The Girl in the Spider's Web

by David Lagercrantz

  August neither nodded nor said a word. But at least his body was no longer rocking.

  “Shall we see if you’re any good at prime number factorization, August? Shall we?”

  August did not budge.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Let’s start with the number 456.”

  August’s eyes were bright but distant, and Salander had the feeling that this idea of hers really was absurd.

  —

  It was cold and windy and there were few people out. But Blomkvist thought the cold was doing him good—he was perking up a bit. He thought of his daughter Pernilla and what she said about writing “for real,” and of Salander of course, and the boy. What were they doing right now?

  On the way up towards Hornsgatspuckeln he stared for a while at a painting hanging in a gallery window which showed cheerful, carefree people at a cocktail party. At that moment it felt, perhaps wrongly, as if it had been ages since he had last stood like that, drink in hand and without a care in the world. Briefly he longed to be somewhere far away. Then he shivered, struck by the feeling that he was being followed. Perhaps it was a consequence of everything he had been through in the last few days. He turned round, but the only person near him was an enchantingly beautiful woman in a bright red coat with flowing dark-blond hair. She smiled at him a little uncertainly. He gave her a tentative smile back and was about to continue on his way. Yet his gaze lingered, as if he were expecting the woman to turn into something more run-of-the-mill at any moment.

  Instead she became more dazzling with each passing second, almost like royalty, a star who had accidentally wandered in among ordinary people, a gorgeous spread in a fashion magazine. The fact was that right then, in that first moment of astonishment, Blomkvist would not have been able to describe her, or provide even one single detail about her appearance.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “No, no,” she said, apparently shy, and there was no getting away from it: her hesitancy was beguiling. She was not a woman you would have thought to be shy. She looked as if she might own the world.

  “Well then, have a nice evening,” he said, and turned again, but he heard her nervously clear her throat.

  “Aren’t you Mikael Blomkvist?” she said, even more uncertain now, looking down at the cobbles in the street.

  “Yes, I am,” he said, and smiled politely, as he would have done for anybody.

  “Well, I just want to say that I’ve always admired you,” she said, raising her head and gazing into his eyes with a long look.

  “I’m flattered. But it’s been a long time since I wrote anything decent. Who are you?”

  “My name is Rebecka Mattson,” she said. “I’ve been living in Switzerland.”

  “And now you’re home for a visit?”

  “Only for a short time, unfortunately. I miss Sweden. I even miss November in Stockholm. But I guess that’s how it is when you’re homesick, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That you miss even the bad bits.”

  “True.”

  “Do you know how I cure it all? I follow the Swedish press. I don’t think I’ve missed a single issue of Millennium in the last few years,” she said.

  He looked at her again, and noticed that every piece of clothing, from the black high-heeled shoes to the checked blue cashmere shawl, was expensive and elegant. Rebecka Mattson did not look like your typical Millennium reader. But there was no reason to be prejudiced, even against rich expatriate Swedes.

  “Do you work there?” he said.

  “I’m a widow.”

  “I see.”

  “Sometimes I get so bored. Were you going somewhere?”

  “I was thinking of having a drink and a bite to eat,” he said, at once regretting his reply. It was too inviting, too predictable. But it was at least true.

  “May I keep you company?” she asked.

  “That would be nice,” he said, sounding unsure. Then she touched his hand—unintentionally, at least that is what he wanted to believe. She still seemed bashful. They walked slowly up Hornsgatspuckeln, past a row of galleries.

  “How nice to be strolling here with you,” she said.

  “It’s a bit unexpected.”

  “So true. It’s not what I was thinking when I woke up this morning.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “That the day would be as dreary as ever.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be such good company,” he said. “I’m pretty much immersed in a story.”

  “Are you working too hard?”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Then you need a little break,” she said, giving him a bewitching smile, filled with longing or some sort of promise. At that moment he thought she seemed familiar, as if he had seen that smile before, but in another form, distorted somehow.

  “Have we met before?” he said.

  “I don’t think so. Except that I’ve seen you a thousand times in pictures, and on TV.”

  “So you’ve never lived in Stockholm?”

  “When I was a little girl.”

  “Where did you live then?”

  She pointed vaguely up Hornsgatan.

  “Those were good times,” she said. “Our father took care of us. I often think about him. I miss him.”

  “Is he no longer alive?”

  “He died much too young.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. Where are we headed?”

  “Well,” he said. “There’s a pub just up Bellmansgatan, the Bishops Arms. I know the owner. It’s quite a nice place.”

  “I’m sure…”

  Once again she had that diffident, shy look on her face, and once again her hand happened to brush against his fingers—this time he wasn’t so sure it was accidental.

  “Perhaps it isn’t fancy enough?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,” she said apologetically. “It’s just that people tend to stare at me. I’ve come across so many bastards in pubs.”

  “I can believe it.”

  “Wouldn’t you…?”

