The Game Trilogy (59 page)

The more he thought about it, the more sense it all made. The takeover of the company and Anna’s murder had been just the preamble. The real match had only started with the failed bombing.

The guy had been loaded with various explosives and other horrors, and had been just fifty metres from one of the busiest parts of Stockholm. Yet somehow he had still managed to fuck the whole thing up.

Even though he must have run the entire length of Drottninggatan, and presumably passed hundreds of
Christmas shoppers tipsy from mulled wine, the bomb had gone off in a place where basically no-one but him had been hurt.

Obviously it could be a miracle, or the poor sod might have panicked. Changed his mind or simply been a bit too heavy-handed with his home-brewed internet explosives.

But there was also another possibility.

That someone had detonated the bomb remotely so that it got maximum attention but did minimum damage. Pretty much like Player 128’s little adventure with the Horse-Guards in Kista. He had thought long and hard about why the Game had made the call that would detonate the explosives so long before the cortege containing the US Secretary of State was due to get there. If he hadn’t been smart enough to see through the Game Master’s bullshit, he’d probably have been the only victim of the blast, just like the bomber in the city centre.

But it was all about shifting people’s focus. Creating an event that was both spectacular and simultaneously raised enough questions for the media and all the so-called experts to be able to argue about on every news channel available.

And in the meantime other things vanished under the radar. In actual fact, the whole thing was just a variation of what the gang at ArgosEye did. Filling the notice-board with their own posters so there was no room for anything else.

Over the next few weeks absolutely everything would be about the explosion and all the question marks surrounding it, and ArgosEye would make sure that the shift in focus lasted long enough.

The only question was: what were they trying to hide?

It had to be something big, that much at least was obvious.

So what the fuck was he going to do now?

Obviously he could go to the press, but what evidence did he have? He, a convicted criminal who had just been deported from an Arab country, directing various unspecified accusations at a well-established Swedish businessman. Not only that, but a wonderful little combo of accusations involving global conspiracy theories, various intelligence agencies and secret societies. God, he might as well make himself a hand-painted sign and join the other nutters protesting outside parliament.

No, he really only had two options.

One: pack his bags and head off into the sunset like a poor lonesome cowboy.

Or two: so much easier! He’d find out what they were planning and put a stop to the whole thing!

Yippikayee, mothafuckers!

The guy in the pilot’s sunglasses and his weird friend double-parked outside her door and went with her all the way up to her flat. They even carried her bags, and then politely declined her offer of a cup of coffee as thanks for their help.

‘Here,’ sunglasses said, rooting through his jacket pockets. During the drive he had introduced himself as Nox. ‘Your brother wanted you to have this.’

He handed her a mobile phone and charger.

‘Pay as you go. Keep it switched on, he’ll call soon.’

He made an odd drumming gesture against the side of his nose.

‘Don’t you worry, little lady, Nox will look out for you!’

He watched the work-experience kid show up on his scooter, parking it right outside the door. It looked like the same guy he’d met several weeks ago, but all these kids looked the same. Long, greasy hair, his entire face covered in spots. Throw in a pair of washed-out jeans, red, Counterstrike eyes and a creased t-shirt and you’d pretty much covered all of Manga’s little disciples.

A bit of rattling with the key in the lock, then a few minutes wait to let the guy switch off the alarm and start things up before he crossed the street.

He opened the door, but to his surprise he wasn’t welcomed by the usual tune from the doorbell.

Maybe Wally Work-Experience had got fed up of it, or else he simply didn’t share Manga’s fascination with
Star Wars
?

Nor was the guy hanging over the counter with a cup of bitter coffee and a crumpled copy of
Metro
the way his master usually did. Instead HP found him towards the back of the shop, in front of one of the larger computers.

He was probably surfing for porn, playing pocket billiards, checking out the internet’s latest accomplishments. ‘Naughty Annie stuffs her Fanny’, ‘Donkey-Hung IV’, or other cinematic masterpieces proudly presented by the world wide web …

‘Does your boss know what you’re doing?’ HP shouted, making the young man almost fall off his chair.

‘What!?’

The guy was staring at him in shock.

‘Calm down, lad, I’m not that dangerous.’

HP grinned and pointed to his own chest.

‘I come in peace. Take me to your leader!’

He nodded benevolently at the kid, who still looked completely blank.

‘Ah, what the hell …’ HP chuckled when the joke
seemed to pass him by. ‘I need to get hold of Manga or Farook or whatever the fuck he’s calling himself this week. Is he still away? His old email and Messenger don’t seem to be working.’

‘Er …?!’

Finally, something resembling a sign of life …

‘Well … the boss is in Saudi or somewhere like that … He’s got a new Hotmail. Do you want it …?’

‘Bingo!’

The young man grinned with relief and a minute or so later he’d managed to dig out a scrap of paper and a pen.

‘You’re HP, yeah?’ he went on in a slightly less shaky voice.

