Game: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Five days, and still not a peep from Henke. He’d promised to get in touch as soon as he got there. Okay, so he’d said something about not taking the shortest route, but five days without a word? Clearly cause for concern.

  Something else that was worrying her the more she thought about it was those cell phones. There was no question that they were pretty damn similar. So what did that mean?

  At best, nothing. Maybe you could buy cells like that in the shops, and Micke just happened to have bought one. Or maybe she’d just seen wrong.

  The phone didn’t have to mean anything. Micke and Henke had never met and neither knew of the other’s existence. As far as she was aware, they didn’t have a single thing in common.

  So what did she really have to worry about?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Mange did have a point, undoubtedly, he thought after he’d looked through the plans.

  Torshamnsgatan 142 was a total Fort Knox. He wasn’t sure, but if he’d interpreted all the abbreviations correctly, the building was equipped with pretty much every sort of security there was. Motion-activated cameras with night vision, infrared alarm detectors, sensors that picked up sound and vibration, and biometric readers on every door. You needed the right fingerprints to get in, so there went his idea of somehow getting hold of a pass card.

  Shit!

  He just had to hope that this Rehyman character knew what he was doing, because he had no idea.

  He put the plans down and suppressed the urge to go out onto the fire escape for a late-night cigarette. Instead he opened another Jolt and pulled out his notepad. A couple of days doodling had left him with a halfway decent idea of what he wanted to achieve with his home visit out in Kista.

  It was actually fairly straightforward. His feelings about the Game were still ambivalent, to put it mildly. On the one hand he was seriously pissed off at the way they had treated him. The setup at Lindhagensplan with his sister, the stone, Bolin the fake, and all the rest.

  And they had set fire to his flat and sent a couple of losers to do the same to Mange’s shop. Not to mention the nightmare with Erman, the plane, and the blaze out there in the sticks. He couldn’t help wondering if the cops had ever managed to piece together the poor nut’s well-done remains?

  The last straw had to be the bomb they’d planted under Auntie’s sofa, which was obviously intended for him but could just as easily have blown his sister into atoms. Revenge was a pretty strong motivation.

  Fucking strong, actually!

  He took a couple of deep swigs from the can of cola.

  On the other hand, things were less clear, in fact almost verging on the sick.

  But they couldn’t be ignored.

  If he managed to get into the Game’s holy of holies, past all their advanced security systems and alarms, and managed to get hold of information that they had done everything to protect—wouldn’t that prove what a remarkable talent he was? That no one could stop him, not even the Game itself, and that he was worth another chance?

  Was he really so fucking desperate for approval that he was prepared to get back in the saddle again, even though he had started to work out how meganasty the journey could be?

  Another couple of days with the conspiracy theorists of the Internet as his only company had given him plenty of food for thought. This could seriously be absolutely massive!

  There were several websites that seemed to suggest, in all seriousness, that swine flu came from a lab. That someone had taken a bit of Spanish flu, a bit of pig disease, and diluted it with the same amount of bird flu, and all to start up a global pandemic.

  It was an interesting idea. According to that theory, the pharmaceutical industry was behind it, and the Game could very well have made it happen.

  For two hundred points, inject yourself with this syringe and spend the next week on public transport, not covering your mouth when you sneeze. Touch as many surfaces as you can, and make sure you don’t wash your hands more than necessary.

  A couple of hundred assignments like that in carefully selected cities, and suddenly sales of Pandemrix, Tamiflu, and alcogel would go up by about a million percent . . .

  There were other people in cyberspace who doubted that the disease existed at all, and thought the whole thing was a scam to give the epidemiologists more money, or scare people into staying in and watching more television.

  And what was really behind Climategate?

  Who dug out the emails in which the climate change scientists decided, with touching unanimity, to exaggerate the threat of global warming? Were they even genuine, and if so, who benefited?

  How did Princess Diana die, who made the spy Litvinenko glow with radiation, who turned out the lights on the King of Pop, assuming Jacko was actually dead and not just faking . . . ?

  How many points would something like that get you?

  And that was far from all . . .

  By this point he had a laptop full of events and interpretations that all, one way or another, fitted the crystal-clear conclusion that his overworked brain eventually spat out.

  Regardless of whether the conspiracy nuts out there blamed the CIA, the WHO, the KGB, or some other exciting combination of letters, one fact remained that everyone seemed to want to ignore.

  In spite of budgets worth billions and political protection from the highest authorities, the list of failed cover-ups was still horrifyingly long: Watergate, the IB affair, Echelon, Lillehammer, Iran-Contra Affair, and Abu Ghraib were just a few examples. The bigger the organization, the more leaks, and bad luck always seemed to be lurking around the corner. It wasn’t just a matter of getting the muscle to do the work, but, possibly more important, managing to keep a lid on it afterward, now and forever.

  And who could guarantee anything of the sort? Just look what happened to the Stasi, and that was before whistle-blower legislation and WikiLeaks. The risk of global conspiracies seemed to exceed the rewards in most cases—by a clear margin!

