“I do have quite a lot on my plate.”
“I understand,” she said, kissing him. “Then you must of course go and get on with your work.”
“Maybe that would be best,” he muttered as she pressed herself against him, kissing him with such force that he had no defence.
He responded to her kiss and put his hands on her hips, and she gave him a shove. She pushed him so hard that he staggered and fell backwards onto the bed, and for a moment he was scared. But then he looked at her. She was smiling as tenderly now as before and he thought: this was nothing more than a bit of rough play. She really wanted him, didn’t she? She wanted to make love with him there and then, and he let her straddle his body, unbutton his shirt, and draw her fingernails over his stomach while her eyes shone with an intense glow and her large breasts heaved beneath her dress. Her mouth was open. A trickle of saliva ran down her chin and she whispered something he could not at first hear. “Now, Andrei,” she whispered again. “Now!”
“Now?” he repeated uncertainly, and felt her tearing off his trousers. She was more brazen than he had expected, more accomplished and wildly lascivious than anybody he had met.
“Close your eyes and lie absolutely still,” she said.
He obeyed and could hear her fiddling with something, he was not sure what. Then heard a click and felt metal around his wrists, and realized he had been handcuffed. He was about to protest, he did not really go in for that sort of thing, but it all happened so fast. With lightning speed, as if she had done it many times, she locked his hands to the headboard. Then she bound his feet with rope and pulled tight.
“Gently,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” but then she gave him a look he did not like and said something in a solemn voice. He must have misheard. “What?” he said.
“I’m going to cut you with a knife, Andrei,” she said, and fixed a broad piece of tape across his mouth.
Blomkvist was trying to tell himself not to worry. Why would anything have happened to Zander? No-one – apart from Berger and himself – knew that he was involved in protecting the whereabouts of Salander and the boy. They had been extremely careful with that piece of information, more careful than with any other part of the story. And yet … why had there been no word from him?
Zander was not someone who ignored his mobile. On the contrary, he normally picked up on the first ring whenever Blomkvist called. But now there was no way of getting hold of him, and that was strange, wasn’t it? Or maybe … again Blomkvist tried to convince himself that Zander was busy working and had lost track of time, or in the worst case had dropped his mobile. That was probably all it was. But still … after all these years Camilla had appeared out of nowhere. Something must be going on, and what was it Bublanski had said?
“We live in a world in which paranoia is a requirement.”
Blomkvist reached for the telephone on the bedside table and called Zander again. He got no answer this time either, so decided to wake their new staff member, Emil Grandén, who lived near Zander in the Röda bergen area of Vasastan. Grandén sounded less than enthusiastic but promised to go over to Zander’s right away to see if he was there. Twenty minutes later he rang back. He had been banging on Zander’s door for a while, he said, and he definitely wasn’t at home.
Blomkvist got dressed and left his apartment, hurrying through a deserted and storm-lashed Södermalm district up to the magazine offices on Götgatan. With any luck, he thought, Zander would be lying asleep on the sofa. It would not be the first time he had nodded off at work and not heard the telephone. That would be the simple explanation. But Blomkvist felt more and more uneasy. When he opened the door and turned off the alarm he shivered, as if expecting to find a scene of devastation, but after a search of the premises he found no trace of anything untoward. All the information on his encrypted email program had been carefully deleted, just as they had agreed. It all looked as it should, but there was no Zander lying on the office sofa, which was looking as shabby and empty as ever. For a short while Blomkvist sat there, lost in thought. Then he rang Grandén again.
“Emil,” he said, “I’m sorry to harass you like this in the middle of the night. But this whole story has made me paranoid.”
“I can understand that.”
“I couldn’t help hearing that you sounded a bit stressed when I was talking about Andrei. Is there anything you haven’t told me?”
“Nothing you don’t already know,” Grandén said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’ve spoken to the Data Inspection Authority too.”
“What do you mean, you too?”
“You mean you haven’t—”
“No!” Blomkvist cut him short and heard Grandén’s breathing at the other end of the line become laboured. There had been a terrible mistake.
“Out with it, Emil, and fast,” he said.
“So …”
“Yes?”
“I had a call from a Lina Robertsson at the Data Inspection Authority. She said that you’d spoken and she agreed to raise the level of security on your computer, given the circumstances. Apparently the recommendations she’d given you were wrong and she was worried the protection would be insufficient. She said she wanted to get hold of the person who’d arranged the encryption for you asap.”
“And what did you say?”
“That I knew nothing about it, except that I’d seen Andrei doing something at your computer.”
“So you said she should get in touch with Andrei.”
“I happened to be out at the time and told her that Andrei was probably still in the office. She could ring him there, I said. That was all.”
“Jesus, Emil.”
“But she sounded really—”
“I don’t care how she sounded. I just hope you told Andrei about the call.”
“Maybe not right away. I’m pretty snowed under at the moment, like all of us.”
