The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo m(-1

by Stieg Larsson

  “All of this will take time to work out,” Frode said. “But she would be a perfect CEO. With the right support team she could represent a whole new deal for the company.”

  “She doesn’t have the experience…”

  “That’s true. She can’t just pop up out of more or less nowhere and start micro-managing the company. But the Vanger Corporation is international, and we could certainly have an American CEO who doesn’t speak a word of Swedish… it’s only business, when all’s said and done.”

  “Sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to the problem of Martin’s basement.”

  “I know. But we can’t say anything without destroying Harriet… I’m glad I’m not the one who has to make the decision about this.”

  “Damn it, Dirch, you won’t be able to bury the fact that Martin was a serial killer.”

  “Mikael, I’m in a… very uncomfortable position.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I have a message from Henrik. He thanks you for the outstanding work you did and says that he considers the contract fulfilled. That means he is releasing you from any further obligations and that you no longer have to live or work here in Hedestad, etc. So, taking effect immediately, you can move back to Stockholm and devote yourself to your other pursuits.”

  “He wants me to vanish from the scene, is that the gist of it?”

  “Absolutely not. He wants you to visit him for a conversation about the future. He says he hopes that his involvement on the board of Millennium can proceed without restrictions. But…”

  Frode looked even more uncomfortable, if that was possible.

  “Don’t tell me, Dirch… he no longer wants me to write a history of the Vanger family.”

  Dirch Frode nodded. He picked up a notebook, opened it, and pushed it over to Mikael.

  “He wrote you this letter.”

  Dear Mikael,

  I have nothing but respect for your integrity, and I don’t intend to insult you by trying to tell you what to write. You may write and publish whatever you like, and I won’t exert any pressure on you whatsoever.

  Our contract remains valid, if you want to continue. You have enough material to finish the chronicle of the Vanger family.

  Mikael, I’ve never begged anyone for anything in my entire life. I’ve always thought that a person should follow his morals and his convictions. This time I have no choice.

  I am, with this letter, begging you, both as a friend and as part owner of Millennium, to refrain from publishing the truth about Gottfried and Martin. I know that’s wrong, but I see no way out of this darkness. I have to choose between two evils, and in this case there are no winners.

  I beg you not to write anything that would further hurt Harriet. You know first-hand what it’s like to be the subject of a media campaign. The campaign against you was of quite modest proportions. You can surely imagine what it would be like for Harriet if the truth were to come out. She has been tormented for forty years and shouldn’t have to suffer any more for the deeds that her brother and her father committed. And I beg you to think through the consequences this story might have for the thousands of employees in the company. This could crush her and annihilate us.

  Henrik

  “Henrik also says that if you require compensation for financial losses that may arise from your refraining from publishing the story, he is entirely open to discussion. You can set any financial demands you think fit.”

  “Henrik Vanger is trying to shut me up. Tell him that I wish he had never given me this offer.”

  “The situation is just as troublesome for Henrik as it is for you. He likes you very much and considers you his friend.”

  “Henrik Vanger is a clever bastard,” Blomkvist said. He was suddenly furious. “He wants to hush up the story. He’s playing on my emotions and he knows I like him too. And what he’s also saying is that I have a free hand to publish, and if I do so he would have to revise his attitude towards Millennium.”

  “Everything changed when Harriet stepped on to the stage.”

  “And now Henrik is feeling out what my price tag might be. I don’t intend to hang Harriet out to dry, but somebody has to say something about the women who died in Martin’s basement. Dirch, we don’t even know how many women he tortured and slaughtered. Who is going to speak up on their behalf?”

  Salander looked up from her computer. Her voice was almost inaudible as she said to Frode, “Isn’t there anyone in your company who’s going to try to shut me up?”

  Frode looked astonished. Once again he had managed to ignore her existence.

  “If Martin Vanger were alive at this moment, I would have hung him out to dry,” she went on. “Whatever agreement Mikael made with you, I would have sent every detail about him to the nearest evening paper. And if I could, I would have stuck him down in his own torture hole and tied him to that table and stuck needles through his balls. Unfortunately he’s dead.”

  She turned to Blomkvist.

  “I’m satisfied with the solution. Nothing we do can repair the harm that Martin Vanger did to his victims. But an interesting situation has come up. You’re in a position where you can continue to harm innocent women – especially that Harriet whom you so warmly defended in the car on the way up here. So my question to you is: which is worse – the fact that Martin Vanger raped her out in the cabin or that you’re going to do it in print? You have a fine dilemma. Maybe the ethics committee of the Journalists Association can give you some guidance.”

  She paused. Blomkvist could not meet her gaze. He stared down at the table.

  “But I’m not a journalist,” she said at last.

  “What do you want?” Dirch Frode asked.

  “Martin videotaped his victims. I want you to do your damnedest to identify as many as you can and see to it that their families receive suitable compensation. And then I want the Vanger Corporation to donate 2 million kronor annually and in perpetuity to the National Organisation for Women’s Crisis Centres and Girls’ Crisis Centres in Sweden.”

