And in the meantime other things vanished under the radar. In actual fact the whole thing was just a variation of what the gang at ArgosEye did. Filling the bulletin board with their own posters so there was no room for anything else.
Over the next few weeks absolutely everything would be about the explosion and all the question marks surrounding it, and ArgosEye would make sure that the shift in focus lasted long enough.
The only question was: What were they trying to hide?
It had to be something big, that much at least was obvious.
So what the hell was he going to do now?
Obviously he could go to the press, but what evidence did he have? He, a convicted criminal who had just been deported from an Arab country, directing various unspecified accusations at a well-established Swedish businessman. Not only that, but a wonderful little combo of accusations involving global conspiracy theories, various intelligence agencies, and secret societies. God, he might as well make himself a hand-painted sign and join the other nuts protesting outside Parliament.
No, he really only had two options.
One: pack his bags and head off into the sunset like a poor lonesome cowboy.
Or two: so much easier! He’d find out what they were planning and put a stop to the whole thing!
Yippikayee, mothafuckers!
♦ ♦ ♦
The guy in the pilot’s sunglasses and his weird friend double-parked outside her door and went with her all the way up to her flat. They even carried her bags, and then politely declined her offer of a cup of coffee as thanks for their help.
“Here,” Sunglasses said, rooting through his jacket pockets. During the drive he had introduced himself as Nox. “Your brother wanted you to have this.”
He handed her a cell phone and charger.
“Pay as you go. Keep it switched on, he’ll call soon.”
He made an odd drumming gesture against the side of his nose.
“Don’t you worry, little lady, Nox will look out for you!”
♦ ♦ ♦
He watched the intern show up on his scooter, parking it right outside the door. It looked like the same guy he’d met several weeks ago, but all these kids looked the same. Long, greasy hair, his entire head covered in spots. Throw in a pair of washed-out jeans, red Counter-Strike eyes, and a creased T-shirt and you’d pretty much covered all of Mange’s little disciples.
A bit of rattling with the key in the lock, then a few minutes’ wait to let the guy switch off the alarm and start things up before he crossed the street.
He opened the door, but to his surprise he wasn’t welcomed by the usual tune from the doorbell.
Maybe Wally Work Experience had got fed up with it, or else he simply didn’t share Mange’s fascination with Star Wars.
Nor was the guy hanging over the counter with a cup of bitter coffee and a crumpled copy of Metro the way his master usually did. Instead HP found him toward the back of the shop, in front of one of the larger computers.
He was probably surfing for porn, playing a bit of pocket billiards while checking out the Internet’s latest accomplishments. “Naughty Annie stuffs her Fanny,” “Donkey-Hung IV,” or other cinematic masterpieces proudly presented by the World Wide Web . . .
“Does your boss know what you’re doing?” HP shouted, making the young man almost fall off his chair.
“What!?”
The guy was staring at him in shock.
“Calm down, lad, I’m not that dangerous.”
HP grinned and pointed to his own chest.
“I come in peace. Take me to your leader!”
He nodded benevolently at the kid, who still looked completely blank.
“Ah, what the hell . . .” HP chuckled when the joke seemed to pass him by. “I need to get hold of Mange or Farook or whatever the hell he’s calling himself this week. Is he still away? His old email and Messenger don’t seem to be working.”
“Er . . . ?!”
Finally, something resembling a sign of life . . .
“Well . . . the boss is in Saudi or somewhere like that . . . He’s got a new Hotmail. Do you want it . . . ?”
“Bingo!”
The young man grinned with relief and a minute or so later he’d managed to dig out a scrap of paper and a pen.
“You’re HP, yeah?” he went on in a slightly less shaky voice.
“Mmh,” HP muttered from the corner of his mouth while he was jotting down Mange’s contact details.
“Mange has said a lot about you . . . You sound like a pretty cool dude. Seen a lot of stuff, I mean.”
“Really, you reckon?” HP said, looking up. “Obviously, I can neither confirm or deny any rumors . . .” he added with a smile.
After all, you had to give kids a chance . . .
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Dear Rebecca,
I have encouraging news from Darfur.
It looks as if there is a sequence of film showing the incident.
Someone who was at the scene seems to have recorded the whole thing using the camera on his cell, and we are currently doing our best to try to get hold of the recording.
Hopefully we will have it within a couple of days.
While I am writing, I wonder if I might ask for your help?
I should very much like to contact your brother.
For a long time now I have been hoping for an opportunity to talk to him in person, to tell him a little more about your father. I might perhaps even be able to rehabilitate Erland a little in Henrik’s eyes. Unfortunately Henrik is not a very easy person to get hold of, and as I myself am often away traveling I haven’t yet managed to arrange a meeting.
I shall be setting off again shortly, probably for a rather long trip, and I would very much appreciate it if you could tell me by return where I might be able to reach him.
With very best wishes,
Tage Sammer
She had just read the email when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me!”
“Yes, so I can hear . . .”
“We probably need to talk . . .”
“You reckon . . . ?”
