Buzz: A Thriller (4 page)

The other three listened to him, and would have trouble accepting anyone else in command if he didn’t. Groups with unofficial leaders never worked in the long run. She had seen that firsthand when she was training, as well as later in her career.

It would take both sensitivity and firmness if she was going to succeed. The margin for error was practically nonexistent.

The flight had been wearing, three changes before they finally reached Khartoum.

A few nights in a hotel and a load of meetings to sort out the formalities.

The Sudanese authorities wanted to inspect everything—their weapons, communications equipment, and bulletproof vests. And all their papers had to be checked, stamped, double-checked, and stamped again before they could pick up their vehicles and finally get going.

The farther south they got, the more barren the landscape became. The dry red earth spread out around them, swirling up under their vehicles and finding its way into every gap, so that all their clothing and equipment ended up covered in a fine, crisp, pink skin.

Even though it was winter the heat was unbearable at times. Karolina Modin took care of the driving while she sat in the boss’s seat beside her.

Bengt Esbjörnsson was driving the big vehicle that followed them, with their interpreter.

Malmén and Göransson were going to be arriving a couple of days later with the minister in the government plane. In the meantime she and the other two were supposed to check out the places they were due to visit.

She had put a fair amount of thought into the planning. She and Peter Göransson had trained together, and had worked together a fair bit before, so she felt fairly comfortable with him.

Malmén and Esbjörnsson got on well, so by splitting them up and hopefully getting a bit of time to talk to Modin as well, she would get the chance to refine the new hierarchy within the group. But she had to admit that her plan hadn’t worked brilliantly so far . . .

Her decision to keep Malmén as her deputy hadn’t been met with the acclaim she had expected. But perhaps that wasn’t so strange. She hadn’t really had much choice.

And the journey down hadn’t exactly gone smoothly.

Esbjörnsson was a taciturn man from the far north of Sweden who didn’t say more than he had to, and Karolina Modin kept to herself without being either unpleasant or particularly friendly.

Really, the group should have had time to work together at home before being sent out into a live situation like this one, but her boss hadn’t been willing to hear anything of that sort.

“You wanted to be put in charge, Normén, so you’re just going to have to grit your teeth and get on with it. Your team
has got the least amount of overtime, so to be honest I have neither the budget or the inclination to send anyone else,” Superintendent Runeberg had said, interrupting her with a look that made her feel like a whining schoolkid.

They had picked up embassy counselor Gladh, his assistant, and their interpreter in Khartoum. It had only taken her a matter of seconds to read this particularly arrogant man, and unfortunately her fears had been proved right more or less immediately. The old duffer must have started work at the foreign ministry before she was born. She had never seen him dressed in anything but a pin-striped suit, tie, and with a handkerchief tucked into his top pocket. The outfit only made him look even taller and skinnier, almost a caricature of himself, and on the few occasions that he deigned to talk to them his reverberant aristocratic southern Swedish accent made it hard not to laugh.

Throughout the entire car journey Gladh had spend most of his time on the phone, complaining to his colleagues in the foreign ministry about how his staff could have made all the security arrangements with the Sudanese government instead of them bothering to fly in inexperienced Swedish police officers with no knowledge of the country or the culture. It also turned out that Gladh had a nephew who was in the police, and he declared that because of this he “knew a few things about the force,” which, to judge from his tone of voice and the look on his face, clearly wasn’t meant to be taken as anything positive.

The only good thing about the journey was that Karolina Modin seemed to share Rebecca’s opinion of the embassy counselor, and as the drive went on they would exchange ironic glances the moment he opened his mouth.

Unfortunately Gladh wasn’t stupid enough not to notice the looks on their faces, and the atmosphere inside the car had practically reached freezing point by the time they arrived.

In marked contrast, Gladh’s assistant, Håkan Berglund, was a pleasant man of about the same age as her, who made a few attempts to smooth over some of the worst of his boss’s behavior.

