Millennium 03 - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

by Stieg Larsson

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I understand perfectly. You’re an errand boy. So go to your superior and tell him what I’ve said. He’ll understand. Tell him that I have copies of … everything. I can take you all down.”

  “We have to come to an agreement.”

  “This conversation is over. Get out of here. And tell them that next time they should send a grown man for me to discuss things with.”

  Zalachenko turned his head away from his visitor. Sandberg looked at Zalachenko for a moment. Then he shrugged and got up. He was almost at the door when he heard Zalachenko’s voice again.

  “One more thing.”

  Sandberg turned.

  “Salander.”

  “What about her?”

  “She has to disappear.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Sandberg looked so nervous for a second that Zalachenko had to smile, although the pain drilled into his jaw.

  “I see that you milksops are too sensitive to kill her, and that you don’t even have the resources to have it done. Who would do it … you? But she has to disappear. Her testimony has to be declared invalid. She has to be committed to a mental institution for life.”

  Salander heard footsteps in the corridor. She had never heard those footsteps before.

  Her door had been open all evening and the nurses had been in to check on her every ten minutes. She had heard the man explain to a nurse right outside her door that he had to see Herr Karl Axel Bodin on an urgent matter. She had heard him offering his I.D., but no words were exchanged that gave her any clue as to who he was or what sort of I.D. he had.

  The nurse had asked him to wait while she went to see whether Herr Bodin was awake. Salander concluded that his I.D., whatever it said, must have been persuasive.

  She heard the nurse go down the corridor to the left. It took her 17 steps to reach the room, and the male visitor took 14 steps to cover the same distance. That gave an average of 15.5 steps. She estimated the length of a step at 60 centimetres, which multiplied by 15.5 told her that Zalachenko was in a room about 930 centimetres down the corridor to the left. O.K., approximately ten metres. She estimated that the width of her room was about five metres, which should mean that Zalachenko’s room was two doors down from hers.

  According to the green numerals on the digital clock on her bedside cabinet, the visit lasted precisely nine minutes.

  *

  Zalachenko lay awake for a long time after the man who called himself Jonas Sandberg had left. He assumed that it was not his real name; in his experience Swedish amateur spies had a real obsession with using false names even when it was not in the least bit necessary. In which case Sandberg, or whatever the hell his name was, was the first indication that Zalachenko’s predicament had come to the attention of the Section. Considering the media attention, this would have been hard to avoid. But the visit did confirm that his predicament was a matter of anxiety to them. As well it might be.

  He weighed the pros and cons, lined up the possibilities, and rejected various options. He was fully aware that everything had gone about as badly as it could have. In a well-ordered world he would be at home in Gosseberga now, Niedermann would be safely out of the country, and Salander would be buried in a hole in the ground. Despite the fact that he had a reasonable grasp of what had happened, for the life of him he could not comprehend how she had managed to dig herself out of Niedermann’s trench, make her way to his farm, and damn near destroy him with two blows of an axe. She was extraordinarily resourceful.

  On the other hand he understood quite well what had happened to Niedermann, and why he had run for his life instead of staying to finish Salander off. He knew that something was not quite right in Niedermann’s head, that he saw visions – ghosts even. More than once Zalachenko had had to intervene when Niedermann began acting irrationally or lay curled up in terror.

  This worried Zalachenko. He was convinced that, since Niedermann had not yet been captured, he must have been acting rationally during the twenty-four hours since his flight from Gosseberga. Probably he would go to Tallinn, where he would seek protection among contacts in Zalachenko’s criminal empire. What worried him in the short term was that he could never predict when Niedermann might be struck by his mental paralysis. If it happened while he was trying to escape, he would make mistakes, and if he made mistakes he would end up in prison. He would never surrender voluntarily, which meant that policemen would die and Niedermann probably would as well.

  This thought upset Zalachenko. He did not want Niedermann to die. Niedermann was his son. But regrettable as it was, Niedermann must not be captured alive. He had never been arrested, and Zalachenko could not predict how he would react under interrogation. He doubted that Niedermann would be able to keep quiet, as he should. So it would be a good thing if he were killed by the police. He would grieve for his son, but the alternative was worse. If Niedermann talked, Zalachenko himself would have to spend the rest of his life in prison.

  But it was now forty-eight hours since Niedermann had fled, and he had not yet been caught. That was good. It was an indication that Niedermann was functioning, and a functioning Niedermann was invincible.

  In the long term there was another worry. He wondered how Niedermann would get along on his own, without his father there to guide him. Over the years he had noticed that if he stopped giving instructions or gave Niedermann too much latitude to make his own decisions, he would slip into an indolent state of indecision.

  Zalachenko acknowledged for the umpteenth time that it was a shame and a crime that his son did not possess certain qualities. Ronald Niedermann was without doubt a very talented person who had physical attributes to make him a formidable and feared individual. He was also an excellent and cold-blooded organizer. His problem was that he utterly lacked the instinct to lead. He always needed somebody to tell him what he was supposed to be organizing.

  But for the time being all this lay outside Zalachenko’s control. Right now he had to focus on himself. His situation was precarious, perhaps more precarious than ever before.

