Bubble: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  She leaned back in her chair, took a deep breath, and laced her fingers together behind her neck. So far Uncle Tage’s story seemed to fit. But how could she find more details?

  She tried some of the other search results, but none of the sites was any great help.

  She changed the search terms, but to no avail. Although she did find a number of books about Swedish UN missions and decided to order a couple of them. Just as she was finished there was a knock at her door.

  “Come in!”

  Kjellgren looked in.

  “Morning, boss, everything okay?”

  “Hmm, did you want anything in particular?”

  “Sanna said you wanted to talk to me about next week’s rota—”

  “Of course, yes, take a seat . . .”

  She gestured to a chair as she swept the photograph and magnifying glass into the top drawer of her desk.

  Time to rearrange her list of priorities.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  He was holding the phone in his hand. He could feel its cool surface against his palm as he gauged how heavy it was. He ran his fingers over the embossed numbers on the back for the umpteenth time.

  1—2—8

  He had been the first runner-up, the Ayatollah of Fuck’n’Rolla, the coolest dude in the Game. Just thinking about it still gave him a bit of a hard-on. Fuck, he really did have a seriously selective memory!

  All the rest of it—the way they’d deceived him, getting him to cross all his boundaries and then dumping him—was almost forgotten. Maybe even forgiven . . . A bit like when old guys go on about what a great time they had doing military service and how the bastard sergeant was actually quite a decent guy really . . .

  But the Game wasn’t just a training exercise, it’s wasn’t playing at war, firing blanks and planning everything around a lunch of pea soup and pork chops. It was totally real, one hundred percent!

  He couldn’t deny that holding the phone certainly felt good. Just for a few seconds feeling part of something bigger, something the average Swede would never get anywhere close to.

  But in spite of all that, he couldn’t go through with the task, he wasn’t that sort of person.

  Everything that had happened down in Bagarmossen was something else entirely. Self-defense, you could almost say.

  Dag or Becca. Not exactly a difficult choice . . .

  What the Game Master was asking him to do now was an entirely different matter. Crystal clear and straight to the point. But he couldn’t do it.

  He wasn’t a murderer.

  Not like that . . .

  They were trying to manipulate him, he could see that. The cops, the message on the computer, the surveillance, the articles in the papers. The phone call, the wedding music.

  It was all part of one big mind-fuck, intended to brainwash him. Make him malleable. Make him do what the Game Master wanted.

  He had to regain the initiative, get the upper hand . . . Slowly he put the phone down and covered it up with some newspapers. Then he went and got his crowbar.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Okay, if no one has any more questions, we’ll stop there. We’ll meet up at six o’clock on Monday for a final run-through before we set off. As you all know, plenty of people will be watching us, which makes this an excellent opportunity to show what we can bring to the organization as a whole.”

  The rest of the team nodded in agreement. No one seemed to have anything to add.

  “Good.” She stood up and gathered her papers, the signal to the others that they could leave the table. Her hands were behaving perfectly, no trace of any trembling.

  It must have been something temporary, like her doctor had said.

  She took out her cell phone and switched it from Silent to Normal. The screen flashed a couple of times, then turned blue. She muttered to herself, then pressed to switch it off. The third time this week, she really should have got it fixed before Black’s visit, but if she left it on and didn’t mess around with the settings, it ought to work okay. Besides, they did most of their internal communication by radio.

  When she got back to her office the letter was on her desk. She realized what it was at once and eagerly tore open the envelope.

  Application for weapons license: Sentry Security.

  Then a load of officialese and a large stamp in the bottom right corner.

  Approved.

  Yes!

  That meant they were now authorized to carry guns on duty, just as she had in the Security Police, and that they could now take with them when they went out the pistols they had used down in the firing range.

  One worry sorted, and a big one at that. The pressure in her chest eased slightly.

  Being armed was important—without weapons they could only ever be lightweight bodyguards, little better than the gym-pumped gorillas trying to keep the fans away from celebrities and pop stars. With weapons they were professionals, specialists who could defend themselves and their charges as far as was physically possible.

  The letter of approval gave no indication why the issuing body had changed its decision, but that didn’t really matter. She already knew.

  Her phone seemed to have woken up and she scrolled through her contacts until she found the right name.

  Thanks for your help! she wrote, then pressed Send.

  Just a few minutes later the answer appeared.

  Don’t mention it, glad I was able to help!

  Have you had time to think over my proposal regarding your find?

  Best wishes, Uncle T.

  She started a reply but stopped herself halfway through. Obviously it would be best to hand everything over to Uncle Tage. He seemed capable of dealing with most things, and the revolver was worrying her more than she cared to admit. Yet it didn’t feel right to let it all go until she knew more about her dad’s past.

  She erased her reply and wrote a new one instead.

  Need more time to think!

  Then she went over to the computer to spread the good news.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  He peered cautiously behind the roller blinds. Obviously he ought to wait until it got dark, but the semidarkness of the Swedish summer wouldn’t descend until eleven at night, and there was no way he could wait that long.

