Bubble: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  Mange took a deep breath.

  “I’ve been involved longer than you. Considerably longer, in fact . . .”

  “So you were the one who dragged me into it . . . ?”

  Mange shook his head.

  “No, to be honest, it wasn’t me. I didn’t know you were involved until you showed up in the shop that time and pulled your phone out. Not even then, in fact, because I thought you’d just found it by accident, that some other Player had lost it. Then when I did realize that you were involved . . .”

  He held his hands out.

  “B-but I don’t under—” HP cleared his throat and tried again.

  From the corner of his eye he could see Nora watching him.

  “H-how did you get involved? What do you do? Are you a Player, or an Ant? You’ve got to tell . . .”

  “Later, HP, right now we don’t have much time. The whole city’s looking for you, the cops, the Ants, everyone . . .”

  Mange turned toward Jeff.

  “Can you keep an eye out in the tunnel?”

  “Sure.”

  “All I can tell you right now is that I’ve tried to help you . . .” Mange went on once the door had closed behind Jeff.

  “Help?!” HP could feel the blood rushing to his head. “For fuck’s sake, you could have told me you were involved, and explained how lethal it all was. Told me to stop! Shit . . . you’re supposed to be my best friend!”

  “Yeah, right, like that would have worked . . .”

  Mange shook his head.

  “Besides, you know what happens if you break rule number one . . . You weren’t the only one who received a warning shot.”

  Nora reappeared with more water, a glass each this time.

  “The arson attack on the shop, remember?” Mange added when HP didn’t seem to get it. “That was aimed at me, not you. A little reminder from the Game Master about what would happen if I didn’t stick to the rules. It probably wasn’t even meant to start a real fire. They just wanted me to realize what was at stake.”

  Nora accidentally tipped one of the glasses and spilled some water on HP’s trousers, but he hardly noticed.

  His brain was still searching for solid ground.

  “S-so . . . how much of all this has been real?” he stammered.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean . . . well, what the hell do you think I mean?! Everything I’ve been through, the fire in my flat, the bomb on the E4, the server farm I blew up out in Kista, running away, all that crap in Dubai, and everything that happened with ArgosEye. How much of that was real? Properly real, I mean?”

  “All of it, of course . . .”

  Mange took a sip of water.

  “But maybe not real in the way you thought . . .” he added, shifting slightly in his chair. “You could say that you never really left the Game . . . that you’ve actually been working for them the whole time. Or, well . . . for us . . .”

  HP put his glass down and covered his face with his hands.

  Mange was still talking, but his voice suddenly sounded tinny and distant, as if he were in a different room.

  The situation was unreal, dreamlike to the point where he ought to be pinching holes in his arms.

  Working for them . . .

  His brain was stuttering, trying desperately to piece the puzzle together, but without any hope of succeeding. He’d blown up their server farm, escaped from their conspiracy to frame him for murder, and sunk their business partners at ArgosEye with all hands . . .

  Unless he was wrong?

  Had he actually been . . .

  Working for them?

  He stared at Mange. Boring, dependable, balding Mangelito. The coward. His old friend, his BFF.

  The world lurched.

  For a brief moment he was back in the eighties, sitting on the sofa in front of the television, with yellow cheese-puff fingers and eyes wide open. On the screen the shower door had just opened and Bobby Ewing had just looked out.

  Working for . . .

  Us . . .

  “What the fuck am I doing here, Mange?” he whispered.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Give us a couple of more minutes, please, Jonsson!”

  The chauffeur got in and closed the car door without a word.

  “Now do you understand why I’m so keen to get hold of that gun?” Tage Sammer said in a low voice.

  She nodded.

  “I think I do, anyway.”

  “Good. I’d appreciate it if you could empty your father’s safe-deposit box as soon as possible and hand the entire contents over to me. Can I ask that of you, Rebecca? You have my word that the gun will disappear, that neither it nor the passports will ever crop up anywhere that they could be misused.”

  She thought for a few seconds.

  “The gun isn’t in the safe-deposit box anymore . . .”

  “What?”

  “I moved it to another one the day I found it, I opened a box in my own name.”

  “Ah, I see. Good thinking, Rebecca!”

  “I have the passports at home. I’ll go to the bank first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”

  “Excellent, Rebecca, you never let me down! If only more of my colleagues were like you!”

  He patted her knee and she found herself enjoying the slight touch.

  “No problem, Uncle Tage,” she mumbled.

  “Back to Fredhäll, please, Jonsson,” he said, tapping on the chauffeur’s shoulder. “Miss Normén needs to get to bed, she’s had a rather trying day . . .”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Okay, HP, let me explain,” Mange began. “You’re here for the reasons Nora has already given you. We’re going to close down the Fortress, and stop PayTag and the Game Master from gaining an unlimited monopoly on people’s pasts.”

  “Er, hang on a minute . . .”

  Mange held up his hand and stopped him.

  “I know you’ve got loads of questions, HP . . .” He looked at his watch. “But time’s marching on. I had to come up with somewhere to meet at short notice, a place they wouldn’t think of.”

  He gestured toward the roof with his hand.

  “This is one of the Game’s own meeting points, which is why it’s free from prying eyes and ears. But we can’t stay here long. We hadn’t exactly counted on you passing out . . .”

  He glanced at his watch again.

  “I signed up a long time ago. I had friends who were already involved in the Game, and I pretty much got an invitation to help out. Just like with you, it started off small, a cool thing to do. As time passed I got more involved, and I liked the feeling of being part of something bigger, something that most people knew nothing about.”

