Bubble: A Thriller (6 page)

Wrong—the trap
they
had got caught up in . . . because no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t get away from the conclusion that Becca was getting more and more drawn in every time they came anywhere close to each other. And after the meeting in the forest when she brought him together with the Game Master, an old but very familiar—and distinctly uncomfortable—feeling had crept up on him again.

Uncle Tage,
she had called him. Saying he was one of Dad’s
old comrades from the Reserve Unit. That they had all—she, he, and Dad—visited the old man in his summer cottage when they were little.

Obviously he had tried to explain the truth to her, but without any success.

She had never really bought the whole story about the Game, despite all his previous attempts to explain. But she seemed to accept this Uncle Tage character without the slightest reservation.

Hell, her voice sounded almost tender when she talked about him, pretty much like when she talked about Dad. Time really had faded her memories as far as the old man was concerned. In a few more years she probably wouldn’t even remember all the times the old fool had beaten him.

All the times the old bastard had lied to doctors and social workers and persuaded her and Mom to back up his fabricated stories.

No, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t keep a lid on the hatred that welled up inside him whenever Dad’s name was mentioned. And the same applied to “Uncle Tage.”

Hatred and—let’s face it—jealousy . . .

Only a year or so before he never would have admitted that was what he felt, and had always felt, toward both Dad and Dag. As if they were stealing his Becca from him and turning her into someone else entirely.

Someone he hardly recognized. A stranger.

Jealousy and hatred, then—a fine old combo, and only exacerbated by his already low credibility level, which effectively crushed any chance he had of convincing her of Tage Sammer’s true identity.

But he could hardly blame her. The fact was that his whole story sounded so fucking unbelievable that he occasionally
had trouble believing it himself. Fortunately he had clung to a few bits of memorabilia that he was keeping hidden in a safe place.

First and foremost there was the phone he had taken two years before out on the E4 expressway from Kent “number 58” Hasselqvist. With the exception of the numbers on the back, it was exactly the same as the phone he had found on the commuter train, the one that had dragged him into this whole crazy business.

Then there was the pass card, the little white rabbit that had fallen out of a book in the NK department store, which had helped him to stop the clock on his normal life and granted him access to his very own Wonderland.

The third object in his collection was the hard drive containing all the files from ArgosEye, the company that made sure the Game could stay buried in the deepest depths of the Internet.

The trojan that Mange had put together, and which he had gone to great lengths to introduce into the company’s computer network, had done its work. A wealth of information had been dragged out into the light: the fake trolls, the blogs that delivered prepackaged opinions on demand, the Stasi database of people who held opposing views, and a load of other dodgy stuff that Philip Argos and his gang had going on up in their high-rise office at Hötorget.

But even though he suspected—correction:
knew
—that ArgosEye was protecting the Game, helping it to stay hidden while simultaneously keeping a record of anyone who tried to find out about it or broke rule number one, the leaked files still hadn’t provided a single piece of firm evidence that his theory was actually correct. Maybe they had secured any information of that sort behind a second firewall, unless Mange’s spyware had simply been looking in the wrong places?

The Game hadn’t floated up to the surface the way he had hoped. It was still lurking down in the depths: the things he had kept proved nothing to anyone who couldn’t see the whole picture. Not even the latest addition to his collection had any real value as evidence: an ordinary printed sheet of A4 that anyone could have put together.
Your final task, HP,
Tage Sammer, aka the Game Master, had said out there among the gravestones where they had drunk coffee together.

After all HP had done to cause trouble for the Game, the plans he had ruined and the money he had stolen, the old bastard had still seemed perfectly calm. No hard feelings, more or less . . .

But on the other hand, the task they had presented to him was no ordinary one.

Christ, what a fucking choice . . .

If he carried out the task, he was basically finished. Fucked for life, in every sense of the phrase. If he didn’t do it, then his life wasn’t the only one at stake . . .

Fuck!

46 of 78 files checked, no unauthorized objects found,
the program informed him.

He looked at the time. More than a minute had passed, only nine left until he had to get out.

Come on, come on, come on
 . . .
Bastard slow library computer!

Scanning
 . . .

70 of 78 files checked, no unauthorized objects found

He leaned forward over the keyboard, moved the mouse to the Internet icon, and got ready to spring into action. No search engines, oh no, just straight to the right addresses, then erase all bookmarks and cookies from the computer before he logged out. Leaving as few footprints as possible . . .

An unexpected noise over by the door made him start. He raised his head and glanced cautiously over the top of the screen.

A short man in a leather jacket, dark glasses, and a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead had come into the computer room.

The man stopped in the doorway as he gazed slowly around the terminals, and something about the way he looked immediately made all of HP’s alarm bells start to ring like mad.

Shit!

♦  ♦  ♦

She tapped in the number and pressed the green icon.

Connecting
 . . . the screen declared, but after staring at it for at least thirty seconds she realized that it clearly wasn’t connecting. Annoyed, she clicked to end the call and repeated the procedure. The very latest smartphone and it was hardly capable of making a call . . .

“Police Headquarters, reception,” a voice suddenly said over the phone, without any ringing tone first.

She hesitated for a second or two, then said, “Permit section, please.”

“One moment.”

You have reached the permit section, current waiting time is estimated to be . . . six . . . minutes . . .

She sighed and looked at her watch. For a moment she considered abandoning the call and phoning Runeberg instead to see whether he could get any information about what was happening . . .

