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

by Stieg Larsson

  She got up from the bed and went to the bathroom where she looked in the mirror. She was no longer limping. She ran her fingers over her hip where the wound had healed to a scar. She twisted her arms and stretched her left shoulder back and forth. It was tight, but she was more or less healed. She tapped herself on the head. She supposed that her brain had not been too greatly damaged after being perforated by a bullet with a full-metal jacket.

  She had been extraordinarily lucky.

  Until she had access to a computer, she had spent her time trying to work out how to escape from this locked room at Sahlgrenska.

  Then Dr Jonasson and Blomkvist had upset her plans by smuggling in her Palm. She had read Blomkvist’s articles and brooded over what he had to say. She had done a risk assessment and pondered his plan, weighing her chances. She had decided that for once she was going to do as he advised. She would test the system. Blomkvist had convinced her that she had nothing to lose, and he was offering her a chance to escape in a very different way. If the plan failed, she would simply have to plan her escape from St Stefan’s or whichever other nuthouse.

  What actually convinced her to decide to play the game Blomkvist’s way was her desire for revenge.

  She forgave nothing.

  Zalachenko, Björck and Bjurman were dead.

  Teleborian, on the other hand, was alive.

  So too was her brother, the so-called Ronald Niedermann, even though in reality he was not her problem. Certainly, he had helped in the attempt to murder and bury her, but he seemed peripheral. If I run into him sometime, we’ll see, but until such time he’s the police’s problem.

  Yet Blomkvist was right: behind the conspiracy there had to be others not known to her who had contributed to the shaping of her life. She had to put names and social security numbers to these people.

  So she had decided to go along with Blomkvist’s plan. That was why she had written the plain, unvarnished truth about her life in a cracklingly terse autobiography of forty pages. She had been quite precise. Everything she had written was true. She had accepted Blomkvist’s reasoning that she had already been so savaged in the Swedish media by such grotesque libels that a little sheer nonsense could not possibly further damage her reputation.

  The autobiography was a fiction in the sense that she had not, of course, told the whole truth. She had no intention of doing that.

  She went back to bed and pulled the covers over her.

  She felt a niggling irritation that she could not identify. She reached for a notebook, given to her by Giannini and hardly used. She turned to the first page, where she had written:

  She had spent several weeks in the Caribbean last winter working herself into a frenzy over Fermat’s theorem. When she came back to Sweden, before she got mixed up in the hunt for Zalachenko, she had kept on playing with the equations. What was maddening was that she had the feeling she had seen a solution … that she had discovered a solution.

  But she could not remember what it was.

  Not being able to remember something was a phenomenon unknown to Salander. She had tested herself by going on the Net and picking out random H.T.M.L. codes that she glanced at, memorized, and reproduced exactly.

  She had not lost her photographic memory, which she had always considered a curse.

  Everything was running as usual in her head.

  Save for the fact that she thought she recalled seeing a solution to Fermat’s theorem, but she could not remember how, when, or where.

  The worst thing was that she did not have the least interest in it. Fermat’s theorem no longer fascinated her. That was ominous. That was just the way she usually functioned. She would be fascinated by a problem, but as soon as she had solved it, she lost interest.

  That was how she felt about Fermat. He was no longer a demon riding on her shoulder, demanding her attention and vexing her intellect. It was an ordinary formula, some squiggles on a piece of paper, and she felt no desire at all to engage with it.

  This bothered her. She put down the notebook.

  She should get some sleep.

  Instead she took out her Palm again and went on the Net. She thought for a moment and then went into Armansky’s hard drive, which she had not done since she got the hand-held. Armansky was working with Blomkvist, but she had not had any particular need to read what he was up to.

  Absentmindedly she read his email.

  She found the assessment Rosin had carried out of Berger’s house. She could scarcely believe what she was reading.

  Erika Berger has a stalker.

  She found a message from Susanne Linder, who had evidently stayed at Berger’s house the night before and who had emailed a report late that night. She looked at the time of the message. It had been sent just before 3.00 in the morning and reported Berger’s discovery that diaries, letters and photographs, along with a video of a personal nature, had been stolen from a chest of drawers in her bedroom.

  After discussing the matter with Fru Berger, we determined that the theft must have occurred during the time she was at Nacka hospital. That left a period of c. 2.5 hours when the house was empty, and the defective alarm from N.I.P. was not switched on. At all other times either Berger or David were in the house until the theft was discovered.

  Conclusion: Berger’s stalker remained in her area and was able to observe that she was picked up by a taxi, also possibly that she was injured. The stalker then took the opportunity to get into the house.

  Salander updated her download of Armansky’s hard drive and then switched off the Palm, lost in thought. She had mixed feelings.

  She had no reason to love Berger. She remembered still the humiliation she had felt when she saw her walk off down Hornsgatan with Blomkvist the day before New Year’s Eve a year and a half ago.

  It had been the stupidest moment of her life and she would never again allow herself those sorts of feelings.

  She remembered the terrible hatred she had felt, and her desire to run after them and hurt Berger.

  Embarrassing.

  She was cured.

