Becca was Black’s bodyguard.
Of course!
She was indirectly working for the Game, which was obviously still bad news. But in his fucked-up state he had misunderstood the whole thing. He’d thought Becca was in a relationship with Black.
Epic fail!
Christ, he could be really thick at times …
The others were staring at him.
‘Well, what do you say?’
‘Er, what?’
Jeff leaned forward on the chair, making its plastic back creak. Suddenly HP realized that there was something familiar about the angular face. They too had met before somewhere …
‘Are you going to help us?’
‘To do what?’
More glances, dubious this time.
Eventually Nora broke the silence.
‘Shut down the Fortress!’
14
Abandonware
‘Hello?’
‘Good evening, dear friend.’
‘Ah, it’s you, splendid. Is this line secure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘In that case I would be grateful for an explanation of what happened.’
‘I can understand that …’
‘I don’t appreciate it when binding agreements are broken. Recent events …’
‘Aid our cause in the long run, believe me!’
‘In what way?’
‘In every way …’
‘Now listen, I don’t appreciate this sort of prank. You can call yourself the Game Master all you like, but don’t forget who’s paying for your activities.’
‘Naturally, my clients’ interests are always at the top of my priority list, my dear friend.’
‘I should hope so! If we could try for a moment to look beyond this … incident. How is everything going with the rest of the plan?’
‘Splendidly. We’re just about to begin. You won’t be disappointed, Mr Black.’
The lift had taken them down to the viewing level. A glassed-in hub with five spokes extending fifty metres straight into the rock on all sides around them. And, if she’d understood correctly, there were a number of similar levels below them.
The control room that they were looking down on, through the large glass window opposite the lifts, was undeniably impressive.
She’d been inside a couple of underground bases before, when she was working for the Security Police. The one occupied by the emergency services call centre beneath the Johannes Church in Stockholm was probably the most impressive. But that was nothing compared to this.
Thirty or so workstations were grouped in three semicircular rows above one another, so that everyone had a clear view of the gigantic screens down in the centre.
Every workplace had three connected screens, along with a mouse, keyboard and a headset neatly hung up alongside. The whole thing looked rather like the Regional Communication Centre in Police Headquarters in Stockholm, but was obviously much more up-to-date and vastly more expensive.
The control room was empty and all the screens were switched off.
‘At full capacity we’ll have thirty operators working in three shifts. They’ll all be experts in IT security. If necessary we can reinforce them with a further ten …’ the site manager bubbled, looking as if he might burst with pride at any moment.
Maybe that wasn’t so strange …
The invited reporters, local politicians and members of parliament seemed just as impressed with the setup as Rebecca was. One of them asked something that she didn’t hear, but it must have been funny seeing as they all burst out laughing.
Black was standing slightly off to one side, flanked by two people from the local management team and a dark-haired woman in her forties whom Rebecca had met in the office a couple of times, one of their new foreign bosses, Anthea Ravel. She didn’t seem particularly pleasant, and spoke that sort of dry, patronizing English that made you feel like a lowly servant. She’d also had such a tight facelift that almost all of her facial expressions were the same.
Some people in the office had taken to calling her the Ice Queen, which was a fairly appropriate nickname.
‘Good question. Naturally, we take the security of the installation very seriously indeed,’ the site manager said.
‘Amongst other things we’ve applied to be classified as a high security area, which would give our security personnel additional powers. And we’re also planning a big exercise together with the National Rapid-Response Unit. Security is our main priority …’
Black suddenly turned his head and met Rebecca’s gaze. Then he leaned to the side and whispered something to the Ice Queen, which made her look in Rebecca’s direction as well.
The woman put her hand on Black’s upper arm and leaned forward. She whispered something, so close that her lips were almost touching Black’s ear. She went on whispering for a few seconds, before slowly pulling back. Whatever it was the Ice Queen had said, it seemed to amuse both of them, and Rebecca couldn’t shake the feeling that they were obviously talking about her.
She forced herself to ignore them and shifted her focus back to the site manager.
‘Well, the big moment has arrived,’ he suddenly announced in English. ‘I’d like to invite our Managing Director, Mark Black, to step forward and press the button.’
The crowd of spectators parted to let Black through to the observation window.
One employee handed Black a small box with a large red button, and Black spent a minute or so posing with this over-emphatic symbol as the cameras flashed.
‘I hereby declare this installation open,’ he then said.
He pressed the button and down in the control room all the screens suddenly came to life.
He should have left at once, thanked them for their help and just toddled off home. Instead he had let them show him the plans. They told him about the electrified fence, the cameras, the guards patrolling the area. He had listened with half an ear. But he noticed one thing very clearly. None of them had said a word about how they were going to get past it all, which could have had two obvious explanations:
Either they didn’t quite trust him and wanted to know if he was onboard before sharing their ingenious plan with him.
