The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble. Литагент HarperCollins USD

so strange that the poor geek seemed to be teetering on the edge.

      ‘This farm,’ he said cautiously. ‘Where exactly is it?’

      Erman snorted.

      ‘Where the fuck do you think? Where do you put a server-farm of that size? Where are the best connections, the most stable transfers, and the best environment for computer traffic? Think! Where are all the big players up here? Northern Europe’s very own Silicon Valley!’

      It took a few seconds before HP made the connection.

      ‘Kista,’ he whispered, almost devoutly.

      ‘Bingo!’ Erman replied with a smile. ‘You’re not completely thick after all!’

      ‘Nilla, there’s something I’d like to sort out with you, something important and I’d really appreciate it if you had a couple of minutes to talk.’

      Good speech, entirely in line with her pre-prepared script.

      Still silence, but at least Nilla hadn’t hung up. She could hear the other woman breathing down the line. Heavy breaths, as if she’d been running to answer the phone in time. Rebecca interpreted the silence as a sort of encouragement.

      ‘I’d like to explain to you what happened that evening, and why. How everything ended up the way it did. But I’d rather not do it over the phone. Is there any chance we could meet for a chat somewhere?’

      She was trying her level best to sound calm and collected. As if what she was asking was no big deal, just a conversation between two adults to sort a few things out.

      ‘I thought I’d made myself clear in my email, Rebecca.’

      Nilla’s voice was ice-cold.

      ‘Neither I nor anyone else in my family has anything to say to you. Please don’t call me again!’

      ‘B-but …’ she began, before she realized that the conversation was over.

      ‘So if you were me, a relatively low-tech bloke who wanted to cause a bit of trouble for the Game and the Game Master. Give them a bit of payback for all the shit they’ve thrown at the two of us. What would you do?’

      Erman nodded thoughtfully.

      ‘Interesting question, hmm …’

      He thought in silence for a few seconds.

      ‘Obviously, the best thing would be to blow the whole thing sky-high, but maybe that’s a bit over the top …’

      ‘Really, you think so?’ slipped out of HP, but Erman didn’t seem to notice.

      ‘If I were you, I’d probably focus on the money,’ he went on.

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘Well, you already know how the rewards work, a foreign bank card linked to an anonymous account. Pretty much like the charge card for a mobile. You just take out the money, and it’s impossible to trace who’s got which card.’

      HP nodded impatiently. Get to the point, mofo!

      ‘All their payments work the same way, in principle. Wages for the functionaries, the Ants and the subcontractors, it’s all done by cards, and those in turn are fed from an anonymous account in a bank somewhere in the Caribbean. The mother account is always loaded with cash to keep the whole thing rolling. If I seriously wanted to fuck with the Game Master, I’d try to get hold of the account number and make a few withdrawals. That would paralyse the whole Game for weeks, maybe months, and you’d end up with enough money to hide yourself away pretty damn well in some distant but agreeable place.’

      ‘Would that really work?’

      ‘Yeah, probably.’ Erman shrugged. ‘The point is that because the Game is damn careful to keep everything anonymous, there are no individuals linked to the account. All you need is the numerical combination that’s currently being used. I’d guess that they change the number all the time, so you’d have to be pretty smart, and pretty quick. I never got to see any of the numbers myself, I just organized the set-up itself. The guys they flew in used to type them in whenever it was necessary. But it’s all inside the farm. I’m sure of that.’

      ‘Is it possible to hack into it?’

      ‘No, like I said, I tried that, and if I can’t get into it when I was the person who set the whole thing up, then I guarantee you that no-one else would be able to either. We’re talking IT security that’s better than they have at the Pentagon …’

      Sure, HP thought sceptically, but either way, hacking didn’t look like an option. ‘So how would you get hold of the account number?’

      He had already guessed the answer.

      ‘You’d have to get inside the farm. There’s a control room, and once you got inside there it would be possible to extract whatever you needed, as long as you knew where to look. If they so much as guess that the account has been blown, they’ll change the code instantly.’

      HP nodded as he stubbed out his cigarette on his shoe.

      This was all sounding a bit Mission Impossible.

      But what the hell, he hadn’t come all the way out here just to go home empty-handed. Too much information was better than too little.

      ‘Can you tell me what I’d have to do?’ he said, tossing the butt towards the nearest tree.

      Erman chuckled.

      ‘Sure, 007, no problem!’

      He turned on his heel and went back inside the house.

      HP took the chance to light another cig. This whole thing was starting to sound like a fucking blockbuster film. He wasted a couple of minutes trying to work out which one came closest. Conspiracy Theory maybe, or Enemy of the State? It was like a mixture of all of them, some kind of tribute thing. He took a couple of deep drags. High above he could hear a familiar droning.

      Farthundra Airline’s afternoon flight, he grinned to himself.

      Erman came back out onto the porch with a folded piece of paper in his hand.

      ‘This is all you need: the address of the farm and a few old usernames that might still work. I’ve written down the bank’s website as well, in case you make it that far. Now you just have to figure out a way of getting into the building, because I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.’

      HP took hold of the piece of paper but Erman didn’t let go.

      ‘Promise me one thing, HP.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You’ve seen how I live, what the Game did to me.’ His stare was back, the one that got to HP. ‘Promise me that you’ll use this information to give them one hell of a fucking kick in the balls, just promise me that!’ Erman’s face was starting to change colour again.

      ‘Sure, mate, no problem, take it easy!’ HP urged uncomfortably, snatching the note.

      He’d got what he wanted, and it was pretty much time to get away from there.

      The address was the only thing he really wanted, the rest was more or less meaningless. No matter what he’d promised this hillbilly, he was hardly going to break into a fucking server-farm, all he needed was a way to get to the Game Master and now he’d got it. A visiting address, no less. All he had to do was head out there and knock on the door, if he still felt like doing that after everything he’d heard.

      The buzzing sound above them returned and Erman twitched. He stared anxiously around the treetops trying to catch a glimpse of the plane.

      ‘Take it easy, Erman, it’s just Farthundra’s very own airline doing its daily flight,’ HP grinned nervously. ‘Nothing worth crapping your pants over.’

      ‘What-did-you-say?!’ Erman spun towards him and the crazy look had made a full-blown