The Game Trilogy (84 page)

Manga shook his head.

‘Think about it, HP. Who told you about the PayTag buyout? I bet it wasn’t Philip Argos or anyone else working there, was it?’

HP’s mind drifted aimlessly and it took him a while to find the right thread.

‘Er, no. It was Monika, Anna Argos’s sister, she told me
out on Lidingö. She said Anna had opposed the sale and that was why they had her killed …’

‘Okay,’ Manga nodded, ‘let me explain …’

He exchanged another glance with Nora, looked at his watch, then leaned closer to HP.

‘PayTag was never interested in ArgosEye. They’d already bought another company in roughly the same line of business for peanuts, and they were in the process of putting together a decent management team. What Philip Argos was planning was a perfectly ordinary stock-market flotation. If it had been a success, then PayTag would have had unwelcome competition …’

HP flinched.

‘What, you mean Monika Argos lied to me? Pretending that the flotation was actually a buyout? Why the hell would she have done that?’

‘Two fairly simple reasons, in fact … First and foremost, because you were in position and leapt at the chance to help her sabotage Philip Argos’s plans …’

HP nodded wearily.

‘And the other reason …?’

‘Well, ask yourself, whose idea was it? Who was likely to get a kick out of the idea that Philip Argos was paying you way over the odds for the shares? It was a real bonus when the trojan actually sank Philip’s ship and he ended up with a ruined reputation and no financial backing …’

Manga looked at HP as if he were expecting an instant answer. But HP’s brain was way, way behind.

‘Think, HP …’ Manga said, more slowly. ‘Who hated Philip Argos enough to cook up one hell of an advanced way to get revenge?’

He pulled out a shiny metal phone with a glass screen and HP flinched involuntarily.

On the screen was a picture of a woman with dark hair
cut in a bob, sitting at a restaurant table. She was holding a glass of wine in her hand and seemed to be drinking a toast with a man who had his back to the camera.

The woman looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place her.

‘Take a closer look, and ignore the colour of her hair,’ Manga said.

HP did as he was asked. And suddenly he saw something. Her posture, the way she was looking at the man. But it was unthinkable. Impossible!

‘Forget Monika,’ Manga 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 could not immediately take this in.

‘She calls herself Anthea Ravel these days,’ Manga continued patiently. ‘She’s working for PayTag, in fact she’s here, getting their new business up and running. Ravel. A fitting surname in a lot of respects, actually. A Janus word …’

‘What the fuck are you talking about,’ 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 …’

Manga 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 pavement 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. Manga 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 using him and 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. 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 know. If I was going to use unorthodox tactics I should have made sure Stigsson left HP alone, but I had hoped to make him see sense. Now you have to deal with all this. I wouldn’t have wished this sort of trial on anyone, least of all you. Truly, I 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!’ Manga 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 Manga 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!’

Manga shook his head with exaggerated vigour.

‘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 …’ Manga 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?’

Manga checked the time for what must be 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 millimetre 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!’

Manga held out his hands.

‘I get it, I can see why you’re sceptical. 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 passcard upstairs,’ he hissed. ‘The lift’s on its way down, so we have to go, now!’

Manga 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 …’

Manga 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 Manga’s face for a few seconds before reluctantly getting up.

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

He tried to say something to Manga, 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 metres Nora slowed down.

‘I can’t make sense of it,’ HP panted to Manga. ‘The Game owns PayTag. Black works for the Game Master …’

He was gasping for air.

‘No, no, absolutely not,’ Manga 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 laboured 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 Underground 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,’ Manga 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?’

Manga 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 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,’ Manga 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 Manga 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 more seconds. The noises from further 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 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 post-war 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 Defence Radio Institute 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 would probably never 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-programme 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 on the Discovery Channel dating from the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, American schoolchildren diving under their desks.

Duck and cover!

As if that would help …

But the considerably more confidential L-programme 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.

A second reactor out at Älta, just outside the city, was intended to develop high-grade plutonium. Just like the Iranians were attempting to do, fifty years on.

But it had turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. So the military had begun to procure plutonium from other sources. And this was where Wikipedia started to get really interesting.

In other words, the Americans had formally rejected the L-programme. So, no help from them with nuclear weapons. But the following paragraphs made the hair on her arms stand up.

Honest John.

Earnest John.

John Earnest …

John Earnest from Bloemfontein, South Africa, with loads of entry stamps from the US in his passport. And whose photograph was a picture of her dad …

That could hardly be a coincidence.

They must have been crawling through the pitch blackness for at least three quarters of an hour.

The floor of the tunnel beneath him was rough, and his hands and knees were protesting increasingly loudly. To the left of him ran a number of thick pipes, and one of them was seriously bloody hot.

He’d already burned his left arm a dozen times, and sweat was starting to drip down his back and face. He could have done with a break several minutes ago, but he had no great inclination to appear pathetic to Nora. If she could do it, then so could he!

He was keeping as close to her as he could, listening out for her movements and breathing in the tunnel ahead of him.

He felt movement over the back of one hand and for a moment he thought he’d got too close to her. Then he realized that it didn’t feel like a leather boot, but something damp and furry.

A tickling motion against the inside of his calf make him jerk and bang his arm against the hot pipe again.

