The Game Trilogy (89 page)

Manga looked up from the laptop.

‘W-what? Why?’

‘I’d rather not say right now. You asked me to trust you, and the same applies here … But, for the sake of appearances, I suppose we could call it my price for taking part in all this …’

He gestured towards the yellow ceiling with one hand.

Manga gave him a long look as he seemed to consider the proposal.

‘Okay, I suppose that’s fair enough …’ he muttered.

He tapped at the computer, then dug out a pen and paper and wrote down a number.

‘Here, he’s online so you can call him right away. There are some pay-as-you-go phones in that box over there. When you’ve finished, smash the SIM-card and scatter the pieces out in the woods, okay?’

‘Sure, no problem …’

Manga gave him another long look.

‘You do know what you’re getting into, don’t you, HP? This isn’t a game. If it goes wrong …’

‘Sure, don’t worry, I’ve got everything under control. This isn’t the first time I’ve gone up against the Game Master …’

‘Well, I guess that’s true. But it is the first time you’re doing something that doesn’t suit the Game’s plans …’

‘Good job I’m not on my own, then,’ HP grinned. ‘If it goes to hell, then we all get fucked at the same time!’

‘Here.’

He handed her the key to her gun-cabinet.

‘I presume you’ve got your ID and passcard in there as well?’

She nodded.

‘Okay, get your stuff out and then head straight down to the firing range. You’ll need to do the test again before we can let you out on duty. You soon lose it if you don’t practise …’

‘That won’t be a problem, Ludvig.’

‘Okay, good.’

‘Was there anything else?’

He nodded.

‘Before you go, Normén, I just have to ask. How the hell did you get Stigsson to agree to reinstate you?’

‘Oh, you could say I had a bit of help from a mutual friend.’

She smiled and he gave her a long look.

‘And is that something you’d like to explain to your boss?’

She took a deep breath.

‘Not right now, Ludvig. But sometime …’

‘Okay …’

He was still looking at her hard.

‘You do know what you’re doing, Becca?’ he finally said in a low voice.

‘Don’t worry, Ludvig. You wanted me back and now I’m here. Just be happy with that for the time being,’ she smiled.

The target turned when she was ten metres away, and long before the conscious part of her brain had registered the fact she had gone into action. Clawing her jacket open, both hands down to her holster.

Gun out, left hand on the bolt. Then push forward and up, feeding a bullet into position. The steadying hand coming up beneath the barrel. Then the sights, and the target.

Two rapid shots.

The target turned away.

She released the hammer with her left thumb, and continued to move forward. A new target turned, this time far off to her right. She squeezed off a shot, not even thinking about the result. Quickly released the hammer and carried on. Two targets began to turn at the same time, and she’d already shot a hole through the first before they stopped turning.

Then her gun clicked.

She hit her left hand against the base of the magazine, then performed the bolt action to release the trapped cartridge onto the floor. Three quick shots.

The targets turned away.

‘Stop, cease fire, unload!’ the instructor yelled.

‘Unloaded!’ she said.

She pulled out the magazine, flipped the bolt and caught the cartridge that was ready to fire. Then she let go of the
bolt, holstered the gun and took off her ear protectors. All the targets popped up with a loud hiss, but she didn’t look at the results. The shooting instructor walked past her, did a quick check of the targets, then came back. She heard him whistle.

‘Well, Normén, that went pretty well. What do you say?’

‘Yep,’ she said.

‘I didn’t actually time you, but I’m guessing you were somewhere close to the record for the course. I’ll call Ludvig straight away and tell him your shooting is … approved. Can you sort them out yourself?’

He handed her a roll of little black stickers.

‘Sure.’

He turned his back on her and headed towards the door.

She tore off four small stickers the size of a stamp and put the roll down.

On her way to the targets she picked up the little green blank cartridge that the instructor had sneaked into her magazine, which had caused the break in her shooting.

All the shots were in the dead zone. Three of the pairs of holes were so close together that they were touching, and the other two had just a millimetre of paper between them.

‘Good, then you’ll be in touch? Thanks for your help.’

He ended the call, opened the back of the phone and pulled out the SIM-card.

He had just snapped it in two when Hasselqvist came round the corner.

‘Er, hi, HP. Listen, I just wanted to explain something …’

‘Sure.’

He turned his back on Hasselqvist and sent one half of the SIM-card into the nearest clump of nettles.

‘That thing in the van …’

‘You mean the GPS?’

