The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest m(-3

by Stieg Larsson

  “What was that?”

  “Fälldin’s visitors’ logbook at Rosenbad. Jerker requisitioned it. It’s a public document.”

  “And?”

  Modig hesitated once again. “The book states only that the Prime Minister met with the chief of Säpo along with a colleague to discuss general questions.”

  “Was there a name?”

  “Yes. E. Gullberg.”

  Blomkvist could feel the blood rush to his head.

  “Evert Gullberg,” he said.

  Blomkvist called from Café Madeleine on his anonymous mobile to book a flight to Amsterdam. The plane would take off from Arlanda at 2.50. He walked to Dressman on Kungsgatan and bought a shirt and a change of underwear, and then he went to a pharmacy to buy a toothbrush and other toiletries. He checked carefully to see that he was not being followed and hurried to catch the Arlanda Express.

  The plane landed at Schiphol airport at 4.50, and by 6.30 he was checking into a small hotel about fifteen minutes’ walk from the Hague’s Centraal Station.

  He spent two hours trying to locate the Swedish ambassador and made contact by telephone at around 9.00. He used all his powers of persuasion and explained that he was there on a matter of great urgency. The ambassador finally relented and agreed to meet him at 10.00 on Sunday morning.

  Then Blomkvist went out and had a light dinner at a restaurant near his hotel. He was asleep by 11.00.

  Ambassador Janeryd was in no mood for small talk when he offered Blomkvist coffee at his residence on Lange Voorhout.

  “Well… what is it that’s so urgent?”

  “Alexander Zalachenko. The Russian defector who came to Sweden in 1976,” Blomkvist said, handing him the letter from Fälldin.

  Janeryd looked surprised. He read the letter and laid it on the table beside him.

  Blomkvist explained the background and why Fälldin had written to him.

  “I… I can’t discuss this matter,” Janeryd said at last.

  “I think you can.”

  “No, I could only speak of it with the constitutional committee.”

  “There’s a great probability that you will have to do just that. But this letter tells you to use your own good judgement.”

  “Fälldin is an honest man.”

  “I don’t doubt that. And I’m not looking to damage either you or Fälldin. Nor do I ask you to tell me a single military secret that Zalachenko may have revealed.”

  “I don’t know any secrets. I didn’t even know that his name was Zalachenko. I only knew him by his cover name. He was known as Ruben. But it’s absurd that you should think I would discuss it with a journalist.”

  “Let me give you one very good reason why you should,” Blomkvist said and sat up straight in his chair. “This whole story is going to be published very soon. And when that happens, the media will either tear you to pieces or describe you as an honest civil servant who made the best of an impossible situation. You were the one Fälldin assigned to be the go-between with those who were protecting Zalachenko. I already know that.”

  Janeryd was silent for almost a minute.

  “Listen, I never had any information, not the remotest idea of the background you’ve described. I was rather young… I didn’t know how I should deal with these people. I met them about twice a year during the time I worked for the government. I was told that Ruben… your Zalachenko, was alive and healthy, that he was co-operating, and that the information he provided was invaluable. I was never privy to the details. I had no ‘need to know’.”

  Blomkvist waited.

  “The defector had operated in other countries and knew nothing about Sweden, so he was never a major factor for security policy. I informed the Prime Minister on a couple of occasions, but there was never very much to report.”

  “I see.”

  “They always said that he was being handled in the customary way and that the information he provided was being processed through the appropriate channels. What could I say? If I asked what it meant, they smiled and said that it was outside my security clearance level. I felt like an idiot.”

  “You never considered the fact that there might be something wrong with the arrangement?”

  “No. There was nothing wrong with the arrangement. I took it for granted that Säpo knew what they were doing and had the appropriate routines and experience. But I can’t talk about this.”

  Janeryd had by this time been talking about it for several minutes.

  “O.K… but all this is beside the point. Only one thing is important right now.”

  “What?”

  “The names of the individuals you had your meetings with.”

  Janeryd gave Blomkvist a puzzled look.

  “The people who were looking after Zalachenko went far beyond their jurisdiction. They’ve committed serious criminal acts and they’ll be the object of a preliminary investigation. That’s why Fälldin sent me to see you. He doesn’t know who they are. You were the one who met them.”

  Janeryd blinked and pressed his lips together.

  “One was Evert Gullberg… he was the top man.”

  Janeryd nodded.

  “How many times did you meet him?”

  “He was at every meeting except one. There were about ten meetings during the time Fälldin was Prime Minister.”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “In the lobby of some hotel. Usually the Sheraton. Once at the Amaranth on Kungsholmen and sometimes at the Continental pub.”

  “And who else was at the meetings?”

  “It was a long time ago… I don’t remember.”

  “Try.”

  “There was a… Clinton. Like the American president.”

  “First name?”

  “Fredrik. I saw him four or five times.”

  “Others?”

  “Hans von Rottinger. I knew him through my mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes, my mother knew the von Rottinger family. Hans von Rottinger was always a pleasant chap. Before he turned up out of the blue at a meeting with Gullberg, I had no idea that he worked for Säpo.”