Stigsson had forbidden her to contact Henke. Not that that was actually much of a problem. Now that she came to think about it, she had been chasing Henke for weeks now, months, in fact. But even though she knew he was home, he had never opened the door when she visited, or picked up her calls when she phoned.

A couple of dutiful text messages, that was pretty much it, and she was under no illusions that it would be any easier to get hold of him now.

The safe-deposit box had unsettled her.

Evidently Henke had secrets that were so valuable he had felt obliged to hide them away in a high-security vault. Stigsson’s crew had already emptied his flat, and all it would take was for someone going through everything they had confiscated to find a copy of the safe-deposit agreement with the bank, or a letter like the one she had received. A request for a search warrant, then the drill would come out and all Henke’s secrets would be dragged into the open.

Whatever was inside that deposit box, it was hardly likely to make things any better for him.

“Permit section, Persson . . .” The voice made Rebecca start.

“Yes, hello, er, my name is Rebecca Normén . . .” She glanced at the papers in front of her and tried to gather her thoughts.

“I’m phoning about an application for a weapons license for a security company. I was just wondering how far you’d got . . .”

♦  ♦  ♦

Cop!

HP ducked down behind the screen instinctively. The guy reeked of police so badly it almost made his nostrils sting.

He bent down to pull the USB stick from the computer. Like hell was he going to let them have all the info he’d gathered over the past few months. The Security Police were bound to come up with some way of turning it all against him, locking him away on an indeterminate sentence . . .

His fingers closed around the little plastic stick, but at that moment the man in the cap burst out into a long, noisy harangue
in a strange language. Another, lighter voice replied almost at once, and when HP carefully peered out he saw the man in the cap leaving the room in the company of a middle-aged woman who had been using a computer a short distance from his.

He waited a few more seconds, then straightened up and breathed out.

False alarm.

God, he was twitchy!

His heart was still pounding in his chest, his hands were trembling, and he had to take several deep breaths to slow his pulse down. High time to ditch the paranoia and get on with business.

The scanning program must have finished by now, and he was eager to see what the media reaction to his arrest had been.

Most of the papers were still running diet tips on their fly sheets, but the online edition of
Expressen
ought to feature him somewhere.

Last night the Security Police arrested a 32-year-old man on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks.

A source in the Security Police says the arrest has almost certainly prevented acts of terrorism on Swedish soil.

Yep, that was how you sold more papers. The fact that they let him go after a few hours probably wouldn’t be published until next week, by which time no one would care.

The media’s memory has always been short, Henrik. People can only deal with one story at a time
 . . .

Shit, sometimes he actually missed Philip and the Argos-Eye gang in the Hötorget skyscraper. Even though they had Anna Argos killed and almost managed to pin the murder on him, not to mention everything they did to him once his cover was blown, sometimes he couldn’t help imagining what might have happened if he hadn’t been found out.

Who would he have been by now?

Rilke’s boyfriend?

Philip’s right-hand man?

Or, even better: his successor . . . the Game Master’s faithful partner, maybe even a future Mark Black. None of that sounded bad at all . . .

On the screen in front of him a little green window had appeared. The scan program must have got stuck when he nudged the USB stick. Damn, two more minutes wasted!

Annoyed, he moved the cursor to close the window and restart the scan. But just as the little arrow reached the cross in the top right corner of the window, letters began to appear. One by one, until they formed a sentence that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.

W

a

n

t

t

o

p

l

a

y

a

G

a

m

e

H

e

n

r

i

k

P

e

t

t

e

r

s

s

o

n

?

He threw himself under the desk and yanked the USB stick from the computer. On the way up he hit his head, got caught in the chair, and almost fell flat on the floor. At the last moment he caught hold of the desk, pulled himself to his knees, and tried to turn his head away. Too late. His gaze was drawn inexorably to the screen, like an insect with a death wish drawn to a UV light.

Run!
a terrified little voice was screaming in his ear.

Get the fuck out of here, moron!

But his body wouldn’t obey.

Instead he remained on his knees in front of the computer, with his mouth half-open and eyes big as Ping-Pong balls, while his brain absorbed everything that was happening on the screen.

A new window opened and a series of images began to roll over it. Cut-and-paste headlines from various news sites:

The Palace reports a record level of interest from foreign media ahead of the royal wedding . . .

Huge server hall installed in old military base north of Uppsala. Rigorous security . . .

Another serious incident of hacking has been reported, this time by various companies in the defense industry. As on previous occasions, the police say that no information appears to have been stolen . . .

The Southern Link Road was closed for the second time in a week because of a computer failure that caused the failure of barriers and ventilation systems . . .

Several leading news websites are once again closing their comment sections . . .

He recognized the lot, he had looked them all up himself, cutting and pasting them onto the USB stick.

They were followed by more cuttings, things he didn’t recognize:

For a third week in a row there have been reports of disruption to computer and mobile networks. The operators affected worst are 3 and Telia, but other networks have also suffered . . .

Three kilos of plutonium from Cold War projects in Sweden were recently handed over to the USA. The
foreign minister has given assurances that it “would not be used for military purposes.”

The EU is forcing Sweden to implement the Data Retention Directive!

The headlines vanished and were replaced by a series of short text messages:

Message received 03/04 09:55:

New job, here’s my new number. Call me! /Becca

Message received 12/04 14:55:

Why don’t you ever answer your phone? /Becca

Message received 02
/05 16:39:

Tried to visit you again. The TV was on. Why didn’t you open the door? /Becca