Bubble: A Thriller (29 page)

“Forget Monika,” Mange went on. “We’re talking about a seriously cold person. Someone who would literally step over dead bodies to get what she wanted. Even her own . . . ?”

He brought up a fresh picture on the phone and this time the man was more visible. It was Mark Black. But HP’s brain was still refusing to cooperate.

“She calls herself Anthea Ravel these days,” Mange continued. “She got a management role in the PayTag Group and is
currently working on getting their new business up and running. A fitting surname in a lot of respects, actually. Ravel is a Janus word, after all . . .”

“Don’t talk in riddles,” HP grunted distractedly as he sat there with his eyes glued to the screen.

“A Janus word can mean its own opposite. Like ‘screen,’ which can mean both to conceal and to show. Janus, after the Roman god with two faces . . .”

Mange held the phone even closer to the end of HP’s nose.

“Two faces, get it?”

“Anna Argos,” HP muttered, unable to quite believe what he was saying.

♦  ♦  ♦

“You must be careful, Rebecca, promise me that,” Tage Sammer said as the car pulled up beside the sidewalk and the chauffeur got out to open the door for her.

“Not just when you go to the bank. The Game has eyes and ears everywhere, and Magnus Sandström is an extremely dangerous person. You can’t trust anything he’s told you. In all likelihood he’s been cultivating the pair of you. Planting stories, arranging meetings . . .”

She shook her head.

“I just can’t believe it. We’ve known each other since we were kids. Mange was nice, a good lad.”

“Of course, I appreciate that it’s hard to take in. But Sandström has been working for the Game for a long time, a very long time. These days he has a senior position, possibly even the most senior. Henrik has already slipped out of our hands, and now I’m afraid that Sandström is well on his way to turning our own weapons against us. We would dearly love to get hold of them both before the wedding, before history repeats itself . . .”

The car door opened and he stopped abruptly.

“Promise you’ll take care of yourself, my dear Rebecca. If you hear from your brother you must call me at once. I’ll try to help you both as best I can, but until Henrik is in safe custody I’m afraid we can’t have any further direct contact.”

She nodded.

“I understand.”

“Good. Well, like I said, I really am sorry that it’s come to this, Rebecca, from the bottom of my heart. Some of the responsibility for this falls on me, I am aware of that. I wouldn’t have wished this sort of trial on anyone, least of all you, and I truly hope that you can forgive me.”

She didn’t answer, but leaned over instead and gave him a peck on the cheek.

The car door closed behind her and a few moments later she was standing alone on her street.

♦  ♦  ♦

“Bingo!” Mange smiled. “Not a bad package deal, is it? Anna Argos gets revenge, PayTag gets rid of a competitor, and the Game Master gets paid. All that was needed to seal the deal was a suitable Player and a way of motivating him into going back into the hornets’ nest. And suddenly your early retirement was over . . .”

HP was shaking his head in disbelief. What Mange was saying obviously sounded completely mad. A conspiracy theory of the first order . . .

But, on the other hand, the boundaries of logic were so far behind him now that there was no point even trying to work out where they were.

Anna Argos, still alive . . .

In which case the fucking bitch had got him locked up and
tortured on suspicion of murdering her, then deported, and all to wind him up to the point where he’d want to get his own revenge. And the whole time she was living a life of luxury on a beach somewhere with a new name while she waited for the plastic surgery scars on her face to heal.

“So the whole business of bringing down ArgosEye was pointless . . . ?” he mumbled.

“No, no, absolutely not!”

Mange shook his head with exaggerated vigor.

“Philip Argos may not have been a killer, but he was still a fully paid-up bad guy. Just think about what they did to you. And what they were doing with the business really did stink . . .”

“But now PayTag and Anna Argos are doing the same thing, just under a different name . . .”

“Unfortunately it looks that way, which takes us back to what I was saying about the Game Master’s wobbly moral compass . . .” Mange pulled a face.

“What’s PayTag’s new company called?”

“Sentry Security . . .”

His brain made the connection between the right synapses almost immediately this time.

