Bubble: A Thriller (34 page)

“And what was their role in the program?”

“I don’t really know. But there was a monthly report, where we would register problems that had arisen. Instances where we had ground to a halt entirely used to be marked with a large
I.
A week or so would pass, and then we would be given a detailed description of what to do in order to solve the problem. The report would be in Swedish, but every now and then you could tell that it had been translated from English. It was mostly just a feeling, certain words and expressions . . .”

“And those reports would come from the I-Group? In that case, surely that must have meant they were talking to people outside the program?”

He shrugged.

“We were fairly convinced of that, but we never had any direct proof . . .”

“The Americans?”

“That’s the logical answer. Even if the politicians might have liked to suggest the opposite, there had been strong military ties between Sweden and the USA ever since the war. The American OSS, the forerunners of the CIA, for instance, financed secret military activities along the northern part of the Norwegian border. The main purpose wasn’t to fight the Nazis, but to have troops ready once the Germans had withdrawn. To prevent any potential Soviet annexation of Norway,” he clarified. “The operation would never have been possible without the help of the Swedish military and intelligence services . . .”

He broke off midsentence and smiled apologetically.

“I’m sorry, my dear, I’ve wandered off the point once again, but I was trying to show that the Swedish and American militaries had been cooperating, albeit unofficially, long before our project began . . .”

She nodded.

“Do you know what happened to the I-Group later, after 1972?”

He paused for a few seconds as he drank his coffee.

“Like I said, the project was shut down, and the military personnel were transferred to other duties. Those of us who were civilians had to try to find work elsewhere. Very sad, of course, so many dedicated colleagues, so much work just abandoned. All in vain . . .”

He sighed.

“I myself moved to Västerås and got a job at ABB as an automation engineer. I was there until I retired. They were a fantastic company to work for, so you could say that it turned
out for the best in the end. You see, we developed processes that . . .”

He carried on, but she was no longer listening to what he was saying.

She had been right. Uncle Tage
had
worked on the nuclear weapons program, handling the exchange of information with the Americans.

“Now, let’s see . . .”

Thore Sjögren took out an envelope and spread its contents across the desk. Photographs, most of them black-and-white, but a few in color. Faded pictures of long-forgotten summer holidays, outings, and other significant events. Judging by the clothes and hairstyles, most of them were taken in the sixties and seventies.

“My wife, Maj-Britt,” he muttered, putting down a photograph of a smiling, sunburned woman in a sundress sitting at a table in a restaurant.

“She passed away three years ago . . .”

“I’m sorry . . .”

He went on looking through the pictures.

“Here!”

He laid out several black-and-white pictures. Typical group shots that could have been from any business. Lots of somber men in suits, some in white coats. Sixty or seventy of them in total, lined up in three rows on a broad flight of steps.

“That picture was taken in 1966 or 1967, I seem to recall . . . That’s me.”

He pointed to a young man in the middle row with a side par. The resemblance was striking.

“Young and fashionable.” He laughed. “These days I’ve only got the
and
left . . .”

He ran his finger across the rows of faces.

“There,” he said, but she had already spotted him.

Back row, third from the left. Suddenly she felt sick.

“Colonel Pellas,” he said, pointing, but she was staring at a different face altogether.

Her dad’s.

THEY WERE STANDING
in a clearing among the trees. Even though it was dark and he was a long way off at first, he had no trouble recognizing them. The old man with the stick, straight-backed.

Beside him Mange’s
slouched silhouette. Steam was rising from their coffee cups.

As he approached them through the snow he gradually noticed more people in there among the trees. Dozens, possibly even hundreds of silent silhouettes that seemed to be watching him. He could feel the snow crunch beneath his feet, but oddly enough there was hardly any sound. The two men now had company in the clearing. Four more figures, all in white Guy Fawkes masks, with painted, curling mustaches and goatee beards.

“Welcome, Henrik,” the Game Master said when he stepped into the clearing.

“Would you like some coffee?” Mange held out a plastic cup toward him, and he took it without saying a word.

“Who are they?” He nodded toward the four people in masks.

“Don’t you know?” the Game Master chuckled.

“Two of them are completely uninteresting, but the other two could turn out to be vitally important.”

The first of them took a step forward and held out his hand. In spite of his bulky winter clothes, it was possible to make out the square, muscular body. They shook hands.

“Friend?” HP asked, but received no answer.

The next person stepped up.

“Enemy?” he asked.

Still no answer.

The third person was a woman, he was sure of that.

“Friend?” he asked again.

For a moment he thought she shrugged her shoulders.

He held out his hand toward the fourth figure, but the person leaned toward him instead and whispered something in his ear. The voice was so familiar, so sad, that it actually felt painful.

“The Luttern labyrinth,” she whispered. “You have to save us. The Carer . . .”

A raven croaked in the distance. Twice, in an ominous way that sent a shiver down his spine. The shadowy figures among the trees suddenly began to move. They stumbled toward the clearing like dark-clad zombies. And all of a sudden he realised who they were . . .

“More,” they hissed.

“MOOOORE!!!”

A moment later he was running. Snow was flying around his feet, his heart pounding in his chest.

The lights from the road lay far away on the horizon.

“See you in the Luttern labyrinth, number 128 . . .” the Game Master called after him. Unless it was actually Mange’s voice that he heard . . . ?

♦  ♦  ♦

Rebecca emerged on the steps and took a few deep breaths.

The fresh air made her nausea subside and after a couple of minutes she felt considerably better.

One by one the pieces of the puzzle seemed to be falling into place. The UN mission, the nuclear weapons program. Dad and Uncle Tage. The passports, the secret courier jobs. Then the betrayal of the Palme government. Dad’s violent rages. The safe-deposit box in Sveavägen, set up in 1986. The wide-bore revolver with its two fired cartridges that made Uncle Tage so uneasy. Which mustn’t be traced to . . .