  Frode weighed the price tag for a minute. Then he nodded.

  “Can you live with that, Mikael?” Salander said.

  Blomkvist felt only despair. His professional life he had devoted to uncovering things which other people had tried to hide, and he could not be party to the covering up of the appalling crimes committed in Martin Vanger’s basement. He who had lambasted his colleagues for not publishing the truth, here he sat, discussing, negotiating even, the most macabre cover-up he had ever heard of.

  He sat in silence for a long time. Then he nodded his assent.

  “So be it,” Frode said. “And with regard to Henrik’s offer for financial compensation…”

  “He can shove it up his backside, and Dirch, I want you to leave now. I understand your position, but right now I’m so furious with you and Henrik and Harriet that if you stay any longer we might not be friends any more.”

  Frode made no move to go.

  “I can’t leave yet. I’m not done. I have another message to deliver, and you’re not going to like this one either. Henrik is insisting that I tell you tonight. You can go up to the hospital and flay him tomorrow morning if you wish.”

  Blomkvist looked up and stared at him.

  Frode went on. “This has got to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But I think that only complete candour with all the cards on the table can save the situation now.”

  “So it’s candour at last, is it?”

  “When Henrik convinced you to take the job last Christmas,” Dirch said, ignoring his sarcasm, “neither he nor I thought that anything would come of it. That was exactly what he said, but he wanted to give it one last try. He had analysed your situation, particularly with the help of the report that Fröken Salander put together. He played on your isolation, he offered good pay, and he used the right bait.”

  “Wennerström.”

  Frode nodded.

  “You were bluffing?”

 
; “No, no,” Frode said.

  Salander raised an eyebrow with interest.

  “Henrik is going to make good on everything he promised. He’s arranging an interview and is going public with a direct assault on Wennerström. You can have all the details later, but roughly the situation is this: when Wennerström was employed in the finance department of the Vanger Corporation, he spent several million kronor speculating on foreign currency. This was long before foreign exchange futures became the rage. He did this without authority. One deal after another went bad, and he was sitting there with a loss of seven million kronor that he tried to cover up. Partly by cooking the books and partly by speculating even harder. It inevitably came to light and he was sacked.”

  “Did he make any profit himself?”

  “Oh yes, he made off with about half a million kronor, which ironically enough became the seed money for the Wennerström Group. We have documentation for all of this. You can use the information however you like, and Henrik will back up the accusations publicly. But…”

  “But, and it’s a big but, Dirch, the information is worthless,” Blomkvist said, slamming his fist on the table. “It all happened thirty-plus years ago and it’s a closed book.”

  “You’ll get confirmation that Wennerström is a crook.”

  “That will annoy Wennerström when it comes out, but it won’t damage him any more than a direct hit from a peashooter. He’s going to shuffle the deck by putting out a press release saying that Henrik Vanger is an old has-been who’s still trying to steal some business from him, and then he’ll probably claim that he was acting on orders from Henrik. Even if he can’t prove his innocence, he can lay down enough smoke screens that no-one will take the story seriously.”

  Frode looked unhappy.

  “You conned me,” Blomkvist said.

  “That wasn’t our intention.”

  “I blame myself. I was grasping at straws, and I should have realised it was something like that.” He laughed abruptly. “Henrik is an old shark. He was selling a product and told me what I wanted to hear. It’s time you went, Dirch.”

  “Mikael… I’m sorry that…”

  “Dirch. Go.”

  Salander did not know whether to go over to Blomkvist or to leave him in peace. He solved the problem for her by picking up his jacket without a word and slamming the door behind him.

  For more than an hour she waited restlessly in the kitchen. She felt so bad that she cleared the table and washed the dishes – a role she usually left to Blomkvist. She went regularly to the window to see if there was any sign of him. Finally she was so nervous that she put on her jacket and went out to look for him.

  First she walked to the marina, where lights were still on in the cabins, but there was no sign of him. She followed the path along the water where they usually took their evening walks. Martin Vanger’s house was dark and already looked abandoned. She went out to the rocks at the point where they had often sat talking, and then she went back home. He still had not returned.

  She went to the church. Still no sign. She was at a loss to know what to do. Then she went back to her motor cycle and got a flashlight from the saddlebag and set off along the water again. It took her a while to wind her way along the half-overgrown road, and even longer to find the path to Gottfried’s cabin. It loomed out of the darkness behind some trees when she had almost reached it. He was not on the porch and the door was locked.

  She had turned towards the village when she stopped and went back, all the way out to the point. She caught sight of Blomkvist’s silhouette in the darkness on the end of the jetty where Harriet Vanger had drowned her father. She sighed with relief.

  He heard her as she came out on to the jetty, and he turned around. She sat down next to him without a word. At last he broke the silence.

  “Forgive me. I had to be alone for a while.”

  “I know.”

  She lit two cigarettes and gave him one. Blomkvist looked at her. Salander was the most asocial human being he had ever met. Usually she ignored any attempt on his part to talk about anything personal, and she had never accepted a single expression of sympathy. She had saved his life, and now she had tracked him out here in the night. He put an arm around her.

