The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

  "Well, you can back me up when Armansky's wrath hits me like a bolt of lightning."

  Berger gave her a concerned look.

  "Will you get into trouble for this?"

  "I don't know. I really don't know."

  "Can we pay you for--"

  "No. But Armansky may bill you for tonight. I hope he does, because that would mean he approves of what I did and probably won't decide to fire me."

  "I'll make sure he sends us a bill."

  Berger stood up and gave Linder a long hug.

  "Thanks, Susanne. If you ever need a friend, you've got one in me. If there's anything I can do for you . . ."

  "Thanks. Don't leave those pictures lying around. And while we're on the subject, Milton could install a much better safe for you."

  Berger smiled as Beckman walked Linder back to her car.

  CHAPTER 22

  Monday, June 6

  Berger woke up at 6:00 on Monday morning. She had not slept for more than an hour, but she felt strangely rested. She supposed it was a physical reaction of some sort. For the first time in several months she put on her jogging clothes and went for a furious and excruciatingly painful sprint down to the steamboat wharf. But after a hundred yards or so her heel hurt so much that she had to slow down and go on at a more leisurely pace, relishing the pain in her foot with each step she took.

  She felt reborn. It was as though the Grim Reaper had passed by her door and at the last moment changed his mind and moved on to the next house. She could still not take in how fortunate she was that Fredriksson had had her pictures in his possession for four days and done nothing with them. The scanning he had done indicated that he had something planned, but he had simply not gotten around to whatever it was.

  She decided to give Susanne Linder a very expensive Christmas present this year. She would think of something really special.

  She left her husband asleep and at 7:30 drove to SMP's office at Norrtull. She parked in the garage, took the elevator to the newsroom, and settled down in the glass cage. Before she did anything else, she called someone from maintenance.

  "Peter Fredriksson has left the paper. He won't be back," she said. "Please bring as many boxes as you need to empty his desk of personal items and have them delivered to his apartment this morning."

  She looked over towards the news desk. Holm had just arrived. He met her gaze and nodded to her.

  She nodded back.

  Holm was a bastard, but after their altercation a few weeks earlier he had stopped trying to cause trouble. If he continued to show the same positive attitude, he could possibly survive as news editor. Possibly.

  She should, she felt, be able to turn things around.

  At 8:45 she saw Borgsjo come out of the elevator and disappear up the internal staircase to his office on the floor above. I have to talk to him today.

  She got some coffee and spent a while on the morning memo. It looked like it was going to be a slow news day. The only item of interest was an agency report, to the effect that Lisbeth Salander had been moved to the prison in Stockholm the day before. She OK'd the story and forwarded it to Holm.

  At 8:59 Borgsjo called.

  "Berger, come up to my office right away." He hung up.

  He was white in the face when Berger found him at his desk. He stood up and slammed a thick wad of papers on his desk.

  "What the hell is this?" he roared.

  Berger's heart sank like a stone. She only had to glance at the cover to see what Borgsjo had found in the morning mail.

  Fredriksson hadn't managed to do anything with her photographs. But he had sent a copy of Cortez's article and research to Borgsjo.

  Calmly she sat down across from him.

  "That's an article written by a reporter named Henry Cortez. Millennium had planned to run it in last week's issue."

  Borgsjo looked desperate.

  "How dare you? I brought you into SMP and the first thing you do is to start digging up dirt. What kind of a media whore are you?"

  Berger's eyes narrowed. She turned ice-cold. She had had enough of the word whore.

  "Do you really think anyone is going to care about this? Do you think you can trap me with this crap? And why the hell did you send it to me anonymously?"

  "That's not what happened, Magnus."

  "Then tell me what did happen."

  "The person who sent that article to you anonymously was Fredriksson. He was fired from SMP yesterday."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "It's a long story. But I've had a copy of the article for more than two weeks, trying to figure out a way to raise the subject with you."

  "You're behind this article?"