  “What?”

  She looked down at the ground again and blushed. At first he thought he was seeing things. Surely adults don’t blush that way? But Rebecka Mattson from Switzerland, who looked like seven million dollars, went red like a little schoolgirl.

  “Wouldn’t you like to invite me to your place instead, for a glass of wine or two?” she said. “That would be nicer.”

  “Well…”

  He hesitated.

  He badly needed some sleep, to be in good shape tomorrow. Yet he said:

  “Of course. I’ve got a bottle of Barolo in the wine rack,” and for a second he thought something exciting might be about to happen after all, as if he were about to embark on an adventure.

  But his doubt would not subside. At first he could not understand why. He did not normally have a problem with this kind of situation—he had more success than most when it came to women flirting with him. This particular encounter had developed very quickly, but he was not unused to that either. So it was something about the woman herself, wasn’t it?

  Not only was she young and exceptionally beautiful and should have had better things to do than chase after burned-out middle-aged journalists. It was something in her expression, the way she switched between bold and shy, and the physical contact. Everything he had at first found spontaneous increasingly seemed to him to be contrived.

  “How lovely. I won’t stay long; I don’t want to spoil your story,” she said.

  “I’ll take full responsibility for any spoiled stories,” he said, and tried to smile back.

  It was a forced smile and in that instant he caught a strange twitch in her eyes, a sudden icy chill which in a second turned into its very opposite, full of affection and warmth, like an acting exercise. He became more convinced that there was something wrong. But he had no idea what, and did not want his suspicions to show, at least not yet. What was going on? He w
anted to understand.

  They continued on up Bellmansgatan. He was not thinking of taking her back to his place any longer, but he needed time to figure her out. He looked at her again. She really was gorgeous. Yet it occurred to him that it was not her beauty which had first captivated him. It was something else, something more elusive. Just then he saw Rebecka Mattson as a riddle to which he ought to have the answer.

  “A nice part of town, this,” she said.

  “It’s not bad.” He looked up towards the Bishops Arms.

  Diagonally across from the pub, just a bit higher up by the intersection with Tavastgatan, a scrawny, lanky man in a black cap was standing studying a map. He looked like a tourist. He had a brown suitcase in his other hand and white sneakers and a black leather jacket with its fur collar turned up, and under normal circumstances Blomkvist would not have given him a second glance.

  But now he observed that the man’s movements were nervous and unnatural. Perhaps Blomkvist was suspicious to begin with, but the distracted way he was handling the map seemed more and more put on. Now he raised his head and stared straight at Blomkvist and the woman, studying them for a brief second. Then he looked down at his map again, seeming ill at ease, almost trying to hide his face under the cap. The bowed, almost timid head reminded Blomkvist of something, and again he looked into his companion’s dark eyes.

  His look was persistent and intense. She gazed at him with affection, but he did not reciprocate; instead he scrutinized her. Then her expression froze. Only in that moment did Blomkvist smile back at her.

  He smiled because suddenly the penny had dropped.

  CHAPTER 22

  NOVEMBER 23—EVENING

  Salander got up from the table. She did not want to pester August any longer. The boy was under enough pressure as it was and her idea had been crazy from the start.

  One always expects too much of these poor savants, and what August had done was already impressive. She went out onto the terrace again and gingerly felt the area around the bullet wound, which was still aching. She heard a sound behind her, a hasty scratching on paper, so she turned and went back inside. When she saw what August had written, she smiled:

  23 × 3 × 19

  She sat down and said, without looking at him this time, “OK. I’m impressed. But let’s make this a little harder. Have a go at 18,206,927.”

  August was hunched over the table and Salander thought it might have been unkind to throw an eight-digit figure at him right away. But if they were to stand any chance of getting what she needed they would need to go much higher than that. She was not surprised to see August begin to sway nervously back and forth. After a few seconds he leaned forward and wrote on his paper: 9419 × 1933.

  “Good. How about 971,230,541?”

  August wrote, 983 × 991 × 997.

  “That’s great,” Salander said, and on they went.

  —

  Outside the black, cube-like office building in Fort Meade with its reflective glass walls, not far from the big radome with its dish aerials, Casales and Needham were standing in the packed parking lot. Needham was twirling his car keys and looking beyond the electric fence in the direction of the surrounding woods. He should be on his way to the airport, he said, he was late already. But Casales did not want to let him leave. She had her hand on his shoulder and was shaking her head.

  “That’s twisted.”

  “It’s out there,” he said.

  “So every one of the handles we’ve picked up for people in the Spider Society—Thanos, Enchantress, Zemo, Alkhema, Cyclone, and the rest—what they have in common is that they’re all…”

  “Enemies of Wasp in the original comic book series, yes.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “A psychologist would have fun with it.”

  “This kind of fixation must run deep.”

  “I get the feeling it’s real hate,” he said.