He tossed the other half in amongst the fir trees.

‘Yep, that’s right … You see, I’d just found it when you appeared at the door … it had been underneath a bag and just rolled out.’

‘Okay …’

‘Is it yours?’

‘W-what?’ HP turned round.

‘The GPS transmitter, is it …?’

‘Yeah, I get it, Kent. No, it isn’t …’

‘Okay, I just wanted to check. You were the one sitting right at the back, so I thought …’

HP shook his head.

‘Nope, not mine. Maybe it belongs to the van?’

‘I doubt it …’

‘In that case I suggest that you get rid of it at once.’

‘Sure, I just want to check with Jeff first, it may be his …’

Hasselqvist drifted away and HP waited another minute before pulling a new SIM-card from his trouser pocket. He inserted it into the phone he had got from Manga, switched it on and tapped in his pin-code.

The text arrived almost immediately.

Done!

Hidden number, but he knew who it was from.

Fuck, Rehyman was fast!

They got changed in silence. Tight black wetsuits, rubber shoes, then neoprene ski masks that made the heat intolerable, and which HP pulled off at once. Total fucking madness, on a massive scale!

‘Everything’s ready,’ he heard Manga say from round the back of the Polo.

‘I still want to double-check,’ Jeff said.

‘But it’s getting …’

‘We’ve got time,’ Jeff interrupted. ‘There’s always time to check your equipment …’

Manga seemed to give up, because when HP walked round the car the back door was already open.

‘Diving gear, inflatable dinghy, welding equipment, explosives …’ Jeff was saying to himself as he moved his hand over the various black bags in the boot.

The word
explosives
startled HP. He had a sudden flashback to the E4 motorway two years before, when he had plugged his phone into a similar bag. A bag stuffed with so much explosive that it was enough to blow an entire building sky-high.

For almost two years he had believed that he’d blown the Game’s brain to kingdom come. But, according to Manga, that had been nothing but an illusion, a very clever one that the Game Master had implanted in his head. The real Death Star wasn’t located in an old office building out in Kista, but deep underground in a bunker little more than a couple of kilometres away.

But if everything he had experienced up until a few days ago was just an elaborate mind game, then what guarantees did he have that what he was experiencing now was any more real?

He had been wrestling with that particular dilemma for several days.

Even if he decided to trust Manga, there were no guarantees. Manga seemed to be telling the truth, because – as far as it was possible to tell – he genuinely appeared to believe his own story. But what if it wasn’t his story?

What if someone else was playing mind games with Manga, in exactly the same way they had done with him?
That what they were heading towards now was actually nothing more than part of an even more elaborate plan?

That was the trouble with conspiracy theories. Once you started to accept their existence, it was impossible to say where they really stopped.

Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t after you …

‘Quiet!’ Jeff suddenly said, raising his head from the boot.

‘Did you hear that?’

No-one said anything.

‘What is it, Jeff?’ Hasselqvist quacked after a few seconds.

‘There!’

A faint humming sound was approaching from the east.

HP realized what it was immediately. He took a couple of quick strides, grabbed the heavy sliding door of the barn and began to close it.

‘What the hell …?’ Jeff yelled.

HP ignored him.

The sound was getting closer very fast, throbbing like a pneumatic drill on his eardrums.

The door was almost closed, just a metre or so left, and HP was leaning his entire weight on the handle. But the door was slowing down, began to catch, and finally stopped with a loud screech.

The throbbing noise was suddenly echoing off the buildings, amplified until he could feel the vibration in his ribcage, and only now did the others seem to get it.

A helicopter, flying extremely low, was about to appear over the treetops any second now. HP made another attempt to close the door. But the wheel at the top seemed to have jumped its track and the door sat fast.

He bent his knees and pulled on the handle as hard as he could, with one leg on each side of the door. Suddenly and
without warning the door jolted loose and came racing towards his chest. He threw himself to the side and only just escaped getting his head caught as it slammed shut.

‘Sorry!’ Jeff shouted, his hands still on the other end.

A moment later the helicopter thundered across the yard, and the pulsing rotor blades practically deafened HP.

Both he and Jeff crouched down instinctively as they tried to catch sight of the helicopter through the broken barn roof.

It seemed to be hovering a few metres above the barn.

HP glanced quickly at the others. Jeff seemed utterly focused on the helicopter, as did Nora. But Hasselqvist slipped quickly inside the van.

