The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (48 page)

“To find out what I know and what I intend to do with it.”

“Partly right. But more precisely, we’ve landed in a constitutional crisis. Let me first say that the government has absolutely no hand in this matter. We have been caught napping, without a doubt. I’ve never heard mention of this . . . what you call the Zalachenko club. The minister here has never heard a word about this matter either. Torsten Edklinth, an official high up in SIS who has worked in Säpo for many years, has never heard of it.”

“It’s still not my problem.”

“I appreciate that. What I’d like to know is when you mean to publish your article, and exactly what it is you intend to publish. And this has nothing to do with damage control.”

“Does it not?”

“Herr Blomkvist, the worst possible thing I could do in this situation would be to try to influence the shape or content of your story. Instead, I am going to propose a cooperation.”

“Please explain.”

“Since we have now had confirmation that a conspiracy exists within an exceptionally sensitive part of the administration, I have ordered an investigation.” The PM turned to the minister of justice. “Please explain what the government has directed.”

“It’s very simple,” said the minister of justice. “Torsten Edklinth has been given the task of finding out whether we can confirm this. He is to gather information that can be turned over to the prosecutor general, who in turn must decide whether charges should be brought. It is a very clear instruction. And this evening Edklinth has been reporting on how the investigation is proceeding. We’ve had a long discussion about the constitutional implications—of course we want it to be handled properly.”

“Naturally,” Blomkvist said in a tone that indicated he had scant trust in the prime minister’s assurances.

“The investigation has already reached a sensitive stage. We have not yet identified exactly who is involved. That will take time. And that’s why we sent Inspector Figuerola to invite you to this meeting.”

“It wasn’t exactly an invitation.”

The prime minister frowned and glanced at Figuerola.

“It’s not important,” Blomkvist said. “Her behaviour was exemplary. Please come to the point.”

“We want to know your publication date. This investigation is being conducted in great secrecy. If you publish before Edklinth has completed it, it could be ruined.”

“And when would you like me to publish? After the next election, I suppose?”

“You decide that for yourself. It’s not something I can influence. Just tell us, so that we know exactly what our deadline is.”

“I see. You spoke about cooperation . . .”

The PM said: “Yes, but first let me say that under normal circumstances I would not have dreamed of asking a journalist to come to such a meeting.”

“Presumably in normal circumstances you would be doing everything you could to keep journalists away from a meeting like this.”

“Yes. But I understand that you’re driven by several factors. You have a reputation for not pulling your punches when there’s corruption involved. In this case there are no differences of opinion to divide us.”

“Aren’t there?”

“No, not in the least. Or rather, the differences that exist might be of a legal nature, but we share an objective. If this Zalachenko club exists, it is not merely a criminal conspiracy—it is a threat to national security. These activities must be stopped, and those responsible must be held accountable. On that point we would be in agreement, correct?”

Blomkvist nodded.

“I understand that you know more about this story than anyone else. We suggest that you share your knowledge. If this were a regular police investigation of an ordinary crime, the leader of the preliminary investigation could decide to summon you for an interview. But, as you can appreciate, this is an extreme state of affairs.”

Blomkvist weighed the situation for a moment.

“And what do I get in return—if I do cooperate?”

“Nothing. I’m not going to haggle with you. If you want to publish tomorrow morning, then do so. I won’t get involved in any horse-trading that might be constitutionally dubious. I’m asking you to cooperate in the interests of the country.”

“In this case ‘nothing’ could be quite a lot,” Blomkvist said. “For one thing, I’m very, very angry. I’m furious at the state and the government and Säpo and all these fucking bastards who for no reason at all locked up a twelve-year-old girl in a mental hospital until she could be declared incompetent.”

“Lisbeth Salander has become a government matter,” the PM said, and smiled. “Mikael, I am personally very upset over what happened to her. Please believe me when I say that those responsible will be held accountable. But before we can do that, we have to know who they are.”