“Sixten is a bit old school,” he said apologetically during their first after-work drink together. “He’s actually not a bad person, and I’ve learned a fair bit from working with him.”

Rebecca shrugged.

“He can behave however he likes, as long as you make it clear to him that I’m the one who decides where the minister goes and where she doesn’t go, not foreign ministry protocol, okay?”

Berglund saluted her with his glass.

“Understood, Inspector. By the way, have I mentioned that I’m moving back to Stockholm in a couple of weeks . . . ?” He gave her a warm smile, and it was more or less as she realized how much she liked his smile that she remembered that she’d forgotten to call home.

♦  ♦  ♦

His flight had started off pretty damn well.

First stop: his old friend Jesus’s holiday flats in Thailand where he lazed about under the palm trees. Reliving happy memories of how he’d beaten the Game and made off with all their money.

But after a month or so he’d started to feel restless.

Hanging out in a hammock listening to the waves breaking
sounded pretty damned sweet when you talked about it—but for the rest of his life?

No fucking way!

Just like Caine in the film
Kung Fu,
he wasn’t the type to settle down.

So he rented some wheels instead and spent a couple of weeks easy riding before he got tired of the smell of exhaust fumes, a chafed ass, and insects between his teeth.

Then he worked his way through the Philippines, Singapore, and Bali before making his way Down Under.

He filled his days with tourist adventures—crocodile safaris, bungee jumps from bridges, swimming with sharks.

But
purchased experiences didn’t count
—especially not after everything he had been through, so a few months later he tired of prepackaged adventures and started to feel restless again, and decided to move on.

He had wondered about carrying on eastward, maybe all the way to the States, but he wasn’t confident his fake identity would stand up at Immigration.

The passport was one thing, but fingerprints were harder to falsify and the Game Master was bound to have had him wiped off every database imaginable.

The thought of doing a stretch as a prison bitch in Alabama State was terrifying enough to make him park the dream of the US of A in the long-stay parking lot.

Besides, all the constant drifting about was starting to get on his nerves.

The restlessness inside him seemed to grow exponentially, along with his insomnia.

More or less consciously, he slowly began to make his way north. He stopped off in India, spending several weeks doped
up on the beach in Goa before he finally ended up here—in damned Neverland.

Dubai is very cool, you will lurve it, my friend
—mais bien sûr!

Note to self—never take travel advice from French queers with black AmEx cards, no matter how much Mary Jane they offer . . .

He’d already had more than his fill after OD’ing on the combined tourist attractions of the Eastern Hemisphere, and the whole of this make-believe country was pretty much as genuine as the name in his latest passport.

A façade, a soulless damn surface without the faintest hint of any connection to its history—or reality either, come to that . . .

His new playmate, Vincent, had promised to meet up with him, but so far he hadn’t heard a peep from him. At a guess, the Frenchman and his posse were still lost in a cloud of smoke on the beach in Goa while he himself was languishing on this artificial island like some sort of luxury castaway. All he needed was a make-believe friend and he’d be home and dry.

Wonder if Armani makes volleyballs . . . ?

Hell, this place could easily go twelve rounds with Vegas for the heavyweight title in tastelessness.

A few days ago he had heard a sunburned family with mom, dad, and 2.1 kids talking Swedish a few tables away, and suddenly he felt like bursting into tears over his breakfast egg. It took him a couple of minutes to realize why.

Hell, he was homesick!

For Sweden, Stockholm, Södermalm, his sister, Mange, the Goat, open-air singing at Skansen, “eight carriages to Ropsten,”
you damn well name it
!

But probably most of all—for himself.

Because even though he had pretty much everything your average Swede could ever want—money, freedom, and the bare minimum of responsibility—the bitter truth was that the only thing he really wanted was what he couldn’t have.

To be HP again—
correction, the new, improved HP
—back in his own tiny little duck pond.