  He did not think that Advokat Thomasson’s visit earlier in the day had been particularly reassuring. Thomasson was and remained a corporate lawyer, and no matter how effective he was in that respect, he would not be a great support in this other business.

  And then there had been the visit of Jonas Sandberg, or whatever his name was. Sandberg offered a considerably stronger lifeline. But that lifeline could also be a trap. He had to play his cards right, and he would have to take control of the situation. Control was everything.

  In the end he had his own resources to fall back on. For the moment he needed medical attention, but in a couple of days, maybe a week, he would have regained his strength. If things came to a head, he might have only himself to rely on. That meant that he would have to disappear, from right under the noses of the policemen circling around him. He would need a hideout, a passport, and some cash. Thomasson could provide him with all that. But first he would have to get strong enough to make his escape.

  At 1.00 a.m. the night nurse looked in. He pretended to be asleep. When she closed the door he arduously sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He sat still for while, testing his sense of balance. Then he cautiously put his left foot down on the floor. Luckily the axe blow had struck his already crippled right leg. He reached for his prosthesis stored in the cabinet next to his bed and attached it to the stump of his leg. Then he stood up, keeping his weight on his uninjured leg before trying to stand on the other. As he shifted his weight a sharp pain shot through his right leg.

  He gritted his teeth and took a step. He would need crutches, and he was sure that the hospital would offer him some soon. He braced himself against the wall and limped over to the door. It took him several minutes, and he had to stop after each step to deal with the pain.

  He rested on one leg as he pushed open the door a crack and peered out into the corridor. He did not see any
one, so he stuck his head out a little further. He heard faint voices to the left and turned to look. The night nurses were at their station about twenty metres down on the other side of the corridor.

  He turned his head to the right and saw the exit at the other end.

  Earlier in the day he had enquired about Lisbeth Salander’s condition. He was, after all, her father. The nurses obviously had been instructed not to discuss other patients. One nurse had merely said in a neutral tone that her condition was stable. But she had unconsciously glanced to her left.

  In one of the rooms between his own and the exit was Lisbeth Salander.

  He carefully closed the door, limped back to the bed, and detached his prosthesis. He was drenched in sweat when he finally slipped under the covers.

  Inspector Holmberg returned to Stockholm at lunchtime on Sunday. He was hungry and exhausted. He took the tunnelbana to City Hall, walked to police headquarters on Bergsgatan, and went up to Inspector Bublanski’s office. Modig and Andersson had already arrived. Bublanski had called the meeting on Sunday because he knew that preliminary investigation leader Richard Ekström was busy elsewhere.

  “Thanks for coming in,” said Bublanski. “I think it’s time we had a discussion in peace and quiet to try to make sense of this mess. Jerker, have you got anything new?”

  “Nothing I haven’t already told you on the phone. Zalachenko isn’t budging one millimetre. He’s innocent of everything and has nothing to say. Just that—”

  “Yes?”

  “Sonja, you were right. He’s one of the nastiest people I’ve ever met. It might sound stupid to say that. Policemen aren’t supposed to think in those terms, but there’s something really scary beneath his calculating facade.”

  “O.K.” Bublanski cleared his throat. “What have we got? Sonja?”

  She smiled weakly.

  “The private investigators won this round. I can’t find Zalachenko in any public register, but a Karl Axel Bodin seems to have been born in 1942 in Uddevalla. His parents were Marianne and Georg Bodin. They died in an accident in 1946. Karl Axel Bodin was brought up by an uncle living in Norway. So there is no record of him until the ’70s, when he moved back to Sweden. Mikael Blomkvist’s story that he’s a G.R.U. agent who defected from the Soviet Union seems impossible to verify, but I’m inclined to think he’s right.”

  “Alright. And what does that mean?”

  “The obvious explanation is that he was given a false identity. It must have been done with the consent of the authorities.”

  “You mean the Security Police, Säpo?”

  “That’s what Blomkvist claims. But exactly how it was done I don’t know. It presupposes that his birth certificate and a number of other documents were falsified and then slipped into our public records. I don’t dare to comment on the legal ramifications of such an action. It probably depends on who made the decision. But for it to be legal, the decision would have to have been made at senior government level.”

  Silence descended in Bublanski’s office as the four criminal inspectors considered these implications.

  “O.K.,” said Bublanski. “The four of us are just dumb police officers. If people in government are mixed up in this, I don’t intend to interrogate them.”

  “Hmm,” said Andersson, “this could lead to a constitutional crisis. In the United States you can cross-examine members of the government in a normal court of law. In Sweden you have to do it through a constitutional committee.”

  “But we could ask the boss,” said Holmberg.

  “Ask the boss?” said Bublanski.

  “Thorbjörn Fälldin. He was Prime Minister at the time.”

  “O.K., we’ll just cruise up to wherever he lives and ask the former Prime Minister if he faked identity documents for a defecting Russian spy. I don’t think so.”

  “Fälldin lives in Ås, in Härnösand. I grew up a few miles from there. My father’s a member of the Centre Party and knows Fälldin well. I’ve met him several times, both as a kid and as an adult. He’s a very approachable person.”