“Come on, Becca, this isn’t the time to get all grumpy. Do you know Philip Argos? Nox said it looked like you did.”
“Who?”
“Philip Argos, previously known as Philip John Martinsson. My former boss and a seriously fucking nasty piece of work . . .”
She sighed.
“It’s complicated . . .”
♦ ♦ ♦
Okay, so the situation was actually even worse than he had imagined.
Nox had done his job impeccably, which wasn’t really that strange. After all, he had stumped up the rent on a flat for the Chief for the next six months, and thrown another ten cartons of cigarettes into the bargain, so now the two nuts were neighbors down on the ground floor.
But what he had found out over the past few days was considerably more troubling.
She’d lied to him!
She had never explained what she had been doing in Östermalm that morning, and as usual he had been a bit too focused on himself to ask.
What annoyed him most was that he had actually believed that the whole thing was a huge damned coincidence. That karma had put her there like some angel of salvation . . .
Whereas in fact she was more like a tart who’d just tumbled out of Philip’s bed after a night of passion . . .
His life had pretty much always been basically screwed up, but he had always been able to rely on Becca. She was the one who helped him keep his head above water. But now she’d let him down, several times over. First she’d jumped into bed with his worst enemy, and then lied about it, or at the very least neglected to tell the truth.
It wasn’t Stoffe who’d blabbed about him—it was his own sister.
Damn!
Damn!
DAMN!!!
He had to take a bre
ak from the computer, go for a little four-meter walk to the door and back, until he calmed down a bit.
The whole thing was like some evil bastard flashback to the days when Dag had her under his thumb. When he almost lost her . . .
To begin with he had admired Dag, thinking of him as a big brother when he and Becca were dating. He hadn’t really wanted to see how Dag was treating her, even though the signs were there. Because Dag was a cool guy, the sort you wanted to hang out with, get a pat on the back from. It had been Mange who opened his eyes and made him realize what Dag was really like, what was actually happening. When he finally woke up from his admiring sleep, he started to hate Dag almost as much as he hated his dad.
Up to now he hadn’t actually hated Philip Argos. On some level HP had still been able to understand why his boss was acting the way he was. Because after all, he had betrayed Philip’s trust, put his whole plan at risk. Cause and effect, so to speak. But now that had all changed.
Now it was freaking personal!
♦ ♦ ♦
The situation was actually even worse than she had imagined.
Last time it had been the sinking of the Estonia and Palme’s murder, but this . . .
When she had finally got him to start talking, he didn’t stop. The words had tumbled out of him like a torrent, especially once she herself had been honest and at least tried to explain about her disastrous date with John, a.k.a. Philip Argos.
She had done her best to believe him, really, really tried hard. But it just wouldn’t go in. Companies cleaning up the Internet, directing blogs and discussion forums while simultaneously collaborating with forces that carried out fake terrorist attacks in order to shift the media’s focus away from things they wanted to hide . . .
Seriously?
And as if that weren’t enough, he had thrown in a bit more—hired assassins, secret Google algorithms, and clairvoyant Lidingö ladies, only to end up back where it had all started.
That bloody Game . . .
38
ONLINE GAMES
Pillars of Society forum
Posted: 29 December, 18:41
By: MayBey
Little Henrik’s holed up in a shabby little hostel for single men on Södermalm. He probably thinks he’s safe.
But we know better, don’t we?
This post has 29 comments
Goodboy.821 says: Are you there?
Farook says: Good to hear from you brother. Long time no c . . . ;)
Goodboy.821 says: Far too long old friend—my bad . . .
Farook says: Did u miss me??
Goodboy.821 says: Fuck off Mange!1!1
Goodboy.821 says: Did you get my email?
Farook says: Yep but it took a while to decrypt. You’re more paranoid about the net than me these days.
Goodboy.821 says: With good reason as you can see . . .
Farook says: Yeah I get it. I’ve read the whole thing.
Goodboy.821 says: And?
Farook says:I completely agree with you brother. What Argos is doing is wrong on more levels than I can think of. It goes against the whole point of the Internet. I know loads of people who’d love to drag those trolls into the light. The trojan’s no problem, I can put one of those together in a couple of days, even from here . . . The only question is how to get it into the system . . .
Farook says: But it must be possible to hack in. I know a few people who could probably manage it, but it might take a couple of months. And you never know how effective that’s going to be, there’s a pretty good chance the attack would be discovered and then the effect would be limited. Same thing if you try to email the trojan in as a hidden file . . .
Goodboy.821 says: Ok, not really the answer I was hoping for . . .
Farook says: I can imagine . . .
Goodboy.821 says: Other ideas?
Farook says: Well, if you can’t send it in from outside, the only other option is to introduce it manually.
Goodboy.821 says: Go on!
Farook says: Ok, thinking out loud here, but if you go down that road you need a computer with full access. An ordinary workstation won’t do. You said yourself that they’d disabled the USB ports on the ordinary rigs so you need to find the right machine, you copy?
Goodboy.821 says: Copy!