  HP nodded reluctantly.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Through the Game it was actually possible to influence events, make a difference. Shine a light on things other people would rather conceal. Secrets that those in power want to hide. Investigations that have been buried, reports that have been swept under the carpet or silenced. Lots of little tasks all slotted together, then we could tip off the media or post what we’d found out on various whistleblower websites. We did a lot of that at the start . . .”

  “But?”

  Mange glanced at Nora.

  “My friends and I only saw a fraction of what was going on. That’s always been the case.

  “The whole Game is divided into small cells, so that the Game Master is basically the only person who can see the whole picture. As time went on, it became clearer that he was changing direction. The Game was getting more and more closely managed, as the Players’ choices became fewer and the tasks increasingly murky. Gradually the rest of us lost whatever influence we had, and everything started to pass through the Game Master. It was becoming more and more obvious that he was exploiting the Game to gain power for himself. Then when PayTag—”

  “Where do I fit into the picture?!” HP interrupted.

  Mange looked clear
ly disconcerted by the unexpected question, and it took him a moment to collect his thoughts.

  “Well, to get straight to the point, you could probably say that most of what you’ve accomplished has been within the boundaries of the Game. Serving the Game Master’s purposes, so to speak . . .”

  Mange smiled uncertainly at HP as if he was waiting for a reaction.

  “B-but I blew up the server farm. I gave them one fuck of a serious kick in the balls, shut them down for months, emptied their bank account, sank ArgosEye . . . didn’t I?” he added when Mange didn’t reply.

  He could hear how hollow his voice sounded.

  “Like I said, I’ve been trying to help you, I was actually trying to get you out,” Mange mumbled.

  “But after the fires . . .” He exchanged a quick look with Nora. “After the fires I agreed to help. The Game Master promised to let you go when it was all finished.”

  He looked down at the floor.

  “They emptied the building in Kista the day after you and Rehyman were there. Moved to another, more secure site. You blew up an empty building, that’s all. I wanted to explain everything to you a thousand times, but as long as they were watching you it was impossible . . .”

  HP took a deep, stuttering breath.

  “So the whole thing was planned, they just let me get away with the money? But why?”

  “The Game needed an attack, an explosion in conjunction with the EU summit, something that could never be traced. The money was your reward for getting through your own End Game, and just as they expected, you took the money and fled the field. No witnesses, no trail . . .”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “So far everything had gone exactly as the Game Master had promised. Both you and Becca were out.”

  “What about later—Dubai, ArgosEye?”

  Mange grimaced.

  “Obviously I should have realized that the Game Master is the one who sets the rules. That he’s the one who decides when the Game begins and ends. Evidently you were too valuable an asset for them to just let you go. I was away and heard by chance that you were involved again, but

  by then there wasn’t much I could do. I asked a friend to keep an eye on you and send me reports about what was happening . . .”

  “Who?”

  Mange shrugged.

  “Does it matter? Anyway, you soon got in touch yourself, to tell me about ArgosEye and asking for my help with the trojan that was going to bring them down. That put me in one hell of a difficult position. Should I help you directly, or check with the Game Master first?”

  Mange twisted his hands in his lap.

  “You called the Game Master . . .”

  HP thought for a moment:

  “So that was why I couldn’t find any information about the Game. You designed the spy program so that it only leaked information that wasn’t about them.”

  Mange shook his head.

  “I did actually suggest that to the Game Master, but he said it wasn’t necessary. That I should help you as much as I could. It took a while for me to realize . . .”

  HP opened his mouth to speak, but it took a while for him to find the right words.

  “Okay, hang on . . . s-so, you mean ArgosEye . . .”

  “. . . was never actually hiding any of the Game’s secrets . . .” Mange concluded.

  “B-but . . . they were the Game’s partners? PayTag was going to buy them out, and . . .”

  Mange 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.” Mange 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 Anna Argos’s sister lied to me? Pretending that the flotation was actually a buyout? Why the hell would she have done that?”

  “For two fairly simple reasons, in fact . . . First and foremost, because you were in position and eager to help. You hate the Game, the Game Master, and PayTag, and leaped at the chance to sabotage their plans . . .”

  HP nodded wearily.

  “And the other reason . . . ?”

  “Well, who was likely to get a kick out of the idea of Philip Argos emptying the company’s coffers into your pockets to buy back Anna’s shares? That he actually managed to sink his own ship, seeing as the trojan was about to leak the details of their dodgy business practices, which would mean that there’d be absolutely zero interest in the shares? Empty coffers, a ruined reputation, and no financial backing . . .”

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

  “Think, HP . . .” Mange said, more slowly. “Who hated Philip Argos enough to cook up one hell of an advanced way to get revenge?”

  He pulled out his cell phone. A shiny metal one with a glass screen that made HP flinch 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 color of her hair,” Mange 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,” Mange 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’s brain was still refusing to cooperate.

  “She calls herself Anthea Ravel these days,” Mange continued. “She got a management role in the PayTag Group and is currently working on getting their new business up and running. A fitting surname in a lot of respects, actually. Ravel is a Janus word, after all . . .”

  “Don’t talk in riddles,” 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 . . .”

  Mange 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 sidewalk 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. Mange 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 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. Well, like I said, 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 am aware of that. I wouldn’t have wished this sort of trial on anyone, least of all you, and I truly 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!” Mange 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 Mange 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!”

  Mange shook his head with exaggerated vigor.

  “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 . . .”