The Game Trilogy

by Anders de la Motte

  She hesitated for a few more seconds, then nodded slowly.

  ‘I understand …’ he repeated, and this time his voice sounded almost sad.

  They sat there in silence while he seemed to ponder the matter.

  ‘A safe deposit box is actually a sort of bubble, has that occurred to you, Rebecca? Life outside goes on, things change, but in there time stands still. Much like life itself. We create our own reality, small spheres where we imagine we control what happens. In actual fact the feeling of control is just an illusion, and those spheres are nothing more than bubbles. But all bubbles are doomed to burst sooner or later, aren’t they?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You must promise to keep what I’m about to tell you to yourself, Rebecca,’ he went on.

  She nodded.

  ‘You mustn’t share it with anyone, not even your brother. As you know, Henrik isn’t capable of keeping a secret in the same way as you or I, and if what I’m about to say were to get out, there would be consequences, serious consequences. Do you understand?’

  ‘Of course, Uncle Tage. You can trust me.’

  ‘Yes, I know I can, Rebecca. You’re more like your father than you realize …’

  He gave her a wry smile that made her heart skip a beat.

  ‘It all started in 1964, in a small village in northern Cyprus. I was the company commander, and your father was one my four platoon leaders. We already knew each other from Officer Training College, and got on well. Erland might not have been the most natural leader, but he made up for it by being extremely well prepared for any possible scenario. And he was reliable and loyal, qualities which are becoming harder and harder to find these days …’

  He turned his coffee cup gently.

  ‘On one occasion we were despatched to protect a Turkish Cypriot village which was coming under constant fire from superior and considerably better armed Greek Cypriot forces.

  ‘Unfortunately our presence didn’t put a stop to hostilities and we were forced to watch as the Turkish Cypriot village was blown to pieces. Erland was a man of firm principles He along with a couple of his colleagues had great difficulty accepting that we had no mandate to intervene in order to protect the weaker party.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Well, unfortunately their frustration led to them loading up two of our UN-marked vehicles with a couple of heavy machine-guns and several boxes of ammunition, with the intention of driving them over to the Turkish Cypriots. The idea was presumably to even out the fight, if only slightly. It wasn’t a declaration of political intent, and even if they had succeeded in delivering the arms, I doubt they would have made much difference …’

  He shook his head slowly.

  ‘But they were stopped at a Greek Cypriot roadblock, and all hell broke loose … There was a thorough investigation, your father and his colleagues were relieved of duty immediately and the whole Swedish contingent of UN forces was reallocated at once to the southern part of the island. Erland took the whole thing very hard. He believed that he had merely been acting to protect the weaker party, according to orders. I can’t pretend that I didn’t sympathize with him, but the regulations were crystal-clear and not only had he broken them, but he had also damaged confidence in the whole UN mission.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Instant dismissal from both the UN and the Swedish Army. As his immediate superior I was forced to sign the papers. A sad day. A very sad day …’

  He paused for a few seconds as he went on toying with his empty coffee cup.

  ‘You see, Rebecca, your father liked being an officer, part of a larger context, surrounded by peers. He had been looking forward to a long and successful career in the military. And when this was suddenly taken away from him, he became …’

  ‘Bitter …’

  He looked up.

  ‘I was thinking of saying a different man, but of course you’re right. Erland was never quite himself again …’

  Empty!

  The bastard lift had been fucking empty! He still couldn’t work out how it had happened.

  Not in the lift, not in the corridor, not in the entrance to the museum. So where the hell had the bloke gone? After all, he couldn’t have pulled some magic trick and disappeared in a puff of bloody smoke, could he?

  But he knew what was going on. The bastards were fucking with his head! Not content with keeping track of his every move and listening through the walls, now they were playing mind games on him. Getting him to chase a ghost halfway across Södermalm. Sneaking into the flat when he was out, planting the phone and with it the clear message that whoever put it there had police connections; most likely the Player was a cop.

  Well, they weren’t going to break him that easily! He’d started piling furniture against the door at night, and on the few occasions he went out, he stuck strands of hair across the crack of the door so he could see if they’d been in. But he’d much rather just not go out.

  The whole of his living-room floor was covered with pizza boxes and newspapers and magazines. He’d pretty much stripped the newsagent’s shelves, and the signs were unmistakable. Weird shit was going on all over the place: people going out to buy cigarettes but never coming home; computer systems shutting down for no reason, closing the barriers in the tunnel network of the Southern Link Road, switching off the landing lights at Arlanda Airport, preventing chemists from issuing prescriptions; things simply vanishing – like that flag out at Kastellholmen that’s always supposed to fly in peacetime. The newspapers seemed to think it was great fun. An innocent prank ahead of the royal wedding … but yesterday Stockholm’s pensioners blocked the Army’s telephone exchange with worried calls.

  As usual, the world full of average Swedes had no idea.

  No flag – no peace.

  In other words, war!

  Well, if it was war they wanted, they could have it!

  BIG TIME!!