‘Mmh,’ HP muttered from the corner of his mouth while he was jotting down Manga’s contact details.

‘Manga has said a lot about you … You sound like a pretty cool dude. Seen a lot of stuff, I mean.’

‘Really, you reckon?’ HP said, looking up. ‘Obviously, I can neither confirm or deny any rumours …’ he added with a smile.

After all, you had to give kids a chance …

She had just read the email when the phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, it’s me!’

‘Yes, so I can hear …’

‘We probably need to talk …’

‘You reckon …?’

‘Come on, Becca, this isn’t the time to get all grumpy. Do you know Philip Argos, Nox said it looked like you did?’

‘Who?’

‘Philip Argos, previously known as Philip John
Martinsson. My former boss and a seriously fucking nasty piece of work …’

She sighed.

‘It’s complicated …’

Okay, so the situation was actually even worse that he had imagined.

Nox had done his job impeccably, which wasn’t really that strange. After all, he had stumped up the rent on a flat for the Chief for the next six months, and thrown another ten cartons of cigarettes into the bargain, so now the two nutters were neighbours down on the ground floor.

But what he had found out over the past few days was considerably more troubling.

She’d lied to him!

She had never explained what she had been doing in Östermalm that morning, and as usual he had been a bit too focused on himself to ask.

What annoyed him most was that he had actually believed that the whole thing was a huge fucking coincidence. That karma had put her there like some angel of salvation …

Whereas in fact she was more like a tart who’d just tumbled out of Philip’s bed after a night of passion …

His life had pretty much always been basically fucked up, but he had always been able to rely on Becca. She was the one who helped him keep his head above water. But now she’d let him down, several times over. First she’d jumped into bed with his worst enemy, and then lied about it, or at the very least neglected to tell the truth.

It wasn’t Stoffe who’d blabbed about him – it was his own sister.

Fuck!

Fuck!

FUCK!!!

He had to take a break from the computer, go for a little four-metre walk to the door and back, until he calmed down a bit.

The whole thing was like some evil bastard flashback to the days when Dag had her under his thumb …

To begin with he had admired Dag, seeing him as a big brother. When Dag and Becca were dating, he hadn’t really wanted to see the signs, because Dag was a cool guy, the sort you wanted to hang out with, get a pat on the back from. It had been Manga who woke him up from his admiring sleep and made him realize what Dag was really like, what was actually happening. Then he started to hate Dag almost as much as he hated his dad.

Up to now he hadn’t actually hated Philip Argos. On some level HP had still been able to understand why his boss was acting the way he was. Because after all, he had betrayed Philip’s trust, put his whole plan at risk. Cause and effect, so to speak. But now that had all changed.

Now it was fucking personal!

The situation was actually even worse than she had imagined.

Last time it had been the sinking of the Estonia and Palme’s murder, but this …

When she had finally got him to start talking, he didn’t stop. The words had tumbled out of him like a torrent, especially once she herself had been honest and at least tried to explain about her disastrous date with John, a.k.a. Philip Argos.

She had done her best to believe him, really, really tried hard. But it just wouldn’t go in. Companies cleaning up the internet, directing blogs and discussion forums while
simultaneously collaborating with forces that carried out fake terrorist attacks in order to shift the media’s focus away from things they wanted to hide …

Seriously?

And as if that wasn’t enough, he had thrown in a bit more – hired assassins, secret Google algorithms and clairvoyant Lidingö ladies, only to end up back where it had all started.

That bloody Game …

She wound the clip backwards and forwards.

Grainy pictures, presumably taken with the camera of a mobile, but it wasn’t hard to see what they showed. The red ground, people in ragged clothes, and in the middle of them the black cars. Then you heard shots, the camera lurched wildly between ground and sky. The
whole scenario felt unreal. As if she had dreamed the same thing over and over again, but this time the dream was being projected on a screen instead of inside her head.

Then the vehicle reversing came so close that the cameraman had to jump out of the way. A short glimpse of a dark-haired woman hanging off the door. Then suddenly he was there.

Right in front of the car, and even if the camera only picked him up for a second, that was more than enough. If you paused the clip you could see plenty of detail. His clothes, far too neat and clean for him to blend in properly, then a glimpse of something like a well-polished, black army boot below one trouser leg. The yellow plastic bag dangling from his free hand.

Then, finally, the enormous black revolver pointing straight at the car.

‘Sent in an anonymous email to the prosecutor yesterday,’ her lawyer had told her.

The clip had been sent for analysis, but if it was genuine she could count on being back on duty after the New Year holiday.

In other words, Uncle Tage had kept his promise.

The least she could do in return was to do as he asked.

She pulled out the pay-as-you-go mobile and pressed the call button.

‘Yes.’ His voice sounded cold when he answered.

The sound of traffic in the background told her he was outside.

‘Monument,’ she said curtly.

‘What?!’

‘The Monument Hotel, that’s where you’re staying, isn’t it?’

