“I’ve been busy.”
“And yet she failed. You got away, thank God.”
“I made it.”
“But aren’t you worried that she could be back at any moment?”
“It has occurred to me.”
“O.K., good. And you do know that Camilla and I did nothing more than walk a short way down Hornsgatan?”
Salander did not answer.
“I know you, Mikael,” was all she said. “And now that you’ve met Ed, I guess I’ll have to protect myself from him too.”
Blomkvist smiled to himself.
“Yes,” he said. “You’re probably right. Let’s not trust him any more than we absolutely have to. I don’t want to become his useful idiot.”
“Doesn’t sound like a role for you, Mikael.”
“No, and that’s why I’d love to know what you discovered when you accessed their intranet.”
“A whole load of compromising shit.”
“About Eckerwald and the Spiders’ relationship with the N.S.A.?”
“That and a bit more besides.”
“Which you were planning to tell me about.”
“I might do, if you behave yourself,” she said with a teasing tone, and that only made him feel happy.
Then he chuckled, because at that moment he realized precisely what Ed Needham was trying to do.
It hit him so forcefully that he had a hard time keeping up his act when he returned to the hotel room, and he went on working with the American until 10.00 that night.
CHAPTER 29
25.xi, Morning
Vladimir Orlov’s apartment on Mårten Trotzigs gränd was neat and tidy. The bed was made and the sheets were clean. The laundry basket in the bathroom was empty. Yet there were signs that something was not quite right. Neighbours reported that some removal men had been there, and a close inspection revealed bloodstains on the floor and on the wall above the headboard. The blood was compared to traces of saliva in Zander’s apartment and a match confirmed.
But the men now in custody – the two who were still capable of communicating – claimed to have no knowledge of bloodstains or of Zander, so Bublanski and his team concentrated on getting more information on the woman who had been seen with him. By now the media had published columns and columns not only about the drama on Ingarö but also about Andrei Zander’s disappearance. Both evening newspapers and Svenska Morgon-Posten and Metro had carried prominent photographs of the journalist, and there was already speculation that he might have been murdered. Usually that would jog people’s memories and prompt them to remember anything suspicious, but now it was almost the exact opposite.
Such witness accounts as came in and were thought to be credible were peculiarly vague, and everyone who came forward – except for Mikael Blomkvist and the baker from Skansen – took it upon themselves to remark that they did not suppose the woman guilty of any crime. She had apparently made an overwhelmingly good impression on everyone who had encountered her. A bartender called Sören Karlsten, who had served the woman and Zander in Papagallo on Götgatan, even went on and on boasting that he was such a good judge of character and claimed to be absolutely certain that this woman “would never hurt a soul”.
“She was class personified.”
She was just about everything personified, if one were to believe the witnesses, and from what Bublanski could see it would be virtually impossible to produce an identikit picture of her. The witness accounts all depicted her in different terms, as if they were projecting their image of an ideal woman onto her, and so far they had no photographs from any surveillance camera. It was almost laughable. Blomkvist said that the woman was without a shadow of doubt Camilla Salander, twin sister of Lisbeth. But go back in the records for many years and there was no trace of her. It was as if she had ceased to exist. If Camilla Salander were still alive, then it was under a new identity.
Bublanski especially did not like it that there had been two unexplained deaths in the foster family she had left behind. The police investigations at the time were deficient, full of loose threads and question marks which had never been followed up.
Bublanski had read the reports, ashamed that out of some bizarre respect for the family’s tragedy his colleagues had even failed to get to the bottom of the glaring problem that both the father and the daughter had emptied their bank accounts just before their deaths, or that in the very week that he had been found hanged the father had started a letter to her which began:
“Camilla, why is it so important to you to destroy my life?”
This person who seemed to have enchanted all the witnesses was shrouded in ominous darkness.
It was now 8.00 in the morning and there were a hundred other things Bublanski should have been attending to, so he reacted with both irritation and guilt when he heard that he had a visitor. She was a woman who had been interviewed by Modig but who now insisted on meeting him. Afterwards he wondered if he had been especially receptive just then, maybe because all he was expecting was further problems. The woman in the doorway had a regal bearing but was not tall. She had dark, intense eyes which gave her a slightly melancholy look. She was dressed in a grey coat and a red dress that looked a bit like a sari.
“My name is Farah Sharif,” she said. “I’m a professor of computer sciences, and I was a close friend of Frans Balder.”
“Yes, of course,” Bublanski said, suddenly embarrassed. “Take a seat, please. My apologies for the mess.”
“I’ve seen much worse.”
“Is that so? Well. To what do I owe this honour?”
“I was far too naive when I spoke to your colleague.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I have more information now. I’ve had a long conversation with Professor Warburton.”
“That’s right. He’s been looking for me too. But it’s been so chaotic I haven’t had time to call him back.”
“Steven is a professor of cybernetics at Stanford and a leading researcher in the field of technological singularity. These days he works at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, whose aim is to ensure that Artificial Intelligence is a positive help to mankind rather than the opposite.”
