‘No problem, I was on my way out anyway. Just thought I’d ask about the pictures …’
‘Pictures?’ He had already taken a step towards the door and put his phone to his ear.
‘The ones I took on Friday, in the van. You were going to try to improve the pixilation, or whatever you call it?’
The phone went on ringing and she could feel him getting rattled by the situation.
‘Oh, no, it didn’t work. Listen, I’ve really got to get this …’
She gave him a little wave and left the room.
‘Hello …? Yes, everything’s going according to plan …’ she heard him say before the door closed behind her.
He didn’t dare have a computer of his own. In his two months as an employee of ArgosEye he had realized how much of a trail you left, both on the internet and your own hard-disk. No way was he going to offer them a smorgasbord like that.
Instead he had developed a strategy where he switched between various borrowed computers at random. Short bursts where his minimal internet footprint would be hidden by thousands of other people’s. Really, though, he ought to steer well clear of the internet altogether. Follow the example of Erman the hermit, cut all ties to civilization, go into hiding in a cabin in the woods and live a low-tech life way below the Game’s radar.
But he had dropped that idea pretty quickly. He was born to live on tarmac, and life in the forest would undoubtedly have finished him off. Just as it had finished off poor Erman …
No, far better to play it cool, go along with it and make the most of the calm by gathering together as many pieces of the puzzle as possible. Preparing as best he could so he was ready when they wanted an answer.
At least that was what he had thought last winter, after his meeting with the Game Master.
Fuck it. Obviously, he should have cut back on his use of the Xbox and concentrated on reality far more than he had actually done. But up to the moment when the cops had kicked his door in, the complete absence of communication had almost managed to persuade him that the meeting out in the forest had been just a bad dream. A mad fantasy conjured up by his fucked up brain, desperate for a bit of acclaim.
Too many hours sitting with the hand controller – or his own joystick, for that matter – made it easy to lose focus.
Six months had passed since he had been given the task out at that creepy pet cemetery. Six months of decent peace and quiet, and halfway through the period of thinking time he had been promised.
Today it was the turn of the library at Medborgarplatsen. Tucked away in a corner where he could see everyone coming and going without them seeing him.
He plugged the little USB stick into one of the computer’s card slots and waited for the files to load. Then he started the security program at the top of the list.
Scanning – please wait, a little dialogue box said, as a timer began to rotate. It usually took about a minute to check for spyware or any signs of surveillance. He never stayed for longer than fifteen minutes, but after the developments of recent days it was probably time to cut that down even more.
He bounced one foot impatiently as he bit on a ragged fingernail. He still had six months, one hundred and eighty days to chisel out a plan, a way out, an exit strategy that could get him out of the infernal trap he had got caught up in.
Wrong – which they had got caught up in … Because no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t get away from the conclusion that Becca was getting more and more drawn in by an old but very familiar need of her own. A distinctly uncomfortable feeling had crept up on him at the meeting in the forest when she had brought him together with the Game Master.
Uncle Tage, she had called him. Saying he was one of Dad’s old comrades from the Reserve Unit. She told him that they had all – her, him and Dad – visited the old man in his summer cottage when they were little.
Obviously he had tried to explain the truth to her, but without any success.
She had never really bought the whole story about the Game, despite his several attempts to explain. But she seemed to accept whatever this Uncle Tage character told her without the slightest reservation.
Hell, her voice sounded almost tender when she talked about him, pretty much like when she talked about Dad. Time really had faded her memories as far as the old man was concerned. In a few more years she probably wouldn’t even remember all the times the old sod had beaten him.
All the times the old bastard had lied to doctors and social workers, and persuaded her and Mum to back up his fabricated stories.
No, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t keep a lid on the hatred that welled up inside him whenever Dad’s name was mentioned. And the same applied to ‘Uncle Tage’.
Hatred and – let’s face it – jealousy …
Only a year or so before he would never have admitted that was what he felt, and had always felt, towards both Dad and Dag. As if they were stealing his Becca from him, and turning her into someone else entirely.
Someone he hardly recognized. A stranger.
Jealousy and hatred, then – a fine old combo, and only exacerbated by his already low credibility level, which effectively crushed any chance he had of convincing her of Tage Sammer’s true identity.
But he could hardly blame her. The fact was his whole story sounded so fucking unbelievable he occasionally had trouble believing it himself. Fortunately he had clung on to a few bits of memorabilia that he kept hidden in a safe place.
First and foremost there was the phone he had taken two years before from Kent ‘Number 58’ Hasselqvist, out on the E4 motorway. With the exception of the numbers on the back, it was exactly the same as the phone he had found on the commuter train, the one which had dragged him into this whole crazy business.
