Local time – 12:45am, Saturday 16th June, 2011.
Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Douglas awoke with a start and sat up. Someone was thumping on his door. He pushed back his heavy quilt and got out of bed. The thumping became more insistent, so he hurried across the room and opened the door. When he found no one there, his fuzzy half-awake mind realised it wasn’t his door. It was Leo’s. Two men were standing outside the room next door in their pyjamas. A groggy Leo emerged.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Something’s happened. The comms committee is meeting urgently.’ Douglas poked his head into the hall. He recognised the two men as Leo’s media competitors. The man who spoke was Henry Rosenberg – owner of numerous US television stations, and with him stood Oliver Jones – multi billionaire collector of newspapers all over the world. They both looked extremely worried. Knowing what he did about the projects these people were working on, Douglas could imagine how dangerous it was if something was amiss. Leo ducked back into his room and emerged with a robe over his silk pyjamas. He hurried past Douglas, calling out, ‘Now you’re awake, why don’t you join us?’ Douglas didn’t hesitate. After all, he would never get back to sleep, sifting through the thousands of disasters potentially destroying the Bilderbergers’ plans.
The media men marched down the dark halls of the castle, and entered one of the conference rooms adjoining the main meeting hall. Two others were already there. One was another media mogul, Terence Frankston, the owner of cable television stations in the USA and UK. The other was David Spelman, the president of the Bilderberg committee and the man who so successfully roused the conference with his closing address at dinner that evening. He was staring at a laptop with a look of intense disgust. Douglas recognised the music ringing out of the tinny speakers. Fat Boy Slim’s ‘Right Here Right Now’. Everyone in the room froze in shock when the music faded down and a voice echoed the familiar words: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. It is my great honour to stand before you for the final toast of the evening.’
‘FUCK!’ Spelman’s eyes bulged with fury. ‘Where the fuck did they get this from?’ Frankston rocked from foot to foot, so agitated with anger he looked like he was going to pee his pants.
‘We’ll find out, that won’t be hard. Any good sound engineer can work out where that recording came from.’ Spelman swatted him away.
‘Of course we can find that out. This is a fucking disaster!’ The four newcomers crowded round the laptop. Leo clicked play when the video ended and they watched it from the start.
‘Where did you get this? What’s the damage?’ Leo asked. Spelman was too frustrated to reply, so Frankston filled in the gaps.
‘Someone has sent this out tonight. Page brought it to our attention and he’s in his room assessing the situation.’ Douglas watched the screen intently. This was far worse than he could ever have imagined. Everything could be undone by this. Everything. Whoever put this together obviously had no idea the mistake they were making. The Bilderbergers would never let them get away with it. When the video once again recited the speech, Spelman leapt up and pressed stop, slamming his finger violently down on the keyboard.
‘For Fuck’s sake! Where’s Page! We need to stop this now!’ Just as he said this, another man shuffled into the room, and again Douglas recognised him. It was Sergey Page, founder of Google. Douglas had noticed him earlier that day; he stood out as one of the youngest faces at the conference. He looked stricken, avoiding eye contact and babbling like a guilty schoolboy.
‘We’ve stopped the email. Had I known sooner, I could have done more, but the guys in the office, they didn’t think it was, well, they didn’t know what it was. Until head of programming thought to call, and, well as you know I didn’t have my phone with me, so it did take them a little while to get onto someone who could reach me. But even then it wasn’t clear straight away what was happening. It’s not good. It’s had plenty of traffic. It’s going to take some work to get rid of it. The server it’s on, it’s bloody tight. It’s going to take some time to... ’ His verbal tap was turned off when Spelman yelled what everyone was thinking.
‘How many Page? How many got out?’ Page’s face flushed.
‘Fifteen million. Fifteen million emails. And the viral effect, well, you know, it’s like a frigging rain storm. It’s exponential. It’s going to fucking explode.’
Douglas could feel the animosity towards Page, and wondered why everyone was acting like this was Google’s fault. He also wondered if this no phone rule had just damaged their mission. A silence engulfed the group. An angry, anxious silence that accentuated the trouble they were in. It was obviously not a good idea to say anything, unless it could solve the problem. Spelman and his media harem glared bitterly at Page. Douglas thought their energy would be better spent brainstorming solutions and he was about to suggest they try this, when he came up with a deliciously simple idea himself. When he spoke, untrusting eyes shifted towards him: the stranger Leo brought.
‘A virus. We’ve got to tell people it’s a virus. Then they’ll delete it, they won’t forward it and hopefully they won’t watch it.’ The glaring eyes went wide, one by one understanding his idea. Spelman was the first to jump in.
‘That’s fucking genius! Do it! Do it now! And do it fast!’ Luckily for Spelman, he was in a room with the four men who, between them, controlled two thirds of the Western World’s media, and who were in constant contact with about 90% of the remaining third. They looked like they were ready to leave and spread their news story. But, in an act of synchronised hesitation, no one moved. Spelman’s anger levels were ready to explode when his minions didn’t do as they were told. Every second they wasted, more people were watching the damn video. The word exponential was like a dagger in the heart of their mission. Eventually Jones stood up and slowly started to walk from the room, and the others were about to follow, when he turned back as if a thought had hooked him.
‘The virus news is nearly perfect. But it’s not enough on its own. We’ll run headlines that it’s China’s biggest and most successful cyber attack, and they’ve hacked Google’s servers to send a virus through Gmail that completely destroys every computer it is opened on. People will delete it in hordes. But we need to distract from the virus, because on its own, it’s too dangerous to become the focus of too much scrutiny.’ Leo almost raised a smile.
‘You’re right. Distraction is key,’ he said. ‘President Santos is addressing the nation tomorrow on Meet the Press. It’s going to be a major news event, but we can’t have it overshadowed by this cyber attack. We need to make it bigger and better, to ensure we knock the virus off the front page.’ Everyone waited for Leo’s scheme to spill out of his head. And when it did, Douglas was amazed he was the only one to gasp. ‘We need an event that is felt by every man, woman and child. I don’t think a policy announcement, however controversial, will do that. But if he was assassinated on live television, I’d say that would do the trick.’ Douglas stepped quietly away from the group, trying to control his horror at his friend’s suggestion. He looked around for similar reactions, but saw none. Spelman frowned, but it was a frown of concentration, not anger.
‘I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. We’ve always known the option was available. And I think you are right. The video is serious enough to take extreme action. I’m sorry to have to agree, but I’d be more sorry to have our plans ruined. An assassination will cause the required chaos and it will leave the country in the perfect setting for our first strike. The strike will have to happen much quicker than previously planned. It will have to happen tomorrow.’
His frown wavered, and he reached out his hand and sealed his agreement with Leo. The others followed close behind. Page looked relieved to be ignored. After congratulating each other for a few more seconds, they all hurried out, leaving Douglas standing in a dark corner, trying to believe what he had just heard.