‘We need to go, now!’ he yelled as he scrambled into the driver’s seat.

‘B-but, we’re not ready …’ Nora cried.

The helicopter was still hovering above them, and the downdraft from the blades was making what was left of the roof begin to shake. Slowly at first, then faster and faster.

Fragments of tiles came loose and fell into the barn.

‘Kent’s right!’ Jeff roared. ‘Any minute now this roof’s going to collapse on top of us …’

A large piece of tile hit the roof of the van with a thud.

‘I’ll open the door, then you lot get going … Just drive, don’t stop and wait for me,’ Jeff yelled in HP’s ear.

HP nodded, and tried to run towards the van in a crouch.

A small piece of tile hit him on the head and he raised his arm instinctively to protect himself. There was a loud bang, then another. Probably one of the helicopter’s runners hitting the roof.

‘Come on, Nora!’ he shouted when he reached the door of the van.

But she seemed to be hesitating.

Jeff roared something at her that HP didn’t hear. He waved his hand towards the van. Another bang, more forceful this time. A large tile crashed to the floor right in front of the van, sending splinters in all directions.

Hasselqvist started the engine.

‘We have to go, come on!’ he yelled again.

Jeff had turned away and was bracing himself against the door. Tiles crashed down, the air was full of flying fragments. HP put his arm across his eyes as they thudded down onto the van. When he looked up Nora was lying on the floor.

Shit!

He leaped out of the van, but she was back on her feet before he could reach her.

‘Into the van, HP, come on!’

She pushed him in ahead of her. More tiles rained down and seemed to pull part of the roof with them. Blood was running down Nora’s face from a wet patch on top of her head. He pushed her down into one of the seats.

‘Jeff!’ she groaned.

‘Never mind your boyfriend, we’ve got to go …’ he snapped.

Through the windscreen he saw the door slowly open.

Hasselqvist revved the engine.

‘Brother …’ she groaned.

‘What?’

‘He’s my older brother, you idiot …!’

Jeff had almost managed to get the heavy door open. His back and neck muscles were straining against his t-shirt, threatening to split it.

The van suddenly leaped forward.

Her brother …

He grabbed hold of the headrest of the nearest seat, then hung out of the door.

‘JEEEFFF!’ he roared.

The mountain of muscle spun round and met his gaze. The van’s wheels were spinning on the dirt-covered concrete floor, trying to get a grip …

HP reached out as far as he could, holding out his hand. Jeff took a couple of quick strides.

The collapse was spreading across the roof, section after section of tiles was giving way and sending showers of razor-sharp fragments clattering against the body of the van. One piece, big as a hand, flew past HP’s nose but he hardly noticed.

Jeff leaped forward …

The tyres suddenly got a grip and the van shot out of the barn like an arrow. A moment later the entire roof fell in.

The dark car was waiting outside her building when she got home. As she approached the chauffeur opened the door and got out. But it wasn’t the same man as before, this one was considerably younger, and it took her a few seconds before she could place him.

‘Hello Rebecca, my name’s Edler, I’m Colonel Pellas’s adjutant …’

He held out his hand.

‘We met very briefly in the flat in Maria Trappgränd …’

‘Hello,’ she mumbled, shaking his hand.

He opened the door to the back seat.

‘Good evening, my dear Rebecca,’ Tage Sammer said. ‘I’m sorry to arrive unannounced like this, but I have good news …’

She hesitated and glanced at Edler.

Sammer seemed to have read her thoughts.

‘We can talk freely, I have no secrets from Edler …’

‘Good …’

Then, after thinking for a couple of seconds, she added:

‘Perhaps we should go up to the flat instead? A bit more pleasant than sitting in the car …’

‘Thanks for the invitation,’ he smiled. ‘I’d like that, on another occasion, but today I would prefer the car. Inside flats one never knows who might be listening …’

He patted the seat beside him and Rebecca had no choice but to climb in.

Edler got in behind the wheel, started the car and pulled away slowly towards Rålambsvägen.

‘Have you found Henke?’ she asked before he had time to open his mouth.

‘Not yet, but we think we know where both he and Sandström are. We’re expecting them to be picked up shortly.’

‘Okay, good. Well, good is probably the wrong word …’

‘I know what you mean, Rebecca. All this is for Henrik’s own good, and we’re very grateful that you’re helping us. We have to get hold of him before he does anything really silly. You see, this isn’t just about the revolver …’

He glanced towards Edler.