The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (20 page)

“Yes?”

“It’s this: if I’m not present, you’re not to say a single word to the police, no matter what they ask you. Even if they provoke you or accuse you. Can you promise me?”

“No problem.”

Gullberg was completely exhausted after all his efforts on Monday. He did not wake until 9:00 on Tuesday morning, four hours later than usual. He went to the bathroom to shower and brush his teeth. He stood for a long time looking at his face in the mirror before he turned off the light and went to get dressed. He chose the only clean shirt he had left in the brown briefcase and put on a brown-patterned tie.

He went down to the hotel’s breakfast room and had a cup of black coffee and a slice of wheat toast with cheese and a little marmalade on it. He drank a glass of mineral water.

Then he went to the hotel lobby and called Clinton’s mobile from the public telephone.

“It’s me. Status report?”

“A lot of BS.”

“Fredrik, can you handle this?”

“Yes; it’s like the old days. But it’s a shame von Rottinger isn’t still with us. He was better at planning operations than I.”

“You were equally good. You could have switched places at any time. Which you quite often did.”

“It’s a matter of intuition. He was always a little sharper.”

“Tell me, how are you all doing?”

“Sandberg is brighter than we thought. We brought in some external help in the form of Mårtensson. He’s a gofer, but he’s usable. We have taps on Blomkvist’s landline and mobile. We’ll take care of Giannini’s and the
Millennium
office phones today. We’re looking at the blueprints for all the relevant offices and apartments. We’ll be going in as soon as it can be done.”

“First thing is to locate all the copies—”

“I’ve already done that. We’ve had some unbelievable luck. Giannini called Blomkvist this morning. She actually asked him how many copies
there were in circulation, and it turned out that Blomkvist only has one. Berger copied the report, but she sent the copy on to Bublanski.”

“Good. No time to waste.”

“I know. But it has to be done in one fell swoop. If we don’t get all the copies simultaneously, it won’t work.”

“True.”

“It’s a bit complicated, since Giannini left for Göteborg this morning. I’ve sent a team of externals to tail her. They’re flying down right now.”

“Good.” Gullberg could not think of anything more to say. “Thanks, Fredrik,” he said at last.

“My pleasure. This is a lot more fun than sitting around waiting for a kidney.”

They said goodbye. Gullberg paid his hotel bill and went out to the street. The ball was in motion. Now it was just a matter of mapping out the moves.

He started by walking to the Elite Park Avenue Hotel, where he asked to use the fax machine. He didn’t want to do it at the hotel where he had been staying. He faxed copies of the letters he had written the day before. Then he went out onto Avenyn to look for a taxi. He stopped at a trash can and tore up the copies of his letters.

Giannini was with Prosecutor Jervas for fifteen minutes. She wanted to know what charges the prosecutor intended to bring against Salander, but she soon realized that Jervas was not yet sure of her plan.

“Right now I’ll settle for charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder. I refer to the fact that Salander hit her father with an axe. I take it that you will plead self-defence?”

“Maybe.”

“To be honest with you, Niedermann is my priority at the moment.”

“I understand.”

“I’ve been in touch with the prosecutor general. Discussions are ongoing as to whether to combine all the charges against your client under the jurisdiction of a prosecutor in Stockholm and tie them in with what happened here.”

“I assumed that the case would be handled in Stockholm,” Giannini said.

“Fine. But I need an opportunity to question the girl. When can we do that?”

“I have a report from her doctor, Anders Jonasson. He says that Salander won’t be in a condition to participate in an interview for several days yet. Apart from her injuries, she’s on powerful painkillers.”

“I received a similar report, and as you no doubt realize, this is frustrating. I repeat that my priority is Niedermann. Your client says that she doesn’t know where he’s hiding.”

“She doesn’t know Niedermann at all. She happened to identify him and track him down to Gosseberga, to Zalachenko’s farm.”

“We’ll meet again as soon as your client is strong enough to be interviewed,” Jervas said.

Gullberg had a bunch of flowers in his hand when he got into the elevator at Sahlgrenska hospital at the same time as a short-haired woman in a dark jacket. He held the elevator door open for her and let her go first to the reception desk on the ward.

