The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

by Stieg Larsson

  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 Borgsjo, 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 Saltsjobaden 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. Borgsjo 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 Borgsjo. 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 Borgsjo 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.

  Borgsjo would naturally claim that he did not know about the conditions at Fong Soo, but Cortez had solid evidence. If Borgsjo took that tack he would be exposed as a liar. In June 1997 Borgsjo 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 Borgsjo 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, Borgsjo went to Vietnam twice more, in 2001 and 2004, to renew the contracts. This was the coup de grace. It would be impossible for Borgsjo to claim ignorance.

  The inevitable media storm could lead to only one thing. If Borgsjo 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 Borgsjo 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 Borgsjo, 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 Borgsjo. 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.

  She limped over to the balcony door and went out to the garden. Someone had sprayed in three-foot-high letters on the back wall:

  WHORE

  It was just after 9:00 in the evening when Figuerola held the car door open for Blomkvist. She went around the car and got into the driver's seat.

  "Should I drive you home, or do you want to be dropped off somewhere?"

  Blomkvist stared straight ahead. "I haven't got my bearings yet, to be honest. I've never had a confrontation with a prime minister before."

  Figuerola laughed. "You played your cards very well," she said. "I would never have guessed you were such a good poker player."

  "I meant every word."

  "Of course; but what I meant was that you pretended to know a lot more than you actually do. I realized that when I worked out how you identified me."

  Blomkvist turned and looked at her profile.

  "You wrote down my car registration when I was parked on the hill outside your building. You made it sound as if you knew what was being discussed at the prime minister's secretariat."

  "Why didn't you say anything?" Blomkvist said.

 
She gave him a quick look and turned onto Grev Turegatan. "The rules of the game. I shouldn't have picked that spot, but there wasn't anywhere else to park. You keep a sharp eye on your surroundings, don't you?"

  "You were sitting with a map spread out on the front seat, talking on the phone. I took down your registration and ran a routine check. I check out every car that catches my attention. I usually draw a blank. In your case I discovered that you worked for Sapo."

  "I was following Martensson."

  "Aha. So simple."

  "Then I discovered that you were tailing him using Susanne Linder at Milton Security."

  "Armansky's detailed her to keep an eye on what goes on around my apartment."

  "And since she went into your building I assume that Milton has put in some sort of hidden surveillance of your apartment."

  "That's right. We have an excellent film of how they break in and go through my papers. Martensson carries a portable photocopier with him. Have you identified Martensson's sidekick?"

  "He's unimportant. A locksmith with a criminal record who's probably being paid to open your door."

  "Name?"

  "Protected source?"

  "Naturally."

  "Lars Faulsson. Forty-seven. Alias Falun. Convicted of safe-cracking in the eighties and some other minor stuff. Has a shop at Norrtull."

  "Thanks."

  "But let's save the secrets till we meet again tomorrow."

  The meeting had ended with an agreement that Blomkvist would come to Constitutional Protection the next day to set in motion an exchange of information. Blomkvist was thinking. They were just passing Sergels Torg in the city centre.

  "You know what? I'm incredibly hungry. I had a late lunch and was going to make some pasta when I got home, but I was waylaid by you. Have you eaten?"

  "A while ago."

  "Take us to a restaurant where we can get some decent food."

  "All food is decent."

  He looked at her. "I thought you were a health-food fanatic."

  "No, I'm a workout fanatic. If you work out, you can eat whatever you want. Within reason."

  She braked at the Klaraberg viaduct and considered the options. Instead of turning down towards Sodermalm she kept going straight to Kungsholmen.

  "I don't know what the restaurants are like in Soder, but I know an excellent Bosnian place at Fridhemsplan. Their burek is fantastic."

  "Sounds good," Blomkvist said.

  Salander tapped her way, letter by letter, through her report. She had worked an average of five hours each day. She was careful to express herself precisely. She left out all the details that could be used against her.

  That she was locked up had turned out to be a blessing. She always had plenty of warning to put away her Palm when she heard the rattling of a key ring or a key being put in the lock.

  I was about to lock up Bjurman's cabin outside Stallarholmen when Carl-Magnus Lundin and Sonny Nieminen arrived on motorbikes. Since they had been searching for me in vain for a while on behalf of Zalachenko and Niedermann, they were surprised to see me there. Magge Lundin got off his motorbike and declared, "I think the dyke needs some cock." Both he and Nieminen acted so threatening that I had no choice but to resort to my right of self-defence. I left the scene on Lundin's motorbike, which I then abandoned at the shopping centre in Alvsjo.

  There was no reason to volunteer the information that Lundin had called her a whore or that she had bent down and picked up Nieminen's P-83 Wanad and punished Lundin by shooting him in the foot. The police could probably work that out for themselves, but it was up to them to prove it. She did not intend to make their job any easier by confessing to something that would lead to a prison sentence.

  The text had grown to thirty-three pages, and she was nearing the end. In some sections she was particularly reticent about details and went to a lot of trouble not to supply any evidence that could back up in any way the many claims she was making. She went so far as to obscure some obvious evidence and instead moved on to the next link in the chain of events.

