The Game Trilogy

by Anders de la Motte

  Problems?

  Don’t give up, we can help you!

  070-931151

  He peered suspiciously at the message for a few seconds. Admittedly, he could do with a bit of instant salvation, but a subscription to Watchtower was hardly going to help.

  At least the cops had had the decency to fix the door, he noted. More or less, at any rate. Two of the locks were completely buggered, but the third seemed to have survived pretty much unscathed.

  The crooked frame creaked in complaint as he pushed the door open.

  Just as he stepped inside he thought he heard a noise from the neighbour’s door, and for a few moments he imagined someone was about to come out.

  He quickly closed the door behind him and then put his eye to the spyhole, but his new neighbour must have had a change of heart because nothing happened.

  Oh well, sooner or later they were bound to bump into each other. Right now he had other things to think about. Considerably more important things …

  The cops evidently hadn’t found the USB memory stick he had hidden in a jar of coffee in the kitchen, but otherwise the flat looked pretty much as he had expected. Every drawer had been emptied, the shelves cleared and the stained mattress on the bed turned upside down.

  Some of his things were missing, he knew that already. He had been given a copy of the list of items they had seized before he was turfed out of the police station. The only question was how much wiser the cops would be after examining a few dog-eared paperbacks and a collection of action films. Not to mention his extensive collection of adult movies …

  As luck would have it, he hadn’t had any dope in the flat for months, he could hardly even remember the last time he had smoked a joint. Must have been in Dubai after that fake Frenchman-slash-hitman had given him a bad trip and then tried to frame him for the murder of sex goddess Anna Argos.

  These days he steered clear of dope – he was paranoid enough as it was.

  He spent ten minutes clearing up the worst of the mess, then threw himself down on the bed.

  ‘Oh, a letter came for you …’ Micke said when they had almost finished eating. ‘Something about a safe deposit box.’

  She started, but he seemed to misinterpret her reaction.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to open your post. I just saw the SEB bank logo on the envelope and assumed it must be for me. I’ve just got a bit too much on my mind right now …’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve got no secrets from you …’

  … any more, a little voice inside her head added, and to judge by Micke’s reaction he must have heard it as well.

  He stood up quickly and came back with the torn-open envelope.

  Dear Rebecca Normén,

  The contract regarding safe deposit box 0679406948, listing you as one of the key-holders, is about to expire.

  Please contact our branch at 6 Sveavägen in Stockholm to discuss the extension of the contract.

  If we fail to hear from you within thirty (30) days from the date of this letter, the box will be opened in the presence of a public notary and the contents stored by the bank for a further sixty (60) days. After that the contents will be disposed of at auction and any eventual profit, minus a handling charge, will be placed in a bank account in the names of the key-holders.

  Yours faithfully,

  L. Helander

  SEB

  ‘I thought safe deposit boxes disappeared years ago,’ Micke said in an exaggeratedly amused voice. ‘A tin box hidden in an underground vault feels like a pretty old-fashioned way to store valuables. More the sort of thing my parents or grandparents would do. I didn’t know you had one …?’

  ‘Nor did I,’ she returned blandly.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to change his mind.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ he asked a few seconds later.

  ‘W-what?’ She looked up from the letter.

  ‘It’s Friday evening, and just for once we’re both off at the same time. How about the cinema?’

  ‘Don’t you want to work? I thought you were up to your neck …?’

  ‘I am, but it can wait till tomorrow. The new Clooney looks interesting.’

  He was still acting with exaggerated cheerfulness, but neither his tone of voice nor his smile convinced her. Okay, so they had talked through everything. She had told him the least hurtful details about her affair with her colleague, Tobbe Lundh, and Micke had said that he forgave her. That he believed her assurance that the whole thing had been a stupid mistake and that he was the one she loved.

  But even though six months had passed since her confession, and even though he had never raised the subject again – not even during one of their rare quarrels – she had no trouble at all picking up the emotion that was bubbling beneath his urbane exterior.

  He didn’t trust her …

  And he was hardly alone in that …

  He picked up the paper from one of the kitchen chairs and leafed through until he found the right page.

  ‘It’s on at Filmstaden on Södermalm, we could aim for the nine o’clock screening and grab a beer afterwards …’

  Her first instinct was to say no. Her computer was full of work she needed to do, things that couldn’t really wait. But a film and a few beers might manage to reinforce the illusion that their relationship was still working. It might even get her brain to skip the usual nightmare and make it easier for her to sleep.

  She could always hope.

  ‘Sure, great! Let’s go for it!’ She tried to sound as though she meant it. ‘Do you want to get the tickets now?’

  ‘Yep!’

  He got up to fetch his laptop and she took the chance to read the letter once more.

  A tin box hidden in an underground vault …

  For some reason she couldn’t help shivering.

  4

  Knowledge is power

  ‘Hello, my name’s Rebecca Normén. Apparently I’ve got a safe deposit box here?’