Events in the past . . .

Sveavägen.

1986.

Dad’s rages.

The revolver is an OPW, an Olof Palme Weapon.

♦  ♦  ♦

She took her cell phone out of her bag. Her fingers didn’t seem to want to do as she told them, and it took two attempts before she managed to tap in the correct PIN.

The email from Uncle Tage arrived almost at once, but it took another minute for the attached file to download. A black-and-white recording from the bank vault, lasting thirty-two seconds, which must have come from one of the cameras in the corridor.

The man walking down the corridor before turning off into the room containing her box was wearing sunglasses and had a baseball cap pulled down over his face.

But she didn’t have any problem recognizing him.

It was Mange.

♦  ♦  ♦

Damn it, he’d been having some creepy fucking nightmares. Last time they’d been caused by the snake venom, and this time by the pills, if he had to guess. They were meant for horses, not people, which probably explained quite a lot.

The long wait in the flat was driving him mad. No Xbox, PlayStation, or any other games console to while away the time with, and all he’d managed to come up with by way of television was a huge old box with just the basic channels. He couldn’t handle any more
Emmerdale
or
Days of Our Lives,
and he’d already had two anxiety-driven jerk-off sessions, and a third was guaranteed to give him friction burns on his joystick. But, as luck would have it, at least he had a decent supply of cigarettes.

He lit yet another Marlboro and set off on his little stroll around the flat. Living room, kitchen, hall—then back again.

A few seconds’ respite, to give him time to think.

One of the gang was supposed to be a traitor, if he was to trust the mysterious A.F. who had sent him the message—through Nora’s smartphone.

A.F.

Friend?

No one outside their little group knew that Nora’s phone had been in the flat he was borrowing. So, logically, A.F. should also be one of the group.

A friend.

An enemy.

The problem was that no one could be ruled out.

Jeff had hated him since the incident in Birkagatan, and their relationship had hardly improved over recent days.

Hasselqvist with a
Q
and a
V
may have declared that bygones were bygones, but that could very easily be a complete lie. He had demolished the guy out on the E4. Sprayed teargas
in his face, humiliated him, and snatched his End Game away from him.

You didn’t forget an injustice like that, not even if you were an obsequious little Kent.

Nora was harder to make out. She had evidently been behind the fires, probably both the one that almost killed him up in his flat, and the smaller one in Mange’s shop.

And he hadn’t entirely dropped the idea that she might have poisoned him with those pills.

The last name on the list was his old friend Farook Al-Hassan, aka Magnus Sandström.

Good old mythomaniac Mange, who, with the blessing of the Game Master, had stuffed him so full of lies that he couldn’t even begin to work out how much of everything he had experienced over the past two years was actually real.

All in all, not a bad collection of suspects—good luck with that case, Columbo!

So, why not just stay at home? Why take the risk of getting involved in this lunatic project? Yep—another two questions that he had no good answer to . . .

Peter Falk would obviously have to put in a bit of overtime.

♦  ♦  ♦

Rebecca reached the bottom of the escalator just as the warning signal went off, and she made it inside the jam-packed subway train seconds before the doors closed.

Sweaty tourists, most of them with fanny packs, caps, and bottles of water, so they were probably Americans. She found herself in the middle of a group of people, with nothing to hold on to.

Someone pushed into her from behind and she tried to move as far to one side as she could.

To judge by the noise, at least the air-conditioning seemed to be switched on, but, together with the sound of the train, it made it hard to hear what anyone was saying.

The person behind her pushed again, and she was just about to turn around and explain that she couldn’t move any further when she heard a familiar voice in her ear.

“Don’t turn around!”

“Mange, what the f—”

She glimpsed a baseball cap and pair of sunglasses from the corner of her eye.

“No, no, for fuck’s sake, don’t turn around . . . !” He put his hand on her back.

“Okay.” She went on staring in the opposite direction.

This was ridiculous, to put it mildly, and if he hadn’t sounded so worried, she would have ignored his plea.

“I’ve sent you something,” he whispered. “Read it and you’ll understand how everything fits together . . .”

“Really, Mange, this is completely . . .” She turned her head.

“No, no, you mustn’t turn around. They’re watching you,
he’s
watching you!”

“Who is, Mange? Who’s watching me?”

“Sammer, of course!” His voice sounded scared.

“And why would he be doing that, Mange? As far as I can work out, he’s got his hands full looking for you. I daresay he’d be quite pleased if I brought you together . . .”

The car lurched and she almost fell, but the tightly packed bodies around her helped her stay upright.

“Don’t make jokes about that, Becca,” he said quietly.

“I’m not joking, Mange. Henrik’s already tried to convince me that Uncle Tage is the Game Master, so now it’s your turn. But, unlike the two of you, Tage Sammer has actually
helped
me, he’s saved my skin a couple of times . . .”

The loudspeaker announced a station that she didn’t catch the name of, and the train began to slow down.

“Besides, you’ve got something of mine, Mange,” she said.

“W-what?”

“Don’t act all innocent. The bank vault on Sveavägen. You stole a metal box that belonged to my dad out of my safe-deposit box. I saw a clip of you . . .”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Becca,” he said, a little too quickly. “Let me explain . . .” He leaned closer to her ear. “The Game is like a Rorschach test, those ink stains, you know? The brain comes up with its own interpretation and then fills in the gaps itself. You only see the things you want to see, Rebecca . . .”

The train pulled in at the platform, braking sharply, and once again she almost fell.

The doors opened and people pushed past her in all directions.

Once she’d regained her balance and looked around, he was gone. It was several minutes before she discovered the cell phone he’d slipped into her pocket. A smooth, silvery thing with a glass touch screen.