  “He didn’t,” Blomkvist said.

  Janeryd turned pale.

  “He worked for something called the Section for Special Analysis,” Blomkvist said. “What were you told about that group?”

  “Nothing. I mean, just that they were the ones who took care of the defector.”

  “Right. But isn’t it strange that they don’t appear anywhere in Säpo’s organizational chart?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It is, isn’t it? So how did they set up the meetings? Did they call you, or did you call them?”

  “Neither. The time and place for each meeting was set at the preceding one.”

  “What happened if you needed to get in contact with them? For instance, to change the time of a meeting or something like that?”

  “I had a number to call.”

  “What was the number?”

  “I couldn’t possibly remember.”

  “Who answered if you called the number?”

  “I don’t know. I never used it.”

  “Next question. Who did you hand everything over to?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “When Fälldin’s term came to an end. Who took your place?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you write a report?”

  “No. Everything was classified. I couldn’t even take notes.”

  “And you never briefed your successor?”

  “No.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well… Fälldin left office, and Ola Ullsten came in. I was told that we would have to wait until after the next election. Then Fälldin was re-elected and our meetings were resumed. Then came the election in 1985. The Social Democrats won, and I assume that Palme appointed somebody to take over from me. I transferred to the foreign ministry and became a diplomat. I was posted to Egypt, and then to India.�
�

  Blomkvist went on asking questions for another few minutes, but he was sure that he already had everything Janeryd could tell him. Three names.

  Fredrik Clinton.

  Hans von Rottinger.

  And Evert Gullberg – the man who had shot Zalachenko.

  The Zalachenko club.

  He thanked Janeryd for the meeting and walked the short distance along Lange Voorhout to Hotel des Indes, from where he took a taxi to Centraal. It was not until he was in the taxi that he reached into his jacket pocket and stopped the tape recorder.

  Berger looked up and scanned the half-empty newsroom beyond the glass cage. Holm was off that day. She saw no-one who showed any interest in her, either openly or covertly. Nor did she have reason to think that anyone on the editorial staff wished her ill.

  The email had arrived a minute before. The sender was editorial-@aftonbladet.com›. Why Aftonbladet? The address was another fake.

  Today’s message contained no text. There was only a jpeg that she opened in Photoshop.

  The image was pornographic: a naked woman with exceptionally large breasts, a dog collar around her neck. She was on all fours and being mounted from the rear.

  The woman’s face had been replaced with Berger’s. It was not a skilled collage, but probably that was not the point. The picture was from her old byline at Millennium and could be downloaded off the Net.

  At the bottom of the picture was one word, written with the spray function in Photoshop.

  Whore.

  This was the ninth anonymous message she had received containing the word “whore,” sent apparently by someone at a well-known media outlet in Sweden. She had a cyber-stalker on her hands.

  The telephone tapping was a more difficult task than the computer monitoring. Trinity had no trouble locating the cable to Prosecutor Ekström’s home telephone. The problem was that Ekström seldom or never used it for work-related calls. Trinity did not even consider trying to bug Ekström’s work telephone at police H.Q. on Kungsholmen. That would have required extensive access to the Swedish cable network, which he did not have.

  But Trinity and Bob the Dog devoted the best part of a week to identifying and separating out Ekström’s mobile from the background noise of about 200,000 other mobile telephones within a kilometre of police headquarters.

  They used a technique called Random Frequency Tracking System. The technique was not uncommon. It had been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, and was built into an unknown number of satellites that performed pinpoint monitoring of capitals around the world as well as flashpoints of special interest.

  The N.S.A. had enormous resources and used a vast network in order to capture a large number of mobile conversations in a certain region simultaneously. Each individual call was separated and processed digitally by computers programmed to react to certain words, such as terrorist or Kalashnikov. If such a word occurred, the computer automatically sent an alarm, which meant that some operator would go in manually and listen to the conversation to decide whether it was of interest or not.

  It was a more complex problem to identify a specific mobile telephone. Each mobile has its own unique signature – a fingerprint – in the form of the telephone number. With exceptionally sensitive equipment the N.S.A. could focus on a specific area to separate out and monitor mobile calls. The technique was simple but not 100 per cent effective. Outgoing calls were particularly hard to identify. Incoming calls were simpler because they were preceded by the fingerprint that would enable the telephone in question to receive the signal.

  The difference between Trinity and the N.S.A. attempting to eavesdrop could be measured in economic terms. The N.S.A. had an annual budget of several billion U.S. dollars, close to twelve thousand fulltime agents, and access to cutting-edge technology in I.T. and telecommunications. Trinity had a van with thirty kilos of electronic equipment, much of which was home-made stuff that Bob the Dog had set up. Through its global satellite monitoring the N.S.A. could home in highly sensitive antennae on a specific building anywhere in the world. Trinity had an antenna constructed by Bob the Dog which had an effective range of about five hundred metres.

  The relatively limited technology to which Trinity had access meant that he had to park his van on Bergsgatan or one of the nearby streets and laboriously calibrate the equipment until he had identified the fingerprint that represented Ekström’s mobile number. Since he did not know Swedish, he had to relay the conversations via another mobile back home to Plague, who did the actual eavesdropping.