The thought that he was doomed to drift around all the tourist hotels of Asia for the rest of his life until he could no longer remember what his name was was enough to make him seriously depressed.

Not even the kung fu legend himself had been able to handle the vagabond lifestyle in the long run, and had ended up as a washed-up drag-queen in a hotel closet with the cord from a window blind as his farewell necktie.

And who could blame him?

He needed something, anything, that reminded him of who he really was, to make him feel even a tiny fucking bit alive again.

♦  ♦  ♦

The government plane landed exactly according to schedule at the little airport of El Fasher, the two jet engines whipping up clouds of dust toward the waiting vehicles.

Apart from their own group, the UN’s local representative was also there to meet the plane, and Rebecca had exchanged a few words with their security staff.

The door of the plane opened and Malmén looked out. Rebecca waved the all-clear to him and he nodded in response.

The minister for international development smiled at her in recognition as she came down the steps from the plane.

“Welcome to . . .” Rebecca began, but Gladh had already pushed between them.

“Welcome to Africa, Minister, I hope you had a good journey? Allow me to introduce the local representative of the United Nations, Mr. Moon, and his deputy, Mrs. Awaga. Our first stop, as you are doubtless already aware, Minister, will be the refugee camp at Dali where we will meet the Sudanese interior minister and the governor of Darfur. After that we will continue to the children’s home in Kaguro . . .”

Rebecca stepped aside and held the car door open for the minister, who obediently took her seat. Gladh went around the car and waited, but Rebecca ignored him. The minister was her charge, Gladh could take care of himself. Surely the old fool could manage to open a car door for himself?

A couple of minutes later they were ready to leave. The minister and Gladh were in the car behind the first military jeep together with Rebecca and Karolina Modin. Esbjörnsson, Malmén, and Göransson were immediately behind them in the Land Cruiser, and the rest of the group was in a third car driven by a local driver. Then came the three UN vehicles and finally another jeep from the Sudanese military. All entirely according to plan.

Her cell phone buzzed.

They were halfway to the refugee camp, nothing but desert savanna alongside the potholed dirt roads, so she couldn’t see any reason not to check her inbox. It was actually pretty incredible that there was any coverage out here in the middle of nowhere—but Africa was apparently the latest gold mine for cell phone operators.

Take good care of yourself, Becca—see you when you get home?

She smiled, then turned her head. In the backseat the minister and Gladh were engaged in a discussion she had stopped listening to several minutes before.

Through the rear window she could just make out the vehicles following them, and the dark silhouettes of their passengers. From this distance it was impossible to tell which shadow was whose.

We’ll see . . .

she wrote, and just as she pressed Send she noticed that Modin was looking at her.

“From home,” she said quickly, and Modin muttered something in reply.

She checked the time.

“Ten minutes to go,” she said into the radio microphone on her wrist. She got a double click in her earpiece to indicate that Malmén had understood what she had said and had nothing to add.

Good.

But really she didn’t need his approval. She had to get used to the fact that this was her team now, her four plus one.

♦  ♦  ♦

The crowd of people was visible from a distance.

The military jeep at the front had just pulled off to the side and waved them through, but unlike the day before,
the last stretch of road leading up to the buildings was blocked off.

“Doesn’t look like we’re going to get any farther,” she said, and Modin nodded.

“Change of plan,” she said into the microphone on her wrist. “The road’s blocked so we’re evidently going to have to walk the last bit. Esbjörnsson and Modin, wait with the cars unless you hear otherwise. Got that, over?”

“You don’t think we might all be needed, it looks messy up ahead, over?”

Malmén’s radio voice was clipped and abrupt, and she noticed Modin imperceptibly raising her head as if in expectation of her reply.

Rebecca took a deep breath.

Four plus one or four against one?
It all depended on how she answered.

Malmén was an experienced bodyguard and he certainly had a point, but if she backed down now it would be clear to everyone who was the real boss of this group.