The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

  "Bigger than Wennerstrom," Blomkvist said. "Are you interested?"

  "Are you serious? Where shall we meet?"

  "How about Samir's Cauldron? Erika's going to sit in on the meeting."

  "What's going on with her? Is she back at Millennium now that she's been thrown out of SMP?"

  "She didn't get thrown out. She resigned because of differences of opinion with Magnus Borgsjo."

  "He seems to be a real creep."

  "You're not wrong there," Blomkvist said.

  Clinton was listening to Verdi through his earphones. Music was pretty much the only thing left in life that could take him away from dialysis machines and the growing pain in the small of his back. He did not hum to the music. He closed his eyes and followed the notes with his right hand, which hovered and seemed to have a life of its own alongside his disintegrating body.

  That is how it goes. We are born. We live. We grow old. We die. He had played his part. All that remained was the disintegration.

  He felt strangely satisfied with life.

  He was playing for his friend Evert Gullberg.

  It was Saturday, July 9. Only four days until the trial, and the Section could set about putting this whole wretched story behind them. He had gotten the message that morning. Gullberg had been tougher than almost anyone he had known. When you fire a 9mm full-metal-jacketed bullet into your own temple, you expect to die. Yet it was three months before Gullberg's body gave up at last. That was probably due as much to chance as to the stubbornness with which the doctors had waged the battle for Gullberg's life. And it was the cancer, not the bullet, that had finally determined his end.

  Gullberg's death had been painful, and that saddened Clinton. Although incapable of communicating with the outside world, he had at times been in a semi-conscious state, smiling when the hospital staff stroked his cheek or grunting when he seemed to be in pain. Sometimes he had tried to form words and even sentences, but nobody was able to understand anything he said.

  He had no family, and none of his friends came to his sickbed. His last contact with life was an Eritrean night nurse by the name of Sara Kitama, who kept watch at his bedside and held his hand as he died.

  Clinton realized that he would soon be following his former comrade-in-arms. No doubt about that. The likelihood of his surviving a transplant operation decreased each day. His liver and intestinal functions appeared to have declined at each examination.

  He hoped to live past Christmas.

  Yet he was content. He felt an almost spiritual, giddy satisfaction that his final days had involved such a sudden and surprising return to service.

  It was a boon he could not have anticipated.

  The last notes of Verdi faded away just as somebody opened the door to the small room in which he was resting at the Section's headquarters on Artillerigatan.

  Clinton opened his eyes. It was Wadensjoo.

  He had come to the conclusion that Wadensjoo was a deadweight. He was entirely unsuitable as director of the most important vanguard of Swedish national defence. He could not conceive how he and von Rottinger could ever have made such a fundamental miscalculation as to imagine that Wadensjoo was the appropriate successor.

  Wadensjoo was a warrior who needed a fair wind. In a crisis he was feeble and incapable of making a decision. A timid encumbrance lacking steel in his backbone who would most likely have remained in paralysis, incapable of action, and let the Section go under.

  It was this simple. Some had it. Others would always falter when it came to the crunch.

  "You wanted a word?"

  "Sit down," Clinton said.

  Wadensjoo sat.

  "I'm at a stage in my life when I can no longer waste time. I'll get straight to the point. When all this is over, I want you to resign from the management of the Section."

  "You do?"

  Clinton tempered his tone.

  "You're a good man, Wadensjoo. But unfortunately you were completely unsuited to succeed Gullberg. You should not have been given that responsibility. Von Rottinger and I were at fault when we failed to deal properly with the succession after I got sick."

  "You've never liked me."

  "You're wrong about that. You were an excellent administrator when von Rottinger and I were in charge of the Section. We would have been helpless without you, and I have great admiration for your patriotism. It's your inability to make decisions that lets you down."

  Wadensjoo smiled bitterly. "After this, I don't know if I even want to stay in the Section."

  "Now that Gullberg and von Rottinger are gone, I've had to make the crucial decisions myself," Clinton said. "And you've obstructed every decision I've made during the past few months."