  But what if there was a shady operator dressed up as an exclusive social diversion that was prepared to take on pretty much any task? A setup that in turn employed even more anonymous figures to do the dirty work, a Sirhan or a Mark or a Lee Harvey. Eager little patsies who would hardly be able to explain what they were even doing if they got caught. Anyway, who on earth would believe them?

  Yes, it actually did fit together, the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place and the chain of logic was holding!

  There was no need for any global conspiracy, no acronym organization or gigantic cover-up! Just an idea, enough money to put it into action, and the Game Master’s approval.

  Then the wheels were in motion.

  Game on!

  Even if he had examined his conclusion from every angle by this point, it still made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

  Fuck, what a setup!

  It made perfect sense, but at the same time it was well beyond belief!

  Was he seriously contemplating, even for a second, making a comeback in something like that, or did it actually make the Game even more appealing now that he had uncovered its true role? And, come to that, his own.

  He emptied the can, tossed it cheerfully toward the wastepaper bin, and immediately opened another one.

  No time for sleep; he needed to stay sharp and do some more serious thinking!

  The best thing about his plan of attack was that he didn’t have to decide just yet. The basic prerequisites remained the same, and he had listed them carefully in his notepad.

  Get inside the building, preferably without being seen.

  Work out what’s going on, who’s still playing, and what the End Game is.

  Try to get at the numbered account with all the cash.

  Get back out in one piece.

  The rest would work itself out.

  If he failed, he could always drop a few anonymous tip-offs to the evening tabloids or Crimewatch before he left the country. He already ha
d the email in his Drafts folder, a quick click on Send and it would be done.

  Sadly the tools he had available for the mission weren’t exactly the sharpest in the box.

  An asocial genius, his own variable knowledge about the Game, Erman’s old log-in details, and hopefully a bit of good old-fashioned luck. The odds of success weren’t exactly cheering.

  But what the hell . . .

  No guts, no glory!

  18

  ARE YOU REALLY SURE YOU WANT TO REENTER?

  THE LIST WAS short.

  Black clothes—check.

  Balaclava—check.

  Log-in details—check.

  Dipstick Associate—check there as well, sadly . . .

  It had just gone ten o’clock in the evening and they were still sitting in the car.

  Torshamnsgatan 142, a hundred meters or so along the street.

  HP would really have preferred to wait until nearer morning, but according to his new friend late evenings were better if you wanted to avoid trouble with the police. Something about shift changes and lots of ordinary Svenssons crashing their cars, practicing their boxing on each other at home, or losing their car keys when they were drunk.

  Apparently the cops were more alert early in the morning, more likely to cruise around dark industrial estates looking for thieves.

  Statistically speaking.

  If he could have five kronor every time his new partner in crime used those words . . .

  To a very large extent all his fears had come true the moment he picked Rehyman up from the station.

  Thick glasses, a center parting, and a Puma sports bag from the early seventies. His trousers were a centimeter or so too short, faded Stan Smiths, and his bright red jacket was the icing on the cake. For a moment HP thought someone was mocking him. That Mange had told the guy to play it up just for a bit of a laugh.

  But he wasn’t going to be that lucky . . .

  Beyond his initial greeting and his statistical presentation, Rehyman hadn’t said a thing, hardly responding to HP’s attempts to lighten the mood and do a bit of bonding. The guy just sat there with his damn bag in his lap, staring out through the windshield.

  They’d already been there for an hour and a half, and HP was on the point of losing it. He did another frustrated drumroll on the steering wheel in the hope of getting some sort of reaction from the passenger seat.

  “Soo, Rehyman . . . Mange . . . I mean, Farook says you work with stuff like this day to day?”

  When there was no response, he added:

  “Installing security systems and so on . . . ? A pretty buoyant market, from what I’ve heard?”

  Still no answer, not so much as a glance.

  A bit unusual, Mange had said. Yeah, right! The dude was a complete muppet, that much was fucking obvious. HP sighed. There was no way this was going to end well.

  As luck would have it, he’d booked an open airline ticket. He could leave first thing tomorrow if need be.

  Auf wiedersehen, suckers!

  The thickset orc of a guard stepped out of the door exactly one hour after his previous round. He looked up and down the road and then, evidently satisfied, fished a large pocket flashlight from his belt, turned left, and went around the corner. In a couple of minutes he would reappear around the other corner of the building, go in through the staff entrance, and presumably continue his round inside the building.

  HP was about to let out another sigh of boredom when he noticed that Rehyman had begun to move. He had pulled a tiny laptop out of his sports bag and plugged a modem into one of the USB ports. The screen lit up and Rehyman’s fingers started a lightning-fast dance over the keys, making a rhythmic pattering sound.

  HP was pretty nifty with a keyboard, but this . . .

  Like rain on a plastic roof, he had time to think, but then curiosity got the better of him.

  “What are you doing, Rehyman?”

  He tried to sound politely interested.

  “Fixing the cameras.”