“My priority is that Salander should be acquitted and declared competent.”

“I can’t help you with that. I’m not above the law, and I can’t direct what prosecutors and the courts decide. She has to be acquitted by a court.”

“OK,” Blomkvist said. “You want my cooperation. Give me some insight into Edklinth’s investigation, and I’ll tell you when and what I plan to publish.”

“I can’t give you that insight. That would be placing myself in the same relation to you as the minister of justice’s predecessor once stood to the journalist Ebbe Carlsson.”
*

“I’m not Ebbe Carlsson,” Blomkvist said calmly.

“I know that. On the other hand, Edklinth can decide for himself what he can share with you within the framework of his assignment.”

“Hmm,” Blomkvist said. “I want to know who Evert Gullberg was.”

Silence fell over the group.

“Gullberg was presumably for many years the chief of that division within SIS which you call the Zalachenko club,” Edklinth said.

The prime minister gave him a sharp look.

“I think he knows that already,” Edklinth said by way of apology.

“That’s correct,” Blomkvist said. “He started at Säpo in the fifties. In the sixties he became chief of some outfit called the Section for Special Analysis. He was the one in charge of the Zalachenko affair.”

The PM shook his head. “You know more than you ought to. I would very much like to discover how you came by all this information. But I’m not going to ask.”

“There are holes in my story,” Blomkvist said. “I need to fill them. Give me information and I won’t try to compromise you.”

“As prime minister I’m not in a position to deliver any such information. And Edklinth is on very thin ice if he does so.”

“Don’t bullshit me. I know what you want and you know what I want. If you give me information, then you’ll be my sources—with all the enduring
anonymity that implies. Don’t misunderstand me. . . . I’ll tell the truth as I see it in what I publish. If you are involved, I will expose you and do everything I can to ensure that you are never re-elected. But as of yet I have no reason to believe that is the case.”

The prime minister glanced at Edklinth. After a moment he nodded. Blomkvist took it as a sign that the prime minister had just broken the law—if only of the more academic type—by giving his consent to sharing classified information with a journalist.

“This can all be solved quite simply,” Edklinth said. “I have my own investigative team, and I decide for myself which colleagues to recruit for the investigation. You can’t be employed by the investigation because that would mean you would be obliged to sign an oath of confidentiality. But I can hire you as an external consultant.”

Berger’s life had been filled with meetings and work around the clock from the minute she stepped into Morander’s shoes.

It was not until Wednesday night, almost two weeks after Blomkvist had given her Cortez’s research papers on Borgsjö, that she had time to address the issue. As she opened the folder, she realized that her procrastination also had to do with the fact that she didn’t really want to deal with the problem. She already knew that calamity was inevitable.

She arrived home in Saltsjöbaden at 7:00, unusually early, and it was only when she had to turn off the alarm in the hall that she remembered her husband was away. She had given him an especially long kiss that morning because he was flying to Paris to give some lectures and wouldn’t be back until the weekend. She had no idea where he was giving the lectures, or what they were about.

She went upstairs, ran a bath, and undressed. She took Cortez’s folder with her and spent the next half hour reading through the whole story. She couldn’t help but smile. The boy was going to be a formidable reporter. He was twenty-six years old and had been at
Millennium
for four years, right out of journalism school. She felt a certain pride. The story had
Millennium
’s stamp on it from beginning to end; every
t
was crossed, every
i
dotted.

But she also felt tremendously depressed. Borgsjö was a good man, and she liked him. He was soft-spoken, sharp-witted, and charming, and he seemed unconcerned with prestige. Besides, he was her employer.
How the hell could he have been so fucking stupid?

She wondered whether there might be another explanation or some mitigating circumstances, but she already knew it would be impossible to explain this away.

She put the folder on the windowsill and stretched out in the bath to ponder the situation.

