The Dying Game Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE DYING GAME

  Asa Avdic is a journalist who for years was a presenter for Swedish Public Service Radio and Television and is currently a host of Sweden’s biggest morning current events program. She lives with her family in Stockholm, Sweden. The Dying Game is her first novel.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  Copyright © 2016 by Åsa Avdic

  Translation copyright © 2017 by Rachel Willson-Broyles

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Originally published in Swedish as Isola by Natur & Kultur, Stockholm.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Avdic, Asa, author. | Willson-Broyles, Rachel, translator.

  Title: The dying game : a novel / Asa Avdic ; translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles.

  Other titles: Isola. English

  Description: New York : Penguin Books, 2017. | “Originally published in Swedish as Isola by Natur & Kultur, Stockholm”—Verso title page.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017000614 (print) | LCCN 2017018737 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524705640 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143131793 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women professional employees—Fiction. | Intelligence service—Fiction. | Psychological games—Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.| Dystopias. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PT9877.1.V35 (ebook) | LCC PT9877.1.V35 I8613 2017 (print) | DDC 839.73/8—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000614

  Cover design: Olga Grlic

  Cover photograph: plainpicture / alt6 / Roger Proulx

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  EPIGRAPH

  STOCKHOLM | THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN | MARCH 2037 ANNA

  THE BEGINNING

  STOCKHOLM | THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN | MARCH 2037 HENRY

  ANNA

  HENRY

  ANNA

  STOCKHOLM | THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN | MAY 2037

  ISOLA | THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN | MARCH 2037 ANNA

  HENRY

  ANNA

  HENRY

  ANNA

  HENRY

  ANNA

  STOCKHOLM | THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN | MAY 2037 THE COLONEL

  KATJA

  THE SECRETARY

  KATJA

  JON VON POST

  THE SECRETARY

  THE END (OR THE BEGINNING) ANNA

  STOCKHOLM | THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN | MARCH 2037 HENRY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn’t time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.

  “Are you happy here?” I said at last.

  He considered this for a moment. “Not particularly,” he said. “But you’re not very happy where you are, either.”

  The Secret History, Donna Tartt

  “It’s a two-man con,” said Shadow.

  “It’s not a war at all, is it?”

  American Gods, Neil Gaiman

  PSUF Protectorate of Sweden under the Union of Friendship

  See also: Sweden, Kingdom of Sweden

  The Protectorate of Sweden under the Union of Friendship, in vernacular speech The Protectorate of Sweden,[6] is a country in the UF. Its independence is disputed. The country is recognized by 107 of the 193 UN states, among them the USA, but it is contested by the other protectorates in the Union of Friendship.[3][7][8][unreliable source?]

  A first step toward the Union of Friendship was taken following the Wall Coup in 1989 and the unrest that ensued. Sweden and Finland have been under a state of martial law and the alliance of defense since 1992. Norway followed later on. On February 17, 1995, the parliament of the Protectorate of Sweden declared itself a full member of the Union of Friendship. The Western bloc does not accept this declaration and many UN countries still consider the Protectorate of Sweden an independent country. The Protectorate of Sweden has de facto and de jure control over its entire territory, but it is simultaneously subject to the common laws of the Union of Friendship, which preempt local statutes.[9] The International Court of Justice in The Hague does not regard the country’s incorporation into the Union of Friendship to be a violation of international law.[10][11][12][13]

  The Protectorate of Sweden is no longer a member of the UN and left the former European Communities before its dissolution.[14]

  The Protectorate of Sweden is bordered to the east by the Protectorate of Finland under the Union of Friendship, to the west by the Protectorate of Norway, and to the southwest by Denmark, where the border has been closed since 1992. The capital city of the Protectorate of Sweden is Stockholm.

  International Encyclopedia, 2016

  STOCKHOLM

  THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN

  MARCH 2037

  ANNA

  ONE AFTERNOON, THE unit secretary came into my office.

  “He wants to see you on the fourteenth floor of the Secretariat Building.”

  “Who does?”

  “He wants to see you!”

  The unit secretary looked extremely excited. Her thick glasses bobbed on the tip of her nose and she frantically shoved them back up, at which point they immediately slid down again. I could understand why she was so worked up. It was rare for those in the Secretariat Building to take an interest in our activities, much less in one of us personally. When I returned home from Kyzyl Kum for good, the Chairman had sent a bouquet of flowers to the office, with my name spelled wrong on the card, so I assumed they didn’t care. Apparently I was mistaken. This made me feel both flattered and anxious. “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  She looked at my wrinkled shirt for one second too long and appeared to be weighing something. “You have time to go home and change,” she said, then turned on her heel and walked off so quickly that I didn’t even have time to pretend I wasn’t offended.

