MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (44 page)

They left the hall for the Departures terminal and had just joined a check-in queue, when something clicked in his mind. He turned to a man next to him, who was holding a magazine in the Dutch language, and asked him a question. The answer electrified him.

He grabbed Rebecca roughly by the arm, turning her around. She had been deep in thought, not paying attention to her surroundings, and her reaction was one of irritation and fright.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Do you still have the numbers of Broerse and Fitzgerald in your phone?” His own phone had still been in his pocket when they fled the terrorists in the night and subsequently been lost in the Rapenburg. The phonebook of his new one was still almost virginal. Rebecca’s mobile had been returned to her by the AIVD.

“Yes,” she answered hesitatingly. “Why?”

“Call them now,” he said urgently, stepping out of the queue and drawing her with him. “I just figured out what their next target is. It’s going to happen tonight!”

~~~

Chapter XXXIX

Once
, they had been frustrated and angry because they weren’t taken seriously. There had been a time when their discoveries and conclusions had been dismissed out of hand. No matter how well they had tried to argue their case, they had been brushed aside as some game-addicted kids who were mixing up their virtual world with the real one. That had changed dramatically.

Less than five minutes after the end of the call, they were approached by two officers of the Royal Marechaussee, the Dutch military police. They were escorted to a large, busy office, evidently the central command post of airport security. Soon after, they found themselves in a conference room. They were joined shortly after by Broerse, who hadn’t even left the airport grounds when the call reached him.

A teleconference was set up with Fitzgerald and the same man they had seen in Wassenaar. They appeared on a big LCD screen on the wall, sitting next to each other in a room that looked much like the one they were in. Their voices came out of a hidden audio system. Again, the American didn’t introduce himself.

Robert repeated what he’d already told briefly on the phone. He told about the guild message they had intercepted that announced Arena training twice a day. He explained that they had wondered about it, but that Arena fighting was simply another part of World of Warcraft and that they had dismissed it in the end.

At that point Rebecca took over. She told about their discovery that the Hammer had been coming back to Terokkar Forest, and how they had followed them to the abandoned ruins of Auchindoun. She described that it looked like a coliseum, much like a large stadium.

“When I saw those supporters of AFC Ajax, I suddenly remembered something,” Robert continued. “I remembered that the guild message didn’t say Arena training, but used the word ArenA instead. With a capital A both at the beginning and the end of the word. It caught my eye when I saw it the first time, but I put it down to a simple misspelling. I forgot about it until I saw a supporter with the name Amsterdam ArenA on his shirt today.”

He could see that the men on the other side of the camera were believing him. He wasn’t ready yet: “Then I asked a Dutchman what kind of match Ajax was playing tonight. The answer frightened me. They’re playing a match in the Champions League against a club out of Tel Aviv, Israel. That’s when I thought it’s likely that whatever they’re intending to do is going to happen tonight.”

He was finished. His last words fell into an abyss of silence. When he looked sideways at Broerse, he was shocked to see naked fear in the man’s eyes.

The American was the first to speak. “I do believe you’re right,” he said. “Please, spell out the name of that place in WoW for me. We must act immediately.” He glanced at his watch. It was a little less than three hours to the start of the match. The majority of the spectators would start streaming toward the stadium in two hours. His next words were directed at Fitzgerald, who was sitting next to him. “Get me a map of that WoW place and the Amsterdam Arena.”

The National Coordinator for Counterterrorism was responsible for overseeing and coordinating the activities of no less than twenty different agencies involved in this field. He was the first person to be apprised of the situation. Only minutes later, he had the Minister of Security and Justice on the phone. His Excellency walked straight out of a television studio, where he was about to go live with an interview for a news program. From his limousine he called the Prime Minister first and then his colleagues from Interior, Defense and Public Health.

Having reached consensus on the course of action, he ordered the protocols to be set in motion. He looked at his watch. Only one hundred and thirty minutes to the start of the match.

***

With only ninety minutes to go, Rebecca was going over the layout of the ruins of Auchindoun again with the secretary-General of some important department, two men of the AIVD, and someone in his early thirties of the NCC, the National Coordination Center in case of calamities. Unfortunately, the latter happened to be a dedicated WoW fanatic. His eyes were glittering as it dawned upon him little by little what they’d become involved in over the last months. He kept asking probing questions, trying to find out more, and Rebecca was having a hard time fending them off.

On the table were blueprints of the Amsterdam ArenA, from the underground parking lots to the stadium above. They were comparing them to many different prints of Auchindoun. They were looking for similarities that would point at what the terrorists might be after. At the moment, they were discussing some tunnel that led to an instance in Auchindoun, and that resembled a more or less corresponding tunnel in the ArenA.

Robert was sitting squarely in the window sill, with his hands wrapped around his knees. They were still somewhere at Schiphol Airport, where they had been transferred from one of the hearing rooms of the Dutch Royal Marechaussee to a meeting room in one of the hotels on the Schiphol complex.

While trying to block out as much of the conversations around him as possible, he tried to focus his thoughts on what plan the terrorists might have. He tried to approach the puzzle from the opposite side. What was their goal? At the train station they had detonated a bomb. A bomb aimed at killing as many people as possible and creating terror. They had succeeded then.

In Antwerp they had also used a bomb, but its function had been mainly to cause people to panic and run. Then they had entered the chaos and started shooting at the crowd. Three of the terrorists had been killed as well. They must have known in advance that they would never get out alive.

