The Game Trilogy

by Anders de la Motte

  ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘Yes, he’s coming round …’

  He felt something cool and wet over his eyes and forehead.

  His head ached, his nose was blocked and he was having to breathe through his mouth.

  Long, rattling breaths.

  ‘Can you hear me, Henke?’

  The object over his eyes vanished and he blinked up at the light.

  Nora’s face was floating above him, and for a few moments he felt full of a sense of wellbeing. She was calling him Henke, just like his sister …

  Then suddenly he remembered where he was.

  And why!

  They must have dragged him inside one of the huts …

  He tried to sit up, pulling his legs towards him to get to his feet.

  ‘Easy …’

  She was holding onto him, trying to stop him, but without putting much force into it.

  ‘The Source …’ he panted. ‘Erman, I’ve got to …’

  Then he caught sight of him.

  He was sitting on a chair a few metres away, leaning forward. Thin, receding hair, with dark-framed glasses, just like the description. Their eyes met and for a few moments HP’s brain tried to take in what he was seeing. What it meant.

  But it was impossible.

  Completely.

  Fucking.

  Impossible.

  ‘Hi, HP. Good of you to drop by …’ Manga grinned.

  18

  Impossible things before breakfast

  ‘HOW …

  THE …

  FUCK …

  CAN …

  YOU …

  BE …

  HERE …?!!!’

  He was sitting astride Manga’s chest, his fingers clasped tightly round his throat and neck as his beat the balding head against the floor.

  ‘Steuurrp … H … P … Furrrfurck …!!’ Manga gurgled, his arms flailing.

  HP didn’t care.

  Someone was pulling at his shoulders, grabbing his arms. Nora was screaming in one ear, but he wasn’t listening. He was going to kill the lying little fucker …

  A powerful arm suddenly wrapped around his neck and got him in a grip that instantly shut off the blood-supply to his brain.

  His vision started to turn black, his fingers began to twitch spasmodically and he lost his grip round Manga’s throat. The next moment he was dragged onto his feet. The stranglehold round his neck eased slightly, just enough for his eyesight to return.

  He could see Nora leaning over Manga.

  ‘Okay, mate, are you going to calm down, or what?’ Jeff snarled in his ear. ‘If not, I’ll be only too happy to break your neck …’

  HP tried to resist, feeling behind him with his hands in an attempt to grab whatever part of Jeff he might be able to damage. But it was hopeless. Jeff’s grip was rocksolid and his pathetic attempts at resistance just led to Jeff lifting him up so his toes were only just touching the ground.

  All his energy drained away. His arms and legs felt heavy as lead and he could no longer hold them up, could hardly hold himself up.

  Jeff dragged him a couple of metres and then dropped him down on a small sofa.

  It took him a few seconds to gather the strength to sit up.

  Manga had got to his feet, and was feeling his neck as he drank a glass of water that Nora seemed to have conjured up out of nowhere.

  HP could have done with something to drink, his throat felt parched and right now thirst was the only sensible feeling he had to cling onto.

  Manga was the Source.

  Manga

  Was

  The

  Source.

  Which meant …

  WHICH MEANT???

  He closed his eyes and put his hand over his forehead. Tears were pricking his eyes, and he screwed them tight shut to stop anything leaking out.

  Fuck.

  Fuck!

  FUCK!!

  Manga picked up the chair he had been sitting on and put it in front of HP.

  ‘Here!’

  He held out the glass of water, still half full.

  HP just stared at him.

  ‘Come on, HP! No need to be scared, you’re among friends …’

  HP grabbed the glass and gulped down the contents. The water was ice-cold and made his throat sting.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How long have you been involved in the Game, Manga, or Farook, or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself this week …?’

  Manga shrugged.

  ‘Quite a while, actually …’

  HP put the glass down, leaned forward and rubbed his temples. He was still trying in vain to get his brain to make the right connections. But it was totally fucking impossible.

  ‘W-what, why … well … er.’

  He carried on rubbing his face, harder and harder. Digging his fingers in until his skin stung.

  ‘From the start?’ he finally managed to say towards the floor. ‘Were you involved right from the start?’ he said in a slightly clearer voice as he straightened up.

  Manga took a deep breath.

  ‘I’ve been involved longer than you. Considerably longer, in fact …’

  ‘So you were the one who dragged me into it …?’

  Manga shook his head.

  ‘No, to be honest, it wasn’t me. I didn’t know you were involved until you showed up in the shop that time and pulled your phone out. Not even then, in fact, because I thought you’d just found it by accident, that some other Player had lost it. Then when I did realize that you were involved …’

  He held his hands out.

  ‘B-but I don’t under …’ HP cleared his throat and tried again.

  From the corner of his eye he could see Nora watching him.

  ‘H-how did you get involved? What do you do? Are you a Player, or an Ant? You’ve got to tell …’

  ‘Later, HP, right now we don’t have much time. The whole city’s looking for you, the cops, the Ants, everyone …’

  Manga turned towards Jeff.

  ‘Can you keep an eye out in the tunnel?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘All I can tell you right now is that I’ve tried to help you …’ Manga went on once the door had closed behind Jeff.