  THREE HOURS LATER, I was plodding through biting wind and freezing rain across the courtyard to the Secretariat Building. Great sheets of half-frozen sleet were blowing straight sideways and whipping at my face, only to suddenly change directions and attack from the other side. It was one of those March days where everything is gray and wet and cold and the light is never more than a hope. There had been many such days that winter. It was mentioned each day on the news that we had never had so few hours of sunlight as during the past year. Maybe it was emissions, maybe it was climate change, maybe it was both. Or something even worse, but of course they didn’t say that on the news. That was the sort of thing people talked about only when they were sure that no one else was listening.

  The building towered up ahead of me as I ascended the stairs, as if I were walking into the maw of a giant whale, and the wind nearly hurled me through the doors. Inside the foyer, I signed in a
t the reception desk, received a visitor badge, was passed through various security doors, handed over my coat and purse to the guard, and was shown to an elevator. The walls and ceiling of the elevator were covered in smoke-colored mirrors, which made me feel painfully self-conscious in my brand-new jacket and bland, old-lady booties from the off-the-rack clothing chain closest to my office. The jacket fit well, but it was made of an itchy, tight material that made me start sweating even before I got off the elevator. My feet were damp and cold and my tights were sagging. I had put on makeup in the hopes of appearing less haggard than I felt, but I suspected that it had achieved the opposite effect. The rain had made my eye makeup run and washed nearly all the cheap powder from my cheeks; what was left was flaking over the eczema on the bridge of my nose and at my hairline. I felt out of place, like I was wearing a costume.

  THE FIRST THING that struck me when I walked out of the elevator on the fourteenth floor was that the sound was different, more muffled. The floors were covered in thick, wall-to-wall carpeting, which made it nearly impossible to walk in heels without stumbling. This was a floor for men. Dark wood, chrome-plated steel, large green plants: scaled back, expensive. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were imbued with power. An air-conditioning unit hummed nearby; it sounded like a distant helicopter. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself; there was nowhere to sit, no art to pretend to study. A door opened and an elegant older woman came out. She said my name and asked me to follow her. I trailed her through the corridor and noticed that despite her high heels, she moved across the soft floor with confident, quick steps. She opened a door at the end of the corridor and let me into a conference room with a dizzying view.

  “Coffee? Tea? Water?”

  “Coffee, please, black.”

  She nodded and made a little gesture with her hand, as if to give me permission to take a seat, and then she left me on my own. There was a sucking sound as she closed the door behind her, as though a vacuum had just formed in the room. I found myself standing in the center of the room. Each detail, from the door handle to the baseboards, looked well planned. It felt like I was doing violence to the coordinated interior just by virtue of being in the room. Just as I was about to pull out a chair to sit down, the door opened again and the elegant secretary showed the Chairman in.

  He was a tall man with thick hair and old acne scars on his face, and even though he wore an expensive suit, which must have been either imported or tailor-made, it looked oddly wrong on him, as if someone had dressed up a statue. I had met him once before when he came by for a tour of our unit. I remember the way we all stood lined up next to our desks, like orphans waiting to be adopted, as he walked around with the managers and inspected the work area and the staff. The mood had been tense and forced during his visit that time, and it felt more or less the same now. He took a few steps toward me and extended his large hand.

  “Anna Francis, so wonderful to finally make your acquaintance!”

  He looked at me, and as he did, I understood why it was that, despite all of his power, people often spoke of him so warmly. His expression was absolutely open and welcoming; it made you feel noticed, like you were the most important person in the whole world. As if he truly thought it was absolutely fantastic to meet me. I very nearly believed him.

  “The pleasure is all mine,” I managed to say.

  “Please, sit!”

  The Chairman waved toward the chairs at the round table, and as I took a seat he walked around the table and sat down across from me.

  “First off, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for your fantastic efforts in Kyzyl Kum. Splendid, simply splendid,” he said with such emphasis that I wondered if our conversation was being recorded. He went on: “I hope you know how pleased we are with your work. The Minister sends greetings as well. Delighted ones, of course. We haven’t had such a good reputation for many years. A humanitarian superpower and all of that. Just what the doctor ordered; we all think so. And of course we’re glad to have been able to support you in your very, very important work, Anna.”

  “I’m very grateful for the opportunity,” I heard myself saying, while at the same time I realized that this wasn’t getting off to the best start for me. We were only a few minutes into our meeting and the Chairman had already gotten me to thank him for the opportunity to thoroughly destroy myself and my life for several years. He was clearly very clever. I started to wonder why I was really there. He leaned across the table.

  “Anna, what I want to talk to you about is strictly confidential. What I am about to say must under no circumstances go beyond you and me.”