So what did all of this tell him? First off, that they wanted to kill. Also that they wanted to inspire as much terror as possible. They targeted tight and crowded places, where people couldn’t easily get away. One bomb had gone off in a low tunnel, the other in a narrow street.

What would happen if a bomb went off in a packed soccer stadium? He thought of the mass panic that would break out. Maybe that would cause as many casualties as the bomb itself. Although the number killed by the bomb would depend on where it went off, how heavy it was, and whether the people at the other side of the stadium would feel threatened as well.

His thoughts broke off when the door opened and several men entered the office. They were talking loudly. One was Sjoerd Broerse. He was trying to placate an obviously agitated man, while trying to remain calm and even deferential.

They turned to the men who had been working on the plans of the stadium with Rebecca. One didn’t need to know a single word of Dutch to understand what was being said. The disappointment in their voices and expressions was clear.

Broerse motioned for them to follow, and Rebecca and Robert went with the little group, trailing behind.

“That’s the mayor of Amsterdam,” Broerse whispered. He slowed his step a little, so he was walking with them now.

“Why is he so angry?”

“Because he wanted to call the entire event off.”

“Why wasn’t it cancelled then?”

“By cancelling, we would only force the terrorists to strike at another opportunity, when we’re
not
forewarned.” They both understood the dilemma.

Rebecca said, “So you’re trying to catch the Hammer tonight?” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. They’re going to leave the place either in chains or in coffins. Let’s just hope that they don’t take any casualties with them. If only we knew what they intend to do. We need a how, when, and where.” The man looked at his watch. Robert did the same. There were seventy-one minutes to go. “Too bad you didn’t see more of what they were doing at that stadium in World of Warcraft.”

A few more steps down the hall, Broerse surprised them. “Are you coming?” he asked.

They looked at him in surprise. “To the ArenA, you mean?”

“Yes. I’m leaving in five minutes.”

***

Khalid shuffled another few inches forward. There were still a lot of people between him and the checkpoint. Most were wearing thick winter garments in combination with at least one item with the bright Ajax colors and logo. He had equipped himself with an Ajax shawl and a red-white cap.

He judged it was going to take at least another ten minutes before it was his turn to be casually frisked for forbidden items. He had been here twice before, as part of their preparation. He knew the sloppy technique the stewards employed. He bet he could smuggle an Apache helicopter in, if he really wanted.

When it was his turn, he made a show of putting his crutches against the gate. He spread his arms, making it clear to the fat man in a fluorescent yellow tricot that he was ready to be searched. Unfortunately, his balance wasn’t well, because of his broken leg with the heavy plaster cast. He swayed a little on his one good leg. The man understood his predicament and quickly patted his back a few times, just for show. Then he helped him back to his crutches and waved him on.

The feed of the security cameras was being streamed to a large truck parked in the extreme corner of the ArenA Boulevard, over at the train and metro station. With its satellite dishes and antennae, it looked like the kind of vehicle that television stations used at events. Inside, some twenty men and women were concentrating on screens that showed the live images of the cameras at the various entrances of the stadium.

“The main purpose of these cameras is to record who enters the stadium. Several cameras inside record what happens in the stadium for later use,” the woman in charge said while she led them into the interior of the truck. “Every square inch of the stands is covered. In case of misbehavior, like vandalism, fighting, or even riots, the recordings are used by the police or the club to identify the guilty people.”

She halted behind one of the screens. A middle aged man was watching it intently, not even acknowledging their presence. The screen showed a tiled area just beyond a series of metal swivel doors that admitted spectators one by one. The full color camera was mounted high on a wall, maybe even on the ceiling, and they were looking down on the heads of the people on the scene. Each visitor was searched by a security guard. Robert recognized the procedure. It was the same in England at concerts or big events. Most people underwent the procedure without complaint and incidents were rare.

On the camera, a minor incident was happening. A man of about thirty years of age was complaining about something while he was being searched. He made an angry gesture. After a short discussion, he allowed the search to be finished. When he stepped away, he tilted his head a little. The agent pressed a key and the screen froze for an instant, the man’s face clearly recognizable. The small digital numbers on top of the screen froze as well. 20:16; only twenty-nine minutes to the start of the game.

“We’re making stills of everything that’s even remotely out of the ordinary,” the woman explained. “Unfortunately, it’s impossible to check the face of each of the fifty thousand visitors tonight. As it is, there are over six hundred images to see.” She looked questioningly at them.

Broerse looked a little embarrassed. “We’d like you to look at those pictures,” he told Rebecca and Robert. “You two know him. You have the best chance of identifying him, if he’s here at all.”

A photo printer was spewing out enlargements of the pictures they were to look at. They sat at a small table in the back of the truck. Rebecca divided the stack in two and they went to work.

***

Khalid lit another cigarette. The stadium was filling up now. He estimated that over eighty percent of the spectators had arrived. The steady stream of people coming down the aisle in search of their rows and seats had lessened considerably. The players had just left the pitch, where they had been doing their warming up.

His eyes scanned the other side of the stadium again. The distances were so great that it was almost impossible to recognize the faces of the people on the other side of the field. Of course, it helped if you knew what you were looking for. He had studied the stadium so extensively that he thought he could have pointed out the seats of his team members blindfolded. Two of the three were in their seats, waiting for it all to begin. Only Pharad’s seat was empty. He checked the time. 20:31; only fourteen minutes until the match started.

***

It was Rebecca who hit gold. They weren’t even halfway through the pictures when he was alerted by a sudden hissing sound from her.

“What have you found?” he asked.

“What do you think of this?” she answered, sliding a picture across the metal surface of the table.