Or, much more likely: these amateurs didn’t actually have a plan …
Two years ago he had broken into a similar establishment, but that one had been considerably smaller, much less protected, and he’d also had the help of Rehyman the genius to get past all the obstacles.
‘Well, what do you think?’
He saw the expectant looks on their faces and for a moment he wondered if he should hold back slightly to soften the blow. But there was no point. These muppets needed to hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
‘Seriously? You’re all fucking mad!’ He shrugged. ‘Do you really think you’re going to be able to get in there?’ He put his finger in the middle of the control room. ‘And even if by some miracle you do manage to get through, what are you going to do there, and – maybe even more importantly – how are you planning to get out again?’
‘Never mind about that,’ Muscleman Jeff said in a way that made HP’s alarm bells ring even louder. He’d definitely seen the bloke before, but where?
‘If you help us get inside, we’ll take care of the rest,’ Nora said.
‘The Source said you’d be able to do that, he said you’ve done stuff like this before,’ Hasselqvist added. ‘That you’re some sort of expert in this area …’
HP nodded.
‘Maybe …’ He turned it all over in his head for a few moments. Sure, it was tempting, and certainly felt very familiar. But, to start with, he already had a shit load of his own problems to deal with, and, what’s more, he trusted this little trio about as much as they trusted him.
The horse doctor seemed more or less okay, but Hasselqvist was a slippery fucker, and the gorilla made him feel uneasy in more ways than one.
But at the same time they had something he might be abl
e to make use of, something that might actually help him understand his own situation.
He took a deep breath.
‘Okay, if I’m even going to consider helping you, I want something in return first …’
‘You mean apart from us saving your life …?’ Nora said before either of the others had even opened their mouths.
HP shrugged his shoulders. A vein was starting to throb in the mountain of muscle’s forehead. They glared at each other for a few seconds.
‘This Source of yours …’ HP drew a pair of weary quotation marks in the air. ‘I want to talk to him directly …’
‘No-one talks directly to the Source,’ Hasselqvist interrupted. ‘We’ve only met him once, all communication is done …’
Nora raised her hand and he fell silent at once.
‘So what does he look like?’ HP did his best not to sound too curious.
There was a brief silence, then Nora shrugged.
‘Ordinary …’ she said, and held up her hand again, this time to stop the other two from protesting. ‘Short hair, average height, not quite forty. A typical suit, I’d say …’
HP nodded.
‘Do you know what his role is in the Game?’
‘Not exactly, but Kent and Jeff have a theory …’
She turned to Hasselqvist.
‘Well … it’s just a feeling. Some of the phrases he uses. I think he’s involved in the technical side of it. Communication, servers, something like that. The plans contain a whole load of technical details. Don’t they, Jeff?’
The mountain of muscle hesitated for a moment, then nodded slowly.
‘These plans are like the ones we use at work for IT projects. If he was involved in construction, there’d be ventilation ducts, plumbing, stuff like that, but there’s nothing of that sort on these plans. Only details of the IT infrastructure …’
‘So you think the Source is some sort of IT guru? Someone who was involved in setting the whole thing up?’ A tingling sensation was slowly spreading from HP’s stomach.
The two men nodded.
‘And how do you know you can really trust him?’
‘We’re not stupid, HP …’ Nora replied. ‘Obviously we were suspicious as well to start with, but the Source has delivered on everything. He brought us together, he’s supplied plans, information about Sentry and PayTag, and – not least – he helped us locate and get hold of you before you were killed or arrested. He’s taken big risks for our sake, and it doesn’t feel like he’s lying. All of that put together means that we’ve decided to trust him, even if we’re still wary. But, like Kent said, we only met the Source once, right at the start. So we couldn’t take you to him even if we wanted to …’
‘I see …’ HP looked down at his lap for a few seconds while he tried to sort out his poker face.
He needed to look a bit disappointed, make it seem like he was backing down.
‘I need to think about it,’ he said. ‘Just for a couple of days. How can I contact you?’
‘Here!’
Jeff took out a mobile phone and put it on the table.
‘Pay as you go, can’t be traced. Call the number for dry cleaning in the contacts and leave a message.’
‘Okay.’
HP picked up the phone, then stood up and headed towards the door.
‘Hang on,’ Hasselqvist shouted, and he stopped. ‘Don’t forget your medicine.’
Hasselqvist tossed a white plastic container to HP.
‘Well done, Kent,’ Nora said. ‘I’d forgotten that. Take two a day for five days, HP.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ He waved the pills in farewell and tried to keep a straight face. ‘I’ll be in touch!’
She was sitting outside one of the meeting rooms in the main building, slowly turning a bottle of water in her hands.
The press had left, leaving just a few of the politicians and various managers from both the Fortress and Sentry.