Then there was the passcard, the little white rabbit that had fallen out of a book in the NK department store, which had helped him to stop the clock on his normal life and granted him access to his very own Wonderland.
The third object in his collection was the hard-drive containing all the files from ArgosEye, the company that made sure the Game could stay buried in the deepest depths of the internet.
The trojan that Manga had put together, and which he had gone to great lengths to introduce into the company’s computer network, had done its work. A wealth of information had been dragged out into the light: the fake trolls, the blogs that delivered pre-packaged opinions on demand, the Stasi database of people who held opposing views, and a load of other dodgy stuff that Philip Argos and his gang had going on for their wealthy clients.
But even though he suspected – correction: knew – that ArgosEye was protecting the Game, helping it to stay hidden whilst simultaneously keeping a record of anyone who tried to find out about it or broke Rule Number One, the leaked files still hadn’t provided a single piece of firm evidence that his theory was actually correct. Maybe they had secured any information of that sort behind a second firewall, unless Manga’s spyware had simply been looking in the wrong places?
The Game hadn’t floated up to the surface the way he had hoped. It was still lurking down in the depths: the things he had kept proved nothing to anyone who couldn’t see the whole picture. Not even the latest addition to his collection had any real value as evidence: an ordinary printed sheet of A4 that anyone could have put together. Your final task, HP, Tage Sammer, a.k.a. the Game Master, had said out there among the pet gravestones where they had drunk coffee together from a flask.
After all HP had done to cause trouble for the Game, the plans he had ruined and the money he had stolen, the old bastard had still seemed perfectly calm. No hard feelings, more or less …
But on the other hand, the task they had presented to him was no ordinary one.
Christ, what a fucking choice …
If he carried out the task, he was basically finished. Fucked for life, in every sense of the phrase. If he didn’t do it, then his life wasn’t the only one at stake …
FUCK!
46 of 78 files checked, no unauthorized objects found, the program informed him.
He looked at the time. More than a minute had passed, only nine left until he had to get out.
Come on, come on, come on … Bastard slow library computer!
Scanning …
70 of 78 files checked, no unauthorized objects found
He leaned forward over the keyboard, moved the mouse to the internet icon and got ready to spring into action. No search engines, oh no, just straight to the right addresses, then erase all bookmarks and cookies from the computer before he logged out. Leaving as few footprints as possible …
An unexpected noise over by the door made him start. He raised his head and glanced cautiously over the top of the screen.
A short man in a leather jacket, dark glasses and a baseball cap pulled down over his forehead had come into the computer room.
The man stopped in the doorway as he gazed slowly around the terminals, and something about the way he looked immediately made all of HP’s alarm bells start to ring like mad.
Shit!
She tapped in the number and pressed the green icon.
Connecting … the screen declared, but after staring at it for at least thirty seconds she realized that it clearly wasn’t connecting. Annoyed, she clicked to end the call and repeated the procedure. The very latest smartphone and it was hardly capable of making a call …
‘Police Headquarters, reception,’ a voice suddenly said over the phone, without any ringing tone first.
She hesitated for a second or two, then said:
‘Permit section, please.’
‘One moment.’
You have reached the permit section, current waiting time is estimated to be … six … minutes …
She sighed and looked at her watch. For a moment she considered abandoning the call and phoning Runeberg instead to see if he could get any information about what was happening …
Stigsson had forbidden her to contact Henke. Not that that was actually much of a problem. Now that she came to think about it, she had been chasing Henke for weeks now, months, in fact. But even though she knew he was home, he had never opened the door when she visited, or picked up her calls when she phoned.
A couple of dutiful text messages, that was pretty much it, and she was under no illusions that it would be any easier to get hold of him now.
The safe deposit box had unsettled her.
Evidently Henke had secrets that were so valuable he had felt obliged to hide them away in a high-security vault. Stigsson’s crew had already emptied his flat, and all it would take was for someone going through everything they had confiscated to find a copy of the safe deposit agreement with the bank, or a letter like the one she had received. A request for a search warrant, then the drill would come out and all Henke’s secrets would be dragged into the open.
Whatever was inside that deposit box, it was hardly likely to make things any better for him.
‘Permit section, Persson …’ The voice made Rebecca start.
‘Yes, hello, er, my name is Rebecca Normén …’ She glanced at the papers in front of her and tried to gather her thoughts.
‘I’m phoning about an application for a weapons licence for a security company. I was just wondering how far you’d got …’
Cop!
HP ducked down behind the screen instinctively. The bloke reeked of plod so badly it almost made his nostrils sting.