  “You will be careful over there, won’t you?”

  “Don’t forget I used to be in a gang.”

  “That was a long time ago, Ed, and many pounds too.”

  “It’s not a question of weight. What is it they say? You can take the boy out of the ghetto…”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “You can never get rid of it. Besides, I’ll have help from the NDRE in Stockholm. They’re itching as much as I am to put that hacker out of action once and for all.”

  “What if Ingram finds out?”

  “That wouldn’t be good. But as you can imagine, I’ve been laying the groundwork. Even exchanged a word or two with O’Connor.”

  “I figured as much. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Ingram’s crew seems to have had full insight into the Swedish police investigation.”

  “They’ve been eavesdropping on the police?”

  “Either that or they have a source, maybe an ambitious soul at Säpo. If I put you together with two of my best hackers, you could do some digging.”

  “Sounds risky.”

  “OK, forget it.”

  “That wasn’t a no.”

  “Thanks, Alona. I’ll send info.”

  “Have a good trip,” she said, and Needham smiled defiantly and got into his car.

  —

  Looking back, Blomkvist could not explain how he had worked it out. It may have been something in the Mattson woman’s expression, something unknown and yet familiar. The perfect harmony of that face may have reminded him of its opposite, and that, together with other hunches and misgivings, gave him the answer. True, he was not yet certain. But he had no doubt that something was very wrong.

  The man now walking off with his map and brown suitcase was the same figure he had seen on the security camera in Saltsjöbaden, and that coincidence was too improbable not to be of some significance, so Blomkvist stood there for a few seconds and thought. Then he turned to the woman who called herself Rebecka Mattson and tried to sound confident:

  “Your friend is heading off.”

  “My friend?” she said, genuinely surprised. “What friend?”

  “Him up there,” he said, pointing at the man’s skeletal back as he sauntered gawkily down Tavastgatan.

  “Are you joking? I don’t know anyone in Stockholm.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I just want to get to know you, Mikael,” she said, fingering her blouse, as if she might undo a button.

  “Stop that!” he said sharply, and was about to lose his temper when she looked at him with such vulnerable, piteous eyes that he was thrown. For a moment he thought he had made a mistake.

  “Are you cross with me?” she said, hurt.

  “No, but…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t trust you,” he said, more bluntly than he intended.

  She smiled sadly and said: “I can’t help feeling that you’re not quite yourself today, are you, Mikael? We’ll have to meet some other time instead.”

  She moved to kiss his cheek so discreetly and quickly that he had no time to stop her. She gave a flirtatious wave of her fingers and walked away up the hill on high heels, so resolutely self-assured that he wondered if he should stop her and fire some probing questions. But he could not imagine that anything would come of it. Instead he decided to follow her.

  It was crazy, but he saw no alternative, so he let her disappear over the brow of the hill and then set off in pursuit. He hurried up to the intersection, sure that she could not have gone far. But there was no sign of her, or of the man either. It was as if the city had swallowed them up. The street was empty, apart from a black BMW backing into a parking space some way down the block, and a man with a goatee wearing an old-fashioned Afghan coat who came walking in his direction on the opposite sidewalk.

  Where had they gone? There were no side streets for them to slip into, no alleys. Had they ducked into a doorway? He walked on down towards Torkel Knutssonsgatan, looking left and
right. Nothing. He passed what had been Samir’s Cauldron, once a favourite locale of his and Berger’s; now called Tabbouli, it served Lebanese food. They might have stepped inside.

  But he could not see how she would have had time to get there, he had been hot on her heels. Where the hell was she? Were she and the man standing somewhere nearby, watching him? Twice he spun around, certain that they were right behind him, and once he gave a start because of an icy feeling that someone was looking at him through a telescopic sight.

  When eventually he gave up and wandered home it felt as though he had escaped a great danger. He had no idea how close to the truth that feeling was, yet his heart was beating fiercely and his throat was dry. He was not easily scared, but tonight he had been frightened by an empty street.

  The only thing he did understand was who he needed to speak to. He had to get hold of Holger Palmgren, Salander’s old guardian. But first he would do his civic duty. If the man he had seen was the person from Balder’s security camera, and there was even a minimal chance that he could be found, the police had to be informed. So he rang Bublanski.

  It was by no means easy to convince the chief inspector. It had not been easy to convince himself. But he still had some residual credibility to fall back on, however many liberties he had taken with the truth of late. Bublanski said that he would send out a unit.

  “Why would he be in your part of town?”

  “I have no idea, but it wouldn’t hurt to see if you could find him, would it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “The best of luck to you in that case.”

  “It’s damn unsatisfactory that the Balder boy is still out there somewhere,” Bublanski said reproachfully.

  “And it’s damn unsatisfactory that there was a leak in your unit,” Blomkvist said.

  “I can tell you, we’ve identified our leak.”

  “You have? That’s fantastic.”