The Game Trilogy (88 page)

Even though it was the middle of summer, the wooden seat still felt ice-cold on his arse.

The planks of the toilet door had shrunk, and let in enough light for him to see the earwigs running about at the foot of the door.

Jeff and Hasselqvist had got busy with the equipment immediately after the run-through. He had hoped to get a private chat with Nora, but she seemed to prefer hanging out with Manga in the kitchen. So mother nature got his undivided attention instead.

It was actually pretty sweet, taking a dump outside, at least in the summer. Obviously there was no toilet paper, but there was a bundle of old newspapers that would probably do the job. And – handily – they also fulfilled his almost obsessive need to read something while he took a crap.

Upsala Nya Tidning.
Uppsala’s new newspaper …

Well, this one was from 1986, so it wasn’t that new any more.

The 33-year-old … Wasn’t that the first bloke arrested for Palme’s murder? Ended up getting shot in the States, if he remembered rightly … Speaking of the USA, PayTag were devious bastards. Together with the Game Master, they’d managed to fuck him over more than once, getting him tortured in Dubai, then using him to sink ArgosEye so that they could turn the merry widow, Anna Argos, into their new superstar …

And what had he got in return?

A couple of million as a sticking plaster, but that was probably loose change for a company like PayTag. A shitty little accounting error!

And now they’d spent the past few weeks trying to break him, and had come pretty fucking close to succeeding. And now every police force in Sweden was looking for him … So why the hell was he stupid enough to consider sticking his head into the lion’s den again?

Well …

Revenge was obviously one motivation, and a fucking strong one at that.

Just the thought of the look on the Game Master’s face
when their main sponsor suddenly discovered a spoke in their wheel was worth the risk. He, Black and Anna Argos all in the same room, shouting at each other. So fucking sweet!

But there were other factors.

The excitement.

The thrill of the chase.

Besides, he had a whole load of mysteries to unravel, and not just concerning the gang he was with.

Who was the Carer? And what was the Luttern labyrinth, where it looked like the bomb was going to be placed? Who was it going to be aimed at?

And, maybe most important of all: how did Becca fit into all of this?

She’s sitting in the passenger seat.

Dad’s driving, Mum and Henke are in the back.

They’re weaving through a maze of narrow streets, and only when she sees the huge church on the hill to their left does she realize where they are.

Döbelnsgatan, next to Johannes Church, on their way up the Brunkeberg ridge in Stockholm.

Henke is no more than six or seven years old, and he’s making a fuss in the back seat. Mum’s trying to keep him quiet, telling him it’s not far now. Dad says nothing, but she can see his jaw clench.

Henke whines, and she turns round to help Mum.

That’s when she sees him.

He’s standing completely still a short way into the darkened churchyard, and seems to be watching them as the car slowly glides past. In one hand she can make out the glow of a cigar. In the other he is holding a stick. Without really knowing why, she raises her hand to wave.

‘Do you know John Earnest, Rebecca?’ her Mum asks gently.

‘Quiet!’ Dad suddenly roars, and Henke starts crying.

‘Make him shut up, for God’s sake!’ She sees his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. Mum shouts back something that she doesn’t hear.

She raises her hands and presses them to her ears.

But the voice goes on whispering inside her head.

Do you know John Earnest, Rebecca?

The car carries on through the slush, and suddenly she realizes where they’re going.

As they reach the top of the hill and Döbelnsgatan turns into Malmskillnadsgatan, the scenario suddenly changes.

Now it’s her adult self sitting behind the wheel.

The sound of Henke crying is still coming from the back seat, but when she looks in the rear-view mirror she sees Tage Sammer’s face instead.

‘Forward, Rebecca, not backward. You have to look forward,’ he says in a tone of voice that’s so sad it pains her heart.

And, just as she looks back at the road, he’s suddenly there, right in front of the bonnet. A man dressed in a dark jacket with the collar turned up around his face. He must have come up the steep steps off to the right. The steps that lead down to Tunnelgatan, where a prime minister is lying, dying.

She slams on the brakes, the wheels lock and the car carries on sliding forward through the slush.

Straight towards the man.

Henke’s crying is turning into a scream.

She releases the brakes, then slams them on again.

Trying to get a grip.

But it’s hopeless.

