The Girl Who Lived Twice

by David Lagercrantz

  In the Tunnelbana on her way to Fridhelmsplan and police headquarters, she googled “Sardar”. It was an old Persian word referring to princes and aristocrats, or leaders of a group or tribe in general. It was used in the Middle East and in Central and South-East Asia. You could also spell it Sirdar, Sardaar or Serdar. A prince, Modig thought. A prince in beggar’s clothing. That would be something. But real life is never the way it is in fairy tales.

  It had taken them a while to get away, and not only because they had failed to pick up a single trace of Lisbeth Salander. Ivan Galinov, the old G.R.U. agent, had been busy with other things too, and Camilla was determined to have him along. He was sixty-three, a man of great education with years of experience in intelligence work and infiltration.

  He was a polyglot; he spoke eleven languages fluently and could switch between different dialects. In Britain, France or Germany he could even have passed for a native. He was tall and slim and carried himself well, and was without doubt a handsome man, with grey hair and white sideburns, even though there was something bird-like about his features. Face to face he was invariably polite and gallant, nevertheless he frightened people; there were rumours about events in his life which added substance to this aspect of his character, and said more about the person he really was.

  One of the stories concerned the loss of an eye during the war in Chechnya. He had had it replaced with an enamel prosthesis, said to be the best available on the market. According to the anecdote – which was inspired by an old joke about a loan officer at a bank – nobody could work out which was the real eye and which the false one, until a subordinate of Galinov hit on the simple truth: “The eye with the faint gleam of humanity is the enamel one.”

  Another account involved the crematorium on the second basement level of the G.R.U.’s headquarters in Khodinka. Galinov had allegedly taken a colleague there and cremated him alive for having sold classified material to the British. It was said that his movements became slower and his eyes stopped blinking when he was torturing his enemies. Probably just talk, most of this, exaggerations becoming myth, and even though Camilla herself used the power of those stories to get what she wanted, it was not what she most valued in him.

  Galinov had been close to her father; like her he had loved and admired him, and just like her he had been let down. That experience had given them a crucial bond. In Galinov she found understanding rather than cruelty, and fatherly concern, and she never had any trouble seeing which eye was the real one. Galinov had taught her to soldier on, and quite recently, when it became clear to her what a crushing blow it had been for him all those years ago when Zalachenko defected to Sweden, she had asked:

  “How did you survive?”

  “The same way you did, Kira.”

  “And how was that?”

  “You survived by becoming like him.”

  They were words she had taken to heart. Words which both scared her and gave her strength and often, as now, with the past hot on her heels, she wanted to have Galinov close by. In his presence she was not afraid to be a little girl again. He was the only person in recent years who had seen her cry and now, heading for Arlanda airport and Stockholm in her private jet, she sought his smile.

  “Thanks for coming along,” she said.

  “We’ll catch her, my love. We’ll get her,” he replied, tenderly patting her hand.

  Salander must have slept after seeing Camilla and her entourage driving off towards the airport, because she woke up and discovered a note on the bedside table to say that Paulina had gone down to breakfast. But now it was ten past eleven and the dining room must be closed. Salander stayed up in the room and cursed to herself when she remembered she had eaten the last of the snacks in the minibar. She drank water from the tap and then showered and put on jeans and a black T-shirt, and sat at the desk to check her e-mails. She had received two files of more than ten gigabytes, together with a message from Medical Examiner Dr Fredrika Nyman:

 

  The anger between the lines passed Salander by, and in any case she was swiftly distracted. She could see that Camilla was now in Sweden, on the E4 from Arlanda heading for Stockholm. She clenched her fists and briefly wondered whether she should go there now too. But she stayed at the desk and pulled up the files the Nyman woman had sent, letting the pages scroll past her eyes like a flickering microfilm. Why was she even doing this, could she really be bothered?

  For now she resolved to concentrate and take a look, at least while she decided what to do next. She knew that this was where she always excelled.

  Salander was capable of grasping within a very short time the content of even the most voluminous documents, and that is why she preferred, as Nyman had suspected, to work directly with raw data. This way she could avoid being influenced by the opinions and annotations of other people. She used the SAMtools programme to convert the information into a so-called BAM file, a document containing the entire genome, and that in itself was no small feat.

  In a way it was like a gigantic cryptogram, with four letters: A, C, G and T, the nitrogenous bases adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. At first glance it looked like one big incomprehensible mass. But in fact it was code for an entire life.

  To begin with Lisbeth looked for deviations, any deviations, by trawling indices and studying graphs. Then she turned to her BAM Viewer, her I.G.V., and compared specific and random segments with the D.N.A. sequences of other people she had found in the 1,000 Genomes Project – genetic information collected from all over the world – and it was then that she discovered an anomaly in the rs4954 frequency in what is known as the EPAS1 gene, which regulates the body’s haemoglobin production.