  “Now I know what my price is,” he said. “We’ve forsaken those girls. They’re going to bury the whole story. Everything in Martin’s basement will be vacuumed into oblivion.”

  Salander did not answer.

  “Erika was right,” he said. “I would have done more good if I’d gone to Spain for a month and then come home refreshed and taken on Wennerström. I’ve wasted all these months.”

  “If you’d gone to Spain, Martin Vanger would still be operating in his basement.”

  They sat together for a long time before he suggested that they go home.

  Blomkvist fell asleep before Salander. She lay awake listening to him breathe. After a while she went to the kitchen and sat in the dark on the kitchen bench, smoking several cigarettes as she brooded. She had taken it for granted that Vanger and Frode might con him. It was in their nature. But it was Blomkvist’s problem, not hers. Or was it?

  At last she made a decision. She stubbed out her cigarette and went into the bedroom, turned on the lamp, and shook Mikael awake. It was 2:30 in the morning.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got a question. Sit up.”

  Blomkvist sat up, drunk with sleep.

  “When you were indicted, why didn’t you defend yourself?”

  Blomkvist rubbed his eyes. He looked at the clock.

  “It’s a long story, Lisbeth.”

  “I’ve got time. Tell me.”

  He sat for a long while, pondering what he should say. Finally he decided on the truth.

  “I had no defence. The information in the article was wrong.”

  “When I hacked your computer and read your email exchange with Berger, there were plenty of references to the Wennerström affair, but you two kept discussing practical details about the trial and nothing about what actually happened. What was it that went wrong?”

  “Lisbeth, I can’t let the real story get out. I fell into a trap. Erika and I are quite clear that it would damage our credibility even further if we told anyone what really happened.”

  “Listen, Kalle Blomkvist, yesterday afternoon you sat here preaching about friendship and trust and stuff. I’m not going to put the story on the Net.”

  Blomkvist protested. It was the middle of the night. He could not face thinking about the whole thing now. She went on stubbornly sitting there until he gave in. He went to the bathroom and washed his face and put the coffeepot on. Then he came back to the bed and told her about how his old schoolfriend Robert Lindberg, in a yellow Mälar-30 in the guest marina in Arholma, had aroused his curiosity.

  “You mean that your buddy was lying?”

  “No, not at all. He told me exactly what he knew, and I could verify each and every word in documents from the audit at SIB. I even went to Poland and photographed the sheet-metal shack where this huge big Minos Company was housed. I interviewed several of the people who had been employed at the company. They all said exactly the same thing.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Blomkvist sighed. It was a while before he spoke again.

  “I had a damned good story. I still hadn’t confronted Wennerström himself, but the story was airtight; if I had published it at that moment I really would have shook him up. It might not have led to an indictment for fraud – the deal had already been approved by the auditors – but I would have damaged his reputation.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Somewhere along the way somebody heard about what I was poking my nose into, and Wennerström was made aware of my existence. And all of a sudden a whole bunch of strange things started happening. First I was threatened. Anonymous calls from card telephones that were impossible to trace. Erika was also threatened. It was the usual nonsense: lie down or else we’re going to nail
you to a barn door, and so on. She, of course, was mad as a hellcat.”

  He took a cigarette from Salander.

  “Then something extremely unpleasant happened. Late one night when I left the office I was attacked by two men who just walked up to me and gave me a couple of punches. I got a fat lip and fell down in the street. I couldn’t identify them, but one of them looked like an old biker.”

  “So, next…”

  “All these goings-on, of course, only had the effect of making Erika very cross indeed, and I got stubborn. We beefed up security at Millennium. The problem was that the harassment was out of all proportion to the content of the story. We couldn’t fathom why all this was happening.”

  “But the story you published was something quite different.”

  “Exactly. Suddenly we made a breakthrough. We found a source, a Deep Throat in Wennerström’s circle. This source was literally scared to death, and we were only allowed to meet him in hotel rooms. He told us that the money from the Minos affair had been used for weapons deals in the war in Yugoslavia. Wennerström had been making deals with the right-wing Ustashe in Croatia. Not only that, the source was able to give us copies of documents to back it up.”

  “You believed him?”

  “He was clever. He only ever gave us enough information to lead us to the next source, who would confirm the story. We were even given a photograph of one of Wennerström’s closest colleagues shaking hands with the buyer. It was detailed blockbuster material, and everything seemed verifiable. So we published.”

  “And it was a fake.”

  “It was all a fake from beginning to end. The documents were skilful forgeries. Wennerström’s lawyer was able to prove that the photograph of Wennerström’s subordinate and the Ustashe leader was a montage of two different images.”

  “Fascinating,” Salander said.

  “In hindsight it was very easy to see how we had been manipulated. Our original story really had damaged Wennerström. Now that story was drowned in a clever forgery. We published a story that Wennerström could pick apart point by point and prove his innocence.”