  "And I maintain that the decisions you've made are absurd. It's going to end in disaster."

  "That's possible. But your indecision would have guaranteed our collapse. Now at least we have a chance, and our plan seems to be working. Millennium doesn't know which way to turn. They may suspect that we're somewhere out here, but they lack documentation, and they have no way of finding it--or us. And we know at least as much as they do."

  Wadensjoo looked out the window and across the rooftops.

  "The only thing we still have to do is to get rid of Zalachenko's daughter," Clinton said. "If anyone starts digging around in her past and listening to what she has to say, there's no knowing what might happen. But the trial starts in a few days, and then it'll be over. This time we have to bury her so deep that she'll never come back to haunt us."

  Wadensjoo shook his head.

  "I don't understand your attitude," Clinton said.

  "I can see that. You're sixty-eight years old. You're dying. Your decisions are not rational, and yet you seem to have bewitched Nystrom and Sandberg. They obey you as if you were God the Father."

  "I am God the Father in everything that has to do with the Section. We're working according to a plan. Our decision to act has given the Section a chance. And it is with the utmost conviction that I say that the Section will never find itself in such an exposed position again. When all this is over, we're going to implement a complete overhaul of our activities."

  "I see."

  "Nystrom will be the new director. He's really too old, but he's the only choice we have, and he's promised to stay on for six years at least. Sandberg is too young and--as a direct result of your management policies--too inexperienced. He should have been fully trained by now."

  "Clinton, don't you see what you've done? You've murdered a man. Bjorck worked for the Section for thirty-five years, and you ordered his death. Do you not understand--"

  "You know quite well that it was necessary. He betrayed us, and he would never have withstood the pressure when the police closed in."

  Wadensjoo stood up.

  "I'm not finished."

  "Then we'll have to continue later. I have a job to do while you lie here fantasizing that you're the Almighty."

  "If you're so morally indignant, why don't you go to Bublanski and confess your crimes?"

  "Believe me, I've considered it. But whatever you may think, I'm doing everything in my power to protect the Section."

  He opened the door and met Nystrom and Sandberg on their way in.

  "Hello, Fredrik," Nystrom said. "We have to talk."

  "Wadensjoo was just leaving."

  Nystrom waited until the door had closed. "Fredrik, I'm seriously worried."

  "What's going on?"

  "Sandberg and I have been thinking. Things are happening that we don't understand. This morning Salander's lawyer lodged her autobiographical statement with the prosecutor."

  "What?"

  Inspector Faste scrutinized Advokat Giannini as Ekstrom poured coffee from a thermos carafe. The document Ekstrom had been handed when he arrived at work that morning had taken both of them by surprise. He and Faste had read the forty pages of Salander's story and discussed the extraordinary document at length. Finally he felt compelled to ask Giannini to come
in for an informal chat.

  They were sitting at the small conference table in Ekstrom's office.

  "Thank you for agreeing to come in," Ekstrom said. "I have read this . . . hmm . . . account that arrived this morning, and there are a few matters I'd like to clarify."

  "I'll do what I can to help," Giannini said.

  "I don't know exactly where to start. Let me say from the outset that both Inspector Faste and I are profoundly astonished."

  "Indeed?"

  "I'm trying to understand what your objective is."

  "How do you mean?"

  "This autobiography, or whatever you want to call it . . . What's the point of it?"

  "The point is perfectly clear. My client wants to set down her version of what has happened to her."

  Ekstrom gave a good-natured laugh. He stroked his goatee, an oft-repeated gesture that was beginning to irritate Giannini.

  "Yes, but your client has had several months to explain herself. She hasn't said a word in all her interviews with Faste."

  "As far as I know there is no law that forces my client to talk only when it suits Inspector Faste."

  "No, but I mean . . . Salander's trial will begin in four days' time, and at the eleventh hour she comes up with this. To tell the truth, I feel a responsibility here which is beyond my duties as prosecutor."

  "You do?"