  There was something so sensationally different there that she immediately ran a search in the PubMed database, and not long after she suddenly exclaimed aloud and shook her head. Was it really possible? She had had an inkling it might be something like that, but she had not expected to see it in black and white quite so soon. Now utterly focused, she forgot all about her sister in Stockholm and even failed to notice that Paulina had come in and greeted her before going into the bathroom.

  Now Salander was entirely concentrated on learning more about this variant of the EPAS1 gene. Not only was it extremely unusual, it also had a spectacular background, traceable all the way back to the Denisova hominins, a subspecies of homo sapiens which had died out forty thousand years ago.

  For a long time the Denisovans were unknown to scientists, but their existence had been recognised ever since Russian archaeologists discovered a bone fragment and the tooth of a woman in the Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia in 2008. It seemed that in the course of history the Denisovans interbred with homo sapiens in South Asia and passed on some of their genes to contemporary humans, among others this variant of EPAS1.

  Thanks to the variant, the body can assimilate even small volumes of oxygen. It makes the blood thinner and helps it to circulate faster, and this lowers the risk of blood clotting and oedema. It is especially advantageous for people living and working at high altitudes, where oxygen levels are lower, and that matched Salander’s initial assumptions, based on the beggar’s injuries and amputations and his carbon-13 analysis.

  But even though she now had such an obvious indication, she could not be certain. The variant was unusual but still found in various parts of the world, so she investigated the man’s Y chromosome and mitochondrial D.N.A. and saw that he belonged to haplogroup C4a3b1, and once she had checked that her remaining doubts disappeared.

  That group was found only among people who live high up on the s
lopes of the Himalayas in Nepal and Tibet, who often work as porters or guides on high-altitude expeditions.

  The man was a Sherpa.

  PART II

  THE MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

  25. – 27.viii

  The Sherpas are an ethnic group in the Himalayan region of Nepal. Many of them work as guides or porters on high-altitude expeditions.

  The majority are adherents of Nyingma, an ancient school of Buddhism, and believe that gods and spirits inhabit the mountains. The deities must be respected and revered in accordance with religious rituals.

  A lhawa, a shaman, is thought to be able to help a Sherpa who is ill or suffers an accident.

  CHAPTER 12

  25.viii

  There were dark clouds out at sea and Blomkvist, in his cabin in Sandhamn, was searching aimlessly on the net. He kept being drawn to information about Johannes Forsell. Occasionally he bumped into him at the grocer’s or down at the harbour, but he had also interviewed him when he became Minister of Defence three years ago, in October 2017. He remembered waiting in a big room with maps on the walls and Forsell putting his head round the door like a cheerful little boy arriving at a party.

  “Mikael Blomkvist,” he said. “My God, how wonderful.”

  Blomkvist was not used to being greeted in that way by politicians, and perhaps he should have dismissed it as an attempt to butter him up. But there was something genuinely enthusiastic about Forsell, and he recalled how stimulating their conversation had been. Forsell was quick-witted and on top of his subjects, and he gave real answers, as if he were truly interested in the questions and not engaging in party politics. Even so, Blomkvist’s clearest memory was of the Danish pastries. On the table there was a plate laden with them, and Forsell most definitely did not look like a man who ate Danish pastries.

  He was tall and fit, a fine figure of a man. He ran five kilometres and did two hundred push-ups every morning, he said, and displayed no signs of light-heartedness whatsoever. Maybe the pastries were an effort to show a common touch, an elitist trying to appear normal, just like the time he told Aftonbladet that he had always loved the annual Melodifestivalen song competition, without then being able to answer a single question about it.

  Blomkvist and he were the same age, they realised, even though Forsell surely looked younger, and would score better in any health check. He was bursting with energy and optimism. “The world looks a dark place, but we’re making progress. There are fewer and fewer wars, let’s not forget that,” he said, giving Blomkvist a book by Steven Pinker which was lying around somewhere, still unread.

  Forsell had been born in Östersund to a family with a small business consisting of a guest house and a holiday village in Åre. He stood out at school from an early age, was a promising cross-country skier and went to a special high school in Sollefteå for talented young winter sportsmen. After an assessment when he was called up for his military service, he was admitted to the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreters’ School, where he learned Russian and became an officer at the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service. For obvious reasons, his years in Must were the least known part of his life. He may, however, have been keeping the G.R.U.’s activities in Sweden under observation; that much transpired from information leaked to the Guardian when Forsell was deported from Russia, where he had been attached to the Swedish Embassy, in late autumn 2008.

  The following year, in February, his father died. He resigned from his post and took over the family business, and in no time at all turned it into a major enterprise. He built hotels in Åre, Sälen, Vemdalen and Järvsö, and also in Geilo and Lillehammer in Norway. In 2015 he was able to sell the business to a German travel group for almost two hundred million kronor. He did, however, hold on to some minor interests in Åre and Abisko.

  That same year he joined the Social Democrats and, without any real political experience, was elected to the town council in Östersund and soon became popular, gaining a reputation for getting things done and for his unconditional attachment to the local football team. He moved swiftly through various posts and before long found himself Minister of Defence. For a time it looked like a P.R. coup for the government.