  ‘Help?!’ HP could feel the blood rushing to his head. ‘For fuck’s sake, you could have told me you were involved, and explained how lethal it all was. Told me to stop! Shit … you’re supposed to be my best friend!’

  ‘Yeah, right, like that would have worked …’

  Manga shook his head.

  ‘Besides, you know what happens if you break rule number one … You weren’t the only one who received a warning shot.’

  Nora reappeared with more water, a glass each this time.

  ‘The arson attack on the shop, remember?’ Manga added when HP didn’t seem to get it. ‘That was aimed at me, not you. A little reminder from the Game Master about what would happen if I didn’t stick to the rules. It probably wasn’t even meant to start a real fire. They just wanted me to realize what was at stake.’

  Nora accidentally tipped one of the glasses and spilled some water on HP’s trousers, but he hardly noticed.

  His brain was still searching for solid ground.

  ‘S-so … how much of all this has been real?’ he stammered.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean … Well, what the hell do you think I mean?! Everything I’ve been through, the fire in my flat, the bomb on the E4, the server farm I blew up out in Kista, running away, all that crap in Dubai, and everything that happened with ArgosEye. How much of that was real? Properly real, I mean?’

  ‘All of it, of course …’

  Manga took a sip of water.

  ‘But maybe not real in the way you thought …’ he added, shifting slightly on his chair. ‘You could say that you never really left the Game … That you’ve actually been working for them the whole time. Or, well … For us …’

  HP put his
glass down and covered his face with his hands.

  Manga was still talking, but his voice suddenly sounded tinny and distant, as if he were in a different room.

  The situation was unreal, dreamlike to the point where he ought to be pinching holes in his arms.

  Working for them …

  His brain was stuttering, trying desperately to keep to the facts: he’d blown up their server farm, escaped from their conspiracy to frame him for murder, and sunk their business partners at ArgosEye with all hands …

  Unless he was wrong?

  Had he actually been …

  Working for them?

  He stared at Manga. Boring, dependable, balding Mangalito. The coward. His old friend, his BFF.

  The world lurched.

  For a brief moment he was back in the eighties, sitting on the sofa in front of the television, with yellow cheese-puff fingers and eyes wide open. On the screen the shower door had just opened and Bobby Ewing was looking out.

  Working for …

  Us …

  ‘What the fuck am I doing here, Manga?’ he whispered.

  ‘Give us a couple more minutes, please, Jonsson!’

  The chauffeur got in and closed the car door without a word.

  ‘Now do you understand why I’m so keen to get hold of that gun?’ Tage Sammer said in a low voice.

  She nodded.

  ‘I think I do, anyway.’

  ‘Good. I’d appreciate it if you could empty your father’s safe deposit box as soon as possible and hand the entire contents over to me. Can I ask that of you, Rebecca? You have my word that the gun will disappear, that neither it nor the passports will ever crop up anywhere that they could be misused.’

  She thought for a few seconds.

  ‘The gun isn’t in the safe deposit box any more …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I moved it to another one the day I found it, I opened a box in my own name.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Good thinking, Rebecca!’

  ‘I have the passports at home. I’ll go to the bank first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.’

  ‘Excellent, Rebecca, you never let me down! If only more of my colleagues were like you!’

  He patted her knee and she found she was grateful for the slightest touch.

  ‘No problem, Uncle Tage,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Back to Fredhäll, please, Jonsson,’ he said, tapping on the chauffeur’s shoulder. ‘Miss Normén needs to get to bed, she’s had a rather trying day …’

  ‘Okay, HP, let me explain,’ Manga began. ‘You’re here for the reasons Nora has already given you. We’re going to close down the Fortress, and stop PayTag and the Game Master from gaining an unlimited monopoly on people’s pasts.’

  ‘Er, hang on a minute …’

  Manga held up his hand and stopped him.

  ‘I know you’ve got loads of questions, HP …’ He looked at his watch. ‘But time’s marching on. I had to come up with somewhere to meet at short notice, a place they wouldn’t think of.’

  He gestured towards the roof with his hand.

  ‘This is one of the Game’s own meeting points, which is why it’s free from prying eyes and ears. But we can’t stay here long. We hadn’t exactly counted on you passing out …’

  He glanced at his watch again.

  ‘I signed up a long time ago. I had friends who were already involved in the Game, and I pretty much got an invitation to help out. Just like with you, it started off small, a cool thing to do. As time passed I got more involved, and I liked the feeling of being part of something bigger, something that most people knew nothing about.’

  HP nodded reluctantly.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘The big thing we found out early on was that through the Game it was actually possible to influence events, make a difference. Shine a light on things other people would rather conceal. Secrets that those in power want to hide. Investigations that have been buried, reports that have been swept under the carpet or silenced. Lots of little tasks all slotted together, then we could tip off the media or post what we’d found out on various whistleblower websites. We did a lot of that at the start …’

  ‘But?’

  Manga glanced at Nora.

  ‘My friends and I only saw a fraction of what was going on. That’s always been the case.