  "No, I am not. Cortez researched and wrote the article entirely on his own. I didn't know anything about it."

  "You expect me to believe that?"

  "As soon as my old colleagues at Millennium saw how you were implicated in the story, Blomkvist stopped its publication. He called me and gave me a copy, out of concern for my position. It was then stolen from me, and now it's ended up with you. Millennium wanted me to have a chance to talk with you before they printed it. Which they mean to do in the August issue."

  "I've never met a more unscrupulous media whore in my whole life. It defies belief."

  "Now that you've read the story, perhaps you have also considered the research behind it. Cortez has an iron-clad story. You know that."

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "If you're still here when Millennium goes to press, that will hurt SMP. I've worried myself sick and tried to find a way out . . . but there isn't one."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You'll have to go."

  "Don't be absurd. I haven't done anything illegal."

  "Magnus, don't you understand the impact of this expose? I don't want to have to call a board meeting. It would be too embarrassing."

  "You're not going to call anything at all. You're finished at SMP."

  "Wrong. Only the board can sack me. Presumably you're allowed to call them in for an extraordinary meeting. I would suggest you do that for this afternoon."

  Borgsjo came around the desk and stood so close to Berger that she could feel his breath.

  "Berger, you have one chance to survive this. You have to go to your damned colleagues at Millennium and get them to kill this story. If you do a good job I might even forget what you've done."

  Berger sighed.

  "Magnus, you aren't understanding how serious this is. I have no influence whatsoever on what Millennium publishes. This story is going to come out no matter what I say. The only thing I care about is how it affects SMP. That's why you have to resign."

  Borgsjo put his hands on the back of her chair.

  "Berger, your cronies at Millennium might change their minds if they knew that you would be fired the instant they leak this bullshit."

  He straightened up.

  "I'll be at a meeting in Norrkoping today." He looked at her, furious and arrogant. "At Svea Construction."

  "I see."

  "When I'm back tomorrow you will report to me that this matter has been taken care of. Understood?"

  He put on his jacket. Berger watched him with her eyes half closed.

  "Maybe then you'll survive at SMP. Now get out of my office."

  She went back to the glass cage and sat quite still in her chair for twenty minutes. Then she picked up the phone and asked Holm to come to her office. This time he was there within a minute.

  "Sit down."

  Holm raised an eyebrow and sat down.

  "What did I do wrong this time?" he said sarcastically.

  "Anders, this is my last day at SMP. I'm resigning here and now. I'm calling in the deputy chairman and as many members of the board as I can find for a meeting over lunch."

  He stared at her with undisguised shock.

  "I'm going to recommend that you be made acting editor in chief."

  "What?"

&nb
sp; "Are you OK with that?"

  Holm leaned back in his chair and looked at her.

  "I've never wanted to be editor in chief," he said.

  "I know that. But you're tough enough to do the job. And you'll walk over corpses to be able to publish a good story. I just wish you had more common sense."

  "So what happened?"

  "I have a different style than you. You and I have always argued about what angle to take, and we'll never agree."

  "No," he said. "We never will. But it's possible that my style is old-fashioned."

  "I don't know if old-fashioned is the right word. You're a very good newspaperman, but you behave like a bastard. That's totally unnecessary. But what we were most at odds about was that you claimed that as news editor you couldn't allow personal considerations to affect how the news was assessed."

  Berger suddenly gave Holm a sly smile. She opened her bag and took out a copy of the Borgsjo story.

  "Let's test your sense of news assessment. I have a story here that came to us from a reporter at Millennium. This morning I'm thinking that we should run this article as today's top story." She tossed the folder into Holm's lap. "You're the news editor. I'd be interested to hear whether you share my assessment."

  Holm opened the folder and began to read. Even the introduction made his eyes widen. He sat up straight in his chair and stared at Berger. Then he lowered his eyes and read through the article to the end. He studied the source material for ten more minutes before he slowly put the folder aside.