  He was spoken of as a hero and an adventurer because of two major achievements alongside his career: swimming the English Channel in the summer of 2002 and climbing Mount Everest six years later, in May 2008. But the tide soon turned, and that could probably be dated back to his uncompromising statement that Russia had been supporting the xenophobic Sweden Democrats during the election campaign.

  He was subjected to attacks which became increasingly savage. But they were nothing compared to what was to follow. After the stock market crash in June, there was a flood of fake news about him, and it was not hard to sympathise with his Norwegian wife Rebecka who, in an interview in Dagens Nyheter, called the lies shameless and added that even their two children now needed bodyguards. The mood was rancorous and frenzied, and the bombardment was constantly being stepped up.

  Recent press pictures showed Forsell no longer as a man who had inexhaustible reserves of energy. He looked gaunt, and the previous Friday he had apparently taken an unexpected week’s holiday. There was even talk of a breakdown. From whichever angle he viewed it, Blomkvist could not but feel sorry for Forsell. Which might be just the wrong attitude, now that he had to investigate whether he had any connection with the beggar and perhaps even with Mats Sabin, the military historian.

  Was it still sensible to assume that Forsell was all decency and enthusiasm? According to the smear campaign, he was said to have hitched a ride on the rowing boat which accompanied his cross-Channel swim, and there were suggestions that he had never reached the summit of Everest, as he said he had. But Blomkvist found no evidence to support any of these accusations, beyond the fact that the expedition on Everest had been a monumental disaster, a Greek tragedy of sorts, where nothing could be established with any certainty.

  Forsell himself was not the focus of the story. He had been far from the epicentre of the turmoil, in which the spectacularly wealthy American woman Klara Engelman had died together with her guide Viktor Grankin at eight thousand three hundred metres. Blomkvist did not research it in any greater depth, and concentrated instead on learning more about Forsell’s career as an officer.

  The fact of his having been an intelligence agent should have been classified, but it had leaked out in connection with his deportation from Russia, and even though the most absurd rumours were being bandied about in the ongoing hate campaign, the army’s commander-in-chief, Lars Granath, several times described Forsell’s role in Moscow as having been “nothing but honourable”.

  There was precious little else in the way of hard facts, and eventually Blomkvist let go of it and simply noted that Johannes and Rebecka had two sons, Samuel and Jonathan, who were eleven and nine years old. The family lived in Stocksund, outside Stockholm, but also owned a place in the country not far away, on the south-eastern shore of Sandön island. Is that where they were right now?

  Blomkvist had Forsell’s private number. “Call me if you have any questions,” he had said in his inimitably unstuffy way. But Blomkvist saw no reason to disturb him just now. He ought to forget about all this and have a nap. He was incredibly tired. But he wasn’t bloody well going to rest just because of that. He called Chief Inspector Bublanski and talked about Salander again, and reported what the beggar might have said about Mats Sabin, although he did add:

  “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Paulina Müller came out of the bathroom in a white towelling robe and saw that Salander was still engrossed with her laptop. She rested a careful hand on her shoulder. Salander was no longer staring at the big house outside Moscow, the way she usually did. She was reading an article, and as usual Paulina could not keep up. She had never met a person who read so fast. The sentences flashed by on the screen. But she did catch the words “… Denisovan genome and that of certain South Asian …” and then she immediately became i
nterested. At Geo she had done some pieces on the origins of homo sapiens and the species’ kinship with the Neanderthals and the Denisovan hominids.

  “I’ve written about that,” she said.

  Salander did not answer, and that made Paulina furious. Salander took care of everything, and protected her, it was true, but she often felt alone and excluded. She could not bear Salander’s silence or her endless hours in front of the computer. Especially at night, that drove her mad, and the nights were bad enough as it was. That was when all the awful things Thomas had done raged inside her, and she dreamed of revenge and retribution. Those were the hours when she really needed Lisbeth.

  But Salander was dealing with her own private hell. Sometimes her body was so tense that Paulina did not dare to press up close, and how was it possible for someone to sleep so little? Whenever Paulina woke up, Salander was lying next to her with her eyes open, listening for sounds in the corridor, or she was sitting at the desk looking at footage from surveillance cameras and satellite images. Paulina felt that she could no longer bear to be kept out of it all, not when they were living so closely together, and she wanted to scream: Who’s out to get you? What are you up to?

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  There was no answer this time either. But Salander did at least turn and give her a look, and it felt a little like an outstretched hand. There was a new, softer light in her eyes.

  “What are you doing?” she said again.

  “I’m trying to discover the identity of a man,” Salander said.

  “A man?”

  “A Sherpa, a little over fifty years old, dead now, probably from the Khumbu valley in north-eastern Nepal, and although he could also be from Sikkim or Darjeeling in India, the signs mostly point to Nepal, and the area around Namche Bazaar. His family originates from eastern Tibet. As a child he seems to have had a fat-deficient diet.” Coming from Lisbeth that was like an entire lecture, and Paulina’s face lit up as she sat down on a chair beside her.