The Game Trilogy (77 page)

She glanced at Thomas.

‘What’s the situation right now?’ he asked quickly.

‘Calm, but tense. We’ve got two men on the pavement and there are also two uniformed police officers on the scene.’

‘Media?’ This from Black.

‘The same as yesterday, possibly slightly more. A few photographers and a television crew.’

Black and Thomas exchanged a look.

A faint tremble ran through her lower right arm, making her fingers twitch.

Shit, not now!

‘We don’t want to look like the sort of people who sneak out the back way, Rebecca,’ Thomas said. ‘Especially not if there are media present. It could be interpreted as an
admission that we have something to hide. Openness is an integral part of the PayTag brand …’

She nodded, as she carefully clasped her right hand behind her back in an attempt to stop it shaking.

‘I understand …’

Her mobile began to vibrate in her inside pocket but she ignored it.

‘Kjellgren, we’re on our way down,’ she said into the microphone on her wrist.

‘It’s me,’ he said when her voicemail kicked in. He wasn’t sure what to say next.

‘I … er …’

The cops in suits suddenly leaped into action. One of them opened the door of the first car, and the other took a few steps towards the rope and the crowd.

The two uniformed officers were fiddling with their belts and didn’t seem altogether sure what to do. As if on command, the demonstrators suddenly began to chant:

Don’t be evil!

Don’t be evil!

He ended the call and put his free hand in his jacket pocket. His fingers grazed the handle of the revolver. Somewhere behind him a heavy car door closed. The sound made him jump.

Quiet music was playing in the lift, a pan-pipes version of
The Winner Takes it All.
Clearly there was some unspoken rule that all Swedish hotels had to play Abba muzak in lifts …

She carefully unbuttoned her jacket and pressed her right arm to her side to check that her pistol and telescopic baton were in place. She should really have been wearing a bulletproof vest. But, against all her usual principles, she
had decided against it, mainly because she didn’t want to look hot and sweaty in front of Black.

A mistake, a big one, she now realized.

Bloody hell, she really did have to pull herself together, get a grip on her thoughts …

Her mouth felt dry, and her heart was beating faster than she had expected. Her right hand was shaking so much that she had to stuff it into her trouser pocket.

She had been involved in considerably more risky jobs than this, so she really shouldn’t be nervous.

Her mobile vibrated in her inside pocket again. This was the third time, so whoever it was seemed keen to get hold of her. But they’d just have to wait. Work came first.

The lift stopped at the ground floor and the door slowly slid open. She took a deep breath.

The chanting of the crowd was getting louder.

Someone bumped into one of the brass posts, making the rope swing.

The suited man beside the rope suddenly began to shout.

‘Back, get back!’

The two uniformed police officers took a few hesitant steps closer.

HP closed his fingers around the handle of the revolver.

There was no going back now.

The main doors opened and the chanting rose to a roar. But it suddenly felt like his ears were blocked.

The carpet of sound around him turned into a faint murmur, and all he could hear was his own heavy breathing.

In …

Out …

His field of vision shrank, turning into a grainy tunnel,
and for a moment he thought he was about to pass out. He squeezed the handle of the revolver even tighter, digging the mesh pattern into his palm. Hundreds of tiny, stinging needle pricks that woke him up and reminded him what he was doing there.

He had a task to carry out.

His last one …

And suddenly he saw him.

The snake himself.

Mark Black …

The roaring started the moment they opened the doors. The crowd pushed forward, she had time to notice the masks, the white overalls, the worried look on Kjellgren’s face. Then the quick movements of the uniformed police officers as they extended their telescopic batons.

Leaving through this exit had been a big mistake.

‘Back, we’re going back,’ she shouted at Thomas’s thick neck.

But he didn’t seem to hear her and carried on towards the car, closely followed by Black.

One of the posts holding the rope toppled over, dragging the others down with it.

And a moment later the demonstrators had broken through.

