Bubble: A Thriller (26 page)

“Do me a favor,” he hissed at HP as he squeezed his arm tighter. “You and I have a bit of unfinished business, so how about putting up a bit of resistance? Just a bit?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Number thirty-two Birkagatan, does that ring any bells? I had to go to A&E to get that red spray paint out of my eyes. I was out sick for a week, and my girlfriend didn’t dare to stay after you’d left your little message on our door . . .”

So that was where he knew the musclebound moron from!

Well, two years had passed, and he’d only caught glimpses of a bright red face and a tattooed arm, but now, in hindsight, it was obvious.

Remember rule number one

The fans liked it when you fried a . . .

“Rat . . .” He blurted it out in a fit of Tourette’s, and he felt Jeff twitch. The grip around his arm got even tighter, and for a moment he thought Jeff was going to hit him.

“Are you coming or what?” Nora said.

A short silence.

“Sure, we’re coming,” Jeff muttered, and shoved HP ahead of him.

Their car was parked on the other side of the wall.

“Get in!” Jeff held one of the back doors open.

“Not until you tell me where we’re going!”

“Get in, I said.” Jeff took a step closer and clenched his fists.

“Like fuck I will.” He looked over his shoulder, trying to find an escape route. But unfortunately he was on an island, and he had serious doubts about his ability to cope with a long run.

“Okay, calm down, both of you.”

Nora again. She put her hand on Jeff’s shoulder and the intimacy of the gesture made HP dislike the bodybuilder even more.

But it seemed to work, because Jeff lowered his hands.

“We’re going to a meeting,” she said curtly. “It’s not far, then afterward we’ll drop you wherever you want to go.”

He didn’t move.

“Come on, HP, you can hardly be scared of a meeting . . .”

She winked at him, and suddenly he found himself trying not to smile. He stood there for a few more seconds, pretending to think about it. But really he was far too tired to think about anything.

“Okay,” he sighed with a shrug. “Let’s do it . . .”

♦  ♦  ♦

The dark Volvo pulled up outside her door.

The driver hardly had time to put the hand brake on before she was out on the sidewalk.

She had already been waiting fifteen minutes in the dark stairwell, and having to wait had done nothing to improve her mood.

She jumped into the backseat and slammed the door hard behind her.

“What the hell is going on?” she snarled.

“Calm down, I’ll explain everything. Just give me a chance, please.”

Tage Sammer held his hands up in such an exaggerated way that she had trouble staying angry.

“Okay,” she said, then took a deep breath. “I’m listening . . .”

“As you already know, I work with security issues. I have done ever since I left the military. The Palace, or rather the office of the Marshal of the Realm, is one of my clients.”

“Yes, I worked that out,” she snapped. “So why didn’t you say so when we last met, and why are you called André Pellas instead of Tage Sammer? And how does my brother fit into the picture . . . ?”

He put one hand on her arm to get her to stop.

“We can set off now, Jonsson,” he said unnecessarily loudly to the chauffeur.

“Of course, Colonel.” The chauffeur put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

Tage Sammer leaned closer to her.

“You have to understand, Rebecca,” he said, “just like your father, sometimes I have to use different names. André Pellas is the name I went by earlier in my career.”

“Military intelligence, yes?”

It was dark in the backseat, but she thought she could see his face twitch slightly.

“I found an old picture of you in a book about Cyprus,” she added.

“I see . . .”

A brief silence followed.

“Well, I should have known better than to underestimate you, Rebecca,” he said with a wry smile.

“Your father was also very diligent in his work, preparing everything very thoroughly, never leaving anything to chance . . .”

He took a deep breath.

“After the attack in Kungsträdgården two years ago, the Palace realized that they needed to improve their handling of security and intelligence. The Marshal of the Realm and I are old acquaintances, which is why he contacted me. As you know, His Majesty has had a number of . . .”

He paused and seemed to be searching for the right words.

“. . . PR-related difficulties, one might say.”

