The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (64 page)

“That you’ve brought other women here? No. But it does bother me that I don’t really know what’s happening between us. And I don’t think I can have a relationship with a man who screws around whenever he feels like it.”

“I’m not going to apologize for the way I’ve led my life.”

“And I guess that in some way I’m falling for you because you are who you are. It’s easy to sleep with you because there’s no bullshit and you make me feel safe. But this all started because I gave in to a crazy impulse. It doesn’t happen very often, and I hadn’t planned it. And now we’ve gotten to the stage where I’ve become just another one of the girls you invite out here.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“You didn’t have to come.”

“Yes, I did. Oh, Mikael . . .”

“I know.”

“I’m unhappy. I don’t want to fall in love with you. It’ll hurt far too much when it’s over.”

“Listen, I’ve had this cabin for twenty-five years, since my father died and my mother moved back to Norrland. My sister got our apartment and I got the cabin. Apart from some casual acquaintances in the early years, there are five women who have been here before you: Erika; Lisbeth; my ex-wife, who I was with in the eighties; a woman I was in a serious relationship with in the late nineties; and someone I met two years ago, whom I still see occasionally. It’s sort of special circumstances. . . .”

“I bet it is.”

“I keep this cabin so that I can get away from the city and have some quiet time. I’m mostly here on my own. I read books, I write, and I relax and sit on the wharf and look at the boats. It’s not a secret love nest.”

He stood up to get the bottle of wine he had put in the shade.

“I won’t make any promises. My marriage broke up because Erika and I couldn’t keep away from each other,” he said, and then he added in English, “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”

He filled their glasses.

“But you’re the most interesting person I’ve met in a long time. It’s as if our relationship took off at full speed from a standing start. I think I fell for you the moment you picked me up outside my apartment. The few times I’ve slept at my place since then, I’ve woken up in the middle of the night needing you. I don’t know if I want a steady relationship, but I’m terrified of losing you.” He looked at her. “So what do you think we should do?”

“Let’s think about things,” Figuerola said. “I’m really attracted to you too.”

“This is starting to get serious,” Blomkvist said.

She suddenly felt a great sadness. They did not say much for a long time. When it got dark they cleared the table, went inside, and closed the door.

On the Friday before the week of the trial, Blomkvist stopped at the Pressbyrån news-stand at Slussen and read the headlines for the morning papers.
Svenska Morgon-Posten’s
CEO and chairman of the board, Magnus Borgsjö, had capitulated and tendered his resignation. Blomkvist bought the papers and walked to Java on Hornsgatan to have a late breakfast. Borgsjö cited family reasons as the explanation for his unexpected resignation.
He would not comment on claims that Berger had also resigned after he ordered her to cover up a story about his involvement in the wholesale enterprise Vitavara Inc. But in a sidebar it was reported that the chair of Svenskt Näringsliv, the confederation of Swedish enterprise, had decided to set up an ethics committee to investigate the dealings of Swedish companies with businesses in Southeast Asia known to exploit child labour.

Blomkvist burst out laughing, and then he folded the morning papers and flipped open his Ericsson to call the woman who hosted
She
on TV4, who was in the middle of a lunchtime sandwich.

“Hello, darling,” Blomkvist said. “I’m assuming you’d still like dinner sometime.”

“Hi, Mikael,” she said, laughing. “Sorry, but you couldn’t be further from my type.”

“Still, how about coming out with me this evening to discuss a job?”

“What do you have going?”

“Erika Berger made a deal with you two years ago about the Wennerström affair. I want to make a similar deal that will work just as well.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I can’t tell you about it until we’ve agreed on the terms. I have a story in the works. We’re going to publish a book and a themed issue of the magazine, and it’s going to be huge. I’m offering you an exclusive look at all the material, provided you don’t leak anything before we publish. This time the publication is extra complicated because it has to happen on a specific day.”

“How big is the story?”

“Bigger than Wennerström,” Blomkvist said. “Are you interested?”

“Are you serious? Where shall we meet?”

“How about Samir’s Cauldron? Erika’s going to sit in on the meeting.”