  She held out the letter and her driving licence to the man behind the counter.

  She was in a small reception area behind an anonymous door right next to Sergels torg in the centre of the city. She must have walked past it a thousand times without ever noticing it. A buzzer and an entry-phone, a reception desk and one solitary man in a suit. Behind him a short flight of steps led down to a dark steel door. It would all have looked perfectly innocent if it hadn’t been for the unobtrusive little round cameras in the ceiling. Five of them, exactly the same sort as in Police Headquarters, which had to be at least three more than necessary. Every point in the room was covered from at least two angles.

  ‘You need to use your card …’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your passcard … To get into the vault you need to use your passcard,’ the man explained, gesturing backwards with his thumb at the metal door behind him.

  ‘It also opens the right section of the vault. Then you use the key to open the box itself. You have got a key?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’ve haven’t got a passcard or a key. To be honest, I didn’t even know I had a deposit box until I received this letter from you. I was hoping you might be able to give me a bit more information …’ She nodded at the sheet of paper in front of him.

  ‘I see. Just one moment …’

  He began tapping at his keyboard, and she noticed a little screen set discreetly into the counter.

  When the man turned slightly to one side she noticed another detail. On one of his shoulders there was a slight but very familiar bulge, a thicker garment under his shirt and well-tailored suit. She’d seen it a thousand times in her work, on herself and other people. The man was wearing a bulletproof vest. She wondered if he was armed as well.

  She took a cautious step closer and leaned carefully over the counter. Her eyes slid down the line of the jacket towards the man’s hips.

  ‘That particular deposit box has two key-holders.’ His voice
made her jump and she straightened up unconsciously.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You and a Henrik Pettersson. Do you know him?’

  She nodded. ‘He’s my brother.’

  ‘Maybe he’s the one who’s got the key and passcard?’

  The idea of Henke having a deposit box seemed very odd. He didn’t exactly own anything that was valuable enough to need this sort of protection. But, on the other hand, the bill for the box hadn’t been paid, and that sounded just like him. And given the way he’d been behaving over the past few months, maybe it wasn’t impossible that he had secrets he needed to keep hidden.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Maybe …’

  ‘Well, the card’s no problem,’ he went on. ‘Because you’re one of the account holders, I can order you a new one. That would cost two hundred kronor. And you’ll also have to pay the overdue fee if you don’t want us to drill the box open?’

  ‘Of course, no problem, just send me the bill.’

  He nodded and typed something into the computer. She guessed it was a request for a new card.

  ‘There, the card will be sent to you within the next few days. But I’m afraid I can’t help you with the key.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The person who set up the contract receives all the keys. Then it’s up to him or her to distribute them. The keys are copy protected, so we can’t actually have new ones made, even if we wanted to. That’s why we have to drill boxes open if people don’t contact us.’

  ‘B-but … If I’m listed as a key-holder …?’

  ‘It’s not unusual for the person who sets up the agreement to list several other people under the same account, as a form of insurance. In case anything should happen to them …’

  PayTag – they were the ones behind it all. Even if he was having trouble getting the pieces of the puzzle to fit together, that fact was still bombproof. PayTag had owned ACME Telecom Services, who in turn had hosted the server farm out in Kista that he had blown sky high two years before.

  The same PayTag that had wanted to buy up ArgosEye and make multi-millionaires of all its conspiring directors up in their Hötorget skyscraper office, until he had pulled the plug and sent that particular ship to the bottom with all hands.

  But PayTag seemed to have just moved on, still swallowing up smaller companies at a feverish pace as its empire grew ever larger.

  He had scraped together all manner of facts about PayTag that were sloshing around the deeper recesses of cyberspace. He had saved most of it on the USB stick that the cops had failed to find.

  But losing it wouldn’t have been a total disaster, he had memorized most of it.

  He lit a fag, took a deep drag and then sent an almost perfect smoke-ring up towards the nicotine-yellow ceiling.

  1992 – PayTag is founded by four dudes at an American university. The basic idea is to facilitate smooth transfers of money over the internet. There’s nothing wrong with the idea, but in purely technical terms they’re ten years too early and the software causes problems. In spite of this, venture capitalists pour money in and they are able to build a number of large server farms to handle the transactions they expect to have to deal with.

  1997 – After five years of figures in the red the coffers start to run dry. Following a disagreement two of the founders leave. The other two decide to change direction and in a desperate attempt to exploit their unused server farms they start hiring out space to other companies that need external backup in case their own servers go down. The lads have struck gold and clients start pouring in almost immediately.

  1999 – For the first time the company’s accounts show a profit, and a fairly healthy one at that, making PayTag practically unique in the IT world.

  2001 – BANG! All the air goes out of the global IT bubble, but seeing as the need for backup is bigger than ever PayTag still manages to make a small profit. And oddly enough in light of the stock market collapse, new capital is available. PayTag goes on a serious shopping spree among its bankruptcy-threatened competitors, and soon manages to weave itself into every aspect of the IT sector: installations, service contracts, consultancy – you name it!