Thomas immediately floored the first person with an elbow in the face. It sounded like a whip cracking as the mask broke, sending a shower of blood and saliva over the white overalls of the nearest protestors. Thomas didn’t seem remotely concerned, and merely shoved the limp body backwards to clear some space. He dealt another blow, then another.

Then she saw him bring his hand back and reach under his jacket in a way that she recognized all too well.

She grabbed the top of Black’s arm with her left hand and pulled him towards her. She felt on her belt for her baton … Her hand was shaking so much she had trouble finding it. And then she heard Thomas yell.

He recognized him from the television.

High forehead, pointed nose and backswept, greying hair. At close quarters the reptilian feeling was even more obvious. He imagined he could see a little forked tongue dart out between the narrow lips. Getting the scent of his surroundings, preparing to attack.

The crowd was roaring now, forcing its way through the cordon. HP went with the flow. Sweat was pouring down his back.

There was a crash, and one of the white-clad figures in front of him fell backwards, leaving a gap.

Its mask fell off, revealing a shocked and very pale woman’s face. Blood was streaming from her nose, soaking the front of her white overalls.

A moment later he caught sight of Becca. Right behind Black with her hand on his arm.

Far too close …

Slowly he began to pull his hand out of his pocket …

‘GUUUUN!!’ Thomas roared, and she saw him draw his own weapon. In amongst the white-overalled figures she caught sight of a dark figure. Baseball cap, sunglasses, a scruffy beard …

Hands were tugging at her clothes, trying to grab hold of Black …

The shout came from his left.

A guttural roar that he hardly heard. He didn’t turn his
head. Instead he went on raising his hand, his eyes fixed on Black.

All of a sudden everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. She could make out every little detail in the scene playing out around her. The white-clad demonstrators that Thomas had just pushed over, the blood on their overalls.

Then Thomas’s silver revolver slowly emerging from its holster.

The demonstrators in front of him raised their hands, trying to defend themselves.

She could see the suspect clearly in the crowd. The cap, the mirrored glasses, the dark camouflage jacket. The hand that was halfway out of his pocket …

Then her view of him was blocked briefly. Her hand reached for her own pistol and closed around the handle.

The shaking hadn’t stopped. Alarm bells were going off in her head, drowning out her thoughts. Something about this whole situation felt wrong … The hands were still grabbing at her, trying to pull Black from her grasp.

Thomas’s gun was out now, the barrel aimed directly at the man in the camouflage jacket. But the demonstrators seemed to be blocking his line of fire. He moved sideways, trying to find a gap.

The alarm bells went on ringing like mad.

WRONGWRONGWRONG!

Suddenly a gap opened up through the protestors. The man in the military jacket was standing motionless just five metres away. He was staring straight at Black, straight at her. His hand emerged from his pocket. She caught a glimpse of a dark object.

Instinct took over. Quick, practised movements.

Draw,

bolt action,

fire!

The sound came from in front of him.

Close enough for him to feel the pressure wave on his face.

A hard blow to the stomach. The next moment his knees gave way. Screaming, falsetto voices on all sides.

Someone grabbed him round the neck, dragging him backwards. Everything went black.

People were screaming in panic, throwing themselves to the ground.

She saw Thomas’s head turn, and he stared at her as the figures in white scattered all around him.

In a flash she holstered her gun, grabbed Black’s arm and shoved him as fast as she could ahead of her towards the edge of the pavement and the waiting cars.

Kjellgren caught up with her and helped get Black in place. Then quickly into the car.

‘Drive,’ she snapped at Kjellgren.

‘What about him?’

Thomas was still standing on the pavement with his revolver in his hands, sweeping the barrel over the crowd as if he were looking for someone.

One of the uniformed police officers shouted something that she couldn’t quite hear, then aimed his own weapon at Thomas.

‘He’ll have to look after himself, drive, drive!’

Kjellgren put his foot down and they shot away from the pavement with a screech of tyres.

‘What the fuck was that all about?’ he snarled when they reached Strömbron.

Swaying, lurching movement, so familiar.

He was lying in the back of a vehicle, a van of some sort, driving fast. Very fast.