“What’s going on with her? Is she back at
Millennium
now that she’s been thrown out of SMP?”

“She didn’t get thrown out. She resigned because of differences of opinion with Magnus Borgsjö.”

“He seems to be a real creep.”

“You’re not wrong there,” Blomkvist said.

Clinton was listening to Verdi through his earphones. Music was pretty much the only thing left in life that could take him away from dialysis machines and the growing pain in the small of his back. He did not hum to the music. He closed his eyes and followed the notes with his right hand,
which hovered and seemed to have a life of its own alongside his disintegrating body.

That is how it goes. We are born. We live. We grow old. We die. He had played his part. All that remained was the disintegration.

He felt strangely satisfied with life.

He was playing for his friend Evert Gullberg.

It was Saturday, July 9. Only four days until the trial, and the Section could set about putting this whole wretched story behind them. He had gotten the message that morning. Gullberg had been tougher than almost anyone he had known. When you fire a 9mm full-metal-jacketed bullet into your own temple, you expect to die. Yet it was three months before Gullberg’s body gave up at last. That was probably due as much to chance as to the stubbornness with which the doctors had waged the battle for Gullberg’s life. And it was the cancer, not the bullet, that had finally determined his end.

Gullberg’s death had been painful, and that saddened Clinton. Although incapable of communicating with the outside world, he had at times been in a semi-conscious state, smiling when the hospital staff stroked his cheek or grunting when he seemed to be in pain. Sometimes he had tried to form words and even sentences, but nobody was able to understand anything he said.

He had no family, and none of his friends came to his sickbed. His last contact with life was an Eritrean night nurse by the name of Sara Kitama, who kept watch at his bedside and held his hand as he died.

Clinton realized that he would soon be following his former comrade-in-arms. No doubt about that. The likelihood of his surviving a transplant operation decreased each day. His liver and intestinal functions appeared to have declined at each examination.

He hoped to live past Christmas.

Yet he was content. He felt an almost spiritual, giddy satisfaction that his final days had involved such a sudden and surprising return to service.

It was a boon he could not have anticipated.

The last notes of Verdi faded away just as somebody opened the door to the small room in which he was resting at the Section’s headquarters on Artillerigatan.

Clinton opened his eyes. It was Wadensjöö.

He had come to the conclusion that Wadensjöö was a deadweight. He was entirely unsuitable as director of the most important vanguard of Swedish national defence. He could not conceive how he and von Rottinger
could ever have made such a fundamental miscalculation as to imagine that Wadensjöö was the appropriate successor.

Wadensjöö was a warrior who needed a fair wind. In a crisis he was feeble and incapable of making a decision. A timid encumbrance lacking steel in his backbone who would most likely have remained in paralysis, incapable of action, and let the Section go under.

It was this simple. Some had it. Others would always falter when it came to the crunch.

“You wanted a word?”

“Sit down,” Clinton said.

Wadensjöö sat.

“I’m at a stage in my life when I can no longer waste time. I’ll get straight to the point. When all this is over, I want you to resign from the management of the Section.”

“You do?”

Clinton tempered his tone.

“You’re a good man, Wadensjöö. But unfortunately you were completely unsuited to succeed Gullberg. You should not have been given that responsibility. Von Rottinger and I were at fault when we failed to deal properly with the succession after I got sick.”

“You’ve never liked me.”

“You’re wrong about that. You were an excellent administrator when von Rottinger and I were in charge of the Section. We would have been helpless without you, and I have great admiration for your patriotism. It’s your inability to make decisions that lets you down.”

Wadensjöö smiled bitterly. “After this, I don’t know if I even want to stay in the Section.”

“Now that Gullberg and von Rottinger are gone, I’ve had to make the crucial decisions myself,” Clinton said. “And you’ve obstructed every decision I’ve made during the past few months.”

“And I maintain that the decisions you’ve made are absurd. It’s going to end in disaster.”

“That’s possible. But your indecision would have guaranteed our collapse. Now at least we have a chance, and our plan seems to be working.
Millennium
doesn’t know which way to turn. They may suspect that we’re somewhere out here, but they lack documentation, and they have no way of finding it—or us. And we know at least as much as they do.”