“Sentry? Shit, that’s where . . .”

“. . . Rebecca works. Exactly. Are you starting to see how it all fits together?”

Mange checked the time for what must have been the tenth time.

“Sorry, but we have to leave soon. Kent’s fixed a place where you can lie low until we’re ready to get going. You’ll have to—”

“Listen, right now I’m about a millimeter away from having a massive stroke, so don’t tell me what I have to do! As you
probably realize, your credibility really isn’t that fucking high right now. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t just go and crawl into a hole until this has all blown over.”

“Because we need you, HP!”

Mange held out his hands.

“I get it, I can see why you’re skeptical. I can’t deny that I’ve deceived you really badly. No question! But everything I’ve done has been to help you and Becca, I swear!”

The door opened and Jeff looked in.

“Someone just used their pass card upstairs,” he hissed. “The lift’s on its way down, so we have to go, now!”

Mange and Nora stood up at once.

But HP didn’t move.

“Come on, HP, we have to leave! I’ll explain more on the way. If they find us down here we’re finished . . .”

“Not until you tell me who
they
are . . .”

“Local transport staff, the cops—who cares?” Jeff snapped. “Get a fucking move on or I’ll carry—”

Mange raised his hand and Jeff stopped instantly.

“I’ll tell you more later, HP, I promise. But right now we have to go. I know it’s a lot to ask, but you have to trust me. If the cops get hold of you, we’re fucked . . .”

HP looked hard into Mange’s face for a few seconds before reluctantly getting up.

They jogged through the tunnel. Nora first, then he and Mange, with Jeff bringing up the rear. HP couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder.

He tried to say something to Mange, ask more questions, but their speed and the uphill slope were keeping his exhausted lungs fully occupied.

The huts disappeared beyond the curve of the tunnel and after a few more meters Nora slowed down.

“I can’t make sense of it,” HP panted to Mange. “The Game owns PayTag. Black works for the Game Master . . .”

He was gasping for air.

“No, no, absolutely not,” Mange replied. “PayTag is owned by a secretive foundation. We have our theories about who’s behind it, but that’s a different story. To start with PayTag was just one of many companies that employed the Game. But for the past year or so they’ve been pretty much the Game’s only client . . .”

Nora stopped short and the others were forced to do the same.

She held one hand up. For a few moments the distant noise of the air vents and HP’s labored breathing were the only sounds.

Then there was a faint, rhythmic scraping sound somewhere ahead of them.

It was easy to recognize. Footsteps, probably from more than one person.

A shrill, three-note signal echoed off the rough walls and made them all jump.

“A radio, must be subway staff!” Jeff growled.

“Back,” Nora said quickly, and started to jog back the way they had come.

“But then we’ll run straight into the arms of whoever—” Jeff protested.

“Quiet!” she snapped. “Just keep up . . .”

They set off at a run.

“So you and your friends are planning a rebellion. A little Palace coup . . .” HP hissed.

“Something like that,” Mange replied. “The Game could still be used in a good way. But we have to cut ties with PayTag and get rid of the current Game Master.”

“Old Sammer?”

Mange flinched and almost stopped.

“You’ve met him?”

“Last winter, out in the pet cemetery beyond the Kaknäs Tower . . . Becca thinks he’s one of Dad’s old colleagues. Is he?”

“Here!” Nora suddenly stopped and pointed at the tunnel wall. There was a rusty metal hatch hidden between two thick pipes.

Jeff pushed in front of them. From a small holster on his belt he pulled out a multipurpose tool. A few moments later he had the hatch open, revealing a dark hole.

They were hit by a warm gust of fetid underground air.

Nora didn’t hesitate, just snaked past the pipes and through the opening.

“Go with her,” Mange said, pointing at the hole. “Nora will look after you. Jeff and I will stay behind to close the hatch after you. There’s another way out through the station at Slussen, with a bit of luck we’ll make it in time . . .”

“B-but . . . er, hold on,” HP protested.

“Get moving,” Jeff snarled. “They’ll be here any minute.”