  But she had no reason to sympathize with Berger.

  She wondered what the video “of a personal nature” contained. She had her own film of a personal nature which showed how Advokat Bastard Bjurman had raped her. And it was now in Blomkvist’s keeping. She wondered how she would have reacted if someone had broken into her place and stolen the D.V.D. Which Blomkvist by definition had actually done, even though his motives were not to harm her.

  Hmm. An awkward situation.

  Berger had not been able to sleep on Thursday night. She hobbled restlessly back and forth while Linder kept a watchful eye on her. Her anxiety lay like a heavy fog over the house.

  At 2.30 Linder managed to talk Berger into getting into bed to rest, even if she did not sleep. She heaved a sigh of relief when Berger closed her bedroom door. She opened her laptop and summarized the situation in an email to Armansky. She had scarcely sent the message before she heard that Berger was up and moving about again.

  At 7.30 she made Berger call S.M.P. and take the day off sick. Berger had reluctantly agreed and then fallen asleep on the living-room sofa in front of the boarded-up picture window. Linder spread a blanket over her. Then she made some coffee and called Armansky, explaining her presence at the house and that she had been called in by Rosin.

  “Stay there with Berger,” Armansky told her, “and get a couple of hours’ sleep yourself.”

  “I don’t know how we’re going to bill this—”

  “We’ll work that out later.”

  Berger slept until 2.30. She woke up to find Linder sleeping in a recliner on the other side of the living room.

  Figuerola slept late on Friday morning; she did not have time for her morning run. She blamed Blomkvist for this state of affairs as she showered and then rousted him out of bed.

  Blomkvist drove to Millennium, where everyone was surprised to see him up so early. He mumbled something, made some coffee, and called
Eriksson and Cortez into his office. They spent three hours going over the articles for the themed issue and keeping track of the book’s progress.

  “Dag’s book went to the printer yesterday,” Eriksson said. “We’re going down the perfect-bound trade paperback route.”

  “The special issue is going to be called The Lisbeth Salander Story,” Cortez said. “They’re bound to move the date of the trial, but at the moment it’s set for Wednesday, July 13. The magazine will be printed by then, but we haven’t fixed on a distribution date yet. You can decide nearer the time.”

  “Good. That leaves the Zalachenko book, which right now is a nightmare. I’m calling it The Section. The first half is basically what’s in the magazine. It begins with the murders of Dag and Mia, and then follows the hunt for Salander first, then Zalachenko, and then Niedermann. The second half will be everything that we know about the Section.”

  “Mikael, even if the printer breaks every record for us, we’re going to have to send them the camera-ready copy by the end of this month – at the latest,” Eriksson said. “Christer will need a couple of days for the layout, the typesetter, say, a week. So we have about two weeks left for the text. I don’t know how we’re going to make it.”

  “We won’t have time to dig up the whole story,” Blomkvist conceded. “But I don’t think we could manage that even if we had a whole year. What we’re going to do in this book is to state what happened. If we don’t have a source for something, then I’ll say so. If we’re flying kites, we’ll make that clear. So, we’re going to write about what happened, what we can document, and what we believe to have happened.”

  “That’s pretty vague,” Cortez said.

  Blomkvist shook his head. “If I say that a Säpo agent broke into my apartment and I can document it – and him – with a video, then it’s documented. If I say that he did it on behalf of the Section, then that’s speculation, but in the light of all the facts we’re setting out, it’s a reasonable speculation. Does that make sense?”

  “It does.”

  “I won’t have time to write all the missing pieces myself. I have a list of articles here that you, Henry, will have to cobble together. It corresponds to about fifty pages of book text. Malin, you’re back-up for Henry, just as when we were editing Dag’s book. All three of our names will be on the cover and title page. Is that alright with you two?”

  “That’s fine,” Eriksson said. “But we have other urgent problems.”

  “Such as?”

  “While you were concentrating on the Zalachenko story, we had a hell of a lot of work to do here—”

  “You’re saying I wasn’t available?”

  Eriksson nodded.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to apologize. We all know that when you’re in the throes of a story, nothing else matters. But that won’t work for the rest of us, and it definitely doesn’t work for me. Erika had me to lean on. I have Henry, and he’s an ace, but he’s putting in an equal amount of time on your story. Even if we count you in, we’re still two people short in editorial.”

  “Two?”

  “And I’m not Erika. She had a routine that I can’t compete with. I’m still learning this job. Monika is working her backside off. And so is Lottie. Nobody has a moment to stop and think.”

  “This is all temporary. As soon as the trial begins—”

  “No, Mikael. It won’t be over then. When the trial begins, it’ll be sheer hell. Remember what it was like during the Wennerström affair. We won’t see you for three months while you hop from one T. V. interview sofa to another.”

  Blomkvist sighed. “What do you suggest?”

  “If we’re going to run Millennium effectively during the autumn, we’re going to need new blood. Two people at least, maybe three. We just don’t have the editorial capacity for what we’re trying to do, and …”

  “And?”

  “And I’m not sure that I’m ready to do it.”

