Buzz: A Thriller (33 page)

HP nodded slowly.

His conflict detector had evidently been correct.

“You said the section heads were involved somehow . . . ?”

“Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked, didn’t I?”

She poured them some more tea.

“All the section heads apart from Kristoffer were chosen by Anna, before Philip came into the picture. You could say they were her protégés, and she was very attached to them. But somehow Philip managed to turn them against her.”

“The shares . . . ? Philip and Anna owned half each, but gave some to the section heads . . .”

She gave him a long look, without either confirming or denying what he had just said.

“But Anna still had the majority holding?”

“Well, that depends a bit on how you count . . . The actual redistribution was Philip’s idea, but Anna supported it. She saw it as a way to tie the section heads more closely to the company, a way of retaining their experience and skills. After the allocation Anna kept forty percent of the shares, Philip twenty, and the four section heads ten percent each. That was no doubt why she agreed to it. Seeing as Philip was the one who was giving up most, she probably saw it as a victory. Because to vote her down, he’d need to have all the section heads on his side, and she couldn’t imagine that they would ever let her down, at least not all of them . . .”

“But that’s what happened . . . ?”

She nodded.

“Somehow he managed to get them all on his side, don’t ask me how, then at the last shareholder meeting they all voted in favor of Philip’s proposal . . .”

“Stock-market flotation . . . ?”

“No, no, absolutely not!” She laughed. “Stock-market flotation would have meant having to account for their activities, telling a load of strangers who the company was actually doing business with, and that’s the last thing Philip would have wanted. No, what they actually forced through was a sell-off . . .”

♦  ♦  ♦

She hung about at the back of the building for a while. Waiting for the worst of her anger to subside, and to give her a chance to consider if this was really such a great idea.

But now she had been waiting out in the cold for a good while, and she was still just as furious as she had been when she stormed out of her flat almost an hour before. Peter Gladh lived on the second floor of a building containing four separate apartments, but he probably had a sublet seeing as his name wasn’t on the list by the entry phone.

The house was set high up, with its back facing a small patch of woodland, and she had had to abandon the rental car and scramble up through the trees to find a decent vantage point.

There were lights in a couple of the windows, and at one point she thought she saw a silhouette pass by. So he was home. Now she just needed to get in, because that was her plan, wasn’t it? Ring on his door and confront him?

She didn’t really know. She might just as well find a nice big stone and chuck it through his window. An eye for an eye, so to speak . . . After all, that was the sort of thing he liked . . .

She had just started looking around for a suitable projectile when suddenly a little dog came sniffing through the snow between the trees. The wind must have been in the wrong direction, because the animal didn’t notice her until it was almost upon her. Then it suddenly lurched backward and started barking madly.

“Tarzan? Tarzan!” she heard someone shout from the illuminated path some hundred meters away to her right. Then she saw two silhouettes approaching quickly through the trees.

Shit!
She had no inclination to explain what she was doing hiding in the woods to a couple of dog-walkers.

The figures were approaching fast, two men, she guessed. The larger of them was carrying a flashlight, and a much
smaller one was running ahead. She waited for them to reach her while Tarzan went on barking hysterically.

“Shhhh,” she tried. “Nice doggy, good Tarzan.”

She took a couple of steps toward the little dog, squatting down in an attempt to calm it down a bit. But the dog just launched itself furiously at her legs and she stood up rapidly.

Little bastard!

“There you are, Tarzan . . . !”

The shorter of the men grabbed the little dog and picked it up, almost like a child. The dog fell silent at once and started to lick the man’s face.

“Sorry,” he said. “Tarzan’s not used to bumping into anyone when he runs around here in the evening. I’m sorry if he startled you . . .”

“No problem,” she muttered. “I think he was probably more scared.”

The other man caught up with them. His flashlight was pointing down at the snow-covered ground. But the light was still strong enough for her to recognize him from the police-station gym. It was Peter Gladh.

“HAVE YOU EVER
heard about the PayTag Group?”

