Bubble: A Thriller (38 page)

The word
explosives
startled HP. He had a sudden flashback to the E4 expressway two years before, when he had plugged his phone into a similar bag. A bag stuffed with so much explosive that it was enough to blow an entire building sky-high.

For almost two years he had believed that he’d blown the Game’s brain to kingdom come. But, according to Mange, that had been nothing but an illusion, a very clever one that the Game Master had implanted in his head. The real Death Star wasn’t located in an old office building out in Kista, but deep underground in a bunker little more than a couple of kilometers away.

But if everything he had experienced up until a few days ago was just an elaborate mind game, then what guarantees did he have that what he was experiencing now was any more real?

He had been wrestling with that particular dilemma for several days.

Even if he decided to trust Mange, there were no guaran
tees. Mange seemed to be telling the truth, because—as far as it was possible to tell—he genuinely appeared to believe his own story. But what if it wasn’t his story?

What if someone else was playing mind games with Mange, in exactly the same way they had done with him? That what they were heading toward now was actually nothing more than part of an even more elaborate plan?

That was the trouble with conspiracy theories. Once you started to accept their existence, it was impossible to say where they really stopped.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you . . .

“Quiet!” Jeff suddenly said, raising his head from the trunk.

“Did you hear that?”

No one said anything.

“What is it, Jeff?” Hasselqvist quacked after a few seconds.

“There!”

A faint humming sound was approaching from the east.

HP realized what it was immediately. He took a couple of quick strides, grabbed the heavy sliding door, and began to close it.

“What the hell . . . ?” Jeff yelled.

HP ignored him.

The sound was getting closer very fast, throbbing like a pneumatic drill in his eardrums.

The door was almost closed, just a meter or so left, and HP was leaning his entire weight on the handle. But the door was slowing down, began to catch, and finally stopped with a loud screech.

The throbbing noise was suddenly echoing off the buildings, amplified until he could feel the vibration in his rib cage, and only now did the others seem to get it.

A helicopter, flying extremely low, was about to appear over the treetops any second now. HP made another attempt to close the door. But the wheel at the top seemed to have jumped its track and the door sat fast.

He bent his knees and pulled on the handle as hard as he could, with one leg on each side of the door. Suddenly and without warning the door jolted loose and came racing toward his chest. He threw himself to the side and only just escaped getting his head caught as it slammed shut.

“Sorry!” Jeff shouted, his hands still on the other end.

A moment later the helicopter thundered across the yard, and the pulsing rotor blades practically deafened HP.

Both he and Jeff crouched down instinctively as they tried to catch sight of the helicopter through the broken barn roof.

It seemed to be hovering a few meters above the barn.

HP glanced quickly at the others. Jeff seemed utterly focused on the helicopter, as did Nora. But Hasselqvist slipped quickly inside the van.

“We need to go, now!” he yelled as he scrambled into the driver’s seat.

“B-but, we’re not ready . . .” Nora cried.

The helicopter was still hovering above them, and the downdraft from the blades was making what was left of the roof begin to shake. Slowly at first, then faster and faster.

Fragments of tiles came loose and fell into the barn.

“Kent’s right!” Jeff roared. “Any minute now this roof’s going to collapse on top of us . . .”

A large piece of tile hit the roof of the van with a thud.

“I’ll open the door, then you lot get going . . . Just drive, don’t stop and wait for me,” Jeff yelled in HP’s ear.

HP nodded and tried to run toward the van in a crouch.

A small piece of tile hit him on the head and he raised his arm instinctively to protect himself. There was a loud bang, then another. Probably one of the helicopter’s runners hitting the roof.

“Come on, Nora!” he shouted when he reached the door of the van.

But she seemed to be hesitating.

Jeff roared something at her that HP didn’t hear. He waved his hand toward the van. Another bang, more forceful this time. A large tile crashed to the floor right in front of the van, sending splinters in all directions.

Hasselqvist started the engine.

“We have to go, come on!” he yelled again.