“But you told him later.”
“Well, he left the office before I got a chance to say anything.”
“So you called him instead.”
“Absolutely, several times. But …”
“Yes?”
“He didn’t answer.”
“O.K.,” Blomkvist said, his voice ice cold.
He hung up and dialled Bublanski’s number. He had to try twice before the chief inspector came to the telephone. Blomkvist had no choice but to tell him the whole story – without discussing Salander and August’s location.
Then he called Berger.
Salander had fallen asleep, but she was still ready for action. She was still in her clothes, with her leather jacket and her boots on. She kept waking up, either because of the howling storm or because August was moaning even in his sleep. But each time she dropped off again, or at least dozed, and had short, strangely realistic dreams.
Now she was dreaming about her father beating her mother, and even then she could feel that old, fierce rage from her childhood. She felt it so keenly that it woke her up again. It was 3.45 and those scraps of paper on which she and August had written their numbers were still lying on the bedside table. Outside, snow was falling. But the storm seemed to have calmed and nothing unusual could be heard, just the wind howling and rustling through the trees.
Yet she felt uneasy, and at first she thought it was the dream lying like a fine mesh over the room. Then she shuddered. The bed next to her was empty – August was gone. She shot out of bed without making a sound, grabbed her Beretta from the bag on the floor and crept into the large room next to the terrace.
The next moment she breathed a sigh of relief. August was sitting at the table, busy with something. Without wanting to disturb him she leaned over his shoulder and saw that he was not writing new prime-number factorizations, or drawing fresh scenes of abuse. He was sketching chess squares reflected in the mirrors of a wardrobe, and above them could be made out a threatening figure with his hand outstretched. The killer was taking shape. S
alander smiled, and then she withdrew.
Back in the bedroom she sat on the bed, removed her pullover and the bandage and inspected the bullet wound. It didn’t look good, and she still felt weak. She swallowed another couple of antibiotic pills and tried to rest. She might even have gone back to sleep for a few moments. She was aware of a vague sensation that she had seen both Zala and Camilla in her dream, and the next second she became aware of a presence, though she had no idea what. A bird flapped its wings outside. She could hear August’s laboured breathing in the kitchen. She was just about to get up when a scream pierced the air.
By the time Blomkvist left the office in the early morning hours to take a taxi to the Grand Hôtel, he still had no news of Zander. He tried again to persuade himself that he had been overreacting, that any moment now his colleague would be calling from some friend’s place. But the worry would not go away. He was vaguely aware that it had started snowing again, and that a woman’s shoe had been left lying on the pavement. He took out his Samsung and called Salander on the Redphone app.
Salander did not pick up, and that did not make him any calmer. He tried once more and sent a text from the Threema app:
Stockholm was more or less deserted. The storm had abated but there were still white-crested waves on the water. Blomkvist looked across to the Grand Hôtel on the other side and wondered if he should forget about the meeting with Mr Needham and drive straight out to Salander instead, or at least arrange for a police car to go there. No, he couldn’t do that without warning her. Another leak would be disastrous. He opened the Threema app again and tapped in:
No answer. Of course there was no answer. He paid the fare and climbed out of the taxi, lost in thought. By the time he was pushing through the revolving doors of the hotel it was 4.20 in the morning – he was forty minutes early. He had never been forty minutes early for anything. But he was burning inside and, before going to the reception desk to hand in his mobiles, he called Berger. He told her to try to get hold of Salander and to keep in touch with the police.
“If you hear anything, call the Grand Hôtel and ask for Mr Needham’s room.”
“And who’s he?”
“Someone who wants to meet me.”
“At this time?”
Needham was in room 654. The door opened and there stood a man reeking of sweat and rage. There was about as much resemblance to the figure in the fishing photograph as there would be between a hungover dictator and his stylized statue. Needham had a drink in his hand and looked grim, dishevelled and a little bit like a bulldog.
“Mr Needham,” Blomkvist said.
“Ed,” Needham said. “I’m sorry to haul you over here at this ungodly hour, but it’s urgent.”
“So it would seem,” Blomkvist said drily.
“Do you have any idea what I want to talk to you about?”
Blomkvist shook his head and sat down on a sofa. There was a bottle of gin and some small bottles of Schweppes tonic on the desk next to it.
“No indeed, why would you?” Needham said. “On the other hand it’s impossible to know with guys like you. I’ve checked you out. You should know that I hate to flatter people – it leaves a bad taste in my mouth – but you’re pretty outstanding in your profession, aren’t you?”
Blomkvist gave a forced smile. “Can we just get to the point?” he said.
“Just relax. I’ll be crystal clear. I assume you know where I work.”
“Not exactly,” he said truthfully.
“In Puzzle Palace, SIG.INT. City. I work for the world’s spittoon.”
“The N.S.A.”