  “I hear you, Malin.”

  “I mean it. I’m a damn good assistant editor – it’s a piece of cake with Erika as your boss. We said that we were going to try this over the summer … well, we’ve tried it. I’m not a good editor-in-chief.”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” Cortez said.

  Eriksson shook her head.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” Blomkvist said, “But remember that it’s been an extreme situation.”

  Eriksson smiled at him sadly. “You could take this as a complaint from the staff,” she said.

  The operations unit of Constitutional Protection spent Friday trying to get a handle on the information they had received from Blomkvist. Two of their team had moved into a temporary office at Fridhemsplan, where all the documentation was being assembled. It was inconvenient because the police intranet was at headquarters, which meant that they had to walk back and forth between the two buildings several times a day. Even if it was only a ten-minute walk, it was tiresome. By lunchtime they already had extensive documentation of the fact that both Fredrik Clinton and Hans von Rottinger had been associated with the Security Police in the ’60s and early ’70s.

  Von Rottinger came originally from the military intelligence service and worked for several years in the office that coordinated military defence with the Security Police. Clinton’s background was in the air force and he began working for the Personal Protection Unit of the Security Police in 1967.

  They had both left S.I.S.: Clinton in 1971 and von Rottinger in 1973. Clinton had gone into business as a management consultant, and von Rottinger had entered the civil service to do investigations for the Swedish Atomic Energy Agency. He was based in London.

  It was late afternoon by the time Figuerola was able to convey to Edklinth with some certainty the discovery that Clinton’s and von Rottinger’s careers after they left S.I.S. were falsifications. Clinton’s career was hard to follow. Being a consultant for industry can mean almost anything at all, and a person in that role is under no obligation to report his activities to the government. From his tax returns it was clear that he made good money, but his clients were for the most part corporations with head offices in Switzerland or Liechtenstein, so it was not easy to prove that his work was a fabrication.

  Von Rottinger, on the other hand, had never set foot in the office in London where he supposedly worked. In 1973 the office building where he had claimed to be working was in fact torn down and replaced by an extension to King’s Cross Station. No doubt someone made a blunder when the cover story was devised. In the course of the day Figuerola’s team had interviewed a number of people now retired from the Swedish Atomic Energy Agency. Not one of them had heard of Hans von Rottinger.

  “Now we know,” Edklinth said. “We just have to discover what it was they really were doing.”

  Figuerola said: “What do we do about Blomkvist?”

  “In what sense?”

  “We promised to give him feedback if we uncovered anything about Clinton and von Rottinger.”

  Edklinth thought about it. “He’s going to be digging up that stuff himself if he keeps at it for a while. It’s better that we stay on good terms with him. You can give him what you’ve found. But use your judgement.”

  Figuerola promised that she would. They spent a few minutes making arrangements for the weekend. Two of Figuerola’s team were going to keep working. She would be taking the weekend off.

  Then she clocked out and went to the gym at St Eriksplan, where she spent two hours driving herself hard to catch up on lost training time. She was home by 7.00. She showered, made a simple dinner, and turned on the T. V. to listen to the news. But then she got restless and put on her running kit. She paused at the front door to think. Bloody Blomkvist. She flipped open her mobile and called his Ericsson.

  “We found out a certain amount about von Rottinger and Clinton.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I will if you come over.”

  “Sounds like blackmail,” Blomkvist s
aid.

  “I’ve just changed into jogging things to work off a little of my surplus energy,” Figuerola said. “Should I go now or should I wait for you?”

  “Would it be O.K. if I came after 9.00?” “That’ll be fine.”

  At 8.00 on Friday evening Salander had a visit from Dr Jonasson. He sat in the visitor’s chair and leaned back.

  “Are you going to examine me?” Salander said.

  “No. Not tonight.”

  “O.K.”

  “We studied all your notes today and we’ve informed the prosecutor that we’re prepared to discharge you.”

  “I understand.”

  “They want to take you over to the prison in Göteborg tonight.”

  “So soon?”

  He nodded. “Stockholm is making noises. I said I had a number of final tests to run on you tomorrow and that I couldn’t discharge you until Sunday.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Don’t know. I was just annoyed they were being so pushy.”

  Salander actually smiled. Given a few years she would probably be able to make a good anarchist out of Dr Anders Jonasson. In any case he had a penchant for civil disobedience on a private level.

  “Fredrik Clinton,” Blomkvist said, staring at the ceiling above Figuerola’s bed.

  “If you light that cigarette I’ll stub it out in your navel,” Figuerola said.

  Blomkvist looked in surprise at the cigarette he had extracted from his jacket.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Could I borrow your balcony?”

  “As long as you brush your teeth afterwards.”

  He tied a sheet around his waist. She followed him to the kitchen and filled a large glass with cold water. Then she leaned against the door frame by the balcony.

  “Clinton first?”

  “If he’s still alive, he’s the link to the past.”

  “He’s dying, he needs a new kidney and spends a lot of his time in dialysis or some other treatment.”

  “But he’s alive. We should contact him and put the question to him directly. Maybe he’ll talk.”