  ‘The whole Game is divided into small cells, so that the Game Master is basically the only person who can see the whole picture. As time went on, it became clearer that he was changing direction. The Game was getting more and more closely managed, as the Players’ choices became fewer and the tasks increasingly murky. Gradually the rest of us lost whatever influence we had, and everything started to pass through the Game Master. It was becoming more and more obvious that he was exploiting the Game to gain power for himself. Then when PayTag …’

  ‘Where do I fit into the picture?!’ HP interrupted.

  Manga looked clearly disconcerted by the unexpected question, and it took him a moment to collect his thoughts.

  ‘Well, to get straight to the point, you could probably say that most of what you’ve accomplished has been within the boundaries of the Game. Serving the Game Master’s purposes, so to speak …’

  Manga smiled uncertainly at HP as if he were waiting for a reaction.

  ‘B-but I blew up the server farm. I gave them one fuck of a serious kick in the balls, shut them down for months, emptied their bank account, sank ArgosEye … Didn’t I?’ he added when Manga didn’t reply.

  He could hear how hollow his voice sounded.

  ‘Like I said, I’ve been trying to help you, I was actually trying to get you out,’ Manga mumbled.

  ‘But after the fires …’ He exchanged a quick look with Nora. ‘After the fires I agreed to help. The Game Master promised to let you go when it was all finished.’

  He looked down at the floor.

  ‘They emptied the building in Kista the day after you and Rehyman were there. Moved to another, more secure site. You blew up an empty building, that’s all. I wanted to explain everything to you a thousand times, but as long as they were watching you it was impossible …’

  HP took another deep, stuttering breath.

  ‘So the whole thing was planned, they just let me get away with the money? But why?’

  ‘The Game needed an attack, something that could never be traced, to tie in with the EU summit. The money was your reward for surviving your own End Game and, just as they expected, you took the money and fled the field. No witnesses, no trail …’

  He shook his head slowly.

  ‘So far everything had gone exactly as the Game Master had promised. Both you and Becca were out.’

  ‘What about later – Dubai, ArgosEye?’

  Manga grimaced.

  ‘Obviously I should have realized that the Game Master is the one who sets the rules. That he’s the one who decides when the Game begins and ends. Evidently you were too valuable an asset for them to just let you go. I was away and heard by chance that you were involved again, but by then there wasn’t much I could do. I asked a friend to keep an eye on you and send me reports about what was happening …’

  ‘Who?’

  Manga shrugged.

  ‘Does it matter? Anyway, you soon got in touch yourself, when you wanted the trojan. You told me about ArgosEye. That put me in one hell of a difficult position. Should I help you directly, or check with the Game Master first?’

  Manga twisted his hands in his lap.

  ‘You called the Game Master …’

  HP thought for a moment:

  ‘So that was why I couldn’t find any information about the Game. You designed the spy program so that it only leaked information that wasn’t about them.’

  Manga shook his head.

  ‘I did actually suggest that to the Game Master, but he said it wasn’t necessary. I was instructed to help you as much as I could. It took a while for me to realize …’

 
HP opened his mouth to speak, but it took a while for him find the right words.

  ‘Okay, hang on … S-so, you mean ArgosEye …’

  ‘… was never actually hiding any of the Game’s secrets …’ Manga concluded.

  ‘B-but … they were the Game’s partners? PayTag was going to buy them out, and …’

  Manga shook his head.

  ‘Think about it, HP. Who told you about the PayTag buyout? I bet it wasn’t Philip Argos or anyone else working there, was it?’

  HP’s mind drifted aimlessly and it took him a while to find the right thread.

  ‘Er, no. It was Monika, Anna Argos’s sister, she told me out on Lidingö. She said Anna had opposed the sale and that was why they had her killed …’

  ‘Okay,’ Manga nodded, ‘let me explain …’

  He exchanged another glance with Nora, looked at his watch, then leaned closer to HP.

  ‘PayTag was never interested in ArgosEye. They’d already bought another company in roughly the same line of business for peanuts, and they were in the process of putting together a decent management team. What Philip Argos was planning was a perfectly ordinary stock-market flotation. If it had been a success, then PayTag would have had unwelcome competition …’

  HP flinched.

  ‘What, you mean Monika Argos lied to me? Pretending that the flotation was actually a buyout? Why the hell would she have done that?’

  ‘Two fairly simple reasons, in fact … First and foremost, because you were in position and leapt at the chance to help her sabotage Philip Argos’s plans …’

  HP nodded wearily.

  ‘And the other reason …?’

  ‘Well, ask yourself, whose idea was it? Who was likely to get a kick out of the idea that Philip Argos was paying you way over the odds for the shares? It was a real bonus when the trojan actually sank Philip’s ship and he ended up with a ruined reputation and no financial backing …’

  Manga looked at HP as if he were expecting an instant answer. But HP’s brain was way, way behind.

  ‘Think, HP …’ Manga said, more slowly. ‘Who hated Philip Argos enough to cook up one hell of an advanced way to get revenge?’

  He pulled out a shiny metal phone with a glass screen and HP flinched involuntarily.

  On the screen was a picture of a woman with dark hair cut in a bob, sitting at a restaurant table. She was holding a glass of wine in her hand and seemed to be drinking a toast with a man who had his back to the camera.