  "This is going to cause one hell of an uproar."

  "I know. That's why I'm leaving. Millennium was planning to run the story in their June issue, but Mikael Blomkvist stopped publication. He gave me the article so that I could talk with Borgsjo before they run it."

  "And?"

  "Borgsjo ordered me to suppress it."

  "I see. So you're planning to run it in SMP out of spite?"

  "Not out of spite, no. There's no other way. If SMP runs the story, we have a chance of getting out of this mess with our honour intact. Borgsjo has no choice but to go. But it also means that I can't stay here any longer."

  Holm sat in silence for two minutes.

  "Damn it, Berger. . . . I didn't think you were that tough. I never thought I'd ever say this, but if you're that thick-skinned, I'm actually sorry you're leaving."

  "You could stop publication, but if both you and I OK it . . . Do you think you'll run the story?"

  "Damn right we'll run it. It would leak anyway."

  "Exactly."

  Holm got up and stood uncertainly by her desk.

  "Get to work," said Berger.

  After Holm left her office she waited five minutes before she picked up the phone and rang Eriksson.

  "Hello, Malin. Is Henry there?"

  "Yes, he's at his desk."

  "Could you call him into your office and put on the speakerphone? We have to have a conference."

  Cortez was there within fifteen seconds.

  "What's up?"

  "Henry, I did something immoral today."

  "Oh, you did?"

  "I gave your story about Vitavara to the news editor here at SMP."

  "You what?"

  "I told him to run the story in SMP tomorrow. Your byline. And you'll be paid, of course. In fact, you can name your price."

  "Erika, what the hell is going on?"

  She gave him a brisk summary of what had happened during the last weeks, and how Fredriksson had almost destroyed her.

  "Jesus Christ," Cortez said.

  "I know that this is your story, Henry. But I have no choice. Can you agree to this?"

  Cortez was silent for a long while.

  "Thanks for asking," he said. "It's OK to run the story with my byline. If it's OK with Malin, I should say."

  "It's OK with me," Eriksson said.

  "Thank you both," Berger said. "Can you tell Mikael? I don't suppose he's in yet."

  "I'll talk to Mikael," Eriksson said. "But, Erika, does this mean that you're out of work from today?"

  Berger laughed. "I've decided to take the rest of the year off. Believe me, a few weeks at SMP was enough."

  "I don't think you ought to start thinking in terms of a vacation yet," Eriksson said.

  "Why not?"

  "Could you come here this afternoon?"

  "What for?"

  "I need help. If you want to come back to being editor in chief here, you could start tomorrow morning."

  "Malin, you're the editor in chief. Anything else is out of the question."

  "Then you could start as managing editor." Eriksson laughed.

  "Are you serious?"

  "Oh, Erika, I miss you so much that I'm ready to die. One reason I took the job here was so that I'd have a chance to work with you. And now you're somewhere else."

  Berger said nothing for a minute. She had not even thought about the possibility of making a comeback at Millennium.

  "Do you think I'd really be welcome?" she said hesitantly.

  "What do you think? I bet we'd begin with a huge celebration, which I would arrange myself. And you'd be back just in time for us to publish you-know-what."

  Berger checked the clock on her desk--10:55. In a couple of hours her whole world had been turned upside down. She realized what a longing she had to walk up the stairs at Millennium again.

  "I have a few things to take care of here over the next few hours. Is it OK if I pop in at around 4:00?"

  Linder looked Armansky directly in the eye as she told him exactly what had happened during the night. The only thing she left out was her sudden intuition that the hacking of Fredriksson's computer had something to do with Salander. She kept that to herself for two reasons. First, she thought it sounded too implausible. Second, she knew that Armansky was somehow up to his neck in the Salander affair along with Blomkvist.

  Armansky listened intently. When Linder finished her account, he said: "Beckman called about an hour ago."

  "Oh?"