Nora looked in his direction, then back at Jeff again. But he had turned away and was bracing himself against the door. Several more tiles crashed down, sending a shower of fragments up into the van. HP put his arm across his eyes. When he looked up Nora was lying on the floor.

Shit!

He leaped out of the van, but she was back on her feet before he could reach her.

“Into the van, HP, come on!”

She pushed him in ahead of her. Another thud, then a cracking sound. More tiles rained down and seemed to pull part of the roof with them. Nora’s face was white, and blood was running down her face from a wet patch on top of her head. He pushed her down into one of the seats.

“Jeff!” she groaned.

“Never mind your boyfriend, we’ve got to go . . .” he snapped.

Through the windshield he saw the door slowly open.

Hasselqvist revved the engine.

“Brother . . .” she groaned.

“What?”

“He’s my older brother, you idiot . . . !”

Jeff had almost managed to get the heavy door open. His back and neck muscles were straining against his T-shirt, threatening to split it.

The van suddenly leaped forward.

Her brother . . .

He grabbed hold of the headrest of the nearest seat, then hung out the door.

“
Jeeefff!
” he roared.

The mountain of muscle spun around and met his gaze. The van’s wheels were spinning on the dirt-covered concrete floor, trying to get a grip . . .

HP reached out as far as he could, holding out his hand. Jeff took a couple of quick strides.

The collapse was spreading across the roof, section after section of tiles was giving way and sending showers of razor-sharp fragments clattering against the body of the van. One piece, big as a hand, flew past HP’s nose but he hardly noticed.

Jeff leaped forward . . .

The tires suddenly got a grip and the van shot out of the barn like an arrow. A moment later the entire roof fell in.

♦  ♦  ♦

The dark car was waiting outside her building when she got home. As she approached, the chauffeur opened the door and got out. But it wasn’t the same man as before, this one was considerably younger, and it took her a few seconds before she could place him.

“Hello, Rebecca, my name’s Edler, I’m Colonel Pellas’s adjutant . . .”

He held out his hand.

“We met very briefly in the flat in Maria Trappgränd . . .”

“Hello,” she mumbled, shaking his hand.

He opened the door to the backseat.

“Good evening, my dear Rebecca,” Tage Sammer said. “I’m sorry to arrive unannounced like this, but I have good news . . .”

She hesitated and glanced at Edler.

Sammer seemed to have read her thoughts.

“We can talk freely, I have no secrets from Edler . . .”

“Good . . .”

Then, after thinking for a couple of seconds, she added:

“Perhaps we should go up to the flat instead? A bit more pleasant than sitting in the car . . .”

“Thanks for the invitation.” He smiled. “I’d like that, on another occasion, but today I would prefer the car. Inside flats one never knows who might be listening . . .”

He patted the seat beside him and Rebecca had no choice but to climb in.

Edler got in behind the wheel, started the car, and pulled away slowly toward Rålambsvägen.

“Have you found Henke?” she asked before he had time to open his mouth.

“Not yet, but we think we know where both he and Sandström are. We’re expecting them to be picked up shortly.”

“Okay, good. Well, good is probably the wrong word . . .”

“I know what you mean, Rebecca. All this is for Henrik’s own good, and we’re very grateful that you’re helping us. We have to get hold of him before he does anything really silly. You see, this isn’t just about the revolver . . .”

He glanced toward Edler.

“We have information about a bomb . . .”

“What? Then you have to postpone the royal wedding . . .”

“No, no, that’s out of the question. The Palace is quite clear on that point.”

“But the risk?”

He took a deep breath and then shrugged his shoulders.

“The risk is considered to be acceptable under the circumstances.”

“Acceptable, seriously? A bomb . . .”

“The information is as yet unconfirmed. We have too few details to be in a position to suggest anything so drastic as postponing the wedding. Bomb threats are a regular occurrence, and my employers . . .”

He sighed.