  Three inspectors gave Holmberg an astonished look.

  “You know Fälldin?” Bublanski said dubiously.

  Holmberg nodded. Bublanski pursed his lips.

  “To tell the truth,” said Holmberg, “it would solve a number of issues if we could get the former Prime Minister to give us a statement – at least we’d know where we stand in all this. I could go up there and talk to him. If he won’t say anything, so be it. But if he does, we might save ourselves a lot of time.”

  Bublanski weighed the suggestion. Then he shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that both Modig and Andersson were nodding thoughtfully.

  “Holmberg … it’s nice of you to offer, but I think we’ll put that idea on the back burner for now. So, back to the case. Sonja.”

  “According to Blomkvist, Zalachenko came here in 1976. As far as I can work out, there’s only one person he could have got that information from.”

  “Gunnar Björck,” said Andersson.

  “What has Björck told us?” Holmberg asked.

  “Not much. He says it’s all classified and that he can’t discuss anything without permission from his superiors.”

  “And who are his superiors?”

  “He won’t say.”

  “So what’s going to happen to him?”

  “I arrested him for violation of the prostitution laws. We have excellent documentation in Dag Svensson’s notes. Ekström was most upset, but since I had already filed a report, he could get himself into trouble if he closes the preliminary investigation,” Andersson said.

  “I see. Violation of the prostitution laws. That might result in a fine of ten times his daily income.”

  “Probably. But we have him in the system and can call him in again for questioning.”

  “But now we’re getting a little too close to poaching on Säpo’s preserves. That might cause a bit of turbulence.”

  “The problem is that none of this could have happened if Säpo weren’t involved somehow. It’s possible that Zalachenko really was a Russian spy who defected and was granted political asylum. It’s also possible that he worked for Säpo as an expert or source or whatever title you want to give him, and that there was good reason to offer him a false identity and anonymity. But there are three problems. First, the investigation carried out in 1991 that led to Lisbeth Salander being locked away was illegal. Second, Zalachenko’s activities since then have nothing whatsoever to do with national security. Zalachenko is an ordinary gangster who’s probably mixed up in several murders and other criminal activities. And third, there is no doubt that Lisbeth Salander was shot and buried alive on his property in Gosseberga.”

  “Speaking of which, I’d really like to read the infamous report,” said Holmberg.

  Bublanski’s face clouded over.

  “Jerker … this is how it is: Ekström laid claim to it on Friday, and when I asked for it back he said he’d make me a copy, which he never did. Instead he called me and said that he had spoken with the Prosecutor General and there was a problem. According to the P.G., the Top Secret classification means that the report may not be disseminated or copied. The P.G. has called in all copies until the matter is investigated. Which meant that Sonja had to relinquish the copy she had too.”

  “So we no longer have the report?”

  “No.”

  “Damn,” said Holmberg. “The whole thing stinks.”

  “I know,” said Bublanski. “Worst of all, it means that someone is acting against us, and acting very quickly and efficiently. The report was what finally put us on the right track.”

  “So we have to work out who’s acting against us,” said Holmberg.

  “Just a moment,” said Modig. “We also have Peter Teleborian. He contributed to our investigation by profiling Lisbeth Salander.”

  “Exactly,” said Bublanski in a darker tone of voice. “And what did he say?”

  “He was very conc
erned about her safety and wished her well. But when the discussion was over, he said that she was lethally dangerous and might well resist arrest. We based a lot of our thinking on what he told us.”

  “And he got Hans Faste all worked up,” said Holmberg. “Have we heard anything from Faste, by the way?”

  “He took some time off,” Bublanski replied curtly. “The question now is how we should proceed.”

  They spent the next two hours discussing their options. The only practical decision they made was that Modig should return to Göteborg the next day to see whether Salander had anything to say. When they finally broke up, Modig and Andersson walked together down to the garage.

  “I was just thinking …” Andersson stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just that when we talked to Teleborian, you were the only one in the group who offered any opposition when he answered our questions.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well … er … good instincts,” he said.

  Andersson was not known for handing out praise, and it was definitely the first time he had ever said anything positive or encouraging to Modig. He left her standing by her car in astonishment.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sunday, 10.iv

  Blomkvist had spent Saturday night with Berger. They lay in bed and talked through the details of the Zalachenko story. Blomkvist trusted Berger implicitly and was never for a second inhibited by the fact that she was going to be working for a rival paper. Nor had Berger any thought of taking the story with her. It was Millennium’s scoop, even though she may have felt a certain frustration that she was not going to be the editor of that particular issue. It would have been a fine ending to her years at Millennium.

  They also discussed the future structure of the magazine. Berger was determined to retain her shareholding in Millennium and to remain on the board, even if she had no say over the magazine’s contents.

  “Give me a few years at the daily and then, who knows? Maybe I’ll come back to Millennium before I retire,” she said.

  And as for their own complicated relationship, why should it be any different? Except that of course they would not be meeting so often. It would be as it was in the ’80s, before Millennium was founded and when they worked in separate offices.