He bent down to pull the USB stick from the computer. Like fuck was he going to let them have all the info he’d gathered over the past few months. The Security Police were bound to come up with some way of turning it all against him, locking him away on an indeterminate sentence …
His fingers closed around the little plastic stick, but at that moment the man in the cap burst out into a long, noisy harangue in a strange language. Another lighter voice replied almost at once, and when HP carefully peered out he saw the man in the cap leaving the room in the company of a middle-aged woman who had been using a computer a short distance from his.
He waited a few more seconds, then straightened up and breathed out.
False alarm.
God, he was twitchy!
His heart was still pounding in his chest, his hands were trembling and he had to take several deep breaths to slow his pulse down. High time to ditch the paranoia and get on with business.
The scanning program must have finished by now, and he was eager to see what the media reaction to his arrest had been.
Most of the papers were still running diet tips on their fly-sheets, but the online edition of Expressen ought to feature him somewhere.
Last night the Security Police arrested a 32-year-old man on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks.
A source in the Security Police says the arrest has almost certainly prevented acts of terrorism on Swedish soil.
Yep, that was how you sold more papers. The fact that they let him go after a few hours probably wouldn’t be published until next week, by which time no-one would care.
The media’s memory has always been short, Henrik. People can only deal with one story at a time …
Shit, sometimes he actually missed Philip and the ArgosEye life. Even though they had Anna Argos killed and almost managed to pin the murder on him, not to mention everything they did to him once his cover was blown, sometimes he couldn’t help imagining what might have happened if he hadn’t been found out.
Who would he have been by now?
Rilke’s boyfriend?
Philip’s right-hand man?
Or, even better: his successor … The Game Master’s faithful partner, maybe even a future Mark Black. None of that sounded bad at all …
On the screen in front of him a little green window had appeared. The scan program must have got stuck when he nudged the USB stick. Damn, two more minutes wasted!
Annoyed, he moved the cursor to close the window and restart the scan. But just as the little arrow reached the cross in the top right corner of the window, letters began to appear. One by one, until they formed a sentence that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
W
a
n
t
t
o
p
l
a
y
a
G
a
m
e
H
e
n
r
i
k
P
e
t
t
e
r
s
s
o
n?
He yanked the USB stick from the computer and threw himself under the desk. On the way he hit his head, got caught in the chair and almost fell flat on the floor. At the last moment he caught hold of the desk, pulled himself to his knees and tried to turn his head away. Too late. His gaze was drawn inexorably to the screen, like an insect with a death wish drawn to a UV light.
Run! a terrified little voice was screaming in his ear.
Get the fuck out of here, moron!
But his body wouldn’t obey.
Instead he remained on his knees in front of the computer, with his mouth half open and eyes big as ping pong balls, while his brain absorbed everything that was happening on the screen.
A new window opened and a series of images began to roll over it. Cut-and-paste headlines from various news sites:
The Palace reports a record level of interest from foreign media ahead of the royal wedding …
Huge server hall installed in old military base north of Uppsala. Rigorous security …
Another serious incident of hacking has been reported, this time by various companies in the defence industry. As on previous occasions, the police say that no information appears to have been stolen …
The Southern Link Road was closed for the second time in a week because of a computer
failure which caused the failure of barriers and ventilation systems …
Several leading news websites are once again closing their comment sections …
He recognized the lot, he had looked them all up himself, cutting and pasting them onto the USB stick.
They were followed by more cuttings, things he didn’t recognize:
For a third week in a row there have been reports of disruption to computer and mobile networks. The operators affected worst are 3 and Telia, but other networks have also suffered …
Three kilos of plutonium from Cold War projects in Sweden were recently handed over to the USA. The Foreign Minister has given assurances that it ‘would not be used for military purposes’.
The EU is forcing Sweden to implement the Data Retention Directive!
The headlines vanished and were replaced by a series of short text messages:
Message received 03/04 09.55:
New job, here’s my new number. Call me!
/Becca
Message received 12/04 14.55:
Why don’t you ever answer your phone?
/Becca
Message received 02/05 16.39:
Tried to visit you again. The TV was on. Why didn’t you open the door? /Becca
Message sent 06/05 22.02:
Hi Mangalito, are you back? /HP
Message received 14/05 21.13:
Where are you, Henke? Are you okay?
Please, call me! /Becca
Message sent 15/05 03.11:
Manga, call me need to talk pronto! /HP
Message received 23/05 18.36:
Henke, please get in touch!!! /Becca
Just as he realized he was reading his own text traffic, the messages disappeared from the screen and were replaced by moving images.
A familiar figure snatching an umbrella from a bag.
CUT
A cortege of horses and carriages riding through Stockholm.
CUT
A dark-clad figure on a moped.
CUT
An unmarked police car rolling over in slow motion.
CUT
An isolated cottage in flames.
CUT
Desert ravens circling above sand dunes.
Then, finally:
The Game Trilogy Page 69