  For five days Plague, who was looking more and more hollow-eyed, listened in vain to a vast number of calls to and from police headquarters and the surrounding buildings. He had heard fragments of ongoing investigations, uncovered planned lovers’ trysts, and taped hours and hours of conversations of no interest whatsoever. Late on the evening of the fifth day, Trinity sent a signal which a digital display instantly identified as Ekström’s mobile number. Plague locked the parabolic antenna on to the exact frequency.

  The technology of R.F.T.S. worked primarily on incoming calls to Ekström. Trinity’s parabolic antenna captured the search for Ekström’s mobile number as it was sent through the ether.

  Because Trinity could record the calls from Ekström, he also got voiceprints that Plague could process.

  Plague ran Ekström’s digitized voice through a program called V.P.R.S., Voiceprint Recognition System. He specified a dozen commonly occurring words, such as “O.K.” or “Salander”. When he had five separate examples of a word, he charted it with respect to the time it took to speak the word, what tone of voice and frequency range it had, whether the end of the word went up or down, and a dozen other markers. The result was a graph. In this way Plague could also monitor outgoing calls from Ekström. His parabolic antenna would be permanently listening out for a call containing Ekström’s characteristic graph curve for one of a dozen commonly occurring words. The technology was not perfect, but roughly half of all the calls that Ekström made on his mobile from anywhere near police headquarters were monitored and recorded.

  The system had an obvious weakness. As soon as Ekström left police headquarters, it was no longer possible to monitor his mobile, unless Trinity knew where he was and could park his van in the immediate vicinity.

  With the authorization from the highest level, Edklinth had been able to set up a legitimate operations department. He picked four colleagues, purposely selecting younger talent who had experience on the regular police force and were only recently recruited to S.I.S. Two had a background in the Fraud Division, one had been with the financial police, and one was from the Violent Crimes Division. They were summoned to Edklinth’s office and told of their assignment as well as the need for absolute secrecy. He made plain that the investigation was being carried out at the express order of the Prime Minister. Inspector Figuerola was named as their chief, and she directed the investigation with a force that matched her physical appearance.

  But the investigation proceeded slowly. This was largely due to the fact that no-one was quite sure who or what should be investigated. On more than one occasion Edklinth and Figuerola considered bringing Mårtensson in for questioning. But they decided to wait. Arresting him would reveal the existence of the investigation.

  Finally, on Tuesday, eleven days after the meeting with the Prime Minister, Figuerola came to Edklinth’s office.

  “I think we’ve got something.”

  “Sit down.”

  “Evert Gullberg. One of our investigators had a talk with Marcus Erlander, who’s leading the investigation into Zalachenko’s murder. According to Erlander, S.I.S. contacted the Göteborg police just two hours after the murder and gave them information about Gullberg’s threatening letters.”

  “That was fast.”

  “A little too fast. S.I.S. faxed nine letters that Gullberg had supposedly written. There’s just one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Two of the letters
were sent to the justice department – to the Minister of Justice and to the Deputy Minister.”

  “I know that.”

  “Yes, but the letter to the Deputy Minister wasn’t logged in at the department until the following day. It arrived with a later delivery.”

  Edklinth stared at Figuerola. He felt very much afraid that his suspicions were going to turn out to be justified. Figuerola went implacably on.

  “So we have S.I.S. sending a fax of a threatening letter that hadn’t yet reached its addressee.”

  “Good Lord,” Edklinth said.

  “It was someone in Personal Protection who faxed them through.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t think he’s involved in the case. The letters landed on his desk in the morning, and shortly after the murder he was told to get in touch with the Göteborg police.”

  “Who gave him the instruction?”

  “The chief of Secretariat’s assistant.”

  “Good God, Monica. Do you know what this means? It means that S.I.S. was involved in Zalachenko’s murder.”

  “Not necessarily. But it definitely does mean that some individuals within S.I.S. had knowledge of the murder before it was committed. The only question is: who?”

  “The chief of Secretariat…”

  “Yes. But I’m beginning to suspect that this Zalachenko club is out of house.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Mårtensson. He was moved from Personal Protection and is working on his own. We’ve had him under surveillance round the clock for the past week. He hasn’t had contact with anyone within S.I.S. as far as we can tell. He gets calls on a mobile that we cannot monitor. We don’t know what number it is, but it’s not his normal mobile number. He did meet with the fair-haired man, but we haven’t been able to identify him.”

  Edklinth frowned. At the same instant Anders Berglund knocked on the door. He was one of the new team, the officer who had worked with the financial police.

  “I think I’ve found Evert Gullberg,” Berglund said.

  “Come in,” Edklinth said.

  Berglund put a dog-eared, black-and-white photograph on the desk. Edklinth and Figuerola looked at the picture, which showed a man that both of them immediately recognized. He was being led through a doorway by two broad-shouldered plain-clothes police officers. The legendary double agent Colonel Stig Wennerström.[7]