The man turns his head, holds his hand towards her, as if to protect himself. Then she sees the revolver in his other hand.

‘Daddy, noooo!!’ Henke screams.

Or is she the one who says it?

Then she hears another voice, far away.

It’s calling her name.

Rebecca, Rebecca.

And the very moment she wakes up, she finally realizes what it is that’s wrong.

The name.

She lay still on the sofa for a few minutes, thinking, fitting the new information into everything she had been through over the past few days.

Then she got up, fetched her mobile and scrolled through the contacts until she found the right number.

‘It’s me,’ she said as soon as the man at the other end answered. ‘I think I understand how it all fits together now. Dad, Henke, the Game – everything.

‘Just tell me what you want me to do!’

He’d just taken the first drag of his morning cigarette, and was on his way round the corner of the barn when he heard their voices and stopped abruptly.

‘He can’t be trusted, don’t you get that?’ Jeff snarled. ‘He’s way too involved, he’s done too much …’

‘Like me, you mean?’

Nora’s voice, just a metre or so away.

HP pressed against the wall and pricked his ears.

‘That’s different. This guy’s got no scruples at all.’

Ah, so the loving couple didn’t trust Manga either, or at least one of them didn’t. Maybe he’d have to upgrade Jeff a bit, the bloke clearly wasn’t as stupid as he looked.

‘Everyone deserves another chance, Jeff. Besides, we need him.’

‘I have no problem giving people a second chance, Nora, but they have to show some sign of regret first. Show they’ve changed. But he still doesn’t think of anyone but himself, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that?’

HP couldn’t help grinning. A lovers’ tiff out here in the bush …

‘You’re just annoyed because he spray-painted your door …’

HP’s smile died instantly.

‘I had to spend seven hours in A&E because of that, if you remember?’

‘Yes, and I really do appreciate you doing this for me, Jeff …’

HP pulled a face. As if it wasn’t enough that it was him they were talking about, Nora’s voice also had a tender quality that he didn’t like.

‘I’ll always be grateful to you for helping me. Without you I’d still be stuck in the Game …’ she continued.

Then there was a short silence, and HP suddenly got the feeling they’d realized he was eavesdropping on them.

But then she went on.

‘You know this is important. Not just for me, but for everyone they’ve exploited and are still exploiting. If we can do this, then it’s all over …’

Jeff muttered something inaudible.

‘Give him a chance, Jeff, that’s all I’m asking …’

Fuck!

The burned-out cigarette was searing his fingers, and he was forced to drop it in the grass and stamp on it hard several times to put it out.

When he looked round the corner Jeff and Nora were gone, but at least he was a bit wiser.

Jeff obviously wasn’t a fan of his, not that he had ever had any reason to believe that he was, which pretty much meant the musclebound hunk could be removed from the list of candidates for A.F. But, on the other hand, Biffalo Bull could still be a traitor, at least as long as the treachery didn’t affect Nora.

He walked round the corner and slipped slowly into
the barn. Hasselqvist was busy doing something right at the back of the van.

‘Hi, Kent,’ HP shouted through the open side-door. Hasselqvist jumped and dropped whatever it was he was holding.

A round object, a bit like an ice-hockey puck, came rolling across the floor towards the door. Hasselqvist leaped at it but HP was quicker.

‘So what have we got here, then?’ he said jokily, holding the puck up.

Hasselqvist grabbed it out of his hands.

‘None of your business!’ he snarled, and HP took an involuntary step back.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

But Hasselqvist pulled the door shut right in his face. But no matter, he’d had time to read the inscription on the side of the little puck.

Elite GPS 512.

Interesting.

Very interesting …

He carried on through the barn and into the house. Manga was bent over his laptop but looked up as soon as HP came into the kitchen.

‘Hi,’ he said, slightly too loud.

HP merely nodded in response.

‘Look, I know you’re pissed off with me, HP …’

‘No shit …’

‘… and you’ve got every right to be. I lied to you, more than once. And I really am sorry about that …’

He smiled uncertainly.

‘But, like I keep saying, I really was trying to help. I’ve been watching your back … Yours and Becca’s …’

‘What do you know about Becca?!’

Manga grimaced.