  He got up from the floor and scratched his beard as he marched over to the fridge. Time to check his supplies: four low-strength lagers, six Gorby pies, half a tube of fish roe.

  The top shelf of the larder increased his assets by three slices of crispbread and a tin of frankfurters. The second shelf was full of silver duct tape. Sixteen rolls, to be precise. He did a quick calculation on his fingers. Another three days, possibly four, before he needed to go out again.

  Good!

  He had a lot to sort out, things to do …

  ‘So where do the passports come in?’

  He took a deep breath, then slowly let the air out again.

  ‘What I’ve told you so far isn’t particularly sensitive. You can find it all on the internet or in various books about the history of the UN. But what I’m about to say is strictly confidential. I hope you understand that?’

  She nodded.

  ‘After the Cyprus mission I continued my career in the military. We were in the middle of the Cold War and the army was larger and far more influential than it is today. Erland and I kept in touch, mostly at my initiative because I felt a certain degree of guilt about what had happened. I had been both his friend and his commanding officer, yet I still hadn’t been able to help him. But as my career in the military developed, I realized that there was always a need for loyal, decisive men like Erland. I began to use him for a number of … small consultancy tasks, I suppose you could call them. Would you like anything else to drink, by the way? Some mineral water, perhaps?’

  He waved the waitress over and ordered two bottles of Ramlösa, which she brought over at once.

  ‘These consultancy jobs, what did they involve?’ Rebecca asked after taking a drink.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t go into the details …’

  ‘You mean he was some sort of spy?’

  ‘No, no, absolutely not.’

  He held his hands up in front of him.

  ‘Nothing of that sort, it was mostly courier work. The exchange of services and in
formation. I really can’t say any more than that … It’s still covered by the Official Secrets Act …’

  ‘But if he needed fake passports …?’

  ‘I know it must sound strange, but you have to understand that times were very different. The Cold War was raging and Sweden was caught between the two superpowers. I’m sure you remember the Swedish DC-3 that was shot down over the Baltic by the Soviet Union, followed by one of the Catalina planes that was sent to search for survivors. Even the most innocent activities were liable to be misinterpreted by the enemy, so it was important to take whatever precautions were available, especially once Erland had a family …’

  ‘B-but Dad had a job, he worked as a salesman, for … for …’

  She tried in vain to remember the name of the company – something beginning with T, she was pretty sure of that. He let her think.

  ‘I’d be surprised if any of you knew very much about Erland’s work … If he ever told you anything, it was probably only in very general terms, no specifics. Something to explain his absences and long trips abroad, perhaps …?’

  She picked up her bottle to refill her glass, but her right hand suddenly twitched a couple of times, making her spill water on the table. She used some napkins to wipe it up as discreetly as she could.

  If anyone had suggested that her dad had been anything but a perfectly ordinary citizen only a few days before, she would probably just have laughed. But that was before she opened his safe deposit box …

  ‘I realize that this must all feel a little … unreal, Rebecca.’

  He leaned forward and put his hand on hers.

  ‘Believe me, I would rather not have had to tell you any of this …’

  She looked at him carefully, trying to find any indication that he didn’t mean it. But he seemed to be completely genuine.

  ‘S-so, what do we do now …?’ she managed to ask. ‘With the things in the box?’ she clarified, dropping her right hand to her lap in an attempt to stop it shaking.

  ‘Leave that to me. I’ll make sure that everything disappears. The passports, the safe deposit box, any documentation that could connect them to your father. Just give me all the keys, codes and anything else necessary, and all your worries will be over.’

  She tensed up involuntarily.

  ‘Naturally, I shall make sure that no shadows fall across your father’s memory …’ He smiled warmly and she paused for a few moments while she considered.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s what I want, Uncle Tage,’ she said eventually. ‘Handing over everything, I mean …’

  He frowned and gave her a long look.

  Then he slowly pulled his hand back and straightened up in his chair.

  ‘In which case I can’t help wondering why not, Rebecca?’

  The expression on his face had suddenly changed, becoming harder.

  He went on looking at her for a few seconds, as his eyes slowly narrowed and his mouth grew thinner.

  ‘There was something else in the box, wasn’t there? Apart from the passports and that photograph …’

  She didn’t move a muscle, but he slowly nodded as if she had nonetheless somehow confirmed his suspicion.

  ‘You found something else, something much more troubling …’

  Her hand was still trembling in her lap, and she could feel her heart beating faster. She made a determined effort not to show the slightest sign that might give her away.

  Uncle Tage went on staring at her, but this time she didn’t look away. Instead she lowered her chin slightly and maintained eye-contact.

  Five seconds.

  Ten …

  ‘Okay,’ he eventually sighed, holding up his hands. ‘There’s another part of the story. Something I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you … We worked together on a special … project, I suppose you would call it,’ he went on. ‘Something rather controversial, which meant that we had to be extremely careful. That’s why we didn’t use our own staff, but brought in freelancers like your father. People without any official connection to the project, but who were still unwaveringly loyal …’

  ‘And who you could afford to lose if anything went wrong …?’