A sharp corner pushed him up against one side, making him whimper in pain.

‘He’s awake,’ he heard a female voice say somewhere behind his head.

He tried to turn his head, but the effort made everything go black once more.

‘No, he’s gone again …’ was the last thing he heard.

She didn’t like travelling by helicopter. The jerky movement of the machine felt unnatural. Nothing like an aeroplane gently riding the currents. If the engines of a plane suddenly stopped, nothing much would happen. The pilot would lower the nose and glide for a while as they tried to deal with the problem.

But if a helicopter’s engine stopped, you wouldn’t be able to defy gravity for too many seconds.

She shook off her discomfort and looked at her watch.

‘Ten minutes to go …’

Black looked up from his Blackberry.

‘Okay, thanks …’

‘Have you heard anything from Thomas?’

‘Yes, he says everything’s been sorted out with the police and that he’ll be joining us by car later in the day.’

‘Good …’

She took a deep breath.

‘So how are you feeling,’ she asked.

‘Fine,’ he said, a little too quickly. ‘Absolutely fine,’ he added. ‘I’m sorry, Rebecca, I should have thanked you for what you did back there. What exactly was going on?’

He was trying to sound calm, but she had no trouble at all discerning the faint tremble in his voice. And he also seemed to have switched to calling her Rebecca instead of Miss Normén.

‘I’m not entirely sure. The demonstration obviously got out of hand, but after that everything’s rather unclear. I had hoped that Thomas might call me to clarify …’

‘He’s been busy with the police …’

‘Yes, I can appreciate that. Gun laws in Sweden are very strict, I’d have been happy to explain them to him if he’d asked. But he never told me he was actually armed …’

‘No, that probably wasn’t a wise move. Thomas is very loyal. He only wants what’s best for me and the company.’

She merely nodded in response.

Black straightened up and crossed his legs.

‘But he didn’t shoot, did he, which must count in his favour, mustn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I was the one who opened fire.’

‘Is that going to cause trouble for you? For us?’

‘I don’t know yet. We’re licenced to bear arms, and I called the duty superintendent in Stockholm to explain what happened and how the police can contact me. We’ll just have to see …’

That last bit was a lie.

She’d have a hell of a job explaining what she had done, she knew that already. Whether or not you had a licence, you couldn’t just go round firing a gun, and certainly not in the middle of the city. The regulations governing warning shots were the same as firing at a target: there had to be an immediate and serious threat to life and limb.

But obviously there had been.

The man in the jacket had a gun, just as Thomas had
shouted, and it was quite clear that he was focused on

Black.

Yet she had still only fired a warning shot …

She had been acting entirely on instinct, and in hindsight she couldn’t really explain why she had done what she had.

In order to make the best of a potentially disastrous situation
, she tried to convince herself.

It had all felt so wrong. Thomas’s view had been blocked, with no opportunity to act. The gun, the attacker, the whole thing was almost a textbook example of an extreme emergency.

All the criteria were in place for firing directly at the target. But in the crowd it was impossible to shoot at the attacker without risking hitting innocent bystanders as well.

That was it, obviously.

She looked down at her hands, grabbing her knees in an attempt to keep them still.

Suddenly she realized that Black was still looking at her. Studying her face intently in a way she didn’t like, and then dropped his eyes to look at her trembling hands.

‘Adrenalin,’ she said. ‘It’ll soon pass …’

For a moment she felt he could see straight through her.

‘Two minutes to landing,’ a voice said over the speakers.

‘Right …’ she said, giving Black a quick smile.

But he didn’t smile back.

He was slipping in and out of consciousness.

He heard voices several times, conversations going on above him.

‘He’s in very bad shape …’

‘How much has he had?’

‘A triple dose. I daren’t give him any more …’

‘Have you spoken to the Source?’

‘Mmm …’

‘And?’

‘He says we have to bring him back to life. That there are no other alternatives …’

‘Okay … So what do we do now?’

‘We wait …’

‘Do we know anything else about the place?’

