The Anomaly

by Hervé Le Tellier

“Yaba Girls.”

Eko Atlantic,

Meredith is bored at Princeton. She’s a Londoner,

Meredith

André Vannier

“Professor Miller teaches at Princeton,” Silveria continues, “and Professor Brewster-Wang is a consultant for NASA and Google. They will have complete free rein to apply Protocol 42, and I will coordinate the operation. Before anyone points

The 787 on the tarmac is the reason we’re all here: it opened communication with Kennedy Airport at exactly 19:03 hours today, June 24. It identified itself as flight Air France 006 from Paris to New York. The plane reported significant damage and was rerouted to this base within minutes. The captain states that he is David Markle, and the copilot Gideon Favereaux, and you each have a full list of passengers and crew. I’m going to hand things

“Protocol 42 has been set in motion because today’s Air France 006 flight already landed at JFK more than four hours ago, at the scheduled time of 16:35 hours. But it was a different aircraft, with a different captain and copilot. On the other hand, an Air France Boeing 787, with the same reference Air France 006, with exactly the same damage as this one, piloted by the same Commander Markle, copiloted by the same Favereaux, and manned by the same crew and with the same passengers, in other words the exact same plane as this one you see here, this same plane, then, landed at JFK Airport, but at 17:17 hours on March 10. Precisely one hundred six days

This man is also called David Markle. He was the pilot on flight Air France 006 on March 10. That particular David Markle is dying of pancreatic cancer, diagnosed a month ago.”

passenger has escaped and vanished into the night.

TIME IS ALL-IMPORTANT, Blake knows that. Fifteen minutes in the hangar are all it takes for him to exploit a chink in the security setup, another seven and he’s driving toward New York in an old Ford F-150 pickup, the most unremarkable vehicle there is, “borrowed” from the parking lot at the air base. Always have just a backpack as luggage.

Slimboy.

E PUR, SI MUOVE

THE MEETING LASTS two hours, two hours at the end of which nothing has been settled, and a tired Jamy Pudlowski brings it to a close. Allowing a week,

He’d already escaped. We know that he boarded the flight in Paris under the name Michaël Weber. It’s a cloned identity, he was traveling with an Australian passport, but that Michaël Weber lives on the Gold Coast, he’s a school bus driver and he’s never left his town. We wanted to take fingerprints from his seat on the Boeing, but it’s made of fabric. If we eliminate the DNA of all the other passengers, we still have to consider the DNA of staff who prepared the meal trays. Imagine, in spite of all this, that we succeed in identifying his: at best we would know the color of his skin, eyes, and hair, and in a pinch whether he’s susceptible to various diseases, but we couldn’t exactly create a profile and go looking for him on social media. We shouldn’t wait for a miracle.” “And images from the plane?”

security cameras, and even during the boarding process we can’t find a single shot that shows his face. We interviewed the people near him in the cabin, but no one really noticed him. We’ve had an Identi-Kit image made of him: thick glasses, long hair, a moustache—details that draw the eye and deflect it from what really matters. And he wore his hood up during the flight.” “Surveillance images from Charles de Gaulle Airport?” “It was back in March: most of them have been wiped. On the few that are left, we can’t see anything at all. With this level of invisibility, we must be dealing with a professional.” “And the breakout from the hangar?” “He forced a door during the little panic created by the beginnings of a fire, which he probably started. No prints

“We’re holding sixty-seven French nationals,” says the special advisor. “And it’s an Air France flight. We’re going to have to call him, Mister Pre—” “No and no. First, I’m going to call Jinping. How many Chinese do we have?” “About twenty, Mister President. But we’ll call the French president right after.”

“My dear Emmanuel, it’s so good to talk to you. I hope you’re

“That’s it,” Xi Jinping summarizes glumly. “They’re in the same shit that we were in last April with the Beijing–Shenzhen flight from January. They’re holding two hundred

‘We’re being presented with a new source of anguish here, and it has every chance of being definitive. Humanity is perhaps being offered its last chance. And, yes, that could be a good pretext for a special edition. But it’s more likely to be a topic for some reflection and a great deal of silence.’ We must

know The anomaly is being translated into a lot of languages, but your original French title, L’anomalie, is an anagram of Amo Ilena L—‘I love Ilena L.’ ”

“June is in red and March is in blue, that’s how I can tell you apart…Don’t tell me that’s wrong, the production invested a lot of money in those sweaters and dyeing your bangs!”