“My name is Annika Giannini. I’m a lawyer and I’d like to see my client again. Lisbeth Salander.”

Gullberg turned his head very slowly and looked in surprise at the woman. He glanced down at her briefcase as the nurse checked Giannini’s ID and consulted a list.

“Room twelve,” the nurse said.

“Thank you. I know the way.” She walked off down the corridor.

“May I help you?”

“Thank you, yes. I’d like to leave these flowers for Karl Axel Bodin.”

“He’s not allowed visitors.”

“I know. I just want to leave the flowers.”

“We’ll take care of them.”

Gullberg had brought the flowers with him mainly as an excuse. He wanted to get an idea of how the ward was laid out. He thanked the nurse and followed the sign to the staircase. On the way, he passed Zalachenko’s door, room fourteen according to Jonas Sandberg.

He waited in the stairwell. Through a glass pane in the door he saw the nurse take the bouquet into Zalachenko’s room. When she returned to her station, Gullberg pushed open the door to room fourteen and stepped quickly inside.

“Good morning, Alexander,” he said.

Zalachenko looked up in surprise at his unannounced visitor. “I thought you’d be dead by now,” he said.

“Not quite yet.”

“What do you want?”

“What do you think?”

Gullberg pulled up a chair and sat down.

“Probably to see me dead.”

“Well, that’s gratitude for you. How could you be so fucking stupid? We give you a whole new life and you wind up here.”

If Zalachenko could have laughed he would have. In his opinion, the Swedish Security Police were amateurs. That applied to Gullberg, and equally to Björck. Not to mention that complete idiot Bjurman.

“Once again we have to haul you out of the furnace.”

The expression did not sit well with Zalachenko, who thought back to his gasoline bomb attack.

“Spare me the lectures. Just get me out of this mess.”

“That’s what I wanted to discuss with you.”

Gullberg put his briefcase on his lap, took out a notebook, and turned to a blank page. Then he gave Zalachenko a long, searching look.

“There’s one thing I’m curious about . . . were you really going to betray us after all we’ve done for you?”

“What do you think?”

“It depends how crazy you are.”

“Don’t call me crazy. I’m a survivor. I do what I have to do to survive.”

Gullberg shook his head. “No, Alexander, you do what you do because you’re evil and rotten. You wanted a message from the Section. I’m here to deliver it. We’re not going to lift a finger to help you this time.”

All of a sudden Zalachenko looked uncertain. He studied Gullberg, trying to figure out if this was some puzzling bluff.

“You don’t have a choice,” he said.

“There’s always a choice,” Gullberg said.

“I’m going to—”

“You’re not going to do anything at all.”

Gullberg took a deep breath, unzipped the outside pocket of his case, and pulled out a 9mm Smith & Wesson with a gold-plated butt. The revolver was a present he had received from British Intelligence twenty-five years earlier as a reward for an invaluable piece of information: the name of a clerical officer at MI5 who in good Philby style was working for the Russians.

Zalachenko looked astonished. Then he burst out laughing.

“And what are you going to do with that? Shoot me? You’ll spend the rest of your miserable life in prison.”

“I don’t think so.”

Zalachenko was suddenly very unsure whether Gullberg was bluffing.

“There will be a scandal of enormous proportions.”

“Again, I don’t think so. There’ll be a few headlines, but in a week nobody will even remember the name Zalachenko.”

Zalachenko’s eyes narrowed.

“You motherfucker,” Gullberg said then with such coldness in his voice that Zalachenko froze.

Gullberg squeezed the trigger and put the bullet right in the centre of Zalachenko’s forehead just as the patient was starting to swing his prosthesis over the edge of the bed. Zalachenko was thrown back onto the pillow. His good leg kicked four, five times before he was still. Gullberg saw a red flower-shaped splatter on the wall behind the bed. He became aware that his ears were ringing after the shot and he rubbed his left one with his free hand.

Then he stood up, put the muzzle to Zalachenko’s temple, and squeezed the trigger twice. He wanted to be sure this time that the bastard really was dead.

Salander sat up with a start the instant she heard the first shot. Pain stabbed through her shoulder. When the next two shots came she tried to get her legs over the edge of the bed.