“Well, that sounds good,” Bublanski said. He felt uncomfortable whenever this topic came up.
“Steven lives somewhat in a world of his own. He found out what happened to Frans only yesterday, and that’s why he didn’t call sooner. But he told me that he had spoken to Frans as recently as Monday.”
“What did they talk about?”
“His research. You know, Frans had been so secretive ever since he went off to the States. I was close to him, but not even I knew anything about what he was doing. I was arrogant enough to think I understood some of it at least, but now it turns out I was wrong.”
“In what way?”
“Frans had not only taken his old A.I. program a step further, he had also developed fresh algorithms and new topographical material for quantum computers.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Quantum computers are computers based on quantum mechanics. They are many thousand times faster in certain areas than conventional computers. The great advantage with quantum computers is that the fundamental constituent quantum bits – qubits – can superposition themselves.”
“You’ll have to take me slowly through that.”
“Not only can they take the binary positions one or zero as do traditional computers, they can also be both zero and one at the same time. At present quantum computers are much too specialized and cumbersome. But Frans – how can I best explain this to you? – would appear to have found ways to make them easier, more flexible and self-learning. He was onto something great – at least potentially. But as well as feeling pride in his breakthrough, he was also very worried – and that was obviously the reason he called Steven Warburton.”
“Why was he worried?”
“In the long term, because he suspected his creation
could become a threat to the world, I imagine. But more immediately, because he knew things about the N.S.A.”
“What sort of things?”
“There’s one aspect I know nothing about. He had somehow stumbled upon the messier side of their industrial espionage. But there’s another aspect I do have a lot of information on. It’s no secret that the organization is working hard specifically to develop quantum computers. For the N.S.A. that would be paradise, pure and simple. An effective quantum machine would enable them to crack all encryptions, all digital security systems eventually, and after that no-one would be safe from that organization’s watchful eye.”
“A hideous thought,” Bublanski said with surprising feeling.
“But there is actually an even more frightening scenario: were such a thing to fall into the hands of major criminals,” Farah Sharif said.
“I see what you’re getting at.”
“So of course I’m keen to know what you’ve managed to get hold of from the men now under arrest.”
“Unfortunately nothing like that,” he said. “But these men are not exactly outstanding intellects. I doubt they would even pass secondary-school maths.”
“So the real computer genius got away?”
“I’m afraid so. He and a female suspect have disappeared without trace. They probably have a number of identities.”
“Worrying.”
Bublanski nodded and gazed into Farah Sharif’s dark eyes, which looked beseechingly at him. A hopeful thought stopped him from sinking back into despair.
“I’m not sure what it means,” he said.
“What?”
“We’ve had I.T. guys go through Balder’s computers. Given how security-conscious he was, it wasn’t easy. You can imagine. But we managed. We had a spot of luck, you might say, and what we soon realized was that one computer must have been stolen.
“I suspected as much,” she said. “Damn it!”
“But wait, I haven’t finished. We also understood that a number of machines had been connected to each other, and that occasionally these had been connected to a supercomputer in Tokyo.”
“That sounds feasible.”
“We can confirm that a large file, or at least something big, had recently been deleted, and we haven’t been able to restore it.”
“Are you suggesting Frans might have destroyed his own research?”
“I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. But it occurred to me while you were telling me all this.”
“Don’t you think the murderer might have deleted it?”
“You mean that he first copied it, and then removed it from his computers?”
“Yes.”
“I find that hard to believe. The man was only in the house for a very short while, he would never have had time – let alone the ability – to do anything like that.”
“O.K., that sounds reassuring, despite everything,” Sharif said doubtfully. “It’s just that …”
Bublanski waited.
“I don’t think it fits with Frans’ character. Would he really destroy the greatest thing he’d ever done? That would be like … I don’t know … chopping off his own arm, or even worse: killing a friend, destroying a life.”
“Sometimes one has to make a big sacrifice,” Bublanski said thoughtfully. “Destroy what one loves.”
“Or else there’s a copy somewhere.”
“Or else there’s a copy somewhere,” he repeated. Suddenly he did something strange: he reached out his hand.
Farah Sharif did not understand. She looked at the hand as if she were expecting him to give her something. But Bublanski decided not to let himself be discouraged.
“Do you know what my rabbi says? That the mark of a man is his contradictions. We can long to be away and at home, both at the same time. I never knew Professor Balder, and he might have thought that I was just an old fool. But I do know one thing: we can both love and fear our work, just as Balder seems to have both loved and run away from his son. To be alive, Professor Sharif, means not being completely consistent. It means venturing out in many directions all at the same time, and I wonder if your friend didn’t find himself in the throes of some sort of upheaval. Maybe he really did destroy his life’s work. Maybe he revealed himself with all his inherent contradictions towards the end, and became a true human being in the best sense of the word.”
“Do you think so?”