“You mean that muckraking book, and the friends who employed gangsters, and the rumors about—”

“Perhaps we needn’t go into detail . . .” he interrupted. “But any decrease in public support goes hand in hand with an increased level of risk, and with an event like the princess’s wedding just around the corner, everyone is rather more nervous than usual.”

“I can understand that, but the Security Police are already on top of all that . . .”

“Naturally, of course they are. But the incident in Kungsträdgården a couple of years ago showed that there were clear deficiencies both in the evaluation of the threat level and in
communication between the Palace and the Security Police. My role is to act as a link. To bridge potential differences of opinion, if you understand what I mean?”

He brought his fingertips together to illustrate his point, and suddenly she couldn’t help smiling. The gesture was so obvious, and so familiar.

“I am also able to contribute the experience and network of contacts I have built up during my thirty years or so in the world of international security,” he went on. “Offering a second opinion, so to speak . . .”

The car climbed to the crown of the Western Bridge, then continued down toward Hornstull.

Down to their right they could make out the dark edifice of the old prison on Långholmen.

“We believe that the attack in Kungsträdgården was carried out by a particular network. A group calling itself the Circus, the Event, and occasionally—”

“The Game,” she interjected.

“Exactly! I presume you heard about it from Henrik?”

She nodded.

“To begin with I thought it was just talk. Another one of his stories . . .”

“But as time went by you became more convinced?”

“Yes, especially after I’d talked to . . .”

She bit her lip.

“. . . Magnus Sandström,” Sammer concluded. “Or Farook Al-Hassan, as he calls himself these days.”

She didn’t answer.

“Don’t worry, Rebecca, we know all about Sandström. We’ve had our eyes on him for quite a while. We know that one of his tasks was to recruit people whom the Game might find useful.”

“People like Henke, you mean?”

“Precisely. Your brother is an excellent example of an active participant. But Sandström and his like also recruit other more . . . passive resources.”

“Such as?”

He leaned even closer and lowered his voice almost to a whisper.

“Such as you, for instance . . .”

THEY PARKED IN
a garage near Södra station.

“Here.”

Nora handed him a pair of cheap sunglasses.

“And pull your hood up as well.”

He didn’t really understand why until they passed a tobacconist’s and he saw his own glazed expression from his passport photograph staring out at him from the wall.

SWEDEN’S MOST WANTED MAN! the fly sheet screamed, so loudly that he felt like covering his ears.

“Okay?” Nora said quietly.

“Sure . . .” he mumbled, without sounding at all convincing. “Is it much farther?”

She shook her head.

“We’re heading to Fatbursparken first, then we’re almost there.”

They walked around some portacabins and made their way along a fence surrounding a building site.

The music and noise from the sidewalk cafés up in Medborgarplatsen were clearly audible.

Jeff stopped for a moment and looked around.

“Through there,” he said, pointing to an opening in the fence.

They went down a rough tarmac path, looping downward in a semicircle. Just as they disappeared below ground level the path turned to gravel and they found themselves in a narrow gulley with rock walls on either side. Weird . . . he thought he knew Södermalm like the back of his hand, but he’d never given any thought to this particular corner.

He must have crossed the footbridge that he could see seven or eight meters above them hundreds of times without ever thinking about what was underneath. Probably because the vegetation growing from the sides of the gulley formed a canopy that blocked the view.

The gulley stopped abruptly at a rock wall. In the middle was a large metal gate, and cool, damp cave air hit them as they got closer.

Jeff looked over his shoulder again, then glanced up at the buildings just visible above ground level.

“Okay?” Nora said.

Jeff nodded.

She took a large key out of one of her jacket pockets and unlocked the gate.

Once they were inside she locked it again.

Jeff pulled out a flashlight and shone it into the cave.

Ten meters in, there was a folding door.

Nora marched quickly over to it and began fiddling with the lock, but HP didn’t move.

He was tired, exhausted, unable to walk another step, at least not until someone told him where the hell they were going.

