“We need to kill him.”
14.v.2008
It all came back to him the next day, on his way down to Base Camp, those words that had sounded so faint through the storm and the driving snow, the last they heard from Klara, the desperate cries:
“Don’t leave me, please!”
It was more than he could bear, and he knew then that those words would echo within him for the rest of his life. Yet beyond that he was alive, and it was intoxicating. Time and again he prayed to God that he might make it all the way down, so he could fall into Rebecka’s arms once more. He was weighed down by guilt but he also wanted to live, and he felt gratitude too, not only towards Nima Rita but also to Lindberg. Without him he would have died up there. Still, he could not bring himself to look him in the eye, and he concentrated instead on Nima. It turned out that he was not the only one; they were all worried about him.
Nima was a wreck. There was talk of taking him to hospital by helicopter, but he refused to accept any help, least of all from Lindberg and Forsell. He was a potential source of trouble, there was no denying it. What would he have to say once he regained his strength? It worried Forsell. It appeared to worry Lindberg even more, and the atmosphere grew increasingly tense. In the end Forsell decided to let it be. Things would just have to run their course. As he grew weaker and they headed down towards the safety of Base Camp, apathy replaced his will to live, and when finally he did get to take Rebecka in his arms, the feelings he had dreamed of were not there. No sense of security, no sense of achievement in having reached the summit, no yearning for her … only a heavy heart.
He barely wanted to eat and drink. He just slept, for fourteen hours, and when he woke up, he was all but mute. It was as if the whole dizzying mountain landscape had been cloaked in ash and he could not find solace anywhere, not even in Rebecka’s smile. Everything seemed dead. Only one thought filled his mind: he had to say what had happened. But he kept putting it off, and not only because of Lindberg and his anguished looks. Word had gone around camp that Nima Rita’s career as a climber was over. Would he be the one who put the final nail in that coffin? Would he be the one to reveal that the man, who in every other way had been the great hero on the mountain, had left a woman to die in the storm in order to save his, Johannes Forsell’s, life?
It was all but unthinkable. Yet that is probably what would have happened had Lindberg not approached him on the trek down from Base Camp. They were level with Namche Bazaar, not far from a ravine with a brook rippling through it. He was walking on his own. Rebecka was further ahead, looking after Charlotte Richter who was concerned about the frostbite on her toes. Lindberg put his arm around Forsell’s shoulders and said:
“We can’t say anything about this, not ever, you get that, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Svante. I’ve got to say something. I can’t live with myself otherwise.”
“I do understand, my friend. Of course I do. But we’re in a bit of a tight spot here,” he said, and in his most obliging voice went on to tell him what the Russians had on them, at which Forsell replied that he might just wait and see, after all.
Perhaps he even saw it as a means of escape, a way out when his inner voice was telling him he had a duty to tell the truth about what happened.
*
The geography was not obvious. Salander had decided to avoid taking the normal road, assuming she had identified the right building. She had come skidding along a woodland path and was now standing by her motorcycle in the midst of a clump of blueberry bushes behind a tall fir tree, looking across a field at the building.
At first, she had detected no signs of life, and been convinced that it was all a smokescreen, a way of throwing her off the scent. The brick and stone building was long, like a stable, and showed signs of disrepair. The huge windows looked like they hadn’t been cleaned for a decade. The roof needed mending, the paint was peeling away from the short end wall, and from where she was standing she could not see any cars or motorcycles. But then she noticed smoke coming from the chimney and gave Plague instructions to start their operation.
Soon after that someone looked out of the door of the building, a long-haired man wearing dark clothes. She only caught a glimpse of him, but she registered his nervous expression as he scanned the surroundings, and that was good enough for her.
She set up her I.M.S.I.-catcher and her mobile base station, and moments later another man peered out, looking very worried too. It had to be them, she was now certain of it. There were probably a number of others as well. Bound to be if they had Blomkvist in there, so she photographed the building and sent the G.P.S. coordinates to Chief Inspector Bublanski in an encrypted message, hoping that would get the police there quickly. Then she approached the house.
Although it was windy and the sky was dark, it was a big risk: there was nowhere to hide on the open ground. But she wanted to look in through the tall windows on the long side of the building, which extended all the way to the ground. She moved forward in a crouch, her weapon drawn, but the windows were tinted, she could not see a thing. Sensing danger, she began to back away. She had come too close. Turning abruptly, she checked her telephone. An intercepted text:
Looking back on events later, it was difficult to say exactly what happened. To Salander it felt as if she had hesitated, just as she had on Tverskoy Boulevard. But Conny Andersson, who picked her up on the cameras at that very moment, got the impression instead of a fiercely determined figure racing up towards the forest.