  “How do you mean?”

  HP stared at his passenger.

  No reply.

  More tapping on the keys, then unexpectedly the rain stopped over eastern Svealand.

  Rehyman turned the laptop so HP could see the screen.

  A window showing what looked like a camera picture was open.

  In its top corner you could see a parked car, possibly a Saab. It took him a few seconds to realize that this was the view from one of the cameras on the façade one hundred meters or so away.

  “How the fuck . . . ?”

  “IP cameras,” Rehyman replied in a monotone. “All the cameras use the Internet to communicate with the server. Much better and cheaper than analog cables. If you know the IP address, it’s easy to crack them. You just need a connection and a web reader.”

  He typed in some commands and moved the mouse over the screen.

  “Soo, what happens now?”

  HP was momentarily feeling completely lost.

  “Each camera has its own flash memory. Usually the images record direct onto the server, but the camera also has the ability to store visual material.”

  “And?”

  “I’m telling the camera to record a sequence and then play that sequence in a loop for the server, instead of sending live pictures. A bit like old films where they used to hold a Polaroid picture up to the camera lens.”

  “What, so the server doesn’t realize it’s watching a recording instead of real pictures?”

  Rehyman looked at HP for several seconds, as if he were a particularly retarded frog that he was about to dissect.

  “No,” he said blankly, and went on tapping.

  The guard came around the corner, went over to the side entrance, and pressed one hand against the reader. A couple of seconds later he disappeared inside the building.

  Rehyman opened the car door and without saying a word began walking quickly toward the building.

  HP had to run to catch up. The guy obviously wasn’t all there, but at the same time he kind of was.

  “So what happens now?” HP hissed when they were standing at the side entrance.

  On the wall sat the biometric reader, a metal box with a glass screen against which the guard had recently pressed his hand to be let in.

  Without bothering to reply Rehyman pulled an aerosol can out of his bag and gave the glass screen a quick spray. Then he took out a little metal flask, out of which he pulled a bit of transparent modeling clay, which he then rolled over the reader.

  The glass screen came to life and started to glow.

  HP couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

  “What the fuck are you playing at?”

  Rehyman gave him another searching look.

  HP decided to rephrase his question.

  “Would you mind explaining what you’re doing, Rehyman?”

  “The spray makes the guard’s palm print stand out, then I cover the screen with a ballistic gel, which has the same consistency and temperature as human skin. The reader detects warmth, texture, and the pattern of the object presented to it, and if these match anything in its database it opens the door.”

  The same emotionless tone of voice, without the slightest hint of nerves or excitement. The guy was obviously a complete retard! This was never going to work!

  A loud click from the lock quickly made him change his mind.

  “I’ll be damned, you’re a genius, Rehyman!” HP grinned as they stepped through the door.

  Another camera was staring down at them and HP raised a questioning eyebrow at his partner in crime. Obviously the genius didn’t pick up on such a subtle gesture but HP didn’t bother asking. That one must have been running on playback as well. Sending old pictures of an empty stairwell, over and over again.

  Say what you like—Rain Man might have zero awareness of social niceties, but when it came to technology he was obviously Harry-fucking-Potter.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  As they approached Lindhagensplan
she could feel her pulse rate go up. The VIPs had flown into Bromma this time, so the drive in was a repeat of an old favorite.

  Or not . . .

  By the time they reached the Traneberg Bridge she was already scanning the overpasses ahead on the far side of the water. Squinting, she tried to see if there was anyone standing up there waiting. But the distance and darkness made it impossible to tell if there was any danger waiting for them.

  As they got closer she saw him. A lone figure up there on the same bridge where Henke had been standing.

  And abruptly her pulse started galloping in panic.

  “There’s someone standing on the bridge,” she managed to say, in a remarkably calm voice.

  “Mmm,” her driver, Wikström, agreed, and eased up on the speed.

  “Alpha 101, slow down. There’s someone up on the bridge,” she said into her microphone.

  She was still surprised that her voice could sound so composed. Inside she was a wreck. She wanted to scream to Wikström that she couldn’t breathe, that he had to stop and let her out, at once!

  “Alpha 102, understood,” the VIP car behind them said, dropping back. “Be careful, 101.”

  The overpass was coming closer.

  The figure was leaning over the railing, completely motionless. As they got closer she was able to make out more details. It looked like he was holding something in his hands.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  They made it past another door and camera, and suddenly they found themselves in a long corridor. Gray linoleum floor and some faint fluorescent strip lights were all they could see. No howling alarms, flashing lights, or heavy steps from a troop of guards. This was going like clockwork! HP couldn’t help opening one of the identical brown doors that lined both sides of the corridor.

  Just a sneak preview!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The figure up above raised its arms over the railing, its fingers clasping a black object.

  A weapon! she thought, panic stricken, and moved her hand to the butt of the pistol by her right hip.

  They were close now and she saw Wikström take a tighter grasp of the steering wheel. Rebecca still had the microphone in her left hand, her knuckles white against the black plastic.