  2005 – The company is listed on the NASDAQ index. The largest single holding belongs to a foundation which is probably linked to the two remaining founders, but various financial machinations, along the lines of those employed by Ikea, make it pretty much impossible to work out if this is actually the case.

  2009 – Another landmark! IT guru and media darling Mark Black is installed as new MD. He immediately sets to work realizing his vision – the Cloud. Clients would no longer merely use PayTag to host their critical backup, but ALL their data. Server spaces are expunged from offices around the world and instead established on the internet –or rather, in one of PayTag’s heavily guarded gigantic server halls which are now popping up like toadstools in sparsely populated areas all over the planet.

  But HP was almost certain that the Game began way before ‘92, and PayTag actually seemed to have been legitimate for a good few years. Which meant that their paths must have crossed somewhere.

  The Game could have been a secret source of finance that stepped in during the collapse of the IT bubble, for instance.

  Or else the mysterious foundation that owned the majority of the shares could conceal something considerably more unpleasant than just a couple of greedy little Ingvar Kamprads who didn’t want to pay tax.

  But the safest way to take the company over probably wasn’t through holding shares, or at least not that alone.

  They would need some kind of presence on the ground, someone who would make sure that things were run the way they should be, which led him to his latest theory.

  The Game had probably planted a trojan inside PayTag. He knew something about trojans having been one himself inside ArgosEye. Something or someone who looked on the surface to be an asset, but who had actually brought something lethal inside the walls. For that tactic to work, the trojan would have to be implanted at the very top of the pyramid. Which meant that there was really only one candidate …

  Mark Black.

  It was under his leadership that the company had grown to span the entire world. The Cloud and the server farms were all part of Black’s vision, and PayTag’s owners appeared to have given him a completely free hand. Celebrities and politicians alike seemed to love the smooth bastard, and the media drooled over everything he did. No-one seemed to have worked out who Black really was. No-one except Henrik HP Pettersson.

  Imagine having a little chat with Mr Black.

  Eye to eye.

  Player to Player …

  He took a last drag, then stubbed the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray on the bedside table.

  A meeting with Mark Black. That wasn’t actually such a bad idea.

  ‘Mark Black, managing director of PayTag and thus indirectly our ultimate boss, will be paying us a visit in a fortnight, as you all know …’

  Rebecca clicked to bring up the first picture of her Powerpoint presentation. It showed about thirty people dressed in white, all wearing Guy Fawkes masks and holding banners.

  ‘The threat level is currently deemed to be high, largely as a result of the various protests seen at previous inaugurations.’

  She switched to an image of demonstrators being led away by the police.

  ‘Black’s private plane, registration number November Six Bravo, will be landing at Bromma on 25 June at 19.55. Kjellgren and I will pick him up in the Audi, Mrsic and Pellebergs will be waiting outside gate number one with the support vehicle. We’ll be driving straight to the Grand Hotel, where I and potentially Mrsic will accompany him to his suite. We’ll decide that once we know how things look. Black evidently isn’t too keen on having much visible security around him … We will be based in room 623, in the same corridor as Black’s suite, and I’ll be staying there.’

  Her mouth felt suddenly dry, and she paused to take a sip of water from
the glass on the table in front of her.

  ‘Departure to the Fortress at 06.15 on the twenty-sixth. Same cars and pairings as before. The site manager and Anthea Ravel from management will be joining us …’

  She saw a couple of the bodyguards exchange glances and went on quickly before any of them had a chance to open their mouths.

  ‘The inauguration ceremony will begin at 09.30, followed directly by the press conference. Any questions so far …?’

  None of the other six people in the little meeting room moved.

  ‘Good,’ she continued. ‘Lindh, you and Gudmundson will meet us on site. Have you spoken to the manager there?’

  Lindh, a sinewy, suntanned man in his forties, cleared his throat and glanced down at the little black notebook on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Yes, it’s all sorted. Thirty journalists have replied to say they’ll be there, along with a group of local politicians, the Minister for Business and his entourage, and representatives from a couple of clients. Possibly a few more. No names that have set off any alarm bells so far, I should probably add. Obviously we’ve checked everyone …’

  When the run-through was finished she took the stairs down to the floor below, said hello to a couple of faces she recognized, then slipped into Micke’s cramped little office. He was crouched over his computer and hardly looked up.

  ‘Hi!’ She leaned over and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

  ‘Hi Becca, did it all go okay?’ He spun his chair round.

  ‘Yep, we’ve got Black’s visit under control.’

  ‘Good, the whole company seems a bit nervous. It’s a big thing, him choosing to come here so soon after the acquisition. Will you be going up to the Fortress with him?’

  She nodded just as his mobile started to ring.

  He picked it up from the desk and looked at the screen. Then he stood up quickly.

  ‘Sorry, I have to take this. We’ve got a crazy amount of work right now, we’re completely swamped …’