Bubble: A Thriller (21 page)

She looked at him, waiting for the words to sink in.

“With the Source’s help we can put a stop to the whole thing. Not just individual tasks, but the whole of their fucking game plan. You get it?”

Before he could answer there was a knock at the door.

“That’ll be Jeff, I’ll get it.”

Hasselqvist walked over to the door.

“Who is it?”

He opened the door a crack to look out, but the person on the other side yanked the handle so hard that Hasselqvist almost fell over.

“Leave it out, Kent, this isn’t some damn spy story . . .” the man chuckled as he came into the room.

He was wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt that bulged impressively over his swollen muscles.

“Oh, so Sleeping Beauty’s woken up.” He nodded quickly at HP as he took off his sunglasses. “You managed to mend him then, good work, Doctor!”

The man—Jeff, evidently—smiled a shiny white smile and winked at Nora, but to HP’s satisfaction she ignored him completely. Not that this seemed to upset Muscleman in the slightest. He pulled a chair over toward HP and sat astride it as he scratched the back of his cropped head a couple of times, revealing a serious tribal tattoo on his lower arm.

“Is there any coffee?”

“I’ll get it, Jeff!”

Hasselqvist got busy with the thermos.

“So what do we know?” Nora asked.

Jeff shrugged.

“I got rid of the revolver and his phone.” He nodded toward HP. “Black’s in position up at the Fortress. They’re busy cutting the inauguration ribbon right now, if I had to guess. The city’s still crawling with police cars, even if they don’t seem to have a clue what they’re looking for . . .”

Hasselqvist handed him a cup of coffee.

“You should be fucking grateful I got hold of you, mate.” Jeff held a thick index finger out toward HP. “If it wasn’t for us you’d be dead now. That big bodyguard had you in his sights, another two seconds and
bang!
”

He added a cocked thumb to the index finger and demonstrated what he meant.

“Anyway, how the fuck did you come up with the idea of shooting Black? That wouldn’t have solved a damn thing . . .”

He grinned and shook his head.

HP muttered something inaudible into his coffee cup. He had to admit that the mountain of muscle in front of him had a point. As the horse medicine did its thing, he was starting to regain control of his brain. But even though he kept rewinding and playing the tape in his head, he still couldn’t really explain what had happened. It all felt very distant.

As if nothing he had experienced over the past twenty-four hours had actually happened, and it had just been a dream. Correction—a nightmare . . .

“Have we heard any more from the Source?” Jeff grunted.

“We’ve got all the plans—” Hasselqvist began, but Nora cut him off.

“Not yet. First we have to find out if he wants to work with us.”

She nodded to HP.

“Okay, I am actually here, you know,” he said. “Look . . . I’m grateful to you for helping me, but I’ve actually got a shitload of my own prob—”

“Your sister, you mean?” Nora interrupted. “The one who works for Sentry?”

“What? No, she works for the Secur—What did you say?”

He saw them exchange a glance and didn’t like that.

“Your sister went on leave from the Security Police last winter,” Nora continued, leaning closer to him. “She started work for Sentry Security, where her boyfriend, Micke, was already employed. She started up a bodyguard unit to look after business bigwigs. Sentry was bought up last year by a company called PayTag. And presumably you already know a bit about them, seeing as you just tried to shoot their managing director . . .”

HP opened his mouth to reply, but Nora didn’t give him the chance.

“Good, then maybe you also know that PayTag is constructing a number of huge server farms around the world? Well, perhaps server hotels would be a better description. Here in Sweden they’ve built a massive installation in one of the military’s old underground bunkers just outside Uppsala. The place is called the Fortress, and it’ll soon be storing data for pretty much every company and government body across the whole of northern Europe . . .”

HP nodded again, more forcefully this time, and suddenly he couldn’t help smiling.

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 . . .

He shook his head as the relief did a little victory lap around his body.

Suddenly he realized that 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 man’s angular face. As if 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!”

“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 meters 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 center 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 center.

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 Center 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 since 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 face-lift that almost all of her facial expressions looked 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.

“Among 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 overemphatic 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, telling 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 whether he was on board 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 whether he should hold back slightly to soften the blow. But there was no point. These idiots 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 important—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 guy 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 shitload 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 able 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 Muscles’ 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 . . .”