The sound of paper rustling somewhere to his left.

He must have been awake for five minutes now, but he was keeping his eyes closed. There was a rhythmic bleeping close to his left ear, which he guessed was a machine keeping a check on his pulse. Best to lie low and take slow, deep breaths.

There were two other people in the room, a man and a woman. He seemed to be lying on some sort of bunk or table a few metres away from them.

He felt a vague pressure in the crook of his right arm, which he guessed was from the needle of a drip, but other than that his body felt surprisingly okay.

There was an odd smell, ether and something musky that he couldn’t identify.

‘To start with, it’s much, much bigger that we thought. Take a look at this!’

The woman’s voice again, then more rustling which HP guessed must have been from some sort of plan.

‘Right, so these red marks, are they …?’ The man’s voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

‘Red is for guards, blue for security cameras, and yellow is different types of alarm …’

‘Okay … And all this comes from the Source?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you trust him?’

‘He’s never given me any reason to doubt him. Everything he’s given us so far has been one hundred percent accurate, just look at that poor sod …’

It took HP a few seconds to realize that the woman meant him.

‘I’m still not sure. About him, or the whole thing.’

The male voice again, a bit whiny, in a way that still sounded extremely familiar. He fought the urge to open his eyes and turn his head.

Suddenly he noticed the bleeps speeding up.

Shit, he had to relax.

Deep breaths, nice and easy.

He wanted to hear more, try to work out what the fuck was going on.

‘Six floors, then,’ the woman went on.

‘Thirty metres into the rock, each floor consisting of a hub with five tunnels leading off it like spokes, each of them fifty metres long. Five times fifty is two hundred and fifty, multiplied by six floors …’

‘One and a half kilometres. That’s a hell of a lot of space …’

‘And each one of the spokes is ten metres wide, which means they might have several rows of server racks in them. Say, two passageways for maintenance in each tunnel. Each rack is, what, one metre deep? That makes …’

‘Five kilometres, maybe more. Five kilometres of servers … That’s a fuck of a lot of capacity!’

The man’s voice sounded agitated.

‘That’s enough to supply …’

‘… pretty much the whole of Europe’s requirements for secure data storage.’

The site manager paused long enough for the statement
to sink in. The hundred or so visitors seemed impressed. As for her, she was only really half-listening to the press conference.

Details of the site’s capacity flickered past on the large screen, interspersed occasionally with pictures of its construction. She stretched discreetly and took the chance to check her phone for messages. But the inbox was empty and the calls she had missed in the lift at the Grand didn’t seem to have been registered by the phone. Weird.

In contrast to the summer heat outside, the air in there was cool, and even though they were above ground, she thought she could detect a faint smell of the rock, a bit like in the underground in Stockholm. Which wasn’t really that strange …

During the Cold War this had been the site of an underground command base – she’d read that in the papers. And just as Kjellgren had said, there was a long tunnel which acted as both an emergency exit and a conduit for all the communication cables to the artillery bunkers on the coast a couple of kilometres away.

Now that same tunnel brought cool water from the Baltic to service the air-conditioning down in the underground chambers. That and the cool Swedish climate, the unlimited and secure supply of electricity and the extensive broadband network were evidently the main reasons why the whole installation had been located in Sweden, blah, blah, blah …

Obviously she ought to have been more interested, because this was her employer they were talking about here, after all. But she was having trouble concentrating on the details of the presentation. She couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling that something was seriously wrong. Really she ought to be trying to call Thomas again.

Black was bound to be safe in there. All the visitors had
been registered and checked out in advance, and had been made to undergo a security check more rigorous than at any airport. All electronic gadgets except the photographers’ cameras had been locked away out in the security lodge. Naturally she had been spared these security procedures, and still had both her radio and mobile on her.

But she already suspected there was no point to the call she was thinking of making. Just as before, Thomas wouldn’t answer. Besides, he would be there in an hour or so.

Kjellgren was driving, and according to the text she had received a few minutes ago, they had already passed Uppsala. She wasn’t looking forward to the meeting.