‘Not as much as I’d like. I have a well-placed source close to Sammer, but all I really know is that he and Becca have met a few times. Sammer seems very interested in her, that much is pretty obvious, but I still don’t know exactly how she fits into the picture. But right now she’s not in any immediate danger, I know that much. Sammer seems totally fixated on you …’

‘Okay, good …’ HP took a deep breath. ‘What’s the Luttern labyrinth, and who’s the Carer? How do they fit into the picture?’

‘W-what?’

‘Come on, Manga, don’t act stupid. The flat next to mine, the workshop, the snakes …?’

He fixed his eyes on Manga, looking for the slightest sign of weakness. But he couldn’t see any, not a flutter of the eyelids or an involuntary twitch.

‘I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about, HP …’

‘And you expect me to believe that, just like that? Your credibility isn’t particularly high right now, Manga …’

‘Come on, HP, I’ve said I’m sorry …’ Even Manga’s voice passed the test. Not the slightest tremor …

‘I don’t know everything that’s going on – like I said, the Game Master doesn’t let anyone else see the whole picture. All I’ve got are fragments. Please, tell me about the flat. Everything’s connected, one way or another …’

HP glared at Manga as he considered what to do.

Okay, so Manga was a liar, but the lies had actually been meant well. And they were old friends … correction: best friends.

He’d always thought of Manga as a bit of a coward, a computer geek, and – more recently – a hen-pecked husband under the thumb of his dragon of a wife. But, even though it hurt to admit it, he had been wrong. Manga
was no coward, and had actually shown himself to be a pretty capable guy.

Besides, now that he came to think about it, he had actually suspected Manga from day one – in fact, from the moment he found that bloody phone on the train. So, looking at it one way, he hadn’t been
completely
taken in. He hadn’t been totally blind.

But it still made sense to keep some things to himself. Having a slight advantage when it came to information wouldn’t hurt at all.

‘That can wait,’ he finally said. ‘So, remind me again why I should go along with this idiotic plan?’

‘Sure, no problem.’ The disappointment in Manga’s voice was obvious. ‘Take a look at this.’

Manga reached for the table and turned the laptop so HP could see the screen.

‘I’ve made a list of clients who have already begun to store their data down in that bunker. Sit down …’

Manga pointed at one of the chairs. He opened an Excel file and started scrolling through the list.

‘The Highways Agency, the Tax Office, the Police, Customs, three different bio databanks, one of which already has over 500,000 DNA samples in its register. Dental records, the National Population Register, the electoral roll, and a whole load of smaller official bodies. Pretty much all telecom and internet providers signed up before the EU directive was passed, which means that all telephone records, and all IP addresses and text messages are already stored in the Fortress.’

‘Okay, that’s more or less what I thought …’ HP mumbled.

‘What?’

‘A few weeks ago they replayed all my computer records, as well as all my texts to you and Becca. A little warning,
just to let me know they were keeping an eye on me. I couldn’t quite work out how they got hold of everything so quickly from so many different sources. But now I get it. All they had to do was press a couple of buttons …’

Manga nodded.

‘Go on …’ HP waved one hand.

‘Okay, so you’ve already worked out the basics, but before too long the big supermarkets will be joining in, followed by pretty much every other company that runs a loyalty card scheme. They’re all terrified that their information is going to leak, with the ensuing loss of customer confidence. But what’s most interesting is probably what’s hidden right at the bottom of the bunker …’

‘Hi Ludvig, it’s Rebecca, sorry to call so early …’

‘Er, no problem. I was awake anyway …’

She could tell he was lying, and gave him a few seconds to come round.

‘So, what can I do for you, Normén?’ he said, in a slightly less sleepy voice.

‘I want to come back to work.’

‘Er, okay. That shouldn’t be a problem. Call the personnel department after nine o’clock and they’ll help you. It’ll probably take a couple of weeks to sort out …’

‘No, no, I haven’t got time for all that. I want to come back now, right away. The wedding’s tomorrow, and you told me yourself that you needed every bodyguard you could get hold of.’

‘Of course, yes. But surely you can see …’

He cleared his throat.

‘Well, as long as this business with your brother is still going on, I can’t take you back, no matter how much I might want to. Stigsson would go mad if I so much as suggested it …’

‘Ask!’

‘What?’

‘Call and ask him!’