  He carefully opened his creaking front door and listened for noises in the gloom of the stairwell. Somewhere below him he could hear the faint sound of a television, but that was all.

  He took a couple of paces in his stocking feet and put his ear to his neighbor’s door. Silent as the grave.

  For the first time in several days, which might reasonably suggest that the flat was empty.

  Even Stasi spies probably had families waiting for them at home.

  He crouched down and cautiously opened the letter box. Dark, much darker than the stairwell, which meant that the windows in there were covered. The smell hadn’t changed from the previous times he had checked. Sawdust. They must have done some serious work in there . . .

  He straightened up, then took a couple of paces and checked down the stairs one more time, just to be sure.

  Then he felt inside the sleeve of his sweater and pulled out the little crowbar.

  It was surprisingly straightforward. The pointed end into the crack, just above the lock, a bang with his palm to wedge it in place, then a sharp jerk and pop goes the weasel!

  It wasn’t so strange, really. Unlike his own door, this one was wood, old wood. Fifty or sixty years of drying out had shrunk the wood badly, giving him plenty of room to play with between it and the frame.

  One muffled noise when the crowbar went in, then a louder one as the bolt of the lock popped out.

  Open Sesame!

  There was hardly a mark on the door.

  HP stood still for a moment and listened. Apart from the television downstairs, there still wasn’t any noise, neither from the stairwell nor from the flat. He scuffed a few little splinters of wood away with one sock, nudging them
up against the wall so they wouldn’t stand out against the stone floor. Then he pulled a small flashlight out of one of his pockets, stepped inside the flat, and carefully shut the door behind him as best he could.

  The smell of sawdust was stronger in the flat, as he stood there for a moment fiddling with the flashlight.

  An image suddenly popped into his head. He and Becca in front of a fire. No, a fireplace.

  Sparks crackling, shooting out onto a tiled floor . . . He was chasing them, trying to catch them before they went out. Her laughter . . .

  The sudden beam from the flashlight made him jump. Pull yourself together, for fuck’s sake! Memory lane can wait.

  He swept the beam of the flashlight around the dark little hall. The flat looked like his, the layout was pretty much the same. He must have seen it at least a hundred times when the Goat was living there. But now it felt weirdly unfamiliar, and he padded about carefully as he let the flashlight illuminate the empty floor.

  No furniture at all, not a single chair or cardboard box. The whole flat felt oddly abandoned, but he could still feel his heart beating faster. He squatted down and shone the flashlight over the floor, just like they did on CSI.

  There were clear footprints in the dust. An obvious highway through the middle of the room, with hardly any deviation. He turned around and shone the flashlight in all directions. The footsteps led from the front door, through the hall and on toward the bedroom door, through the living room. He could make out at least three different types of shoes, two that looked like different types of sneakers, and a third that seemed smoother, like a smarter sort of shoe.

  All the visitors appeared to have been heading for the bedroom, which was rather odd seeing as that was the room farthest from his own flat. That must be where they had been doing most of the work, because in spite of the smell he hadn’t seen a single trace of sawdust.

  As he got closer he suddenly noticed a faint glow beneath the door. He froze and got ready for a rapid retreat. Then he realized that the light was far too faint to come from any ordinary lamp. Besides, it was red, so he guessed it probably came from a digital display on some electronic gadget.

  He took a few cautious steps and put his ear to the bedroom door.

  Silence.

  The smell of sawdust was so strong that it almost stung his nostrils. Somewhere under the sweet, woody smell was something more acrid that he didn’t recognize.

  He paused for a few moments.

  Five.

  Ten.

  Then he put his hand on the handle, took a deep breath, and carefully opened the door.

  10

  SNAKE EYES

  THE SIX GUNS went off so close together that the blasts almost merged into one. Double shots with just a few milliseconds between them. The targets turned away with a short hydraulic hiss.

  The sound of empty magazines hitting the floor, followed by a short metallic rattle as the gunmen quickly replaced them with new ones.

  The targets turned forward again.

  Single shots this time, then all the weapons clicked more or less simultaneously. But none of the six bodyguards seemed at all surprised. Rapid bolt actions slid the green blanks that Rebecca had slipped into their magazines onto the ground.

  Then more shots, until the clock ticked and turned the targets away again.

  “Cease fire and unload!” Rebecca ordered as she removed her ear defenders.

  The expensive ventilation system was doing its job, she noted. Even though sixty shots had been fired in the past minute down in the firing range, the smell of gunpowder was scarcely noticeable.

  She pressed a button on the remote and the targets turned forward. Six figures made of brown cardboard, the size and shape of real people.

  But instead of a drawing of a threatening gunman, these targets merely had a circle the size of a saucer drawn on the front. In the middle of the chest—heart, lungs, spine.

  One shot in that circle on an unprotected body would in all likelihood be fatal. Two would guarantee death.

  She didn’t need to go up to the targets to check the results.

  None of her team needed to retake the test.

  All ten shots were within the circles, direct hits in the death zone, and not even the interruption to their firing toward the end had made them lose their focus.