But she wasn’t the one who had made a fool of herself, she wasn’t the one who had drawn an illegal handgun …

‘Our site basically works the same way as an old-fashioned bank vault …’ the site manager went on as the video projector faded neatly into an image she recognized.

The bank vault on the screen was practically identical to the one she had been in a few days before. Thick concrete walls, polished marble floor and long rows of little brass doors … Could it be the same vault?

Rebecca straightened up in her chair instinctively. She had been trying not to think about the safe deposit box and Tage Sammer’s story, hoping to set the whole thing to one side for a few days until Black’s visit was over.

‘A thick shell to protect against attack from outside,’ the site manager went on. ‘Then separate compartments inside, each one isolated from the others to allow entry only to those authorized to access the contents. But here the size of each compartment can be varied with a few simple commands from the control room. In other words we can adapt to our clients’ requirements instantaneously.
The compartments become bubbles whose size can be constantly adjusted.

‘Any demand to store ten, one hundred, or even a thousand times more information would be no problem at all, the changes can be made instantly. What server room can compete with that level of capacity?’

He left another deliberate pause for the rhetorical question to hang in the air for a few seconds. The projector replaced the bank vault with an image of a spacious underground chamber containing row upon row of identical server cabinets.

‘Everything gathered in one location. Simple, cost effective, and – above all – secure,’ the site manager went on.

The projector laid a new picture at an angle on top of the current one. An almost identical underground room, then another, and another … Rows of shiny server cabinets, so many that she had already lost count. Thousands, millions of secrets, all stored in the same place.

All of a sudden she felt rather unwell. It must have been the after-effects of the adrenalin rush. But at least her hands had stopped shaking.

The site manager resumed his speech as the vaults went on multiplying on the screen, but she was no longer listening.

Like shiny little bubbles, all of them doomed to burst sooner or later …

‘Are you awake, HP?’

For a moment he wondered about carrying on pretending to be unconscious, in the hope of finding out more about what was going on.

But something in her voice made him open his eyes before he had actually made up his mind.

It took just a matter of seconds for him to recognize
her. Her platinum blonde hair was now dark, but the nose piercing and overblown eye-shadow were the same.

The emo girl with the headphones he had seen in the underground.

‘Good,’ she nodded to him. ‘How are you feeling?’

He tried to say something, but all that emerged from his lips was a sort of dry croak.

‘Here.’ She handed him a bottle of water and he raised himself up on one elbow. Deep, wonderful mouthfuls …

‘Your fever’s gone down,’ she said, looking at a screen beside him. ‘But it’ll be a few days before the infection’s disappeared completely. You’ve been dosed up with enough penicillin to treat a horse. Quite literally.’

He didn’t try to answer, and just nodded as he looked round slowly. It looked like a hospital, with the only difference that everything in there was bigger. The bunk he was lying on, the lamps and straps hanging from the ceiling.

It took him a while to work it out.

‘A vet’s?’ he croaked.

‘Yep,’ she replied. ‘Well, at least you’re not totally out of it. My name’s Nora. And you already know Kent over there …’

HP sat up with an effort and glanced over towards the corner where the man was supposed to be sitting.

And there he was.

‘Hi, HP,’ the man said. ‘Or should I call you 128?’

The words echoed for few seconds in his brain.

‘Hasselqvist with a Q and a V …’ he muttered, without really being able to take it in.

‘A.k.a. Player 58,’ the man spat. ‘Remember? You sprayed teargas in my face out on the Kymlinge Link Road.’

He flew up from his chair and sprang at HP.

‘Easy now, Kent …’ the emo girl said, stepping between them.

She was almost ten centimetres taller than Hasselqvist, and, judging by her posture, considerably more muscular.

‘We haven’t got time for wounded egos …’

Hasselqvist with a Q and a V glowered at her for a few seconds, then threw out his arms in surrender.

Stepping back, he muttered, ‘In case you’re interested, I suffered an allergic reaction and had to spend three days in intensive care …