“Damn right. Do you have any idea how fucking insane you have to be to mess with us, Mikael Blomkvist? Do you?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” he said.
“And do you know where I think your girlfriend really belongs?”
“No.”
“She belongs behind bars. For life!”
Blomkvist gave what he hoped was a calm, composed little smile. But in fact his mind was spinning. Did Salander hack the N.S.A.? The mere thought terrified him. Not only was she in hiding, with killers on the hunt for her. Was she also going to have the entire U.S. intelligence shock troops descend on her? It sounded … well, how did it sound? It sounded totally off the wall.
One of Salander’s abiding characteristics was that she never did anything without first carefully analysing the potential consequences. She did not follow impulses or whims and therefore he could not imagine she would take such an idiotic risk if there was the slightest chance of being found out. Sometimes she put herself in danger, that was true, but there was always a balance between costs and benefits. He refused to believe that she had got herself into the N.S.A.’s systems, only to allow herself to be outwitted by the splenetic bulldog standing in front of him.
“I think you’re jumping to conclusions,” he said.
“Dream on, dude. But you heard me use the word ‘really’ just then. Some word, hey? Can be used in all sorts of ways. I don’t really drink in the mornings, and yet here I am with a glass in my hand, ha ha! What I’m trying to say is that you might be able to save your girlfriend’s skin if you promise to help me with one or two things.”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“Peachy. Let me begin by asking for a guarantee that you’ll not quote me as your source.”
Blomkvist looked at him in surprise. He had not expected that.
“Are you some kind of whistleblower?”
“God help me, no. I’m a loyal old bloodhound.”
“But you’re not acting officially on behalf of the N.S.A.”
“You could say that right now I have my own agenda. Sort of doing my own thing. Well, how about it?”
“I won’t quote you.”
“Great. I also want to make sure we agree that what I’m going to tell you now will stay between us. You might be wondering why the hell I’m telling a fantastic story to an investigative journalist, only to have him keep his trap shut.”
“Good question.”
“I have my reasons. And I trust you – don’t ask me why. I’m betting that you want to protect your girlfriend, and you think the real story is elsewhere. Maybe I’ll even help you with that, if you’re prepared to cooperate.”
“That remains to be seen,” Blomkvist said stiffly.
“Well, a few days ago we had a data breach on our intranet, our NSANet. You know about that, don’t you?”
“More or less.”
“NSANet was created after 9/11, to improve coordination between our own intelligence services on the one hand and those in other English-speaking countries – known as the Five Eyes. It’s a closed system, with its own routers, portals and bridges, and it’s completely separate from the rest of the Internet. We administer our signals intelligence from there via satellite and fibre-optic cables and that’s also where we have our big databases and store classified analyses and reports – from Moray-rated documents, the least sensitive, all the way up to Umbra Ultra Top Secret, which even the President of the United States isn’t allowed to see. The system is run out of Texas, which by the way is idiotic. But it’s still my baby. Let me tell you, Mikael, I worked my ass off to create it. Hammered away at it day and night so that no fucker could misuse it, never mind hack it. Every single little anomaly sets alarm bells ringing, plus there’s a whole staff of independent experts monitoring the system. These days you can’t do a goddamn thing on the web without leaving footprints. At least that’s the theory. Everything is logged and analysed. You shouldn’t be able to touch a single key without it triggering a notification. But …”
“Somebody d
id.”
“Yes, and maybe I could have made my peace with it. There are always weak spots, we can always do better. Weak spots keep us on our toes. But it wasn’t just the fact that she managed to get in. It was how she did it. She forced our server and created an advanced bridge, and got into the intranet via one of our systems administrators. That alone was a damn masterpiece. But that wasn’t all, not by a long chalk: then the bitch turned herself into a ghost user.”
“A what?”
“A ghost. She flew around in there without anyone noticing.”
“And your alarm bells didn’t go off?”
“That damn genius introduced a Trojan unlike anything else we knew, because otherwise our system would have identified it right away. The malware then kept upgrading her status. She got more and more access and soaked up highly classified passwords and codes and started to link and match records and databases, and suddenly – bingo!”
“Bingo what?”
“She found what she was looking for, and then she stopped wanting to be invisible – now she wanted to show us what she’d found, and only then did my alarm bells go off: exactly when she wanted them to.”
“And what did she find?”
“She found our hypocrisy, Mikael, our double-dealing, and that’s why I’m sitting here with you and not on my fat ass in Maryland, sending the Marines after her. She was like a thief breaking into a house just to point out that it was already full of stolen goods, and the minute we found that out she became truly dangerous – so dangerous that some of our senior people wanted to let her off.”
“But not you.”
“Not me. I wanted to tie her to a lamp post and flay her alive. But I had no choice except to give up my pursuit, and that, Mikael, seriously pissed me off. I may look calm now, but you should have seen me … Jesus!”
The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4) Page 36