“We may never know. But he had changed, hadn’t he? The custody hearing declared him unfit to look after his own son. Yet that’s precisely what he did, and he even got the boy to blossom and begin to draw.”
“That’s true, Chief Inspector.”
“Call me Jan. People sometimes even call me Officer Bubble.”
“Is that because you’re so bubbly?”
“Ha, no, I don’t think so somehow. But I do know one thing for sure.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you’re …”
He got no further, but neither did he need to. Farah Sharif gave him a smile which in all its simplicity restored Bublanski’s belief in life and in God.
At 8.00 Salander got out of her bed on Fiskargatan. Once more she had not managed to get much sleep, and not only because she had been working at the encrypted N.S.A. file without getting anywhere at all. She had also been listening out for the sound of footsteps on the stairs and every now and then she checked her alarm and the surveillance camera on the landing.
She was no wiser than anyone else as to whether her sister had left the country. After her humiliation on Ingarö, it was by no means impossible that Camilla was preparing a new attack, with even greater force. The N.S.A. could also, at any moment, march into the apartment. Salander was under no illusions on either point. But this morning she dismissed all that. She went to the bathroom with resolute steps and took off her top to check her bullet wound. She thought it was finally beginning to look better, and in a mad moment she decided to take herself off to the boxing club on Hornsgatan for a session.
To drive out pain with pain.
Afterwards she was sitting exhausted in the changing room. She hardly had the energy to think. Her mobile buzzed. She ignored it. She went into the shower and let the warm water sprinkle over her. Gradually her thoughts cleared, and August’s drawing reappeared in her mind. But this time it wasn’t the illustration of the murderer which caught her attention – it was something at the bottom of the paper.
Salander had only had a very brief glimpse of the finished work at the summer house on Ingarö; at the time she had been concentrating on sending it to Bublanski and Modig. If she had given it any thought at all, then like everyone else she would have been fascinated by the detailed rendering. But now her photographic memory focused on the equation August had written at the bottom of the page, and she stepped out of the shower deep in thought. The only thing was, she could hardly hear herself think. Obinze was raising hell outside the changing room.
“Shut up,” she shouted back. “I’m thinking!”
But that did not help much. Obinze was absolutely furious, and anyone other than Salander would understand why. Obinze had been shocked at how weak and half-hearted her effort at the punchbag was, and had worried when she began to hang her head and grimace in pain. In the end he had surprised her by rushing over and rolling up the sleeve of her T-shirt, then to discover the bullet wound. He had gone completely crazy, and evidently had not calmed down even now.
“You’re an idiot, do you know that? A lunatic!” he shouted.
She was too weak to answer. Her strength deserted her completely, and what she had remembered from the drawing now faded from her mind. She sank down on the bench in the changing room next to Jamila Achebe. She used to both box and sleep with Jamila, usually in that order. When they fought their toughest bouts it often seemed like one long, wild foreplay. On a few occasions their behaviour in the shower had not been entirely decent. Neither of them set much store by etiquette.
“I actually agree
with that noisy bastard out there. You’re not quite right in the head,” Jamila said.
“Maybe so,” Salander said.
“That wound looks nasty.”
“It’s healing.”
“But you needed to box?”
“Apparently.”
“Shall we go back to my place?”
Salander did not answer. Her mobile was buzzing again in her black bag. Three text messages with the same content from a withheld number. As she read them she balled up her fists and looked lethal. Jamila felt that it might be better to have sex with Salander another day instead.
Blomkvist had woken at 6.00 with some great ideas for the article, and on his way to the office the draft came together in his mind with no effort at all. He worked in deep concentration at the magazine and barely noticed what was going on around him, although sometimes he surfaced with thoughts of Zander.
He refused to give up hope, but he feared that Zander had given his life for the story, and he did what he could to honour his colleague with every sentence he wrote. On one level he intended the report to be a murder story about Frans and August Balder – an account of an eight-year-old autistic boy who sees his father shot, and who despite his disability finds a way of striking back. But on another level Blomkvist wanted it to be an instructive narrative about a new world of surveillance and espionage, where the boundaries between the legal and the criminal have been erased. The words came pouring out, but still it was not without its difficulties.
Through an old police contact he had got hold of the paperwork on the unsolved murder of Kajsa Falk, the girlfriend of one of the leading figures in Svavelsjö M.C. The killer had never been identified and none of the people questioned during the investigation had been willing to contribute anything of value, but Blomkvist nevertheless gathered that a violent rift had torn apart the motorcycle club and that there was an insidious terror among the gang members of a “Lady Zala”, as one of the witnesses put it.
Despite considerable efforts, the police had not managed to discover who or what the name referred to. But there was not the slightest doubt in Blomkvist’s mind that “Lady Zala” was Camilla, and that she was behind a whole series of other crimes, both in Sweden and abroad. But it was not easy to unearth any evidence, and that exasperated him. For the time being he referred to her in the article by her codename, Thanos.
The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4) Page 41
