in the distant window of a souvenir shop. The driver staggers onto the street, his forehead laced with blood, waving frantic arms. Anna watches with an ashen face.

  “It’s anarchy. They’re going to die. They’re all going to fucking die.”

  Azi isn’t so sure. Something else is happening.

  “Wait! Look. That’s Luisenstraße. The television van’s not the only thing there. I think that was…I think that was on purpose. The driver must have been on one of the protesters’ networks, or had access. He meant to do it.”

  The bearer of their viewpoint has forced his way to within a hundred feet of Luisenstraße now, pushing against the flow of runners on the street, shouting an incomprehensible commentary. Then, as the camera stops dancing for a second, they see it clearly for the first time. An astonishing mess of vehicles and other debris is accumulating where the TV news van crashed: scooters, a bronze statue toppled onto its side, café tables and chairs, two small cars, a street-cleaning lorry complete with still-whirling brushes, a drinking fountain.

  “They’re doing it! The street, it’s impassable…it’s working!”

  Azi pauses, daring to look up for the first time—but then Odi sees something.

  “Azi, wait. Look! They need to get out of there, now. The terrorists are armed, and I see a movement among the vans. They must realize they are trapped, and the moment they work out—”

  Before he can finish the sentence, the image in the feed shakes and tumbles. An armored Interpol truck has erupted through the improvised roadblock. The news van topples aside, chairs and ornaments splinter, as a metal-reinforced bonnet and windshield shudder into view. Dark, sleek and deeply stained, the truck’s doors slide open and men in riot gear start to emerge, clambering over the wreckage—three, four, five of them facing the crowd. There are automatic weapons in their hands.

  Odi and Anna watch in silence. The sound from the feed is muffled, but they can still hear the crowd’s shouts and screams, escalating towards incoherence as more and more people realize what is happening. Odi opens his mouth. Azi’s hands hammer a faint beat on the laptop. Onscreen, the men raise their weapons.

  Then the phone drops onto the cobbled road. The screen becomes an unfocused blur, its view of dark stone and pale dust trembling in the shockwave. There are no voices, no detectable human sounds. A minute passes. Azi’s lip is bleeding where he has bitten it. A spot of blood hits the keyboard.

  Suddenly, the camera lifts into air still thick with dust and the lens turns, approximating their previous view. It’s impossible to see anything with
clarity—but Luisenstraße is no longer there. All that remains is rubble between the barest bones of buildings.

  A few feet in front of the camera lens lies an inverted TV news van with a bearded bronze head nestled deep in its paneling. People are running, screaming, waving their hands, staggering through rubble. Yet they’re alive—which is more than can be said for the five armed men who were standing directly in front of an armored truck that has just obliterated its vicinity. Azi is the first to speak.

  “Munira…I mean, Amira Dewan. Her admin account—she was running the show. She had a direct line to these guys. So I told the ones at the back that it was now or never. That they should hit detonate, trigger their explosives, set off a chain reaction…”

  He stops for a moment, trying to take in what’s onscreen. “And I thought…I thought the street would take the worst of it. And everyone was running away. And there was no time, and so…and so…and so…”

  Words become impossible. Is he crying, or laughing, or abandoning his grip on sanity? To either side of him, the windowless van’s steel walls rebound reflections in what look like rainbows. Surely the van can’t be doing what it seems to be doing: melting, opening like a flower, its petals cracked apart in glinting light.

  Anna moves for the first time in five minutes.

  “You can take that look off your face. This really is happening.”

  With a start, Azi realizes that the van has indeed unfurled itself, revealing the concrete chamber from his and Odi’s meeting. Men and women in suits are dotted around, standing at terminals, holding phones, holstering weapons. They’re all staring at the three figures sitting in the box’s metal heart.

  A booming, sexless voice fills the space, its noise rushing from all sides like the sea.

  “Mr. Azi Bello. Odi, Anna.”

  A pause.

  “Thank you.”