Giannini had been there for only a few minutes. She sat paralysed and tried to work out which direction the sharp reports had come from. She could tell from Salander’s reaction that something deadly was brewing.

“Lie still,” she shouted. She put her hand on Salander’s chest and shoved her client down onto the bed.

Then Giannini crossed the room and pulled open the door. She saw two nurses running towards another room two doors away. The first nurse stopped short on the threshold. “No, don’t!” she screamed and then took a step back, colliding with the second nurse.

“He’s got a gun. Run!”

Giannini watched as the two nurses took cover in the room next to Salander’s.

The next moment she saw a thin, grey-haired man in a houndstooth jacket walk into the corridor. He had a gun in his hand. Annika recognized him as the man who had come up in the elevator with her.

Then their eyes met. He appeared confused. He aimed the revolver at her and took a step forward. She pulled her head back in and slammed the door shut, looking around in desperation. A nurses’ table stood right next
to her. She rolled it quickly over to the door and wedged the tabletop under the door handle.

She heard a movement and turned to see Salander just starting to clamber out of bed again. In a few quick steps she crossed the floor, wrapped her arms around her client, and lifted her up. She tore electrodes and IV tubes loose as she carried her to the bathroom and set her on the toilet seat. Then she turned and locked the bathroom door. She dug her mobile out of her jacket pocket and dialled 112.

Gullberg went to Salander’s room and tried the door handle. It was blocked. He couldn’t move it even an inch.

For a moment he stood indecisively outside the door. He knew that the lawyer, Giannini, was in the room, and he wondered if a copy of Björck’s report might be in her briefcase. But he couldn’t get into the room, and he did not have the strength to force the door.

That hadn’t been part of the plan anyway. Clinton would take care of Giannini. Gullberg’s only job was Zalachenko.

He looked around the corridor and saw that he was being watched by nurses, patients, and visitors. He raised the pistol and fired at a picture hanging on the wall. His spectators vanished as if by magic.

He glanced one last time at the door to Salander’s room. Then he walked decisively back to Zalachenko’s room and closed the door. He sat in the guest chair and looked at the Russian defector who had been such an intimate part of his own life for so many years.

He sat still for almost ten minutes before he heard movement in the corridor and was aware that the police had arrived. By now he wasn’t thinking of anything in particular.

Then he raised the revolver one last time, held it to his temple, and squeezed the trigger.

As the situation developed, the futility of attempting suicide in the middle of a hospital became apparent. Gullberg was transported at top speed to the hospital’s trauma unit, where Dr. Jonasson received him and immediately initiated a battery of measures to maintain his vital functions.

For the second time in less than a week Jonasson performed emergency surgery, extracting a full-metal-jacketed bullet from human brain tissue. After a five-hour operation, Gullberg’s condition was critical. But he was still alive.

Yet Gullberg’s injuries were considerably more serious than those Salander had sustained. He hovered between life and death for several days.

Blomkvist was at the Kaffebar on Hornsgatan when he heard on the radio that a sixty-five-year-old unnamed man, suspected of attempting to murder the fugitive Lisbeth Salander, had been shot and killed at Sahlgrenska hospital in Göteborg. He left his coffee untouched, picked up his laptop case, and hurried off towards the editorial offices on Götgatan. He had crossed Mariatorget and was just turning up St. Paulsgatan when his mobile beeped. He answered on the run.

“Blomkvist.”

“Hi, it’s Malin.”

“I heard the news. Do we know who the killer was?”

“Not yet. Henry is chasing it down.”

“I’m on the way in. Be there in five minutes.”

Blomkvist ran into Cortez at the entrance to the
Millennium
offices.

“Ekström’s holding a press conference at 3:00,” Cortez said. “I’m going to Kungsholmen now.”

“What do we know?” Blomkvist shouted after him.

“Ask Malin,” Cortez said, and was gone.

Blomkvist headed into Berger’s—wrong; Eriksson’s—office. She was on the phone and writing furiously on a yellow Post-it. She waved him away. Blomkvist went into the kitchenette and poured coffee with milk into two mugs marked with the logos of the KDU and SSU political parties. When he returned she had just finished her call. He gave her the SSU mug.