There was silence on the line.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Sure. So who told you?’

He was trying to sound relaxed, but she had no trouble hearing how worried he was.

‘Have you ever heard of anyone calling themselves MayBey?’

‘MayBey, you mean that pretend cop?’

‘What do you mean, pretend …? You know him?’

‘Sort of, I checked your computer the other night while you were out. Saw you’d pasted together a document with quotes, then took a look at the forum. That’s the sort of thing I did when I was working for Philip …’

Then a car horn, and the sound cut out for a moment, and for a few seconds she thought the call had been broken.

Then she heard his footsteps. It sounded a bit like he was running.

‘Did what, Henke?’ she said irritably. ‘Look, I don’t feel like playing your silly games right now …’

‘Trolling.’

‘Like I …’

‘Going into different forums anonymously and fucking up the debate, or trying to steer it in the
right
direction, so to speak. Weren’t you listening when I told you all this the last time we spoke?’

She sighed.

‘You said loads of stuff, Henke, and most of it wasn’t very nice …’

‘Fuck that,’ he interrupted. ‘Whatever, this MayBey shows all the symptoms of troll disease.’

‘Which are …?’

‘He picks up words and jargon from others on the forum. Manages to get accepted. Then he starts tossing in
little fire-crackers, and soon enough everyone’s attention is focused on him.

‘He doesn’t seem to be an attack troll, because he’d be swearing all the time and causing loads of trouble, so at a guess he’s got some sort of agenda.’

‘But how can you be so sure he’s not a police officer?’

‘Okay, so the police jargon sounds right. But a real cop would hardly need to throw in a load of film quotes.’

‘What?!’

She could almost hear him grinning.

‘So you hadn’t noticed? Well, I didn’t check that thoroughly, but there were quotes from De Niro and Clint, I’m sure of that. That line about
rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk
, that’s from
Taxi Driver
…’

He paused, but she could still hear his quick footsteps.

‘Besides, there’s his name,’ he went on. ‘In the world of forums, names always mean something, even the trolls’ … To show how fucking smart they are, dangling bait in front of people’s noses without anyone noticing.’

‘So, MayBey?’

‘Well, to start with there’s the obvious connection to Maybe. And that’s the name of Judge Dredd’s arch-enemy. A serial killer who loves playing all sorts of games with the police … But if that wasn’t enough, there’s the whole anagram thing. Internet jockeys love anagrams. MayBey – Abyme?’

He left a dramatic pause and she had no choice but to spring the trap.

‘And?’

Mise en Abyme
is a film term for looking into an abyss. I learned that at Adult Education …’

For a moment his voice sounded strained and he cleared his throat.

‘Like when you put two mirrors opposite each other,
kind of. A copy of a copy, ad infinitum. Doubly unreal, yeah? Like a dream within a …’

‘Dream …’ she concluded.

Shit, they were on his trail!

He ought to just forget about the hotel, forget about his stuff and find another hiding place at once. But he couldn’t leave the phone there. It was his only link to the Game, and as long as he had that, he had at least some sort of physical proof that they actually existed.

He cautiously poked his head above the wall behind the hotel.

No obvious danger.

The little bit of wood he had poked into the catch of the emergency exit at the top of the fire escape was still there so he had no trouble getting to the right floor. The corridor was empty, but to be on the safe side he waited a minute or so before creeping up to his door.

He put his ear to it and listened.

Not a sound.

He didn’t have much time.

If Becca was right and someone was posting information on the internet about where he was, it wouldn’t be long before they showed up here. But why would that police troll have posted anything about him? And how had he found him?

He’d have to deal with all that once he’d found himself a more secure place to hide.

He put the key-card in the lock and opened the door. The room was dark. He took a cautious step inside but refrained from turning the light on. His eyes quickly adjusted. The room was empty, as was the bathroom. He grabbed his bag and hurriedly gathered together his things.

The phone went in first. He hadn’t touched it since he’d
got it back from Nox. To be honest, he’d had so much to think about that he’d almost forgotten about it.

But now it felt like his life depended on it.

There – done!

He closed the bag and took a couple of steps towards the door. But instead of opening it and taking off towards the fire escape at the end of the corridor he stopped. He wasn’t sure where the feeling came from, but something wasn’t right. He leaned closer to the door and peered carefully through the peephole. At first he could only see part of the corridor. Then he saw movement over by the lift. Two figures in balaclavas and dark clothing, heading straight towards him.

In a flash he put the safety chain on, then grabbed the little chair by the desk and wedged it under the door handle.

Then he opened the window as far as the safety catch would allow and clambered up onto the windowsill.

Just as there was a rattle from the lock behind him he gave the window-frame a good kick, breaking the catch.

He tossed his bag down, then took aim at the snowdrift a few metres below.

The chair slid to the floor and the door opened a few centimetres before the security chain caught it.

‘There!’ a voice roared.

Then he jumped.