Buzz: A Thriller (24 page)

He dabbed at his mouth with his linen napkin.

“I daresay I’ve had the idea within me ever since my time in the Military Intelligence and Security Service, but it wasn’t until I started at Burston that it started to firm up. We worked in a way which at least in part was reminiscent of what we do today at ArgosEye, but the difference there was that clients only came to us once the crisis was a fact. A company in an
acute crisis is a grateful client in many respects, not least when it comes to being able to charge liberally for your services . . .”

He took a sip of his wine and HP took the chance to take another mouthful of grape juice.

“Among other things, we handled the situation that arose with Dole after that documentary claiming that they were poisoning their employees in South America. They were using a banned insecticide on their bananas—maybe you remember it?”

HP nodded.

“Dole had tried threatening to sue the director of the film, which is basically the very worst thing you could do. You’ve probably heard of the Streisand Effect, where your efforts to conceal information only serve to increase the attention being paid to it? That was the situation when we got involved. Obviously the film couldn’t be stopped, but we found another solution which at least enabled us to bring some balance to the debate. We paid for sponsored links alongside any key words that had anything to do with the film. The title, the filmmaker’s name, the chemical compound of the poison—you name it.”

He gestured toward the ceiling.

“If anyone searched for any of those words, they always got Dole’s corrected version of the story three centimeters to the right of their search results. The links only cost a few hundred dollars, but the invoice we presented Dole with was at least a thousand times that amount . . .”

He smiled and paused long enough for them both to take another mouthful of food.

“The actual idea was brilliant. Using the mechanics of the Internet to defend the interests of a client . . .”

He finished his mouthful before going on.

“ . . . but as time went on I started to get tired of having to put out fires that were already blazing. Instead I started to think of a way to discover and deal with likely fires before they had time to flare up, pretty much the way we did in military intelligence. We used to use a tool that was managed by the National Defense Radio Center, a sort of search matrix for monitoring communications, looking for certain loaded terms, like
bomb, terrorist, explosion,
and so on . . .”

“The famous National Defense Radio Center filter, the one that caused all those protests? Reading people’s emails?” HP interjected.

“That’s the one.” Philip nodded. “Which was actually all rather ridiculous seeing as the National Defense Radio Center neither could nor would ever want to read everyone’s emails. Their filter merely picks up things that might be worth checking, maybe one email in a million, if someone used the right combination of terms. In terms of integrity, it’s no more invasive than using a supermarket loyalty card . . .”

“Exactly!” HP agreed. “So that was where you got the idea? A National Defense Radio Center, but for businesses?”

He regretted his comment at once, and cursed his inability to keep his mouth shut.

Philip gave him a long look.

“Well, that’s probably taking the comparison a bit far, Magnus . . .”

HP gulped.

“ . . . at least that’s what I usually say to the few journalists who are intelligent enough to ask the same question . . .”

Philip paused to take another sip of his wine.

“But, just between the two of us, you’re thinking along
exactly the right lines . . .” he concluded and gave HP a wink.

♦  ♦  ♦

Everything was connected, she was more and more certain of that now, especially once she’d spoken to Micke.

“The IP address was concealed by one of the anonymizing sites,” he explained. “But we managed to get past that. The problem was that we just got stuck in another similar server somewhere else, and my guess is that it would go on like that for quite a while. Whoever set this up knows what he’s doing, and definitely doesn’t want to be traced.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to write down what he had just told her so she could refer back to it later.

“So we’re stuffed, in other words?”

“Well,” he said, and his tone of voice made her feel suddenly more cheerful. “We’re not exactly novices at this sort of thing, we’ve seen stuff like this before. Give us another week or so and we can probably get to the bottom of it.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I really appreciate your help with this!”

“That goes without saying. And just so you know, I don’t believe a word of the shit that’s been written about you.”

A few seconds of silence followed, before he went on. “One more thing—I was going to ask what you’re doing on Saturday?”

“Nothing special, why?”