  She scrolled back and read through a section where she told how Advokat Bjurman had violently and sadistically raped her. That was the part she had spent the most time on, and one of the few she had rewritten several times before she was satisfied. The section took up nineteen lines in her account. She reported in a matter-of-fact manner how he had hit her, thrown her onto her stomach on the bed, taped her mouth, and handcuffed her. She then related how he had repeatedly committed acts of sexual violence against her, including anal penetration. She went on to report how at one point during the rape he had wound a piece of clothing--her own T-shirt--around her neck and strangled her for such a long time that she temporarily lost consciousness. Then there were several lines where she identified the implements he had used during the rape, which included a short whip, an anal plug, a rough dildo, and clamps, which he attached to her nipples.

  She frowned and studied the text. At last she raised the stylus and tapped out a few more lines of text.

  On one occasion when I still had my mouth taped shut, Bjurman commented on the fact that I had several tattoos and piercings, including a ring in my left nipple. He asked if I liked being pierced and then left the room. He came back with a needle, which he pushed through my right nipple.

  The matter-of-fact tone gave the text such a surreal touch that it sounded like an absurd fantasy.

  The story simply did not sound credible.

  That was her intention.

  At that moment she heard the rattle of the guard's key ring. She turned off the Palm at once and put it in the recess at the back of the bedside table. It was Giannini. She frowned. It was 9:00 in the evening and Giannini did not usually appear this late.

  "Hello, Lisbeth."

  "Hello."

  "How are you feeling?"

  "I'm not finished yet."

  Giannini sighed. "Lisbeth, they've set the trial date for July 13."

  "That's OK."

  "No, it's not OK. Time is running out, and you're not telling me anything. I'm beginning to think that I made a colossal mistake taking this job. If we're going to have the slightest chance, you have to trust me. We have to work together."

  Salander studied her for a long moment. Finally she leaned her head back and looked up at the ceiling.

  "I know what we're supposed to be doing. I understand Mikael's plan. And he's right."

  "I'm not so sure about that."

  "But I am."

  "The police want to interrogate you again. A detective named Hans Faste from Stockholm."

  "Let him interrogate me. I won't say a word."

  "You have to hand in a statement."

  Salander gave Giannini a sharp look. "I repeat: I won't say a word to the police. When we get to that courtroom the prosecutor won't have a single syllable from any interrogation to fall back on. All they'll have is the statement that I'm composing now, large parts of which will seem preposterous. And they're going to get it a few days before the trial."

  "So when are you actually going to sit down with a pen and paper and write this statement?"

  "You'll have it in a few days. But it can't go to the prosecutor until just before the trial."

  Giannini looked sceptical. Salander suddenly gave her a cautious smile. "You talk about trust. Can I trust you?"

  "Of course you can."

  "OK. Could you smuggle me in a hand-held computer so that I can keep in touch with people online?"

  "No, of course not. If it were discovered I'd be charged with a crime and lose my licence to practice."

  "But if someone else got one in, would you report it to the police?"

  Giannini raised her eyebrows. "If I didn't know about it . . ."

  "But if you did know about it, what would you do?"

  "I'd shut my eyes. How about that?"

  "This hypothetical computer is soon going to send you a hypothetical email. When you've read it I want you to come again."

  "Lisbeth--
"

  "Wait. It's like this. The prosecutor is dealing with a marked deck. I'm at a disadvantage no matter what I do, and the purpose of the trial is to get me committed to a secure psychiatric ward."

  "I know."

  "If I'm going to survive, I have to fight dirty."

  Finally Giannini nodded.

  "When you came to see me the first time," Salander said, "you had a message from Blomkvist. He said that he'd told you almost everything, with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions had to do with the skills he discovered I had when we were in Hedestad."

  "That's correct."

  "He was referring to the fact that I'm extremely good with computers. So good that I can read and copy what's on Ekstrom's machine."

  Giannini went pale.

  "You can't be involved in this. And you can't use any of that material at the trial," Salander said.

  "You're right about that."

  "So you know nothing about it."

  "OK."

  "But someone else--your brother, let's say--could publish selected excerpts from it. You'll have to think about this possibility when you plan your strategy."

  "I understand."

  "Annika, this trial is going to turn on who uses the toughest methods."

  "I know."

  "I'm happy to have you as my lawyer. I trust you and I need your help."

  "Hmm."

  "But if you get difficult about the fact that I'm going to use unethical methods, then we'll lose the trial."

  "Right."

  "And if that were the case, I need to know now. I'd have to get myself a new lawyer."

  "Lisbeth, I can't break the law."

  "You don't have to break any law. But you do have to shut your eyes to the fact that I am. Can you manage that?"

  Salander waited patiently for almost a minute before Annika nodded.

  "Good. Let me tell you the main points that I'm going to put in my statement."

  Figuerola had been right. The burek was fantastic. Blomkvist studied her carefully as she came back from the ladies'. She moved as gracefully as a ballerina, but she had a body like . . . hmm. Blomkvist could not help being fascinated. He repressed an impulse to reach out and feel her leg muscles.

  "How long have you been working out?" he said.

  "Since I was a teenager."

  "And how many hours a week do you do it?"