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“It’s a global consultancy firm that specializes in Internet security, among other things. Somehow Philip managed to negotiate a huge bid for a majority stake in ArgosEye. Philip and the others will all become rich, while the company acquires considerably more muscle, in purely business terms . . .”

HP leaned back on the sofa.
So that’s what Beens’s little performance in the bar had been about?
With a global company behind them and millions of fresh dollars in the kitty, they’d be able to expand, develop even better tools. Get even more control . . .

But apparently Anna hadn’t agreed with the proposal. Just like Monika, she had found herself increasingly disapproving of the direction the company was going in.

She herself was one of the first IT entrepreneurs, and had literally built her career out of the development of the Internet. And now she was going to help to limit it, muzzling people and hiding uncomfortable truths through the exploitation of the Internet’s own mechanisms.

Yep, he could understand perfectly why Anna had opposed the deal. And according to Monika she had had one last trump card. Even if the tribal council voted her out, she had evidently come up with a new way to stick a wrench in the works. Screwing up the whole deal right in front of the greedy little bastards’ noses . . .

“Somehow Philip must have found out about it and confronted her . . .” Monika said as she came back from the kitchen with a fresh pot of tea.

“I’ve got no idea what happened, all I know is that Anna was scared, utterly damned terrified, if you’ll excuse my language . . .”

She took a sip of her tea.

“Was that why she left the country?”

Monika nodded.

“Anna called me from London, and just said she was going to be gone a few weeks, without giving me any explanation. But I could tell from the tone of her voice . . . Sometime later she called from Dubai and told me a bit more. Afterward I worked out that was the evening when she . . .”

Monika fell silent.

“So that story Philip told everyone, about her year off . . .”

“Completely made up, just like the whole thing about her death being an accident. The police down there are sure Anna was murdered. They’ve even released an arrest warrant for their main suspect.”

He wriggled uncomfortably, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“But Philip was very firm on that point. Nothing was allowed to get out that could jeopardize the deal, not under any circumstances. After what had happened to Anna, I didn’t dare disagree. Anyway, I’m dependent upon his goodwill . . .”

“In what way?”

HP leaned forward keenly.

“I’m Anna’s closest relative, our parents are dead, which means that I inherit her shares in the company.”

He frowned.

“How can that be a problem? I mean, you’ll get a lot of money for them once the deal goes through.”

She snorted.

“Anna didn’t want to take their money. No matter what happened, she was planning to keep hold of her shares and stop PayTag from swallowing up her life’s work, at least as long as she could . . .”

Monika got up from the sofa and started to clear their still half-full cups. Then she suddenly stopped and turned to him.

“Would you have anything against coming out onto the terrace with me? I feel I need a cigarette . . .”

♦  ♦  ♦

“But you’re bleeding!” the man holding the dog said.

Gladh shone the flashlight at her leg. A small red stain was starting to show through her jeans on one of her calves, just above the top of her boot. She lifted her leg, pulled off her glove, and touched it with her finger.

The man was right.

“Naughty Tarzan!” the man with the dog said. “I really am very sorry . . .”

Gladh moved the beam of the flashlight slightly higher.

When it reached her face she noticed him tense up.

“My name’s Pierre, and this is Peter,” the man with the dog said. “We live over there.”

He pointed toward the house behind them.

“Come back with us and we can patch you up, and obviously we’ll pay for new jeans . . .”

“There’s really no need—” she began, but the man interrupted her.

“No, no, I insist. It really is the least we can do, isn’t it, Peter?”

“Well, if she doesn’t want to . . .” Gladh muttered.

“Nonsense!” said the man whose name was apparently Pierre. “Come along!”

He took hold of her arm, not remotely unpleasantly, more like they were old friends, and started to steer her back toward the path. Tarzan protested mildly at her presence, but Pierre hushed him.

“Naughty Tarzan, you mustn’t growl at our new friend! What did you say your name was?”