As soon as she answered she realized that it wasn’t actually true. In a moment of weakness she’d agreed to have dinner with John, the man on the treadmill. But of course she could always cancel that . . .

“This is going to sound a bit odd, but I’ve got to go to a funeral
and I was wondering if you’d like to come. It’s to do with work, and if you’re still considering the job offer, it would be a good opportunity for me to introduce you. Besides, I’d like to show off my beautiful girlfriend . . .”

The question caught her by surprise.

She’d been hoping for a meal and the cinema, a chance to patch things up. But this?

Networking at a funeral? What on earth was he thinking?

Besides, she’d already made it clear that she wasn’t interested in changing jobs.

The last funeral she’d been to had been Dag’s, when she rushed out after just a few minutes. She’d fought so hard to leave all that behind—make a new life for herself, far away from the person she used to be. And she had almost succeeded as well . . .

But the thought of standing in a church with a load of people dressed in black made her skin crawl.

“No, thanks!”

Her abrupt answer seemed to take him by surprise almost as much as her.

“Er, what? But you said you could . . .”

“Yes, I could . . .” she went on. “But I don’t want to.”

♦  ♦  ♦

“So what have you managed to learn so far, Magnus?”

HP thought fast.

“That everything is about perception . . .” He glanced at Philip.

“Good. Go on.”

“That monopoly control of the flow of information is a
thing of the past, and the only way to limit damage is to try to steer the flood of information in the right direction. Filling the bulletin board with your own posters, so to speak.”

Philip opened his mouth to say something, but HP was warming to his theme.

“Going full throttle on loads of different channels at the same time to drown out your opponent, and if that doesn’t work, shifting the focus and getting people to look at something else until it’s all blown over. The media’s memory has always been short, and on the Internet it’s even shorter.” He stopped himself and took a deep breath.

“People can only deal with one story at a time,” he concluded, glancing at Philip once more.

“Good, Magnus. Excellent, in fact. You’ve learned more than I had dared to hope, which makes it even easier to get to my point today,” Philip said with a smile.

He wiped his mouth again, then leaned across the table as he adopted a more serious expression. HP suddenly realized he was holding his breath.

“Kristoffer will be coming back from abroad next week and in conjunction with his return I’m thinking of changing things around a bit in the management team. I would have liked to have done so before now, but for various reasons it hasn’t happened . . .”

He made a face that HP had trouble interpreting.

“Over the next few weeks the company is going to be facing some serious challenges. I’m afraid I can’t share all the details with you, but one thing that’s very clear is that the demands on each and every one of us are going to increase considerably. It’s a whole new ball game, as the Americans would say . . . As you might have noticed already, there are certain people who
haven’t quite kept up with developments. Who no longer match our profile, if you understand what I mean . . . ?”

HP nodded. His heart was suddenly racing with expectation.

“Obviously this is just between the two of us, but as soon as we’ve got past Anna’s funeral, there’s going to be a reorganization. I’m thinking of moving Frank to the Laundry, which will mean that we need a new team leader in the Troll Mine. I don’t suppose you can think of anyone who might be suitable for the job . . . ?”

“I can probably think of at least one candidate,” HP replied with a broad grin.

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Dear Uncle Tage,

Thanks for your kind letter.

I would be happy to accept your offer, right now I could do with all the help I can get.

Best wishes,

Rebecca Normén

SHE REALIZED SHE
was clutching at straws, but in her situation she hardly had anything to lose. If nothing happened soon, she’d be both out of a job and a convicted criminal.

Besides, there was something about the old man that appealed to her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. But that was probably mostly just rubbish . . . Tage Sammer reminded her of her dad, that was obviously it, and that was probably why she’d decided to email him.

♦  ♦  ♦

“Well, like I said. This flat is practically unique. The view, the location, and not least the original features . . .”

The blond estate agent gestured toward the brick wall in one corner of the room, then at the exposed beams in the ceiling, as if she were a museum guide in the middle of a tour.