HP gave Mange an angry look.

“You and I have more talking to do . . .”

“Absolutely, I promise, HP. We’ll sort everything out, but until then you have to trust me. Now go, for fuck’s sake!”

HP hesitated a couple of more seconds. The noises from farther up the tunnel were clearer now. Heavy steps, probably boots. Voices drifting through the darkness, followed by the unmistakable crackle of a radio. HP took a deep breath, then dived into the darkness.

SHE SHOULD REALLY
be asleep.

It was the middle of the night, her day had been eventful, to put it mildly, and it was more than an hour since she had taken her sleeping pills.

But in spite of that, she was wide awake.

Her laptop was sitting on the little kitchen table beside a plate holding the remains of the microwaved Gorby pie she had forced herself to have as an evening meal. Thoughts were flying around inside her head.

She no longer knew what to believe.

Uncle Tage’s story was pretty astonishing, but at the same time far from impossible. When you looked at all the evidence and threw in a number of other events and indications, it actually held up.

Claim number one:
Dad and André Pellas/Tage Sammer served together in Cyprus
.

The photograph from the safe-deposit box and the other one she had found in the book both seemed to support that theory.

Claim number two:
Dad and some colleagues tried to smuggle arms in an attempt to stop the losing side from being massacred
.

The event itself certainly happened, and if you accepted the fact that Dad served in Cyprus, then the claim could very well be accurate.

Then what?

Dad was supposed to have carried on working for the military in some capacity . . . as a courier who needed fake passports because of the sensitive nature of his work?

That wasn’t actually quite as unlikely as she had initially thought. Until very recently, the Cold War had felt very distant to her, the sort of thing you only saw in films and television documentaries.

But back then, in the sixties and seventies, it had been very real indeed.

The postwar period had started to fascinate her more than she liked to admit. A few hours on Wikipedia was all it had taken to get a better idea of what things had been like. Sweden had had one of the largest air forces in the world, with vast underground hangars, like the one out in Tullinge.

There weren’t many people, now or then, who doubted the fact that the enemy was off to the east, and Sweden’s friends to the west. Sweden had feigned neutrality, but at the same time the National Defense Radio Establishment was monitoring the Soviet Union and, in all likelihood, passing the information to NATO. None of this was exactly news,
but it wasn’t the sort of thing you normally chatted about over coffee, except perhaps the other year when divers found the wreckage of one of the surveillance planes shot down by the Russians over the Baltic Sea.

But the part that fascinated her most was something else entirely, something she’d had no idea about until just a few
weeks ago. If it hadn’t been for the newspaper cuttings on Henke’s bedroom wall, she probably never would have made the connection.

Sweden had recently handed over three kilos of plutonium to the USA. According to the official statement, the plutonium had been used in research projects during the sixties and seventies, and since then had been lying hidden in an underground military base, probably somewhere much like the Fortress.

A Swedish project conducting research into nuclear weapons, and then sitting on several kilos of potentially lethal plutonium for something like forty years, sounded utterly incredible. The whole thing must have been top secret!

Apart from recent newspaper articles about the handover, to her surprise she found that Wikipedia had a great deal to say on the matter:

There had been two different threads to the research.

The S-program was supposed to develop ways of counteracting a nuclear attack. Which seemed entirely logical, given the spirit of the times. She had seen black-and-white public information films from America dating from the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis on the Discovery Channel. Schoolchildren diving under their desks.

Duck and cover!

As if that would help . . .

But the considerably more confidential L-program was a different matter entirely: research into the development of Swedish nuclear weapons. If there hadn’t been so much documentary evidence, she would have dismissed the whole idea as fantasy. Like that television mockumentary claiming that the 1958 World Cup didn’t actually take place in Sweden, or the theory that Neil Armstrong was really bouncing around in a
sandpit in a Hollywood studio rather than on the surface of the moon.

But the remains of the first test reactor were preserved in the rock beneath the Royal Institute of Technology, pretty much slap bang in the middle of the city. That much was confirmed by the Institute’s own website.