“Rebecca,” she mumbled. “Rebecca Normén.”

She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Gladh, but the darkness made it impossible to see the expression on his face.

♦  ♦  ♦

She smoked blue Blend cigarettes, menthol, which didn’t really surprise him. He pulled a Marlboro out of the packet he had bought in the kiosk at the subway station, then felt in his pocket for his new disposable lighter. He missed his trusty old Zippo.

“You said you were dependent on Philip’s goodwill. What do you mean by that?” he said as he lit their cigarettes.

She took a deep drag before replying.

“I don’t want any blood money from PayTag, there’s no question of that. It would feel like a betrayal of Anna. But at the same time I don’t want to hold on to the shares, because
then I’d end up owning part of the monster my sister wanted to destroy, so I’m in a difficult position.”

She took a couple of quick, angry drags, then put the cigarette out in an upturned flowerpot on the plastic table beside them.

“Philip has offered to buy the shares from me himself, and, even if I realize that just means that he’ll sell them on to PayTag, it seems the least worst option . . .”

“Hang on, couldn’t you sell the shares to someone else? Someone on the outside?”

She made a resigned gesture.

“Like who? The company isn’t listed on the stock market, and I haven’t exactly got a lot of speculators lined up . . . I mean, ArgosEye doesn’t even make a profit . . .”

HP took a deep drag, then flicked the butt out onto the snow-covered lawn. There was a little shower of sparks followed by a short hiss.

“I might have a suggestion,” he said with a smile.

♦  ♦  ♦

The whole thing was pretty surreal.

Pierre the dog man pulled her inside his flat, parked her on a sofa, and then quickly brewed up what had to be the most perfect cappuccino she had ever tasted in her life.

And now she was sitting there with Gladh on the divan opposite, while Pierre poked about for the first-aid kit out in the kitchen. For a few moments they just glared at each other.

He looked pretty tough, she couldn’t deny that. A square face, dark eyes, and a posture that suggested he was more than capable of looking after himself in a fight. She briefly
regretted leaving the extendable baton in her jacket pocket. But surely he wouldn’t have a go at her here, in front of a witness?

“You know who I am, don’t you?” she began.

He nodded.

“Yep, we’ve bumped into each other a few times down in the station gym. But this is all rather—”

“Unexpected,” she interrupted. “I don’t suppose you thought I’d show up here?”

“No . . .” he said, giving her a long look.

“Well, here I am, so now the question is what we do next.”

He squirmed, and cast a long look toward the kitchen, where it sounded like Pierre was still rummaging about.

“Well, I’d appreciate it if we could keep this between us . . .”

He leaned toward her.

“I don’t want this coming out at work . . .”

“No, I can quite understand that,” she snarled, and she saw him flinch.

“Peter, have you seen the box of Band-Aids. I’m sure it was in the bathroom,” Pierre called.

“No, I haven’t,” Gladh called, without taking his eyes from her. “But I don’t think we need it, Rebecca’s just leaving . . .”

“No, I’m not,” she hissed.

♦  ♦  ♦

The train rattled on through the winter darkness on its way into the city. He had just managed to catch the last train that evening, and apart from the driver and a guy wearing headphones a couple of seats in front of him, the carriages were empty.

He really could understand why Philip had reacted the way he had. There was some seriously heavy stuff going on, and not only financially.

The PayTag Group. He was sure he’d heard the name before, and he was trying desperately to remember where. But the more he thought about it, the further he seemed to get from the answer.

But one thing was clear at least. He was finally starting to understand why Anna Argos had been murdered. Just as he had thought, she was caught up in the Game, but not as a simple little Player. She, and above all her company, played a considerably more significant role than that.

ArgosEye protected the Game, while at the same time presumably benefiting from its unique services. If the company was bought and gained access to seriously large amounts of money, they would be able to use the Game on a more regular basis, and exploit its full potential. Getting them to dig out secrets, misjudgments, and general screwups that people were desperate to keep hidden.