The flat was undeniably impressive. An old loft, renovated to make a spacious three-room apartment at the top of Stigberget on Södermalm, with a magnificent view of Djurgården and the entrance to Stockholm Harbor. The previous owner must have been an architect, because it looked like it came straight out of one of the design magazines HP usually found at the barber’s. From his point of view, he couldn’t really understand how people could get so excited about Danish design from the fifties, teppanyaki grills, or imported Italian limestone. But design was the fetish of the twenty-first century. You only had to compare the feeble little shelf of shame reserved for porn mags with the massive display of interior design magazines in any gasoline station to realize that. Everyone who was anyone evidently fucked on colorful Carl Malmsten sofas instead of a sturdy old Klippan covered in sweaty fake leather from Ikea . . . And speaking of the F-word: Rilke seemed completely blown away by interior design porn. She soaked up every sales cliché that fell from the estate agent’s mouth, giggled in a false way at the right places, and at one point he almost got the feeling that the two women were flirting with each other. Ordinarily he would have found the whole scenario a bit sexy. But for some reason the adult-film director who usually lived inside his head seemed to have gone to lunch, because the giggling and the little intimate touches were actually making him more annoyed
than excited. He glanced at the time. It was almost an hour since they left the office, and they hadn’t even had lunch yet.

He didn’t have time for this sort of nonsense—he actually had a job to do, and so did Rilke, especially if she was going to be able to afford a place like this . . .

Rilke seemed to pick up on his irritation, because she concluded her discussion with the estate agent, exchanged air kisses, and then came over to him with a key ring dangling teasingly from her finger.

“Mette’s letting us have a look on our own for a while,” she said as the front door closed. “What do you say about starting in the bedroom?”

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Dear Rebecca,

You’ve made an old man very happy.

I’ll write again as soon as I have any relevant information to give you, probably within the next few days. Try not to worry, my dear, this will all work out, you’ll see.

Best wishes,

Uncle Tage

She read through the email more times than she needed to, and for some reason she couldn’t help smiling. She liked his tone, and even if the message was short, it still felt strangely reassuring.

♦  ♦  ♦

A dream.

That was what it felt like.

For the first time in his life he had an exciting job with a good salary, and he seemed to be the boss’s favorite. As well as that, he had met a girl, a real ten-pointer who was as attractive as she was smart.

Money, career, and love. This was what life was supposed to be like!

There was just one problem. It wasn’t his dream.

It belonged to Magnus Sandström; the fake one, though, not the original.

But ever since that lunch with Philip, he found himself toying more and more with a rather pleasant thought. Dumping the phone in the nearest drain, moving into that flat with Rilke, forgetting all about Anna Argos and the Game, and making a normal life for himself.

Difficult—of course! But not impossible.

Most of it seemed to be going brilliantly—if it weren’t for what Nox had told him the other evening.

It wasn’t really that dramatic. But Nox had taken his surveillance duties very seriously, and had seen two lads, eighteen to twenty or so, hanging around for several hours in a doorway on the other side of the street from the hotel. Nox recognized everyone who lived on the whole block, and these two definitely didn’t fit in. They were rather too well-dressed and polished, and had seemed rather nervous.

Nox hadn’t seen any cells or cameras, he was definite on that point, but HP still found himself feeling increasingly uneasy.

If the Game, against all expectation, had found out that he’d come back home to Stockholm, he couldn’t see any way that he could be traced to the Hotel Hopeless. It would have been far more likely for them to send their spies to his old flat in Maria Trappgränd, or to Becca’s place out in Fredhäll, but he’d been careful to steer well clear of both of those. Okay, so he’d popped into Mange’s shop briefly, and in hindsight that could be seen as an unnecessary risk. But he hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to see a friendly face, and the shop was only a few blocks from the hotel, and he had disguised himself well. Unfortunately his visit had been in vain, seeing as Mange hadn’t even been there, just his pimply stand-in.