‘I’m not quite with you, Normén …?’

‘I’m asking you to call Stigsson and ask him if it’s okay for me to return to duty. Please, will you do that, straight away?’

There were a few moments of silence.

‘Sure,’ he muttered eventually. ‘But I already know what the answer’s going to be.’

Me too
, she thought.

‘The lowest level of the bunker is reserved for one particular client. The whole thing’s top secret …’

Manga looked over his shoulder, as if he were worried that someone was listening.

‘To be honest, I think this particular client is more than just an ordinary customer. It could be that the secret tenant in the lowest level is actually behind the whole PayTag Group. But instead of risking their own valuable brand they’re using PayTag as a front, a windscreen for the insects to smash themselves to death on, while those with the real power are sitting nice and safe in the passenger seat on the other side of the glass.’

‘And who might they be?’

Manga shrugged.

‘Who do you think? Which companies have the most influence within the information-gathering industry? Which ones are constantly designing new services to tempt us into saying what we’re doing right now, where we are, which search terms we use most often, or even – what we’re thinking?’

HP thought for a moment.

‘There are plenty of candidates. Search engines, social media sites …’

‘You’re on the right track, young Padwan …’

Manga closed the laptop.

‘Google, Facebook, Twitter and a few more have worked out what we’re too stupid to realize.’

‘Which is …?’

‘That information is the new currency. If you can get hold of enough information, in the end everyone will want to do business with you. Just look at Facebook’s stock-market valuation. It may be lower than they were expecting, but it’s still three of four times the value of Ericsson.

‘But do you know what their assets are, HP? Have a guess! What do you think? Not telecom systems, or years of research, or tens of thousands of patents. What Facebook owns, and what makes it worth all those billions, its very greatest asset, is …’

‘Its users,’ HP muttered.

‘Exactly! Or, to be more precise, the
information
that its users volunteer. Everything gets stored – comments, shares, pictures, games, likes …’

Manga’s face was starting to go red.

‘How do you predict the future, HP? By looking back at the past, that’s the starting point for any forecaster. The more information you have about the past, the more reliable your predictions for the future will be. Just think …’

Manga paused for breath for a moment.

‘What if the past,
everyone’s
past, was stored in one and the same place? State databases, medical records, patterns of consumption, social networking and search engine preferences. All of it in one massive database? All you’d have to do is collate the information. Then all you have to do is type in a search word, anything you like, and you’d be able to watch the trends. How many people had cancer in a particular year, how many people prefer white cars to blue ones, what age groups are most likely to commit
crimes, or look for particular brands, are most active on Twitter, where they live, what music they listen to, what books they read, and what they usually buy in the supermarket on the last Wednesday before payday …’

He paused for breath again.

‘
He who controls the past controls the future
, Orwell wrote in
1984
, and he certainly had a point. Although I’d have to say that the PayTag project is even more refined that that …’

He paused again, and HP couldn’t help leaning closer.

‘He who controls the future, HP, without any shadow of a doubt … is actually the person who
owns
the past. And that’s exactly what the whole PayTag project is about!’

HP lit a cigarette. He deliberately took his time, to give himself a chance to think.

All of this was pretty hard to digest. Besides, it was hardly the first conspiracy theory he’d ever heard. Last time it had been Erman going on about the Game, and now it was Manga and PayTag.

But if there was one thing he had learned over the past two years, it was that no theory, no matter how far-fetched it might seem, could be written off entirely. No smoke without fire, at least not where the Game was concerned.

And everything Manga had said fitted in pretty well with the little demonstration he had been given on the computer in the library. Moreover, it also fitted with the little backup plan he’d been working on. In fact it actually made it even better …

He took a deep drag, then slowly exhaled the smoke.

‘Okay Manga, I get what you mean, but to be honest I don’t give a shit what PayTag’s up to. All I want is to deliver a decent kick in the bollocks to the Game Master, Anna Argos and Black. And that’s where our interests seem to coincide. It looks like we’ve got a mutual enemy …’

He took another drag, then stubbed the cigarette out on a cracked old saucer on the draining board.

‘It’s like this, Manga: if you want my help, I need a favour in return. I need to get hold of Rehyman, preferably straight away. I need to talk to him with no-one else listening …’