‘Bollocks!’ he yelled.

‘Are you okay?’

A faint bluish light appeared ahead of him, then swung round towards him. She was using her mobile phone as a torch.

‘A fucking rat,’ he muttered. ‘I hate rats …’

‘We can stop for a bit if you like?’

‘No, no, it’s fine. Let’s carry on.’

But Nora seemed to have realized how tired he was. She turned round and sat across the passageway, pulling her legs up and pressing her boots against the hot pipe. Out of her trouser pocket she pulled a tub of chewing tobacco and, without showing the slightest sign of offering any to him, tucked one of the tiny pouches under her lip.

‘We probably haven’t got far left …’ She put the tub back in her pocket.

‘Where to? The station at Slussen, or what?’

He stretched his stiff limbs and tried to sit in the same position as her.

‘I thought that to start with, but the tunnel’s curving in the wrong direction. We’re heading south. I think we must be getting close to Medborgarplatsen …’

‘Okay … And when we get there, where do we go after that? Where’s this flat Manga mentioned?’

‘You’ll see …’

He tried to look hard at her, but the mobile was facing towards him and her face was in shadow. She was actually pretty cool. Clearly the smart one of the group.

Kent Hasselqvist was a pathetic little approval-junkie, and Muscleman Jeff lived up to all his prejudices about tattooed gym-freaks with cropped hair. But Nora was different.

‘So, what was your role in the Game?’ he said in a tone of voice that was supposed to sound relaxed and not uncomfortably interested.

‘I mean, were you a Player or an Ant?’ he added rather less confidently when she didn’t answer. ‘Or some sort of Functionary like Mangelito?’

Still no answer.

‘Okay, Greta Garbo. Sorry I asked …’ he muttered and resumed the crawling position.

‘Shall we?’ He nodded at the tunnel ahead of them.

She sat still for a moment longer.

Then she shifted round and switched off her mobile.

‘A Player, just like you,’ she said, and began to crawl away.

Rebecca carried on scrolling down the page. Most of the information seemed to come from the Royal Library, so a visit there felt like a natural next step.

In 1968, four years after her dad was fired from the military and, according to Sammer / Pellas, started work as a consultant, Sweden signed the non-proliferation treaty and gradually began to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme, which officially ended in 1972. But the following section on Wikipedia appeared to contradict that:

All of this fitted perfectly with what Uncle Tage had said. A large, top-secret research project requiring clandestine contact with other countries. A project which was later closed down but continued on a smaller scale, even more secretly than before. Rumbling on below the surface with the tacit approval of those in power.

In 1985, however, a newspaper article attracted a lot of attention and the Palme government suddenly got cold feet. An official investigation was set up, and took two years to conclude that there were no conclusions to conclude seeing as all research into nuclear weapons really had stopped in 1972, just as the government had been claiming all along.

Two years allowed plenty of time to shut things down, cut off all contacts and erase all traces for good. A solution that suited all parties. Or at least
almost
all …

If she was right, if the L-programme and its even more secret successor had been Sammer’s and, by extension, her dad’s project, then this would mean that they were both conclusively removed from it in 1985 or 86.

The safe deposit box contract had been signed in 1986, and that was also the period when Dad began to change. He became bitter, angry – and considerably more violent. Was that when he got hold of the revolver, or had he had it much longer, possibly from Uncle Tage as a form of security?

The nuclear weapons programme was originally under the auspices of the air force, and, in contrast with the army,
their personnel were issued with this sort of revolver, .38 calibre.

That would explain why Uncle Tage was so keen to get hold of the gun, apart from wanting to keep it away from Henke.

He wanted to get shot of the revolver for good.

Before it could be traced back to events in the past …

Now what had he meant by that?

Then there were his cryptic words towards the end of the conversation that she hadn’t really taken in before she was out of the car. Something about
not letting history repeat itself.

She closed her eyes, rested her head in her hands and massaged her temples.

God, what a story!

‘Did you get far up the rankings?’ he gasped towards her legs. ‘I was first runner up, Player number 128. I was actually in the lead for a while, but I suppose you know all that …’

No answer.

She really was playing hard to get …

Without any warning Nora suddenly stopped and he almost hit his head on her backside. Not that that would have been a wholly unpleasant experience.

He was about to open his mouth to say something clever when she cut him off.

‘Shhhh!’

Now he suddenly noticed the faint light ahead of them.

It was coming through the roof of the tunnel, through some sort of grille or something. There was a vague sound of voices in the distance.

‘What time is it?’ he hissed.

‘Half past five.’

For a moment he thought she meant in the evening. That they had spent a whole day crawling through the darkness. But that obviously wasn’t the case. They’d picked him up from Långholmen in the middle of the night, then they’d walked through the tunnel just in time to see the last trains rumble home before the system shut down.

Add a few hours for talking and crawling, and it would soon be time for breakfast.

Nora carried on moving forward carefully, stopping just below the grating. She got up into a crouch and carefully stretched out, reaching towards the light. Her head disappeared from view and for a moment, even though he could see the rest of her body, he felt strangely abandoned.

Then she was back.

‘Come on!’

She waved him forward.

‘Quick!’ she added when he failed to move fast enough.