Millennium
was going to publish the story, no question. If she had still been there, she wouldn’t have hesitated. That
Millennium
had leaked the story to her in advance was nothing but a courtesy; they wanted to reduce the damage to her personally. If the situation had been reversed—if
SMP
had made some damaging discovery about
Millennium
’s chairman of the board (which happened to be her)—they wouldn’t have hesitated either.

Publication would be a serious blow to Borgsjö. The damaging thing was not that his company, Vitavara Inc., had imported goods from a company on the United Nations blacklist of companies using child labour (and in this case slave labour too in the form of convicts, undoubtedly some of them political prisoners). The really damaging thing was that Borgsjö knew about all this and still went on ordering toilets from Fong Soo Industries. It was a mark of the sort of greed that did not go down well with the Swedish people in the wake of the revelations about other criminal capitalists such as Skandia’s former president.

Borgsjö would naturally claim that he did not know about the conditions at Fong Soo, but Cortez had solid evidence. If Borgsjö took that tack he would be exposed as a liar. In June 1997 Borgsjö had gone to Vietnam to sign the first contracts. He had spent ten days there on that occasion and toured the company’s factories. If he claimed not to have known that many of the workers there were only twelve or thirteen years old, he would look like an idiot.

Cortez had demonstrated that in 2001, the UN commission on child labour had added Fong Soo Industries to its list of companies that exploit child labour, and that this had then been the subject of magazine articles. Two organizations against child labour, one of them the globally recognized International Joint Effort Against Child Labour in London, had written letters to companies that had placed orders with Fong Soo. Seven letters had been sent to Vitavara Inc., and two of those were addressed to Borgsjö personally. The organization in London had been very willing to supply the evidence. And Vitavara Inc. had not replied to any of the letters.

Worse still, Borgsjö went to Vietnam twice more, in 2001 and 2004, to renew the contracts. This was the coup de grâce. It would be impossible for Borgsjö to claim ignorance.

The inevitable media storm could lead to only one thing. If Borgsjö was smart, he would apologize and resign from his positions on various boards. If he decided to fight, he would be annihilated.

Berger did not care if Borgsjö was or was not chairman of the board of Vitavara Inc. What mattered to her was that he was the CEO of
SMP
. At a time when the newspaper was on the edge and a campaign of rejuvenation was under way,
SMP
could not afford to keep him.

Berger’s decision was made.

She would go to Borgsjö, show him the document, and thereby hope to persuade him to resign before the story was published.

If he dug in his heels, she would call an emergency board meeting, explain the situation, and force the board to dismiss Borgsjö. And if they did not, she would have to resign, effective immediately.

She had been thinking for so long that the bathwater was now cold. She showered and towelled herself off and went to the bedroom to put on a bathrobe. Then she picked up her mobile and called Blomkvist. No answer. She went downstairs to put on some coffee, and for the first time since she had started at
SMP
, she looked to see whether there was a film on TV that she could watch to relax.

As she walked into the living room, she felt a sharp pain in her foot. She looked down and saw blood. She took another step and pain shot through her entire foot; she had to hop over to an antique chair to sit down. She lifted her foot and saw to her dismay that a shard of glass had pierced her heel. At first she felt faint. Then she steeled herself and took hold of the shard and pulled it out. The pain was appalling, and blood gushed from the wound.

She pulled open a drawer in the hall where she kept scarves, gloves, and hats. She found a scarf and wrapped it around her foot and tied it tight. That was not going to be enough, so she reinforced it with another improvised bandage. The bleeding had apparently subsided.

She looked at the bloodied piece of glass in amazement.
How did this get here?
Then she discovered more glass on the hall floor. Jesus Christ. She looked into the living room and saw that the picture window was shattered and the floor was covered in glass.

She went back to the front door and put on the outdoor shoes she had kicked off as she came home. That is, she put on one shoe and stuck the toes of her injured foot into the other, and hopped into the living room to take stock of the damage.

Then she found the brick in the middle of the living-room floor.