  "I do not wish to sound at all offensive. That is not my intention. But we have a procedure for trials in this country. You, Fru Giannini, are a lawyer specialising in women's rights, and you have never before represented a client in a criminal case. I did not charge Lisbeth Salander because she is a woman, but on a charge of aggravated assault and attempted murder. Even you, I believe, must have realized that she suffers from a serious mental illness and needs the protection and assistance of the state."

  "You're afraid that I won't be able to provide Lisbeth Salander with an adequate defence," Giannini said in a friendly tone.

  "I do not wish to be judgemental," Ekstrom said, "and I don't question your competence. I'm simply making the point that you lack experience."

  "I do understand, and I completely agree with you. I am woefully inexperienced when it comes to criminal cases."

  "And yet you have all along refused the help that has been offered by lawyers with considerably more experience--"

  "At the express wish of my client. Lisbeth Salander wants me to be her lawyer, and accordingly, I will be representing her in court." She gave him a polite smile.

  "Very well, but I do wonder whether in all seriousness you intend to offer this statement to the court."

  "Of course. It's her story."

  Ekstrom and Faste glanced at each other. Faste raised his eyebrows. He could not see what Ekstrom was fussing about. If Giannini did not understand that she was on her way to sinking her client, then that certainly was not the prosecutor's fault. All they needed to do was to say thank you, accept the document, and put the issue aside.

  As far as he was concerned, Salander was off her rocker. He had employed all his skills to persuade her to tell them, at the very least, where she lived. But in interview after interview that damn girl had just sat there, silent as a stone, staring at the wall behind him. She had refused the cigarettes he offered, and had never so much as accepted a coffee or a cold drink. Nor had she registered the least reaction when he pleaded with her, or when he raised his voice in moments of extreme annoyance. Faste had never conducted a more frustrating set of interviews.

  "Fru Giannini," Ekstrom said at last, "I believe that your client ought to be spared this trial. She is not well. I have a psychiatric report from a highly qualified doctor to fall back on. She should be given the psychiatric care that for so many years she has badly needed."

  "I take it that you will be presenting this recommendation to the district court."

  "That's exactly what I'll be doing. It's not my business to tell you how to conduct her defence. But if this is the line you seriously intend to take, then the situation is, quite frankly, absurd. This statement contains wild and unsubstantiated accusations against a number of people, in particular against her guardian, Advokat Bjurman, and Dr. Peter Teleborian. I hope you do not in all seriousness believe that the court will accept an account that casts suspicion on Dr. Teleborian without offering a single shred of evidence. This document is going to be the final nail in your client's coffin, if you'll pardon the metaphor."

  "I hear what you're saying."

  "In the course of the trial you may claim that she is not ill and request a supplementary psychiatric assessment, and then the matter can be submitted to the medical board. But to be honest, her statement leaves me in very little doubt that every other forensic psychiatrist will come to the same conclusion as Dr. Teleborian. Its very existence confirms all documentary evidence that she is a paranoid schizophrenic."

  Giannini smiled politely. "There is an alternative view," she said.

  "What's that?"

  "That her account is in every detail true and that the court will elect to believe it."

  Ekstrom looked bewildered by the notion. Then he smiled and stroked his goatee.

  Clinton was sitting at the little side table by the window in his office. He listened attentively to Nystrom and Sandberg. His face was furrowed, but his peppercorn eyes were focused and alert.

  "We've been monitoring the telephone and email traffic of Millennium's key employees since April," Clinton said. "We've confirmed that Blomkvist and Eriksson and this Cortez fellow are pretty downcast on the whole. We've read the outline version of the next issue. It seems that even Blomkvist has reversed his position and is now of the view that Salander is mentally unstable after all. There is a socially linked defence for her--he's claiming that society let her down, and that as a result it's somehow not her fault that she tried to murder her father. But that's hardly an argument. There isn't one word about the break-in at his apartment or the fact that his sister was attacked in Goteborg, and there's no mention of the missing reports. He knows he can't prove anything."