  "He and Berger are coming in later this week to sign a contract. He wants to thank us for what Milton has done, and above all for what you have done."

  "I see. It's nice to have a satisfied client."

  "He also wants to order a safe for the house. We'll install it and finish up the alarm package before this weekend."

  "That's good."

  "He says he wants us to invoice him for your work over the weekend. That'll make it quite a sizable bill we'll be sending them." Armansky sighed. "Susanne, you do know that Fredriksson could go to the police and get you into very deep water on a number of counts."

  She nodded.

  "Mind you, he'd end up in prison so fast it would make his head spin, but he might think it was worth it."

  "I doubt he has the balls to go to the police."

  "You may be right, but what you did far exceeded instructions."

  "I know."

  "So how do you think I should react?"

  "Only you can decide that."

  "How did you think I would react?"

  "What I think has nothing to do with it. You could always fire me."

  "Hardly. I can't afford to lose a professional of your calibre."

  "Thanks."

  "But if you do anything like this again, I'm going to get very angry."

  Linder nodded.

  "What did you do with the hard drive?"

  "It's destroyed. I put it in a vise this morning and crushed it."

  "Then we can forget about all this."

  Berger spent the rest of the morning calling the board members of SMP. She reached the deputy chairman at his summer house near Vaxholm and persuaded him to drive to the city as quickly as he could. A rather makeshift board assembled over lunch. Berger began by explaining how the Cortez folder had come to her, and what consequences it had already had.

  When she finished, it was proposed, as she had anticipated, that they try to find another solution. Berger told them that SMP was going to run the st
ory the next day. She also told them that this would be her last day of work and that her decision was final.

  She got the board to approve two decisions and enter them in the minutes. Magnus Borgsjo would be asked to vacate his position as CEO, effective immediately, and Anders Holm would be appointed acting editor in chief. Then she excused herself and left the board members to discuss the situation among themselves.

  At 2:00 she went down to the personnel department and had a contract drawn up. Then she went to speak to Sebastian Strandlund, the culture editor, and the reporter Eva Carlsson.

  "As far as I can tell, you consider Eva to be a talented reporter."

  "That's true," said Strandlund.

  "And in your budget requests over the past two years you've asked that your staff be increased by at least two."

  "Correct."

  "Eva, in view of the email to which you were subjected, there might be ugly rumours if I were to hire you full-time. But are you still interested?"

  "Of course."

  "In that case my last act here at SMP will be to sign this employment contract."

  "Your last act?"

  "It's a long story. I'm leaving today. Could you two be so kind as to keep quiet about it for an hour or so?"

  "What . . . ?"

  "There'll be a memo coming around soon."

  Berger signed the contract and pushed it across the desk towards Carlsson.

  "Good luck," she said, smiling.

  *

  "The older man who participated in the meeting with Ekstrom on Saturday is Georg Nystrom, a police superintendent," Figuerola said as she put the surveillance photographs from Modig's mobile on Edklinth's desk.

  "Superintendent," Edklinth muttered.

  "Stefan identified him last night. He went to the apartment on Artillerigatan."

  "What do we know about him?"

  "He comes from the regular police and has worked for SIS since 1983. Since 1996 he's been serving as an investigator with his own area of responsibility. He does internal checks and examines cases that SIS has completed."

  "OK."

  "Since Saturday morning six persons of interest have been to the building. Besides Sandberg and Nystrom, Clinton is definitely operating from there. This morning he was taken by ambulance to have dialysis."

  "Who are the other three?"

  "A man named Otto Hallberg. He was in SIS in the eighties but he's actually connected to the Defence General Staff. He works for the navy and the military intelligence service."

  "I see. Why am I not surprised?"

  Figuerola laid down one more photograph. "This man we haven't identified yet. He went to lunch with Hallberg. We'll have to see if we can get a better picture when he goes home tonight. But the most interesting one is this man." She laid another photograph on the desk.