  ‘That sounds rather cynical …’

  ‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Your father was well aware of the rules of the game. He knew how it worked. Anyway, this project was given high priority for a number of years, and we had access to almost unlimited resources. Then suddenly everything changed, political support was withdrawn and the budget was cut drastically. But we carried on with our work nonetheless, just more discreetly. Everyone involved in the project was convinced of its importance for national security. And we also had a degree of support from some of our former sponsors, which enabled us to carry on well into the 1980s. But eventually one of our most faithful friends abandoned us, someone who had previously been our biggest supporter. Our little unit was shut down for good, the offices closed and the remaining staff reallocated elsewhere. In conjunction with this I left the service altogether. Since then I have worked for the private sector …’

  ‘And Dad, what happened to him?’

  ‘Your father was never formally employed, there was no contract, and thus no obligations …’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It wasn’t right, considering how faithfully he had served our cause … Of course there were others like him, people who also ended up out in the cold without so much as a word of thanks. But I’m afraid Erland was the one who took it hardest. That was the second time he had been expelled, cast out of somewhere he felt he belonged …’

  He paused to drink the rest of his mineral water.

  ‘When was this? What year?’

  ‘The late 1980s, you’d have been, what, eleven or twelve years old then …?’

  She took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. Her right hand had finally calmed down enough for her to dare to put it back on the table.

  ‘Do you remember much from that time, Rebecca?’

  ‘Well, er …’ she said, her voice catching, and she cleared her throat. ‘Not much, really.’

  But that wasn’t entirely true. She remembered some things well. Far too well.

  He didn’t wake up until it was almost evening, which wasn’t actually that odd. It had been four o’clock by the time he went to bed.

  He had been sitting against that fucking wall listening, trying to pick up the slightest detail of the conversations that seemed to be going on in there. Hour after hour of indistinct muttering, with only random words audible.

  By now his notepad was full of things he thought he had heard, but they left him none the wiser.

  The words gluten, labyrinth and carer had recurred several times but, just like all the other words, it was impossible to piece them together into anything resembling a coherent context.

  He dragged himself up into a sitting position, scratched his beard, then under his arms and his balls. Then he pulled one of the longer butts out of the ashtray on the bedside table and fumbled for his lighter. This whole situation was on the verge of slipping out of his hands. He had no plan, no defence at all, the cops were breathing down his neck and, to cap it all, he was under constant surveillance.

  He hadn’t spoken to Becca for several weeks, months even, which was actually no bad thing. If he stayed away from her, then she ought to be safe. The only problem was that he felt so fucking lonely!

  He’d tried to get hold of Manga, but the sodding little rug-hugger wasn’t answering his phone and the computer shop had been boarded up since winter when his little work experience lads got locked up. Okay, so he could have gone out to Farsta and knocked on the door of Manga’s flat, but that felt like far too ambitious a project. Anyway, besides the fact that he really didn’t feel like leaving the flat, he had no desire at all to bump into Manga’s lawfully wretched other half, Betul the Bitch …

  He found an old box of matches in one of the kitchen drawers and, w
ith some difficulty, managed to light the cigarette butt.

  But even the fag wasn’t enough to improve his mood.

  He ought to be starving, it had been hours since his last micro-bombed gourmet feast. But he had no appetite at all.

  Just as he slumped onto the sofa his phone began to ring in the bedroom. He briefly considered not bothering to answer it.

  But whoever was calling seemed keen to get hold of him, because it went on ringing.

  He guessed it was Becca, and suddenly felt his mood brighten. He thought he might abandon his principles and answer this time, just a short conversation so he could hear her voice. That would hardly do too much damage.

  He struggled laboriously up from the sofa and stumbled back into the bedroom. He’d got about halfway when he realized what was wrong. The ringtone was right, but the problem was that he’d switched his Nokia off once the cops had let go of him. He’d taken the battery out and put the phone in one of the kitchen drawers.

  So it wasn’t that phone that was ringing.

  He speeded up and lurched round the doorframe into the bedroom.

  The phone was still ringing, but the tone seemed to change, and suddenly sounded louder, sharper. Like a razor-blade against his eardrums. It took him a couple of seconds to identify where the sound was coming from. The pile of newspapers on the bedside table, beside the ashtray he’d just searched for butts. He tipped the whole lot onto the bedroom floor. He saw the silvery phone slide across the parquet floor, halfway under the bed. For a moment his heart seemed to have stopped.

  The phone had been dead, switched off – he was absolutely certain of that!

  He had even tried to bring it back to life the other night, just to make sure. Why the hell hadn’t he simply destroyed it, smashed it with a hammer and thrown the pieces in the bin?

  The screen was flashing and the vibrations were making the phone move, almost as if it were a living creature hiding under his bed.

  HP felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The phone had almost spun round one hundred and eighty degrees, and he couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  Obviously he shouldn’t answer, there were at least a thousand logical reasons why not.