“There’s a lot at stake, Rebecca, much more than you can imagine. Popular support for the royal family has halved during the past fifteen years, parliament is full of republicans who are simply biding their time, and if the figures continue to decline at the same rate . . .”

He paused and shrugged once more.

“Of course, factors of that sort can’t be taken into account when you’re evaluating the level of threat, but you know how that works as well as I do. All large organizations are the same. Somewhere there’s always someone who’s worried about losing his job, and who therefore hesitates to make unpalatable but sometimes necessary decisions.”

He held his hands out.

“There’s hardly anything that increases support for the royal family like a wedding, my employers taught me that a few years ago. Unfortunately all the articles in the papers, however wrong they might be, have wiped out almost all of the upturn.”

“What about the christening? That wasn’t long ago.”

He shook his head.

“A christening is far too low key, it doesn’t give the same
warm glow. Nowadays I’m afraid there are only two things that raise support for the royal family—weddings and national crises. In other words, it would take a very great deal indeed for anyone to decide to rein in the festivities, let alone postpone them. Anyway, as far as this potential bombing is concerned, we have very few details so far.”

“So what do you know, can you tell me?”

“Not really, Rebecca . . .” He paused for a few seconds, exchanged a quick glance with Edler in the rearview mirror before going on.

“A few hours ago we received a tip-off about a flat. We got a warrant and searched it, and found certain indications that a bomb could have been constructed there . . .”

“And how is this connected to Henke?”

Sammer took a deep breath.

“The flat was in Maria Trappgränd, right next door to Henrik’s . . .”

Her heart began to beat faster, but she did her best to hide her agitation.

“Hang on, you’re not suggesting that Henke . . . ? Well, you can drop that idea. He can hardly put together a bookcase, let alone a bomb . . .”

“I agree with you entirely, my dear Rebecca.”

He gently patted one of her knees.

“We don’t believe that Henrik constructed the bomb on his own either. But, on the other hand, it can hardly be a coincidence that the workshop was located in the flat next door to his. And we’ve also found a couple of his fingerprints in there . . .”

Rebecca shook her head reluctantly.

“As I said before, Henrik is in dangerous company at the moment. Extremely dangerous company. The people he has
surrounded himself with are experts at manipulating other people, they’ve done it many times before. And sadly Henrik is, as you know, rather . . .”

“Gullible . . .”

“Precisely.”

The car stopped at a red light on the roundabout at Lindhagensplan, and they sat in silence for a moment.

They were only a couple of hundred meters from the place where the car she and Kruse were in crashed after Henke dropped a rock through the windshield from the expressway bridge above. Admittedly, Henke hadn’t known she was in the car, but that was fairly irrelevant. Someone had manipulated him into doing it, getting him to completely ignore the inevitable conclusion that other people would be hurt as a consequence of his actions. Could that really happen again?

Under the right circumstances—absolutely.

“So what do you want me to do, Uncle Tage?” she said as the car approached the expressway bridge.

His voice sounded sad:

“A lot of people’s lives are at risk, Rebecca. If we don’t manage to catch Henrik tonight, then we will all have to do whatever we can to stop him. And I do mean whatever, if you understand me?”

He paused briefly.

“Obviously, you can choose not to accept the assignment. No one would blame you. I can have a word with Eskil Stigsson . . .”

They passed under the bridge and she couldn’t help glancing up at the railing above. For a few moments she imagined she could see someone up there. A dark-clad figure in a hood.

“No!” she said, a little too loudly, and saw Edler looking at her in the rearview mirror.

“No thanks, Uncle Tage. That won’t be necessary,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Just as you say, there’s too much at stake. I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done already . . .”

“Don’t mention it. We need the right people in the right positions. People we can rely on. We all agree on that, Stigsson, my employers, and I.”

He patted her knee again.

“You’re so like your father, Rebecca, have I already said that? Conscientious, loyal, reliable, no matter what the circumstances. Those qualities are getting harder and harder to find in today’s egocentric society . . .”

She couldn’t help blushing.