  "That is precisely the problem," Sandberg said. "Blomkvist must know that someone has their eye on him. But he seems to be completely ignoring his suspicions. Forgive me, but that isn't Millennium's style. Besides, Erika Berger is back in editorial and yet this whole issue is so bland and devoid of substance that it seems like a joke."

  "What are you saying? That it's a decoy?"

  Sandberg nodded. "The summer issue should have come out in the last week of June. According to one of Malin Eriksson's emails, it's being printed by a company in Sodertalje, but when I rang them this morning, they told me they hadn't even gotten the CRC. All they'd had was a request for a quote about a month ago."

  "Where have they printed before?" Clinton said.

  "At a place called Hallvigs in Morgongava. I called to ask how far they had gotten with the printing--I said I was calling from Millennium. The manager wouldn't tell me a thing. I thought I'd drive up there this evening and take a look."

  "Makes sense. Georg?"

  "I've reviewed all the telephone traffic from the past week," Nystrom said. "It's bizarre, but the Millennium staff never discusses anything to do with the trial or Zalachenko."

  "Nothing at all?"

  "No. They mention it only when they're talking with someone outside Millennium. Listen to this, for instance. Blomkvist gets a call from a reporter at Aftonbladet asking whether he has any comment to make on the upcoming trial."

  He put a tape recorder on the table.

  "Sorry, but I have no comment."

  "You've been involved with the story from the start. You were the one who found Salander down in Gosseberga. And you haven't published a single word since. When do you intend to publish?"

  "When the time is right. Provided I have anything to say."

  "Do you?"

  "Well, you can buy a copy of Millennium and see for yourself."

  He turned off the recorder.

  "We didn't think about
this before, but I went back and listened to bits at random. It's been like this the entire time. He hardly discusses the Zalachenko business except in the most general terms. He doesn't even discuss it with his sister, and she's Salander's lawyer."

  "Maybe he really doesn't have anything to say."

  "He consistently refuses to speculate about anything. He seems to live at the offices around the clock; he's hardly ever at his apartment. If he's working night and day, then he ought to have come up with something more substantial than whatever's going to be in the next issue of Millennium."

  "And we still haven't been able to tap the phones at their offices?"

  "No," Sandberg said. "There's been somebody there twenty-four hours a day--and that's significant--ever since we went into Blomkvist's apartment the first time. The office lights are always on, and if it's not Blomkvist it's Cortez or Eriksson, or that faggot . . . er, Christer Malm."

  Clinton stroked his chin and thought for a moment.

  "Conclusions?"

  Nystrom said: "If I didn't know better, I'd think they were putting on an act for us."

  Clinton felt a cold shiver run down the back of his neck. "Why hasn't this occurred to us before?"

  "We've been listening to what they've been saying, not to what they haven't been saying. We've been gratified when we've heard their confusion or noticed it in an email. Blomkvist knows damn well that someone stole copies of the 1991 Salander report from him and his sister. But what the hell is he doing about it?"

  "And they didn't report her mugging to the police?"

  Nystrom shook his head. "Giannini was present at the interviews with Salander. She's polite, but she never says anything of any weight. And Salander herself never says anything at all."

  "But that will work in our favour. The more she keeps her mouth shut, the better. What does Ekstrom say?"

  "I saw him a couple of hours ago. He'd just been given Salander's statement." He pointed to the pages in Clinton's lap.

  "Ekstrom is confused. It's fortunate that Salander is no good at expressing herself in writing. To an outsider this would look like a totally insane conspiracy theory with added pornographic elements. But she still shoots very close to the mark. She describes exactly how she came to be locked up at St. Stefan's, and she claims that Zalachenko worked for Sapo and so on. She says she thinks everything is connected with a little club inside Sapo, pointing to the existence of something corresponding to the Section. All in all it's fairly accurate. But as I said, it's not plausible. Ekstrom is in a dither because this also seems to be the line of defence Giannini is going to use at the trial."