Андерс де ла Мотт – The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble (страница 30)
This time Manga seemed to hear him and, after checking and double-checking in the rear-view mirror, he eased up slightly on the accelerator.
HP sat up in his seat and took a couple of deep, relieved breaths. Manga wasn’t much of a driver at the best of times, and the Jason Bourne manoeuvre he had just pulled could have ended really badly.
The Ford seemed to have been completely
‘Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask …’ he managed to splutter.
‘Shoot,’ Manga muttered, without taking his eyes from the rear-view mirror.
‘This whole carpet-seller routine of yours.’
‘Hmm …’
‘Well, I suppose I’m wondering why, really? I mean … you’ve tried a whole load of different stuff over the years. The vegan thing, local politics, Amnesty … You never stuck with any one thing for too long. Like that screen-saver you’ve got in the shop:
‘…
The trick worked, Manga’s jaw stopped grinding and his rigid grasp of the steering wheel relaxed slightly. A bit of practical philosophy and a few Couplandisms, that was Manga’s bag, he was considerably better at that than street-racing in the suburbs. Best to keep him in his comfort zone …
‘So why did you get hooked on Islam in particular?’ he blurted out, and found himself, to his own surprise, genuinely curious to know the answer. He didn’t really have any idea why Manga had converted. Bloody hell, what sort of a best friend was he, he’d never even asked …?
‘I mean, there’s a whole load of religions out there to choose from …’ he went on rather vaguely.
‘Well, giving to the poor, putting spiritual concerns above worldly ones, helping a brother in need … what’s not to like?’ Manga smiled wryly as the Polo’s speed slowed to a more normal level.
‘Women covered up, suicide bombers, holy war, there are quite a few options, aren’t there …?’
Manga sighed wearily.
‘Most of that has very little to do with religion, if you look below the surface … There are fanatics everywhere, but here in the West we get much more worked up about men in beards burning flags in Damascus than we do about smooth-shaven weirdos with bad haircuts blowing up abortion clinics in Detroit.’
‘So you mean the whole jihad thing is mainly a question of bad PR …?’
‘Something like that,’ Manga grinned, almost back to his normal self again. ‘Just like the Bible, the Koran is ninety per cent about living your life in a decent way, focusing on love and mercy and being a good person. The other ten per cent is stuff that might have been important for the survival of the tribe in the desert a fuck of a long time ago, but these days it’s basically nonsense. Unfortunately not everyone seems to have worked out that we’re living in the twenty-first century, or else they choose not to for a variety of reasons. That’s hardly unique to Islam. We’re good at focusing on the wrong things here in the West as well. Just look at the war on terror …’
He shook his head unhappily.
‘Fear is a strong instrument of power, brother, extremely strong, in fact. If you pluck the right strings the population stays docile, concentrates on idiotic rubbish and doesn’t complain about the things that are really important, like freedom of expression and thought and other fundamental human rights. It works both ways.’
‘So a lot of our lack of trust is a sort of mutual power trip? Each country’s Big Brother stands to gain if we stay scared of each other?’
‘Exactly, brother, you’ve hit the nail on the head!’ Manga hit the wheel with one hand.
HP shrugged. Bloody hell, maybe the Mangster actually had a point?
‘… and the name? I mean, I get the Al-Hassan, seeing as your dad’s name is Hasse, but why Farook?’
‘Well, as I’m sure you know, Magnus means “great”, which doesn’t exactly apply to me …’
HP couldn’t help grinning.
Manga was small and wiry, with thick glasses and his hairline was already halfway to the North Pole. In purely physical terms, he wasn’t what you’d call great.
‘I’ve never really felt much like a Magnus, and Manga sounds so eighties. It just seemed to make sense when I converted. Farook is someone who can tell good and bad apart. Someone who helps others find the right path. Religion helped me to sort out a whole load of stuff, and I hoped I might be able to do the same for other people.’
‘So that’s why you haven’t given up even on such a hopeless case as me? You’re my spiritual guide?’
‘Something like that, brother, something like that,’ Manga smiled, then turned on the car radio.
All readings back to normal, HP thought happily and slumped down slightly in his seat. But he couldn’t help taking the occasional surreptitious glance in the wing-mirror.
Rebecca was sitting outside the door to an anonymous conference room in the parliament building with a cup of coffee from a vending-machine in her hand. It was really far too early for her to be back at work, but she’d insisted and no-one had protested, not even Anderberg. Besides, the personal protection unit was on its knees in advance of the EU Presidency, and every man or woman who was able to work was welcome. All of the reserves had been called up, meaning that they had an extra twenty-five people who had previously served in the unit. But they were still having trouble covering all their duties.
Rebecca’s charge was behind the conference-room door, and, according to the schedule, would be there for at least another two hours. Wikström, with whom she was sharing the assignment, had just headed down to the canteen to have a quick lunch, and in half an hour’s time, when he got back, she would be doing the same.
Scenarios like this were what bodyguard work mainly consisted of. Waiting, more waiting, and then a move to a different location where the waiting would begin again. There was no way to pass the time apart from taking short walks along the corridor or talking to your colleagues. Books and MP3-players, the things other people used to pass the time, were obviously banned in her line of work. Nearly all of it was pure routine mixed with tedium. The difficulty was staying alert and ready for the brief periods that weren’t routine. She had already experienced more than her fair share of those …
She had four years left of her secondment to the Security Police, and she had already seen more action than most bodyguards did in their entire careers.
In spite of this, she still liked the job, the whole deal of being a protector, in charge of a situation. Detailed planning, checking routes and escape plans, thinking through every possible scenario with the others in the unit.
The set-up was basically the same for each job, regardless of who was being protected. You just added more people and equipment if the threat-level was higher. You also had to plan for basic requirements, meals, toilet breaks, that sort of thing. Timetables and schedules were always changing, and lunch and dinner could suddenly fall by the wayside.
Bodyguards were important to democracy, more so in recent years since attacks on politicians had become more common. The subjects she had encountered so far had been pleasant, almost grateful for their protection and had been careful to follow all instructions. But she hadn’t yet had the ‘honour’ of working in the royal protection unit …
His Majesty usually wanted the officers as far away from his royal person as possible. Ideally they should be invisible, or at least out of sight. That business with the explosion in Kungsträdgården seemed to have to changed his tune, though.
That had been completely crazy. At the time, His Royal Highness had been absolutely furious about what had happened, and hadn’t minced his words to his bodyguards. Evidently they hadn’t been close enough to protect him, which coming from him was rather ironic.
But after the first few days of hysteria the media had calmed down The explosion had frightened the horses but no one had been killed, and it had been a while since she last read an article confidently identifying the purpose of the attack.
Because the attack had been aimed at the head of state, the Security Police were in charge of the investigation, but to judge by Vahtola and Runeberg’s comments they didn’t exactly have any red-hot leads. ‘Single perpetrator on a moped, heading towards Birger Jarlsgatan.’ This had been the first description circulated, and she suspected that its single sentence pretty much summed up the findings of the investigation so far.