Right now they were having lunch further along the corridor, and a short while ago Black and the Ice Queen had both left the gathering to hold a conference call in the small room behind her.
She glanced at the time. Kjellgren and Thomas ought to be there any minute now.
For the third time in the past five minutes she took out her mobile.
No new messages, from either Kjellgren or Micke.
She pressed the call button again, but just like last time was put straight through to Micke’s voicemail. Not that that was particularly unusual …
For the last week or so she’d hardly had time to talk to him at all, maybe even longer than that.
Often neither of them got home till late, and then they just crashed out on the sofa.
She hadn’t told him about her meeting with Uncle Tage, and only selected details about the safe deposit box. She’d said it contained a few old papers: marriage and birth certificates, a few worthless shares. He hardly ever asked her about what she got up to these days. He was probably trying to prove that he trusted her. And she was repaying the confidence by lying to him again …
She looked at the time, then took a little tub of pills from her bag, checked they were the right ones and fished out one tablet. She glanced around quickly before swallowing it down with a swig from the bottle.
Using antidepressant medication is nothing to be ashamed of, Rebecca …
Yeah, right!
That statement might make sense in the reality her doctor lived in. But in her world you couldn’t show the slightest sign of weakness.
But in her private life, she at least she knew it wasn’t her fault alone that her relationship with Micke wasn’t working.
She had actually taken on her job at Sentry for Micke’s sake, to be in the same world as he was, and she had done her best to understand what he was involved in. But it wasn’t entirely straightforward trying to follow all the technical ins and outs. A whole load of different companies and official bodies were having problems with various targeted hacker attacks, she had understood that much.
DDoS – Distributed Denial of Service – was something she knew about from the time the police website had been attacked. Someone, or several people, had managed to get hundreds, and possibly thousands, of different computers to fire a mass of requests at the same server at exactly the same time, so many that it eventually stopped working.
And she understood viruses as well.
But there were loads of other security threats.
DoS attacks were related to DDoS, and then there were trojans, worms, spyware and a whole load more whose names and functions she had already forgotten.
Hacker attacks had been going on for years, but according to Micke they had become much more intensified. Most companies were worried about viruses and other hostile attacks that could affect their day to day activities. But what really scared them, and what made them turn to Sentry for help, was the risk that outsiders might gain access to their customer details: dates of birth, credit and debit card numbers, medical records, insurance history, purchasing patterns, criminal records, bank account information. The list of information hidden away in supposedly secure databases was practically infinite. And if any outsider got hold of that information, the company or official body in question would suffer a massive loss of public confidence.
One large bank had already lost several hundred thousand credit and debit card numbers, and a gambling site had thrown in plenty of other details, including email addresses and IMS IDs.
Installations like the Fortress were supposed to be the solution to problems like that. All information stored in one place, protected by the very latest technology and guarded round the clock by thirty experts in IT security. What company or official body could offer anything like that?
She heard a door close further along the corridor and shortly afterwards she saw Thomas marching along the corridor with Kjellgren at his heels.
Thomas didn’t look happy.
I’ll be in touch! – Not fucking even!
&nbs
p; He already knew who the Source was, and even where he was hiding.
And there he was, thinking he’d seen a ghost and was going mad. But the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.
There was only one person who fitted that description, both physically and in terms of what he knew. The server king, the computer genius, the crazy backwoodsman, the outcast – the man, the myth, the legend:
Fucking Erman himself!
So he had survived the blaze in the outback. Managed to get himself a new identity, and then gradually returned to civilization while he finessed his plan. First finding a new hiding place, and then setting about gathering information.
Two years was a long time. Erman may have been pretty soft-boiled when they met, but there was no doubt that the guy was smart. Something of an IT genius, at least according to his own testimony. And once Erman had got himself and his head sorted, and got back in front of a keyboard, there was probably no end to the stuff he could dig out. Tasks that had been carried out, players who had failed …
Shit, HP had actually given the bloke the idea of wiping out the server farm because of what he’d managed to do out in Kista.
And PayTag’s Fortress was obviously a hundred times bigger. The new, improved Death Star …
The Source said you’d done stuff like this before. That you’re some sort of expert …
Ha!
The evidence was watertight.
Erman was the Source!
Or rather, the new, improved version of Erman was.
Slimmer, clean-shaven, short-haired, and with less of an allergy to electricity than the last version. Those idiots at the vet’s seemed to think he was still working for the Game. Maybe that was part of his plan to seem credible. The truth about his real background, the nervous breakdown and the time he had spent holed up in the woods were hardly likely to inspire confidence. Better to pretend he was still part of the Game.
Now it was just a matter of finding the bastard’s hiding place, and he had a feeling he’d already solved that one. It was actually ridiculously simple. After all, the bloke had said it himself out there in his cottage when he was banging on about the Game. The best hiding place was where no-one would ever think of looking.
The Game Trilogy Page 81