Литагент HarperCollins - The Complete Game Trilogy - Game, Buzz, Bubble

The screen flashed again and his finger had almost gone automatically to the No icon before he noticed that this message was different.

Wanna play a game, Henrik Pettersson?

Yes

No

HP stiffened in his seat.

What the fuck …?

He glanced around quickly a few times. Was someone messing with him?

There were maybe ten, twelve other passengers spread out around the carriage, and apart from a mother with two hyperactive kids almost all of them seemed to be in the same sluggish morning coma as him. Hanging heads, glassy eyes, sweaty, overheating. Not one of them so much as glanced in his direction.

He checked the screen again. The same text. How the hell could the phone know his name?

He looked around, but was left none the wiser. Then he clicked the button for No.

A new message flashed up immediately, this time in Swedish.

Are you really sure you don’t want to play a Game, HP?

He almost flew out of his seat. What in the name of holy fuck was going on here?

He shut his eyes tight, took a couple of deep breaths, and regained control of his galloping hangover anxiety.

Just keep calm, he thought. You’re a smart lad. And this isn’t the fucking Twilight Zone.

Either this is Candid Camera or else one of your mates is mucking about with you. Probably the latter …

Manga was top of the list of suspects. An old friend from school, good with technical stuff, owned a computer shop, got furious about anyone taking the piss about his new-found Arab god, and he had a really sick sense of humour.

Yep, no doubt about it. This was one of Manga’s sick jokes!

Relief spread through his body.

So, Mangalito.

It had been ages. He had actually thought that getting married and his new religion had turned Manga soft, but the little bastard must have been biding his time for this masterstroke.

First he had to work out how it all fitted together, and then find a way to turn the joke back on Manga.

It was bloody well thought-out so far, he had to give the little floor-kisser credit for that.

HP looked around once again.

Nine people in total in the carriage, twelve if he counted the young kids.

Three teenage girls, an alcoholic, two stereotypical Swedish blokes about the same age as him, somewhere round thirty. An old boy with a stick, a pretty decent girl of twenty-five or so with a ponytail and wearing running gear (it must have been the hangover that stopped him noticing her earlier), and finally the woman with the kids.

Whichever one of them Manga the Muslim had managed to recruit, they had to have some sort of electronic gizmo to be able to send the messages. Sadly, that didn’t exactly make the list much shorter. Five of them were clicking on some sort of electronic gadget, and, if you counted the earplugs the alcoholic was wearing, at a push you could stretch the list of suspects to six.

His weary brain came to the conclusion that it was more the rule than the exception to mess about with a mobile on the train, not just to send texts but to kill a few minutes with one of those stupid mobile phone games.

So, Einstein – not really much wiser.

His head was throbbing from the unexpected exertion, and his mouth was still bone-dry. Strangely enough, though, he did feel slightly more alert.

So what happened now?

How was he going to get his own back?

He decided to go along with the prank for a while, so first he pressed the No icon, then, when the question was repeated, the icon for Yes.

Oh yes, he’d play along with it for a while and pretend to be taken in, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized that this was actually pretty cool. A good way of passing time on a boring train journey.

‘Fucking Manga,’ he grinned, before a new message appeared on the screen.

Welcome to the Game HP!

Thanks! he thought, leaning back.

This was going to be interesting, after all.

Even before the wheels of the heavy vehicle had stopped Rebecca Normén was out on the pavement. The heat that hit her was so intense that she wanted to get back into the cool of the car at once.

Three weeks of high summer in Sweden had made the streets so hot that the tarmac had started to stick to your shoes, and the bulletproof vest she was wearing under her shirt and jacket was hardly making things any better.

After quickly surveying the scene and deciding there was no danger, she opened the door and let out her charge, who had been waiting obediently in the back seat.

The guard on the door of the main government offices at Rosenbad was for once awake enough to open the door immediately, and a few moments later Sweden’s Minister for Integration was safely inside the thick walls of the government building.

Rebecca had time for a quick coffee in the canteen and then a trip to the toilet before returning to her driver to check they were ready for the next move.

She looked at the time. Fourteen more minutes to wait, then a short walk along the quayside to the Foreign Ministry for a meeting with the minister who, unlike her own charge, had a full team of bodyguards. At least two, usually more. A whole team, the way it should be.

‘Personal protection coordinator’ was her job-title, presumably because ‘one-man bodyguard unit’ didn’t sound particularly reassuring. The Minister for Integration was deemed a suitably demanding job for someone with less than a year’s experience as a bodyguard, at least in the opinion of her boss. Medium to low threat-level, according to the latest analysis. Besides, and this may have been more significant, none of her older colleagues wanted the job of personal protection coordinator …

As she emerged from the main entrance she caught her driver quickly tossing his cigarette in the gutter next to the car.

Unprofessional, she thought with irritation, but what else did she expect?

Unlike her, he wasn’t a proper bodyguard but a less skilled version intended to save the state money. A chauffeur with a bit of extra training and a badly fitting bulletproof vest, employed by the transport unit of the Cabinet Office rather than the Security Police. Twenty years older than her and with obvious problems taking orders from someone younger, let alone a woman.

‘Ten minutes,’ she said curtly. ‘Stay here with the car until we get there.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better if I drove to the Foreign Ministry now? It’s usually a hell of a job finding anywhere to park there.’

His objection was predictable. The driver, Bengt, his name was, had decided on principle to have some sort of opinion about everything she said. There was a hint of ‘listen, young lady …’ in every sentence he uttered.

As if age and gender automatically made him an expert at protecting people.

Clearly his one week of training hadn’t taught him that backwards was safe, but that forwards was unknown territory and therefore higher risk. Idiot!

‘You’ll wait here until I tell you to drive over!’ she snapped, without bothering to explain her decision. ‘Any questions?’

‘No, boss,’ he replied, without making much effort to hide his irritation.

Why on earth was it so hard to get certain types of men to accept a woman as their boss? Either they tried to get the better of you and take control, like Bengt here, or worse, made insinuations and comments about your sex-life, or lack of one.

Offering you their services, whether or not they happened to be married … And if you were stupid enough to complain to your own boss you were soon out in the cold. She’d seen plenty of examples of that.

She never dated colleagues, on principle. Mixing your work and private life soon got way too complicated. Put simply: don’t shit on your own doorstep.