Wadensjöö looked out the window and across the rooftops.

“The only thing we still have to do is to get rid of Zalachenko’s daughter,”
Clinton said. “If anyone starts digging around in her past and listening to what she has to say, there’s no knowing what might happen. But the trial starts in a few days, and then it’ll be over. This time we have to bury her so deep that she’ll never come back to haunt us.”

Wadensjöö shook his head.

“I don’t understand your attitude,” Clinton said.

“I can see that. You’re sixty-eight years old. You’re dying. Your decisions are not rational, and yet you seem to have bewitched Nyström and Sandberg. They obey you as if you were God the Father.”

“I am God the Father in everything that has to do with the Section. We’re working according to a plan. Our decision to act has given the Section a chance. And it is with the utmost conviction that I say that the Section will never find itself in such an exposed position again. When all this is over, we’re going to implement a complete overhaul of our activities.”

“I see.”

“Nyström will be the new director. He’s really too old, but he’s the only choice we have, and he’s promised to stay on for six years at least. Sandberg is too young and—as a direct result of your management policies—too inexperienced. He should have been fully trained by now.”

“Clinton, don’t you see what you’ve done? You’ve murdered a man. Björck worked for the Section for thirty-five years, and you ordered his death. Do you not understand—”

“You know quite well that it was necessary. He betrayed us, and he would never have withstood the pressure when the police closed in.”

Wadensjöö stood up.

“I’m not finished.”

“Then we’ll have to continue later. I have a job to do while you lie here fantasizing that you’re the Almighty.”

“If you’re so morally indignant, why don’t you go to Bublanski and confess your crimes?”

“Believe me, I’ve considered it. But whatever you may think, I’m doing everything in my power to protect the Section.”

He opened the door and met Nyström and Sandberg on their way in.

“Hello, Fredrik,” Nyström said. “We have to talk.”

“Wadensjöö was just leaving.”

Nyström waited until the door had closed. “Fredrik, I’m seriously worried.”

“What’s going on?”

“Sandberg and I have been thinking. Things are happening that we
don’t understand. This morning Salander’s lawyer lodged her autobiographical statement with the prosecutor.”

“What?”

Inspector Faste scrutinized Advokat Giannini as Ekström poured coffee from a thermos carafe. The document Ekström had been handed when he arrived at work that morning had taken both of them by surprise. He and Faste had read the forty pages of Salander’s story and discussed the extraordinary document at length. Finally he felt compelled to ask Giannini to come in for an informal chat.

They were sitting at the small conference table in Ekström’s office.

“Thank you for agreeing to come in,” Ekström said. “I have read this . . . hmm . . . account that arrived this morning, and there are a few matters I’d like to clarify.”

“I’ll do what I can to help,” Giannini said.

“I don’t know exactly where to start. Let me say from the outset that both Inspector Faste and I are profoundly astonished.”

“Indeed?”

“I’m trying to understand what your objective is.”

“How do you mean?”

“This autobiography, or whatever you want to call it . . . What’s the point of it?”

“The point is perfectly clear. My client wants to set down her version of what has happened to her.”

Ekström gave a good-natured laugh. He stroked his goatee, an oft-repeated gesture that was beginning to irritate Giannini.

“Yes, but your client has had several months to explain herself. She hasn’t said a word in all her interviews with Faste.”

“As far as I know there is no law that forces my client to talk only when it suits Inspector Faste.”

“No, but I mean . . . Salander’s trial will begin in four days’ time, and at the eleventh hour she comes up with this. To tell the truth, I feel a responsibility here which is beyond my duties as prosecutor.”

“You do?”

“I do not wish to sound at all offensive. That is not my intention. But we have a procedure for trials in this country. You, Fru Giannini, are a lawyer specialising in women’s rights, and you have never before represented a client in a criminal case. I did not charge Lisbeth Salander because she is a
woman, but on a charge of aggravated assault and attempted murder. Even you, I believe, must have realized that she suffers from a serious mental illness and needs the protection and assistance of the state.”