Bogdanov spotted her on his screen but, unlike Andersson, he did not raise the alarm. He only looked on in grudging fascination as she disappeared among the trees. For some seconds she was invisible. Then there was the sound of an accelerating engine and he saw it on his screen: she was riding a motorcycle straight at them, at high speed. The bike bounced as it flew across the open space, and he assumed that was the last he would see of her.
He heard gunshots and the sound of breaking glass, and the motorcycle swerved out there in the field. But Bogdanov did not wait to see how it would end. He grabbed the car keys lying on the table next to him and hurried out, feeling an irresistible urge to break free at last, to escape from something that could not possibly end well, either for them or for Wasp.
Blomkvist opened his eyes and saw the blurry figure of a man right in front of him, a bloated, unshaven guy in his forties with long hair, a square jaw and bloodshot eyes. The man’s hands were shaking and he was holding a pistol that was also shaking as he looked nervously at Galinov, who was still trying to catch his breath.
“Do I shoot him?” the man shouted.
“Shoot him,” Galinov said. “We have to get out of here,” and at that Blomkvist began to kick wildly as if he could fend off the bullets with his wounded feet. He had time to see the man’s eyes narrow and the muscles tense in his forearm. He had just shouted, “No, for God’s sake, no!” when he heard the roar of a vehicle approaching at top speed. Then the man spun around.
There was shooting all around, maybe from machine guns, it was impossible to tell. The only certainty was that the vehicle was heading straight for them. There was a crash, and a shower of broken glass flew across the factory floor. A motorcycle came thundering in through a window, and on it sat a skinny figure dressed in black. She drove right into one of the men standing there and was thrown against the wall in the collision.
The gunfire continued and the flabby man with the square jaw was aiming his pistol not at him now, he was aiming it at the figure who had been thrown from her bike. But she was already up and moving. Frantic, hurried footsteps came charging towards him and Blomkvist saw Galinov’s face stiffen with fear or concentration. He heard more shooting and screams before pain and nausea overwhelmed him and he lost consciousness again.
Lindås, Kowalski and the Forsells had eaten an Indian takeaway, having broken off from their work. Now they were sitting in the living room and Lindås was
trying to gather her wits once more. She was anxious to get a better understanding of what Lindberg had said to Forsell while they were trekking down from Base Camp.
“I thought that he had my best interests at heart,” Forsell said. “He told me he was worried we’d be hit with other accusations if we told people what had happened, and that it was already touch and go as it was.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“The top people at the G.R.U. knew who we were, obviously. They would be asking themselves if there was some connection between Grankin’s death and our presence on the mountain. Svante went on in the same friendly tone: ‘They’ve been wanting to get you for some time, as I’m sure you know,’ and it’s true, I did know that. The G.R.U. considered me dangerous and an aggravation. Then, in the same damn understanding voice, he reminded me that they probably had kompromat on me.”
“Kompromat?”
“Compromising material.”
“What was he referring to?”
“An incident with a government minister called Antonsson.”
“The Minister for Trade?
“That’s it. At the time, in early 2000, Sten Antonsson was recently divorced and feeling a bit lost, and he fell in love with a young Russian woman called Alisa. The poor man was on cloud nine. But during a visit to St Petersburg – and I was in the city then – the two of them drank buckets of champagne in his hotel room. In the middle of all the fun, Alisa started fishing for sensitive information, and I think that’s when the penny dropped. Not true love after all, just a good old-fashioned honey trap, and he totally lost it. Started raising hell and his bodyguards came rushing in, and there was complete pandemonium. Someone had the idiotic idea that I should question the woman, so I was summoned up to the room.”
“What happened?”
“In I went as swiftly as I could and the first thing I saw was Alisa, wearing lacy knickers and garters and the whole shebang. She was hysterical and I tried to calm her. Then she started yelling that she wanted money, or she’d sue Antonsson for assault. I was caught on the back foot and, since I had a wad of roubles on me, I gave them to her. Not all that elegant. But it was the only solution I could come up with on the spur of the moment.”
“And you were worried there might be pictures?”
“I was, yes, and Lindberg reminding me of the incident made everything that much more complicated. I thought of Becka and of how much I loved her, and I was terrified that she would think that I was some kind of sleazebag.”
“So you kept quiet about what had happened?”
