The Game Trilogy

by Anders de la Motte

As she emerged onto the street she looked round carefully before walking off towards the bus stop. One block away an old car started up, but the sound of the engine was almost swallowed by the snowdrifts and she didn’t notice it.

  It was the photograph of the failed suicide bomber that put him on the scent. A terrible picture that the evening tabloids were making the most of, obviously.

  The picture was taken from directly above – someone must have leaned right out of a window to look down. The lifeless body, the dark stains on the snow, debris and broken plate-glass windows, it was all clearly visible.

  But what caught HP’s attention was a small detail at the edge of the chaos. At the very top of the picture, on its own in the snow, was a little rectangular object that stopped him dead. The hair on the back of his neck stood up just like it had in the H P Lovecraft tunnel. He didn’t even need to zoom in to work out what it was.

  A mobile phone! A shiny one that looks very fucking similar to the one in his wardrobe.

  Once his brain had made the connection it wasn’t that hard to carry on with the rest of the puzzle. First a bit of googling among the traditional media.

  ‘The second terrorist attack in Sweden in the last two years …’

  ‘It’s clear that international terrorism is here to stay.’

  ‘Experts in terrorism agree that there are at least three hundred potential terrorists in Sweden …’

  ‘The opposition parties, which had previously opposed increased surveillance, have now decided to back the measures …’

  ‘A poll of our readers indicates that an overwhelming majority of the Swedish people support a strengthening of …’

  It was that last sentence that made him change his focus and head out into his old hunting grounds. It didn’t take him many minutes to find the right place. Some of the trolls seemed to have changed their names, but he could still recognize them by the way they expressed themselves.

  ‘M00reon’, ‘M1crosrf’ and ‘JabRue’ were his own creations. But there were also old favourites like ‘VAO’, ‘Bosse Baldersson’, ‘Ljugo Juli’ and ‘Lasse Danielsson’. He tested every troll name he could remember, and the results exceeded all his expectations.

  From the day after the bombing, all of them – the whole lot, tutti – without one single fucking exception, had posted comments that one way or another dealt with the terrorist attack. When he switched to the blogs the results were basically the same. Even the most superficial bloggers had something to say on the subject, even if it was just clichés like ‘Fucking awful’ or ‘My sisters best friend was like a minute from being blone up …’

  The conclusion was crystal clear!!

  ArgosEye was fanning the flames as much as it possibly could, and the whole opinion-shaping machinery had cranked into action precisely twelve hours after the failed suicide bombing.

  Coincidence?

  Well, of course it could be.

  But considering what he already knew …

  NFW!

  No Fucking Way!!!!!

  She had a heavy bag of groceries in each hand and her gym bag on her back. She was only ten metres from the bus when the doors closed and it pulled away from the pavement with a hiss.

  She swore loudly to herself, thought about waiting for the next one, then decided to walk the two kilometres or so home from Fridhemsplan.

  By the time she was about halfway she had already regretted her decision several times.

  In spite of her gloves, the bags were cutting into her hands and making her stop more and more often to let the blood back into her fingers. And the pavements hadn’t been properly gritted and she came close to slipping over several times.

  She had just passed the park beside the teacher training college when the dark car glided up next to her. To the right of her, on the other side of the high fence, cars were streaming out of the Fredhäll tunnel, and the noise and movement of the traffic down on the E4 was probably why she didn’t react until the car had stopped and the thickset man was standing in her path.

  ‘Get in,’ he said abruptly and opened the back door.

  ‘What?’

  On the other side of the car the driver’s door opened and a red-haired woman, about the same age as her, got out and walked round the car.

  ‘Get in!’ the man repeated. ‘There’s someone who wants to talk to you …’

  She leaned over and peered inside the car, which she thought was a Mercedes.

  John was sitting inside.

  ‘Please get in, Rebecca,’ he said softly.

  She glanced quickly to her left. The woman was on the pavement behind her.

  Like the man on the other side of her, the woman had her jacket undone in a way that Rebecca recognized, with one hand on her belt inside the opening of the jacket.

  She took a step back towards the fence.

  Suddenly she realized that she recognized the man beside her.

  ‘You were on my bus,’ she stated drily. ‘But you were much nicer then …’

  ‘Are you going to get in, or what …?’ he replied.

  ‘What happens if I say no?’

  The man took half a pace forward, and the woman did the same on the other side.

  ‘Let’s all take this nice and calmly,’ John said from the rear seat of the car. ‘I’m sorry about our little misunderstanding the other day, I really am, Rebecca … I was tired and had had too much to drink, and as a result I misjudged the whole situation. I hope you can accept my apology, and I can assure you that I have no intention of seeking revenge in any way at all.’

  He pointed to the plaster on his nose.

  ‘If you’d be so kind as to get in, we’ll drive you home. It’s only a few hundred metres, but those bags look heavy …’

  As he finished his sentence the big man held out one hand to take her bags, repeating his gesture from the bus. She hesitated. The man and woman were almost imperceptibly closing in on her. Slowly she put the bags down on the ground and took a step backwards.