  He looked me straight in the eye as if to verify that I truly understood what he was saying. I did. I had spent enough time with the junta and the military in Kyzyl Kum to know that this meant, If anything gets out, we’ll know you are the leak, so I nodded. Yes, I understood. He went on. “Anna, have you heard of the RAN project?”

  I nodded again, feeling even more ill at ease. The RAN project was one of those projects everyone had heard about, but no one really knew what it was. Judging by the massive web of secrecy surrounding it, it also wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to know about. One time in Kyzyl Kum, one of the soldiers had mentioned a case that had been taken on by the RAN group, but when I started asking follow-up questions he just looked troubled, maybe even scared, and changed the subject, so I let it go. There are some kinds of knowledge you don’t necessarily want to be privy to.

  “I know it exists, but I don’t know what it is.”

  The Chairman shook his head disapprovingly. “Well, naturally, we would have preferred that neither you nor anyone else knew even that much.”

  He leaned a little farther across the table.

  “Before I go on, Anna, I need to know: can I depend on your discretion? If not, this meeting is over.”

  I swallowed and considered my options. There weren’t any.

  “Of course,” I said. “What is it about?”

  The Chairman looked pleased and placed a folder on the table. Where did that come from? I thought in confusion. I hadn’t noticed a briefcase, and the table had been empty when we entered the room.

  “Anna, you’re here today because I want to ask for your help. As you realize, it has to do with the RAN project. I won’t burden you with too many details; only a limited number of us have insight into the group’s work, and as it stands now . . .” The Chairman leaned back and sighed before going on: “As it stands now, the operative arm of the project has been beset by a defection. The simple fact is, we are one man—or woman—short.”

  The sentence hung in the air and my mouth went totally dry.

  “I am very grateful for your faith in me, but I’m really not sure whether I’m . . .”

  I cut myself off when I noticed the Chairman’s astonished face. He stared at me for a few seconds with his eyebrows raised, and then he burst into loud, hearty laughter.

  “No, I’m not suggesting that you should become part of the RAN group! No, dear Anna, I’d have to say we have other candidates with . . . well, different qualifications. But I could use your help during the recruiting phase.”

  I felt incredibly embarrassed, the way you do when you respond to a wave and then realize it was meant for someone standing behind you. I swallowed my shame as hard and fast as I could and tried to move on.

  “How can I be of service?”

  The Chairman clasped his hands in front of him.

  “As I’m sure you understand, we are looking at several candidates right now, each one extremely qualified in their own way. And what we want to do now is test them in a high-pressure situation. A little field exercise, you could say. That’s where you come in, Anna. You have a great deal of experience in confronting and evaluating people under extreme conditions. You are used to assessing strengths and weaknesses. You know how far people can go, and you also know when they’
re at the end of their rope. This knowledge of yours is quite unique, Anna. Not many people have it.”

  The flattery warmed me, even though I knew it was part of the strategy. I was supposed to feel indispensable and needed, and it was almost a little embarrassing that it worked even though I saw through it. I said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

  “So what we were thinking is that we will carry out a little stress test. We’ll toss our top candidates into an authentic situation in which you can evaluate them. See who shows leadership qualities, who thinks strategically, who is diplomatic, and who doesn’t live up to expectations.”

  I still didn’t understand what he was getting at.

  “What is it you want me to do, more specifically?”

  The Chairman gave a brilliant smile.

  “Oh, it’s really quite simple. I want you to play dead.”

  SO THAT WAS the Chairman’s masterful plan, which he proceeded to lay out for me. A faked murder as a stress test. And this was how it would happen: the candidates for the position in the RAN project would be isolated on an island under the guise of participating in the first phase of recruiting, group exercises, and preparation in advance of the final tests. I would be presented as one of the candidates. The team would also include a doctor with experience in crisis management. Sometime during the first twenty-four hours, the doctor and I would stage my death (“At first we were thinking suicide, but I think we’ve settled on murder now,” the Chairman said in a tone that suggested that he considered himself flexible and accommodating), and once I had been declared dead by the doctor I would turn to observing the other participants from what the Chairman called “a hidden position.” My task would be to evaluate how the candidates handled my dramatic demise. Who took initiative, who thought about security, who was the first to come up with a theory about what had happened, and so on. After forty-eight hours, the exercise would be terminated, everyone would be brought home, and I would hand in a report about each of the candidates to the RAN project leadership. All contact would be carried out under the greatest discretion via the secretary of the RAN project. “What we’re really interested in is your intuitive judgment,” said the Chairman. “We can perform deeper analyses of the candidates later; for now, it’s your gut feeling we want to hear about above all.” I felt terribly uneasy when the Chairman was finally finished with his explanation.