Game: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  So he ended up covering his motives with a little white lie . . .

  He said he wanted to find out who was behind the Game, maybe give an anonymous tip-off to one of the evening papers, or Crimewatch or something like that. A bit of payback for all the shit he’d had to take. Mange bought it without question, and why not? It could very easily have been true.

  He was able to dig out a server address more or less instantly, but after that, things ground to a complete halt. HP got a bit downhearted but Mange wasn’t the sort to give up. From what they could work out, the server appeared to be in Sweden, and if it was, then that meant that somewhere in cyberspace there was someone who had sold, installed, and configured it. The odds that such a person would be somewhere in Mange’s network of contacts were pretty good.

  He’d put out a few tentative feelers and they’d have to wait to see if there was any response. That wasn’t quite the scenario HP had been hoping for. Patience and waiting were definitely not his bag, but on the other hand he didn’t really have much choice.

  He’d just have to grin and bear it.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  A GroupWise message was really all it took to get going. She soon found Nilla’s email address on the internal contact list, even though she had a different surname, but it had been thirteen years and she had almost counted on Nilla being married by now.

  So what was the best way to put it?

  It took Rebecca over an hour to compose the email, and in the end she realized that if she was ever going to send it, she would have to keep it short.

  But when she moved the cursor to the Send button, she suddenly felt hesitant. Her index finger was left hanging in the air above the mouse button. Was this really such a good idea?

  What sort of answer was she expecting? Sure, I’d love to talk to you, Rebecca. Let’s meet for coffee and chat about old times. Maybe you could tell me what happened the night my brother was murdered?

  She moved the mouse away. She’d have to leave it for another day when she’d had time to think it through more thoroughly. Thirteen years had passed already, so a few more days wouldn’t make any difference.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  When the telephone rang HP sat up with a jerk. It took him a few seconds to work out where he was, and what the stupid tune resounding through the flat actually meant.

  Mange’s—correction, Farook’s—flat, with him on the sofa, the room still dark. He blinked a few times to see the clock on the television. Who the hell was calling the Al-Hassan residence at 2:10 at night?

  The ringing stopped; they must have answered in the bedroom. Then the baby started to scream. A couple of minutes later a bleary-eyed Mange appeared in the living room, wearing one of those full-length white nightshirts that he seemed to wear all the time these days.

  “The burglar alarm has gone off in the shop; you can come with me into the city,” he slurred as he buttoned his harem trousers.

  “The security company and the cops are already there, so it’s kind of urgent. Get your clothes on while I go to the toilet . . .”

  HP crawled off the sofa and pulled on his jeans and sneakers without protest.

  Just before they set off, Betul the witch stuck her head out of the nursery and gave him the evil eye, but that wasn’t the reason HP felt an uneasy lump in his stomach.

  “Has this happened before?” he asked with feigned nonchalance while Mange beat the crap out of his little Polo as they crossed the Liljeholmen Bridge.

  “A couple of times over the years,” he muttered through his teeth as he swerved through a red light. “But not since we put bars on the windows and installed a camera inside. According to the security company the thieves didn’t get in, but apparently the cops want me there straightaway. Wonder why?”

  HP kept quiet and clung on to the handle above the door. The lump in his stomach was growing exponentially.

  Four minutes later Mange pulled up sharply outside the shop. The security firm’s car and two cop cars were parked outside, and a bit farther away stood a fire engine.

  To HP’s relief, the shop seemed to be undamaged.

  “Hello,” one of the policemen said as he pulled a notepad from his trouser pocket. “Selini, Södermalm police. Are you the owner?” He nodded to HP.

  “No, I am, Farook Al-Hassan.”

  The policeman gave Mange and his Middle Eastern appearance a long look but said nothing.

  “Okay, we’ll need a few personal details and so on in a bit, but I’d like to show you this first.”

  He led them over to the entrance. The door of the shop was open and it took HP a few seconds to comprehend that the security guards had probably opened it up, as well as the roller blind.

  “We were ’round the corner when the alarm went off, so we came close to catching them red-handed. Two men on a moped, one of them watching while the other one tried to break in. My partner reckons the one who was watching was filming what the other one was doing. Crime videos like that are getting more and more common, happy slapping and all that . . .”

  HP had suddenly gone ice-cold. He opened his mouth to say something but the policeman interrupted him.

  “Either way, we pursued them for a few minutes, but we lost them when they turned into a cycle path through Tantolunden. They must have used an emergency hammer or something like that to break the glass.”

  They’d just reached the front door and the policeman indicated a fist-sized hole in the window alongside. The window was full of what looked like snow, making it look a bit like a Christmas display. All that was missing were a couple of plastic reindeer and a chocolate Santa Claus, HP noted, almost in amusement, before he understood what the white powder was.

  “I emptied our fire extinguisher through the hole, so it never caught properly. There’ll be a bit of cleaning up, but that’s better than the alternative . . .”

  The policeman shrugged.

  HP’s stomach had clenched solid and he was having trouble breathing. The cop’s voice sounded like it was in slow motion.