  It had taken several days for the penny to drop. ACME Telecom Services Ltd – that was the company listed at the office bunker he and Rehyman the Boy Wonder had stealth-raided, the place they discovered that the Game was being steered from. Until he had blown the whole place sky high, that is …

  So, ACME Telecom Services.

  A proud member of the PayTag Group, it had said on their website.

  If he had been even the slightest bit doubtful about his mission before, then all considerations were now totally Scarlett O’Hara’ed.

  PayTag owned ACME, and ACME hosted the Game.

  And your conclusion, Sherlock?

  PayTag was the Game!

  Suddenly the pavement was lit up by the lights of another car, very bright, albeit the car was a considerably scruffier one.

  It stopped in the middle of the road for a few seconds, then backed sharply to park behind the Mercedes. A scrawny little man in a leather jacket, cowboy boots and pilot’s sunglasses jumped out of the passenger side.

  ‘What’s all this then?’ he said, taking several authoritative steps towards them.

  The man and woman on either side of Rebecca exchanged glances.

  ‘What do you mean?’ the man replied, lowering the hand he had been holding out towards Rebecca.

  ‘Renko, surveillance,’ said the man in sunglasses, waving a little black wallet. ‘No stopping here, and that applies to Mercs as well, yeah …?’

  ‘We were just offering to give this lady a lift …’

  ‘Off you go, now, my partner and I can drive Normén home.’

  The man in sunglasses gestured over his shoulder with his thumb towards the ramshackle car. The driver’s door was open now. A man in a green army jacket got out with some difficulty and straightened up to his full height. Rebecca saw the woman to her left unconsciously take half a step back, and was close to doing the same herself.

  The man was huge, at least 2.10 metres tall, and almost a metre across the shoulders.

/>   His long hair hung down on both sides of his head, and what with that and a large fur hat, most of his face was hidden. Not that you really felt you wanted to see it.

  ‘Okay, off you go, unless you want an A-penalty …’ the man in sunglasses chattered, waving with one hand. ‘Normén, you hop in the back, the rescue patrol is ready to depart.’

  He pulled his sunglasses down onto the tip of his nose and winked at her.

  Rebecca took a step towards the car. The woman was still standing in her way.

  For a few seconds they just stared at each other.

  Then the red-haired woman slowly stepped aside.

  A few moments later Rebecca was sitting in the surveillance car. It was full of rubbish and smelled odd, almost as if something had died in there. The driver’s seat was pushed so far back that the huge man at the wheel might as well have been sitting beside her on the back seat. The car radio was playing some old song she vaguely recognized.

  The Mercedes performed an angry u-turn and drove off quickly in the direction of the Western Bridge.

  ‘Okay!’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘First: if you two clowns are going to play at being police officers again, it’s an O-penalty, not A … And second: where’s my idiot of a brother, and what the hell is he up to?’

  37

  Blamegames

  Pillars of Society forum

  Posted: 28 December, 18:06

  By: MayBey

  So what’s it to be?

  Do you want me to get him?

  Thumbs up, or down?

  Time to cast your vote …

  This post has 231 comments

  The more he thought about it, the more sense it all made. The takeover of the company and Anna’s murder had been just the preamble. The real match had only started with the failed bombing.

  The guy had been loaded with various explosives and other horrors, and had been just fifty metres from one of the busiest parts of Stockholm. Yet somehow he had still managed to fuck the whole thing up.

  Even though he must have run the entire length of Drottninggatan, and presumably passed hundreds of Christmas shoppers tipsy from mulled wine, the bomb had gone off in a place where basically no-one but him had been hurt.

  Obviously it could be a miracle, or the poor sod might have panicked. Changed his mind or simply been a bit too heavy-handed with his home-brewed internet explosives.

  But there was also another possibility.

  That someone had detonated the bomb remotely so that it got maximum attention but did minimum damage. Pretty much like Player 128’s little adventure with the Horse-Guards in Kista. He had thought long and hard about why the Game had made the call that would detonate the explosives so long before the cortege containing the US Secretary of State was due to get there. If he hadn’t been smart enough to see through the Game Master’s bullshit, he’d probably have been the only victim of the blast, just like the bomber in the city centre.

  But it was all about shifting people’s focus. Creating an event that was both spectacular and simultaneously raised enough questions for the media and all the so-called experts to be able to argue about on every news channel available.

  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 notice-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 fuck 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 nutters 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 mobile 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 work-experience kid 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 face covered in spots. Throw in a pair of washed-out jeans, red, Counterstrike eyes and a creased t-shirt and you’d pretty much covered all of Manga’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 of it, or else he simply didn’t share Manga’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 towards the back of the shop, in front of one of the larger computers.

  He was probably surfing for porn, playing pocket billiards, 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 Manga or Farook or whatever the fuck 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 Manga’s contact details.

  ‘Manga 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 rumours …’ he added with a smile.

  After all, you had to give kids a chance …

  To: becca.normen@hotmail.com

  From: t.sammer@gmail.com

  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 is said to have recorded the whole thing using the camera on his mobile, and we are currently doing our best 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 travelling 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 that 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 nutters were neighbours 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.