The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo m(-1

by Stieg Larsson

  I would very much like to be your friend. If you can stand to have anything more to do with the Vanger family. Best regards, Harriet

  P.S. I understood from Erika that you’re planning to tackle Wennerström again. Dirch Frode told me how Henrik pulled a swifty on you, as they say in Australia. What can I say? I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.

  From ‹mikael.blomkvist@millennium.se›

  To ‹harriet.vanger@vangerindustries.com›:

  Hi Harriet. I left Hedeby in a big hurry and am now working on what I really should have been spending my time on this year. You’ll be advised in plenty of time before the article goes to press, but I think I can say that the problems of the past year will soon be over.

  I hope you and Erika will be friends, and, of course, I have no problem with you being on Millennium’s board. I’ll tell Erika about what happened, if you think that’s wise. Henrik wanted me never to say anything to anyone. Let’s see, but right now I don’t have the time or the energy and I need a little distance first.

  Let’s keep in touch. Best/Mikael

  Salander was not especially interested in what Mikael was writing. She looked up from her book when Blomkvist said something, but at first she could not make it out.

  “Sorry. I was talking aloud. I said that this is horrible.”

  “What’s horrible?”

  “Wennerström had an affair with a twenty-two-year-old waitress and he got her pregnant. Have you read his correspondence with his lawyer?”

  “My dear Mikael – you have ten years of correspondence, emails, agreements, travel arrangements, and God knows what on that hard drive. I don’t find Wennerström so fascinating that I’d cram six gigs of garbage into my head. I read through a fraction of it, mostly to satisfy my curiosity, and that was enough to tell me that he’s a gangster.”

  “OK. He got her pregnant in 1997. When she wanted compensation, his lawyer got someone to try to convince her to have an abortion. I assume the intention was to offer her a sum of money, but she wasn’t interested. Then the persuading ended up with the heavy holding her underwater in a bath until she agreed to leave Wennerström in peace. And Wennerström’s idiot writes all this to the lawyer in an email – of course encrypted, but even so… It doesn’t say much for the IQ of this bunch.”

  “What happened to the girl?”

  “She had an abortion, and Wennerström was pleased.”

  Salander said nothing for ten minutes. Her eyes had suddenly turned dark.

  “One more man who hates women,” she muttered at last.

  She borrowed the CDs and spent the next few days reading through Wennerström’s emails and other documents. While Blomkvist kept working, Salander was up in the sleeping loft with her PowerBook on her knees, pondering Wennerström’s peculiar empire.

  An idea had occurred to her and she could not let it go. Most of all she wondered why it had not occurred to her sooner.

  In late October Mikael turned off his computer when it was only 11:00 in the morning. He climbed up to the sleeping loft and handed Salander what he had written. Then he fell asleep. She woke him that evening and gave him her opinion of the article.

  Just after 2:00 in the morning, Blomkvist made the last backup of his work.

  The next day he closed the shutters on the windows and locked up. Salander’s holiday was over. They went back to Stockholm together.

  He brought up the subject as they were drinking coffee from paper cups on the Vaxholm ferry.

  “What the two of us need to decide is what to tell Erika. She’s going to refuse to publish this if I can’t explain how I got hold of the material.”

  Erika Berger. Blomkvist’s editor in chief and long-time lover. Salander had never met her and was not sure that she wanted to either. Berger seemed like some indefinable disturbance in her life.

  “What does she know about me?”

  “Nothing.” He sighed. “The fact is that I’ve been avoiding her ever since the summer. She’s very frustrated about the fact that I couldn’t tell her what happened in Hedestad. She knows, of course, that I’ve been staying out at Sandhamn and writing this story, but she doesn’t know what it’s about.”

  “Hmm.”

  “In a couple of hours she’ll have the manuscript. Then she’s going to give me the third degree. The question is, what should I tell her?”

  “What do you want to tell her?”

  “I’d like to tell her the truth.”

  Salander frowned.

  “Lisbeth, Erika and I argue almost all the time. It seems to be part of how we communicate. But she’s absolutely trustworthy. You’re a source. She would rather die than reveal who you are.”

  “How many others would you have to tell?”

  “Absolutely no-one. It will go to the grave with me and Erika. But I won’t tell her your secret if you don’t want me to. On the other hand, it’s not an option for me to lie to Erika, make up some source that doesn’t exist.”

  Salander thought about it until they docked by the Grand Hotel. Analysis of consequences. Reluctantly she finally gave Blomkvist permission to introduce her to Erika. He switched on his mobile and made the call.

  Berger was lunching with Malin Eriksson, whom she was considering hiring as managing editor. Eriksson was twenty-nine years old and had been working as a temp for five years. She had never held a permanent job and had started to doubt that she ever would. Berger called her on the very day that Malin’s latest temp job ended to ask if she would like to apply for the Millennium position.

  “It’s a temporary post for three months,” Berger said. “But if things work out, it could be permanent.”

  “I’ve heard rumours that Millennium is having a difficult time.”

  Berger smiled.

  “You shouldn’t believe rumours.”