  “A few soaking rags and probably a bit of paraffin through the hole. It doesn’t look like they were planning a robbery, just wanted to start a fire. I don’t suppose you happen to have acquired any enemies recently, Mr., er . . . Al-Hassan?”

  “No, not as far as I know,” Mange replied, giving HP a long look.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  They both sat in silence on the way home. Thoughts were whirling through HP’s head. He was desperate for a cigarette but knew he’d make himself even less popular if he lit up in the car.

  This was the second warning, albeit something of a failure, but still. If the cops hadn’t happened to come around the corner when they did, the computer shop wouldn’t be there now. The whole thing would have gone up in smoke, just like that. Whoosh!

  And all because he had chosen to break rule number one again.

  He’d dragged Mange into this and it had almost cost Mange his shop. In other words, they must have been watching them somehow, either electronically, or else there were people out there following him.

  The thought made HP’s skin crawl. He couldn’t help looking in the side mirror. There was a car behind them, a Ford, to judge by the lights. It was keeping its distance, didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

  “My mom’s sister’s got a small cottage on an allotment in Tanto,” Mange said curtly, and it took HP a couple of seconds before he worked out what Mange meant.

  “I’ll move out tomorrow.”

  Silence filled the car again.

  Another glance in the mirror; the Ford was still there. One of its headlights was more yellow than the other. A replacement rather than the original, HP guessed.

  Now Mange seemed to have noticed that something was up, because he too was taking long looks in the rearview mirror.

  “I need to make a couple of calls,” he muttered, clutching the wheel. “We need to work out who these bastards are, HP, and once we’ve done that, you have to promise me that you’re goin
g to give them some serious payback from me. Kick some ass, you get me?”

  HP smiled and nodded.

  “I promise, Mange,” and this time Mange didn’t correct him.

  They fell silent again.

  He tried to think. Could he really promise Mange that he’d whip the Game Master’s backside? Sure, he was fucking upset with the way they were treating him, and this latest move on his friend had definitely crossed the line.

  But still. What a couple of hustlers they must have sent to do the job! A couple of cretins who didn’t even check the area before they set to work. He’d seen a can of spray paint in the gutter a few meters away. The cops didn’t seem to have noticed it, or if they had, they hadn’t linked it to the break-in.

  But HP got the message, loud and clear. First, set light to the shop, then write the message. All of it filmed. That sort of assignment would be worth a thousand points or so, maybe more. Not a job for newbies, in other words.

  Give the job to Luca Brasi.

  And yet they’d still managed to fuck it up, even though there were two of them! He could have handled something like that solo, but good people are hard to find, even for a Game Master, apparently.

  After all, he’d been first runner-up for a reason, number 128, the man that not even all the king’s horses could stop. If he could just talk to the Game Master, get a chance to explain himself.

  He saw Mange cast another anxious glance in the rearview mirror and decided to park any thoughts of that nature for the time being. Mange was looking completely paranoid now, as if he was going to burst any second, and his foot was on the floor of the battered little Polo, even though it had already had to work hard on its way into the city. It was shaking like it had Parkinson’s and HP quickly pulled on his seat belt, even though it didn’t actually make him feel much safer.

  The Ford was still some fifty meters behind them.

  Their exit ramp was getting closer, but Mange showed no sign of turning off.

  Instead he stuck in the right-hand lane, slowing down a bit so that the Ford almost caught up with them.

  Just as they were about to pass the exit ramp, he changed down a gear and suddenly wrenched the wheel to the right, making HP grab the door handle in horror to stop himself flying out of his seat. The Polo’s tires protested loudly and they missed the barrier at the end of the access ramp with the smallest possible margin, swerving up the road and flying through a red light, all without Mange so much as touching the brake pedal.

  “Calm down, for fuck’s sake!” HP yelled, trying to make himself heard above the pained howl of the Polo, but Mange didn’t seem to be listening. The knuckles clutching the wheel were white and he was grinding his jaw like he was on acid.

  HP twisted his head to look for the Ford, but the road behind them was completely empty.

  “You can calm down, Mange,” he said in a gentler tone of voice. “There’s no one behind us.”

  This time Mange seemed to hear him and, after checking and double-checking what HP had said in the rearview mirror, he eased up slightly on the accelerator.

  HP sat up in his seat and took a couple of deep, relieved breaths. Mange wasn’t much of a driver at the best of times, and the Jason Bourne maneuver he had just pulled could have ended really badly.

  The Ford seemed to have been completely halal, the driver hadn’t even swerved in an attempt to follow them, but Mange didn’t seem to have noticed that. Instead he seemed to be looking for new pursuers to race with. They still had a way to go, and HP had to find a way to snap Mange out of this paranoia if they weren’t going to end up in Huddinge Hospital.

  “Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask . . .” he managed to splutter.

  “Shoot,” Mange muttered, without taking his eyes from the rearview mirror.

  “This whole carpet-seller routine of yours.”

  “Hmm . . .”

  “Well, I suppose I’m wondering why, really? I mean . . . you’ve tried a whole load of different stuff over the years. The vegan thing, local politics, Amnesty . . . You never stuck with any one thing for too long. Like that screen saver you’ve got in the shop: If you don’t change . . .”