“Come on.” Jeff tugged at his arm.

He opened his mouth to tell the king of the bodybuilders to go fuck himself, but at that moment a row of lamps lit up on the other side of the door, revealing a long tunnel that led into the rock.

He hesitated a few more seconds, then his curiosity got the better of him.

The tunnel was big; judging from its height and width, it looked like it had probably once been used for trains. The roof was bricked over, and every fifteen meters there was an old fluorescent light fitting, giving off just enough light to see by. The sides of the tunnel were mostly bare rock, but here and there water had trickled through, polishing the surface.

The tunnel curved to the left, and the ground sloped gently down. HP’s tired legs were grateful for any help they could get. Their steps echoed off the walls, and once they’d walked about fifty meters the folding door behind them vanished from view.

“So where are we going?” he asked Nora.

“We told you, back on Långholmen. A meeting . . .” Jeff answered.

“Yes, but I thought . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

What had he actually thought?

He scarcely knew. His whole system had rebooted, and only now did his head seem to have started working normally.

They had entered the tunnel up by Fatbursparken, and it curved down and to the left. They must have walked about two hundred meters now, which meant they should be somewhere under . . .

♦  ♦  ♦

Sankt Paulsgatan.

The chauffeur pulled up in a free parking space. Then, without a word from Sammer, he got out onto the sidewalk and closed the car door behind him.

“You must have an awful lot of questions, Rebecca, and believe me, nothing would please me more than to be able to answer them all. But, as I’m sure you can appreciate, that is sadly not possible . . .”

He looked at her in a way that made her nod unconsciously in agreement.

“But, because I trust you, I will do my best to satisfy your curiosity. Tell me what you know, and I shall try to fill in the gaps . . .”

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.

The fact that Sammer was working for both the Palace and Security Police explained a fair amount. But she had plenty more questions, a great deal more, and now she had to try to reformulate them.

“The safe-deposit box . . .” she began. “You knew there was a gun in it, didn’t you?”

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded slowly.

“I certainly suspected as much. As I said, your father had begun to act on his own, and made a number of ill-considered decisions. It would be extremely unfortunate if the weapon were to be traced back to . . .”

He gestured toward the window.

“. . . events in the past.”

He fell silent and looked at her.

“A safe-deposit box is in many ways a sort of bubble, Rebecca. A place where time has stopped and all the normal rules have ceased to apply. But as you already know, bubbles have one thing in common . . .”

“Sooner or later they’re bound to burst,” she said.

He nodded.

“And the passports?”

“There’s less risk attached to them, but I’d still be grateful if you could let me have them, along with the gun. Not least to protect your father’s memory . . .”

She didn’t answer and tried instead to put her questions together into something resembling a narrative.

“That piece of paper you gave Henke, out in the cemetery. You said you wanted to give him a message, that that was why you needed to get in touch with him . . .”

Sammer didn’t respond and seemed to be waiting for her to suggest something.

“I don’t quite see how it all fits together . . .” she said.

He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out in a sigh.

“I promised your father that I’d look after you. Both you and Henrik. When we started to receive information that suggested Henke was seriously involved in the Game, I decided to break the rules . . .”

“Something happened out there by the Kaknäs Tower, didn’t it . . . ?” she said.

He glanced briefly out the window.

“I suppose you could say that I decided to use rather unorthodox tactics . . .”

“Come on, this is my little brother we’re talking about! You have to tell me, Uncle Tage!”

He lowered his voice and leaned forward.

“Henrik doesn’t like me, does he? He doesn’t like the fact that you and I are close?”

“Er . . . what?” The question took her by surprise. “Well, maybe not. But not because of you.”

“I’m afraid it is, Rebecca . . .”

He took a deep breath and appeared to think for a few moments.

“Let me explain. Most participants in the Game become afflicted sooner or later with severe paranoia. They have difficulty seeing the difference between fantasy and reality, and begin to see conspiracy theories around every corner . . .”