Farook says: But obviously that’s a lot more dangerous, you get that too?
Goodboy.821 says: Just sort the trojan and leave the rest with me . . .
♦ ♦ ♦
She wound the clip backward and forward.
Grainy footage, presumably taken with the camera of a cell, but it wasn’t hard to see what they showed. The red ground, people in ragged clothes, and in the middle of them the black cars. Then you heard shots; the camera lurched wildly between ground and sky. The whole scenario felt unreal. As if she had dreamed the same thing over and over again, but this time the dream was being projected on a screen instead of inside her head.
Then the vehicle reversing came so close that the cameraman had to jump out of the way. A short glimpse of a dark-haired woman hanging off the door. Then suddenly he was there.
Right in front of the car, and even if the camera only picked him up for a second, that was more than enough. If you paused the clip you could see plenty of detail. His clothes, far too neat and clean for him to blend in properly, then a glimpse of something like a well-polished, black army boot below one trouser leg. The yellow plastic bag dangling from his free hand.
Then, finally, the enormous black revolver pointing straight at the car.
“Sent in an anonymous email to the prosecutor yesterday,” her lawyer had told her.
The clip had been sent for analysis, but if it was genuine she could count on being back on duty after the New Year holiday.
In other words, Uncle Tage had kept his promise.
The least she could do in return was to do as he asked.
She pulled out the pay-as-you-go cell and pressed the Call button.
“Yes.” His voice sounded cold when he answered.
The sound of traffic in the background told her he was outside.
“Monument,” she said curtly.
“What?!”
“The Monument Hotel, that’s where you’re staying, isn’t it?”
There was silence on the line.
“Are you still there?”
“Sure. So who told you?”
He was trying to sound relaxed, but she had no trouble hearing how worried he was.
“Have you ever heard of anyone calling themselves MayBey?”
“MayBey, you mean that pretend cop?”
“What do you mean, ‘pretend’ . . . ? You know him?”
“Sort of, I checked your computer the other night while you were out. Saw you’d pasted together a document with quotes, then took a look at the forum. That’s the sort of thing I did when I was working for Philip . . .”
Then a car horn, and the sound cut out for a moment, and for a few seconds she thought the call had been broken.
Then she heard his footsteps. It sounded a bit like he was running.
“Did what, Henke?” she said irritably. “Look, I don’t feel like playing your silly games right now . . .”
“Trolling.”
“Like I . . .”
“Going into different forums anonymously and screwing up the debate, or trying to steer it in the right direction, so to speak. Weren’t you listening when I told you all this the last time we spoke?”
She sighed.
“You said loads of stuff, Henke, and most of it wasn’t very nice—”
“To hell with that,” he interrupted. “Whatever, this MayBey shows all the symptoms of troll disease.”
“Which are . . . ?”
“He picks up words and jargon from others on the forum. Manages to get accepted. Then he starts tossing in little firecrackers, and soon enough everyone’s attention is focused on him.
“He doesn’t seem to be an attack troll, because he’d be swear
ing all the time and causing loads of trouble, so at a guess he’s got some sort of agenda.”
“But how can you be so sure he’s not a police officer?”
“Okay, so the police jargon sounds right. But a real cop would hardly need to throw in a load of film quotes.”
“What?!”
She could almost hear him grinning.
“So you hadn’t noticed? Well, I didn’t check that thoroughly, but there were quotes from De Niro and Clint on there, I’m sure of that. That line about a ‘rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk,’ for instance, that’s from Taxi Driver . . .”
He paused, but she could still hear his quick footsteps.
“Besides, there’s his name,” he went on. “In the world of forums, names always mean something, even the trolls’ . . . To show how damned smart they are, dangling bait in front of people’s noses without anyone noticing.”
“So, MayBey?”
“Well, to start with there’s the obvious connection to Maybe. And that’s the name of Judge Dredd’s archenemy. A serial killer who loves playing all sorts of games with the police . . . But if that wasn’t enough, there’s the whole anagram thing. Internet jockeys love anagrams. MayBey—Abyme?”
He left a dramatic pause and she had no choice but to spring the trap.
“And?”
“Mise en Abyme is a film term for looking into an abyss. I learned that at Adult Education . . .”
For a moment his voice sounded strained and he cleared his throat.
“Like when you put two mirrors opposite each other, kind of. A copy of a copy, ad infinitum. Doubly unreal, yeah? Like a dream within a . . .”
“Dream . . .” she concluded.
♦ ♦ ♦
Shit, they were on his trail!
He ought to just forget about the hotel, forget about his stuff, and find another hiding place at once. But he couldn’t leave the phone there. It was his only link to the Game, and as long as he had that, he had at least some sort of physical proof that they actually existed.
He cautiously poked his head above the wall behind the hotel.
No obvious danger.
The little bit of wood he had poked into the catch of the emergency exit at the top of the fire escape was still there, so he had no trouble getting to the right floor. The corridor was empty, but to be on the safe side he waited a minute or so before creeping up to his door.
Buzz: A Thriller Page 29