  “Then what’s the point of anything happening to you?” Mange concluded, and suddenly took a break from staring in the mirror. “Fuck, HP, sometimes you do listen to what I say!”

  The trick worked, Mange’s jaw stopped grinding and his rigid grasp of the steering wheel relaxed slightly. A bit of practical philosophy and a few Couplandisms, that was Mange’s bag—he was considerably better at that than street racing in the suburbs. Best to keep him in his comfort zone . . .

  “So why did you get hooked on Islam in particular?” he blurted out, and to his own surprise realized that he was actually curious to know the answer. He didn’t really have any idea why Mange had converted. Damn it, what sort of a best friend was he, seeing as he’d never even asked . . . ?

  “I mean, there’s a whole load of religions out there to choose from . . .” he went on rather vaguely.

  “Well, giving to the poor, putting spiritual concerns above worldly ones, helping a brother in need . . . what’s not to like?” Mange smiled wryly as the Polo’s speed slowed to a more normal level.

  “Women covered up, suicide bombers, holy war, there are quite a few options, aren’t there . . . ?”

  Mange sighed wearily.

  “Most of that has very little to do with religion, if you look below the surface . . . There are fanatics everywhere, but here in the West we get much more worked up about men in beards burning flags in Damascus than we do about smooth-shaven men with pudding-bowl haircuts blowing up abortion clinics in Detroit.”

  “So you mean the whole jihad thing is mainly a question of bad PR . . . ?”

  “Something like that.” Mange grinned, almost back to his normal self again. “Just like the Bible, the Koran is ninety perscent about living your life in a decent way, focusing on love and mercy, and being a good person. The last ten percent is stuff that might have been important for the survival of the tribe in the desert a fuck of a long time ago, but which is basically nonsense these days. Unfortunately not everyone seems to have worked out that we’re living in the twenty-first century, or else they choose not to for a variety of reasons. That’s hardly unique to Islam. We’re good at focusing on the wrong things here in the West as well. Just look at the war on terror . . .”

  He shook his head unhappily.

  “Fear is a strong instrument of power, brother, extremely strong, in fact. If you pluck the right strings, people stay docile, concentrate on idiotic rubbish, and don’t complain about the things that are really important, like freedom of expression and thought and other fundamental human rights. It works both ways.”

  “So a lot of our lack of trust is a sort of mutual power trip? Each country’s Big Brother stands to gain if we stay scared of each other?”

  “Exactly, brother, you’ve hit the nail on the head!” Mange hit the wheel with one hand.

  HP shrugged. Hell, maybe the Mangster actually had a point?

  “. . . And the name? I mean, I get the Al-Hassan, seeing as your dad’s name’s Hasse, but why Farook?”

  “Well, as I’m sure you know, Magnus means ‘great,’ which doesn’t exactly apply to me . . .”

  HP couldn’t help grinning.

  Mange was small and wiry, with thick glasses, and his hairline was already halfway to the North Pole. In purely physical terms, he wasn’t what you’d call great.

  “I’ve never really felt much like a Magnus, and Mange sounds so eighties. It just seemed to make sense when I converted. Farook is someone who can tell good and bad apart. Someone who helps others find the right path. Religion helped me to sort out a whole load of stuff, and I hope I might be able to do the same for other people.”

  “So that’s why you haven’t given up even on such a hopeless case as me? You’re my spiritual guide?”

  “Something like that, brother, something like t
hat.” Mange smiled, then turned on the car radio.

  All readings back to normal, HP thought happily and slumped down slightly in his seat. But he couldn’t help taking the occasional surreptitious glance in the side mirror.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Rebecca was sitting outside the door to an anonymous conference room in the Parliament building with a cup of coffee from a vending machine in her hand. It was really far too early for her to be back at work, but she’d insisted and no one had protested, not even Anderberg. Besides, the Personal Protection Unit was on its knees in advance of the EU presidency, and every man or woman who was able to work was welcome. All of the reserves had been called up, meaning that they had an extra twenty-five people who had previously served in the unit. But they were still having trouble covering all their duties.

  Rebecca’s charge was behind the conference-room door, and, according to the schedule, would be there for at least another two hours. Wikström, with whom she was sharing the assignment, had just headed down to the canteen to have a quick lunch, and in half an hour’s time, when he got back, she would be doing the same.

  Scenarios like this were what bodyguard work mainly consisted of. Waiting, more waiting, and then a move to a different location where the waiting would begin again. There was no way to pass the time apart from taking short walks along the corridor or talking to your colleagues. Books and MP3 players, the things other people used to pass the time, were obviously banned in her line of work. Ninety-five percent of the time was pure routine mixed with tedium. The difficulty was staying alert and ready for the remaining five percent that weren’t routine and that she had already experienced more than her fair share of . . .

  She had four years left of her secondment to the Security Police, and she had already seen more action than most bodyguards did in their entire careers.

  In spite of what had happened, she still liked the job, the whole deal of being a protector, in charge of a situation. Detailed planning, checking routes, and escape plans, thinking through every possible scenario with the others in the unit. If X occurs, I’ll do Y and you do Z.