Bubble: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  “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 . . .” Mange 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?”

  Mange checked the time for what must have been 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 millimeter 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!”

  Mange held out his hands.

  “I get it, I can see why you’re skeptical. 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 pass card upstairs,” he hissed. “The lift’s on its way down, so we have to go, now!”

  Mange 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—”

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

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

  He tried to say something to Mange, 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 meters Nora slowed down.

  “I can’t make sense of it,” HP panted to Mange. “The Game owns PayTag. Black works for the Game Master . . .”

  He was gasping for air.

  “No, no, absolutely not,” Mange 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 labored 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 subway 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,” Mange 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?”

  Mange 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 a 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,” Mange 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 Mange 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 of more seconds. The noises from farther 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.

  19

  BEING EARNEST

  SHE SHOULD REALLY be asleep.

  It was the 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 postwar 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 Defense Radio Establishment 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 probably never would 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-program 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 from America dating from the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis on the Discovery Channel. Schoolchildren diving under their desks.

  Duck and cover!

  As if that would help . . .

  But the considerably more confidential L-program 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.

  On April 6, 1960, the US National Security Council decided that American policy would not support Swedish nuclear armament, nor any Swedish program to develop nuclear weapons, because it was thought more beneficial to the defense of the West against the Soviet Union if Sweden were to devote its limited resources to conventional weapons rather than a very costly nuclear weapons program.

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

  In spite of the policies outlined in 1960, Swedish representatives in contact with the US military were granted access to confidential information during the 1960s, partly regarding nuclear weapon tactics and the demands these made on surveillance resources and rapid decision making, and partly regarding other data about nuclear physics.

  Among other things, Swedish representatives were able to inspect the MGR-1 Honest John missile system, which could be armed with the W7 and W31 nuclear warheads. The USA had also developed the W48 shell to be fired from 155 mm howitzers, with an explosive effect of 0.072 kilotons. No plans for such small-scale Swedish nuclear weapons have ever been found, however.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Honest John.

  Earnest John.

  John Earnest . . .

  John Earnest from Bloemfontein, South Africa, with loads of entry stamps from the United States 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 damn 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 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 made him jerk and bang his arm against the hot pipe again.

  “Shit!” he yelled.

  “Are you okay?”

  A faint bluish light appeared ahead of him, then swung around toward him. She was using her cell phone as a flashlight.

  “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 around 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 pack 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 pack 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 she.

  “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 Mange mentioned?”

  “You’ll see . . .”

  He tried to look hard at her, but the cell phone was facing toward 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 around and switched off her cell.

  “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 nonproliferation treaty and gradually began to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, which officially ended in 1972. But the following section on Wikipedia appeared to contradict that:

  However, activities related to nuclear weapons continued at the National Defense Research Establishment even after the dismantling work had been concluded in 1972, albeit on a
considerably smaller scale. (Resources in 1972 were approximately one-third of the 1964–65 level.) Research into ways of protecting against the effects of nuclear weapons, unconnected to any research into active construction or an independent capability, continued.

  All of this fit perfectly with what Uncle Tage had said. A large, top-secret research project requiring clandestine contact with other countries. A project that 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, since 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-program 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 1986.

  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 program 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 caliber.

  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 rid 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 toward 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.