  “This Dahlman that I would be replacing…” Eriksson hesitated. “He’s going to work at a magazine owned by Hans-Erik Wennerström…”

  Berger nodded. “It’s hardly a trade secret that we’re in conflict with Wennerström. He doesn’t like people who work for Millennium.”

  “So if I take the job at Millennium, I would end up in that category too.”

  “It’s very likely, yes.”

  “But Dahlman got a job with Monopoly Financial Magazine, didn’t he?”

  “You might say that it’s Wennerström’s way of paying for services rendered. Are you still interested?”

  Eriksson nodded.

  “When do you want me to start?”

  That’s when Blomkvist called.

  She used her own key to open the door to his apartment. It was the first time since his brief visit to the office at Midsummer that she was meeting him face to face. She went into the living room and found an anorexically thin girl sitting on the sofa, wearing a worn leather jacket and with her feet propped up on the coffee table. At first she thought the girl was about fifteen, but that was before she looked into her eyes. She was still looking at this creature when Blomkvist came in with a coffeepot and coffee cake.

  “Forgive me for being completely impossible,” he said.

  Berger tilted her head. There was something different about him. He looked haggard, thinner than she remembered. His eyes had a shamed expression, and for a moment he avoided her gaze. She glanced at his neck. She saw a pale red line, clearly distinguishable.

  “I’ve been avoiding you. It’s a very long story, and I’m not proud of my role in it. But we’ll talk about that later… Now I want to introduce you to this young woman. Erika, this is Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth, Erika Berger, editor in chief of Millennium and my best friend.”

  Salander studied Berger’s elegant clothes and self-confident manner and decided after ten seconds that she was most likely not going to be her best friend.

  Their meeting lasted five hours. Berger twice made calls to cancel other meetings. She spent an hour reading parts of the manuscript that Blomkvist put in her hands. She had a thousand questi
ons but realised that it would take weeks before she got them answered. The important thing was the manuscript, which she finally put down. If even a fraction of these claims were accurate, a whole new situation had emerged.

  Berger looked at Blomkvist. She had never doubted that he was an honest person, but now she felt dizzy and wondered whether the Wennerström affair had broken him – that what he had been working on was all a figment of his imagination. Blomkvist was at that moment unpacking two boxes of printed-out source material. Berger blanched. She wanted, of course, to know how it had come into his possession.

  It took a while to convince her that this odd girl, who had said not one word during the meeting, had unlimited access to Wennerström’s computer. And not just his – she had also hacked into the computers of several of his lawyers and close associates.

  Berger’s immediate reaction was that they could not use the material since it had been obtained through illegal means.

  But, of course, they could use it. Blomkvist pointed out that they had no obligation to explain how they had acquired the material. They could just as well have a source with access to Wennerström’s computer who had burned everything on his hard drive to a CD.

  Finally Berger realised what a weapon she had in her hands. She felt exhausted and still had questions, but she did not know where to begin. At last she leaned back against the sofa and threw out her hands.

  “Mikael, what happened up in Hedestad?”

  Salander looked up sharply. Blomkvist answered with a question.

  “How are you getting along with Harriet Vanger?”

  “Fine. I think. I’ve met her twice. Christer and I drove up to Hedestad for a board meeting last week. We got drunk on wine.”

  “And the board meeting?”

  “She kept her word.”

  “Ricky, I know you’re frustrated that I’ve been ducking you and coming up with excuses not to tell you what happened. You and I have never had secrets from each other, and all of a sudden there’s six months of my life that I’m… not prepared to tell you about.”

  Berger met Blomkvist’s gaze. She knew him inside and out, but what she saw in his eyes was something she had never seen before. He was begging her not to ask. Salander watched their wordless dialogue. She was no part of it.

  “Was it that bad?”

  “It was worse. I’ve been dreading this conversation. I promise to tell you, but I’ve spent several months suppressing my feelings while Wennerström has absorbed all my attention… I’m still not ready. I’d prefer it if Harriet told you instead.”

  “What’s that mark around your neck?”

  “Lisbeth saved my life up there. If it weren’t for her, I’d be dead.”

  Berger’s eyes widened. She stared at the girl in the leather jacket.

  “And right now you need to come to an agreement with her. She is our source.”

  Berger sat for a time, thinking. Then she did something that astonished Blomkvist and startled Salander; she surprised even herself. The whole time she had been sitting at Mikael’s living-room table, she had felt Salander’s eyes on her. A taciturn girl with hostile vibrations.

  Berger stood up and went around the table and threw her arms around the girl. Salander squirmed like a worm about to be put on a hook.

  CHAPTER 29

  Saturday, November 1 – Tuesday, November 25

  Salander was surfing through Wennerström’s cyber-empire. She had been staring at her computer screen for almost eleven hours. The idea that had materialised in some unexplored nook of her brain during the last week at Sandhamn had grown into a manic preoccupation. For four weeks she had isolated herself in her apartment and ignored any communication from Armansky. She had spent twelve hours a day in front of her computer, some days more, and the rest of her waking hours she had brooded over the same problem.

  During the past month she had had intermittent contact with Blomkvist. He too was preoccupied, busy at the Millennium offices. They had conferred by telephone a couple of times each week, and she had kept him updated on Wennerström’s correspondence and other activities.