  “Nice shooting, all of you!” she said curtly as she noted the results in her file.

  “Practice makes perfect, boss.” Mrsic grinned at her. “Nice to know it wasn’t wasted . . .”

  She let the comment pass. She really ought to be pleased. She had designed everything down here herself, everything from the layout of the range to the demands made of each marksman.

  The whole thing had cost upward of two million kronor, and if she hadn’t managed to secure the license, that money would basically have been wasted. But Uncle Tage had come to her rescue again.

  “Do you want to get your own test done, Rebecca? I can look after the targets.” Kjellgren held out his hand for the remote.

  “No thanks,” she said, slightly too quickly. “It’s getting late, I’ll do it early tomorrow morning,” she added, pretending to look at her watch.

  “But thanks anyway, Kjellgren.” She forced herself to smile.

  “Right, then,” she said, turning quickly toward the other five bodyguards. “You’ve all passed, well done!” She demonstratively made a checkmark in the file, making sure it was angled in such a way that no one could see her right hand shaking.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It took him a few seconds to realize where the smell was coming from.

  Terrariums.

  Large terrariums lined up on wooden frames along the walls, with heat lamps above them. Five lamps in total, one above each tank. Only one of them was lit, but he could feel the heat from several meters away.

  In the middle of the room stood a large worktable piled high with clutter.

  He aimed the flashlight around the room, then took a couple of tentative steps forward. The door closed silently behind him, but he hardly noticed.

  He was wondering what sorts of creatures were lurking behind the panes of glass . . .

  He directed the beam of light toward the terrariums, but they all seemed to be empty.

  Good!

  A sudden rattling sound from off to the right made him jump and drop the torch on the floor.

  Shit!

  He bent down quickly to get it, and when he straightened up again he found himself looking straight into the eyes of a rat that was so fucking enormous it made the hair on his arms stand up.

  It was only a meter or so away, shut inside a cramped metal cage hanging over the side of one of the terrariums, and he could see the animal’s whiskers twitch as it caught his scent.

  He hated rats. Vile little bacteria motels with yellow teeth and bald tails . . .

  This one obviously wasn’t your average disgusting sewer rat, but one of those black and white ones you could only get from the pet shop.

  Damn it!

  So what the hell was the rat doing in there?

  And the terrariums?

  He couldn’t see any sign of microphones or reel-to-reel tape recorders. The only thing that came close to a technical gadget was something that looked like a small radio on the corner of the large worktable.

  The display was on, and when curiosity got the better of him and he touched one of the buttons, he heard voices on the radio muttering to each other in a language he didn’t understand. Probably just a perfectly ordinary radio tuned in to some AM frequency . . . He moved the beam of the flashlight around the room a few more times but couldn’t see any trace of the surveillance control room he had been expecting.

  Weird . . .

  A loud plastic click followed by a faint whirring sound made him jump again, but this time he managed to hold on to the flashlight. He caught a glimpse of movement over by the rat cage and aimed the beam of light at it. One side of the cage was missing, and in its place was a
sheet of wood that also formed one side of the terrarium. A small hatch between the cage and terrarium was slowly sliding up, presumably lifted by some sort of electric motor. He leaned down to look under the terrarium and saw a little dark box connected to a timer.

  The hatch was almost completely open now, and the rat, which must’ve been seriously pissed off sitting in that cramped cage, was already exploring the opening to the spacious terrarium.

  It hesitated for a moment, its whiskers twitching, but evidently something in there smelled good, as it quickly scampered inside.

  HP leaned forward to see better. The heat lamp may have been on, but the terrarium still seemed to be empty. All he could see was some sort of climbing frame in one corner, a bowl of water, and a thick layer of sawdust. The rat took a couple of cautious steps through the sawdust, lifted its head, and sniffed at its new surroundings. Behind it the motor began to whirr again and the hatch slowly closed, but neither the rat nor HP noticed it.

  The animal took a step forward, then another. A sudden twitch of its whiskers and it stopped. Its little pink nose was quivering . . .

  The snake appeared out of nowhere. It leaped out of the sawdust like a coiled spring and bit the rat in the middle of its back with such force that both creatures slammed into the glass right in front of HP’s face.

  He tumbled backward onto the floor and the flashlight rolled away as his heart did somersaults in his chest.

  But instead of following his initial instinct to run away in panic, he sat there almost paralyzed in front of the terrarium.

  The snake was lying there quite still with its jaws clamped onto the back of the struggling rat. Its dead, reptilian eyes seemed to be staring right at him through the glass wall.

  HP realized that he was holding his breath . . .

  The rat’s fight was short-lived: the wriggling stopped and was replaced by a feeble twitching that soon died away. Then a couple of jerks in its legs and bald tail. And with that it was completely still.

  The snake lay there for a while before it let go. Then it twisted around, slowly put its jaws over the rat’s head, and, with jerky movements, set about swallowing the rodent whole.

  HP shuddered.

  Seriously fucking disgusting. What kind of sick mind would come up with that business with the timer? Live food . . . What the hell was wrong with a can of Whiskas?