  For the hundredth time she went over every detail. She was not afraid that she had missed anything, but she was not sure that she had understood how every one of the intricate connections fitted together.

  This much-discussed empire was like a living, formless, pulsating organism that kept changing shape. It consisted of options, bonds, shares, partnerships, loan interest, income interest, deposits, bank accounts, payment transfers, and thousands of other elements. An incredibly large proportion of the assets was deposited in post-office-box companies that owned one another.

  The financial pundits’ most inflated analyses of the Wennerström Group estimated its value at more than 900 billion kronor. That was a bluff, or at least a figure that was grossly exaggerated. Obviously Wennerström himself was by no means poor. She calculated the real assets to be worth between 90 and 100 billion kronor, which was nothing to sneez eat. A thorough audit of the entire corporation would take years. All in all Salander had identified close to three thousand separate accounts and bank holdings all over the world. Wennerström was devoting himself to fraud that was so extensive it was no longer merely criminal – it was business.

  Somewhere in the Wennerström organism there was also substance. Three assets kept showing up in the hierarchy. The fixed Swedish assets were unassailable and genuine, available to public scrutiny, balance sheets, and audits. The American firm was solid, and a bank in New York served as the base for all liquid capital. The story was in the business with the post-office-box companies in places such as Gibraltar and Cyprus and Macao. Wennerström was like a clearing house for the illegal weapons trade, money laundering for suspect enterprises in Colombia, and extremely unorthodox businesses in Russia.

  An anonymous account in the Cayman Islands was unique; it was personally controlled by Wennerström but was not connected to any companies. A few hundredths of a percent of every deal that Wennerström made would be siphoned into the Cayman Islands via the post-office-box companies.

  Salander worked in a trance-like state. The account-click-email-click-balance sheets-click. She noted down the latest transfers. She tracked a small transaction in Japan to Singapore and on via Luxembourg to the Cayman Islands. She understood how it worked. It was as if she were part of the impulses in cyberspace. Small changes. The latest email. One brief message of somewhat peripheral interest was sent at 10:00 p.m. The PGP encryption programme (rattle, rattle) was a joke for anyone who was already inside his computer and could read the message in plain text:

  Berger has stopped arguing about the ads. Has she given up or does she have something cooking? Your source at the editorial offices assured us that they were on the brink of ruin, but it sounds as if they just hired a new person. Find out what’s happening. Blomkvist has been working at Sandhamn for the past few weeks, but no-one knows what he’s writing. He’s been seen at the editorial offices the past few days. Can you arrange for an advance copy of the next issue?/HEW/

  Nothing dramatic. Let him worry. Your goose is cooked, old man.

  At 5:30 in the morning she turned off her computer and got out a new pack of cigarettes. She had drunk four, no, five Cokes during the night, and now she got out a sixth and went to sit on the sofa. She was wearing only knickers and a washed-out camouflage shirt advertising Soldier of Fortune magazine, with the slogan KILL THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT. She realised that she was cold, so she reached for a blanket, which she wrapped around herself.

  She felt high, as if she had consumed some inappropriate and presumably illegal substance. She focused her gaze on the street lamp outside the window and sat still while her brain worked at top speed. Mamma-click-sister-click-Mimmi-click-Holger Palmgren. Evil Fingers. And Armansky. The job. Harriet Vanger. Click. Martin Vanger. Click. The golf club. Click. The lawyer Bjurman. Click. Every single fucking detail that she couldn’t forget even if she tried.

  She wondered
whether Bjurman would ever take his clothes off in front of a woman again, and if he did, how was he going to explain the tattoos on his stomach? And the next time he went to the doctor how would he avoid taking off his clothes?

  And Mikael Blomkvist. Click.

  She considered him to be a good person, possibly with a Practical Pig complex that was sometimes a little too apparent. And he was unbearably naive with regard to certain elementary moral issues. He had an indulgent and forgiving personality that looked for explanations and excuses for the way people behaved, and he would never get it that the raptors of the world understood only one language. She felt almost awkwardly protective whenever she thought of him.

  She did not remember falling asleep, but she woke up at 9:00 a.m. with a crick in her neck and with her head leaning against the wall behind the sofa. She tottered to the bedroom and fell back to sleep.

  ***

  It was without a doubt the biggest story of their lives. For the first time in a year and a half, Berger was happy in the way that only an editor who has a spectacular scoop in the oven can be. She and Blomkvist were polishing the article one last time when Salander called him on his mobile.

  “I forgot to say that Wennerström is starting to get worried about what you’ve been doing lately, and he’s asked for an advance copy of the next issue.”

  “How do you know… ah, forget that. Any idea what he plans to do?”

  “Nix. Just one logical guess.”

  Blomkvist thought for a few seconds. “The printer,” he exclaimed.

  Berger raised her eyebrows.

  “If you’re keeping a lid on the editorial offices, there aren’t many other possibilities. Provided none of his thugs is planning to pay you a nighttime visit.”

  Blomkvist turned to Berger. “Book a new printer for this issue. Now. And call Dragan Armansky – I want security here at night for the next week.” Back to Salander. “Thanks.”