“I made up my mind to wait, and when I saw that Nima wasn’t talking either, I put it to one side. Anyway, we then started having other problems.”
“What sort of problems?”
Kowalski answered:
“Someone leaked to the G.R.U. that Johannes had tried to recruit Grankin.”
“How could they do that?”
“We thought it was Stan Engelman,” Kowalski said. “That summer and autumn we were getting convincing reports suggesting that he was also a member of Zvezda Bratva. We suspected Engelman of having a mole on the expedition who had told him about the friendship between Johannes and Viktor. We even thought it might be Nima Rita.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“No, yet there was no doubt that the G.R.U. had somehow been informed, even if we didn’t think they knew anything for certain. Nonetheless … a formal complaint was lodged with the Swedish government. It was suggested that pressure from Johannes had aggravated the stress Grankin was suffering on Everest and had cost him his life. As you know, Johannes was deported from Russia.”
“So that’s why?” Lindås said.
“Partly. In fact the Russians were kicking out a great number of diplomats at that time. But yes, that was part of the picture, and it was a tremendous loss for us all.”
“But not for me,” Forsell said. “For me, it was the start of something new and better. I left the military and felt an enormous sense of relief. I was in love and we were married, and I built up my father’s business and had children. I felt life was wonderful again.”
“And that’s dangerous,” Kowalski said.
“Don’t be such a cynic,” Rebecka said.
“But it’s true. A happy man lowers his guard.”
“I grew careless and didn’t put two and two together as I should have,” Forsell said. “In my eyes, Lindberg remained a trusted friend and supporter. I even made him my parliamentary under-secretary.”
“And you think now that was a mistake?” Catrin said.
“To put it mildly – almost immediately after that, things began to catch up with me.”
“You were the victim of a disinformation campaign.”
“That too, but above all, I had a visit from Janek.”
“And what did he want?”
“I wanted to talk about Nima Rita,” Kowalski said.
“Do explain.”
“Certainly,” Forsell said. “You see, I had stayed in touch with Nima for a long time. I helped him with money and built a house for him in Khumbu. But in the end it made no difference what I did. After Luna died, his entire life collapsed and he became seriously ill. I managed to reach him a few times on the telephone, but I could hardly understand him. He was just rambling. His head was one big mess and no-one could be bothered to listen to him anymore. He was seen as harmless – even by Lindberg. But by the autumn of 2017, the situation had changed. A journalist with The Atlantic, Lilian Henderson, was writing a book about the events on Everest. It was due to be published the year after, to mark the tenth anniversary of the drama. Lilian was exceedingly well informed; not only did she know about the romance between Viktor Grankin and Klara, but also about Stan Engelman’s links to Zvezda Bratva. She had even looked into the rumour that Engelman had wanted to see both his wife and Grankin dead on the mountain.”
“My God.”
“Exactly. And she conducted a hard-hitting interview with Stan Engelman in New York. Stan denied all the accusations, of course, and there were no guarantees that Lilian would be able to produce evidence to back up what she had uncovered. In spite of that, it must have been clear to Engelman that he was in serious trouble.”
“So what happened?” Lindås said.
“Lilian Henderson made the mistake of mentioning that she was going to Nepal to speak to Nima Rita. As I said, under normal circumstances Nima was perfectly harmless, but maybe not in the face of an investigative journalist with enough background knowledge to be able to sort the facts from the madness.”
“And what were the facts?”
“The very ones Lilian was interested in, among others,” Kowalski said.
“What do you mean?”
“One of our people at the embassy in Kathmandu read Nima’s wall newspapers. In among everything else was the information that Engelman had asked Nima to kill Mamsahib on the mountain, although it seems Nima talked about an Angelman, making it sound as if the instructions had been issued by a dark angel from heaven.”
“And you think that’s true?” Lindås asked.
“Yes, we do,” Kowalski continued. “We believe that Engelman had been toying for some time with the idea of using Nima Rita.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Don’t forget that Engelman would have been desperate when he understood that Klara and Grankin were scheming to get him.”
“How did Nima react? Do we know anything about that?”
“He was deeply shaken, as you can imagine,” Forsell said. “Everything he had done, his entire career, had been designed to help people, not take lives, and he refused to listen. But afterwards, when he saw that he had in the end contributed to her death, it simply would not let him go. You can just imagine. He was devastated by guilt and paranoia, and in the autumn of 2017, when Janek came to see me, Nima was desperately trying to confess his sins in Kathmandu. He wanted to tell the whole world.”
“That’s certainly what it looked l
ike,” Kowalski said, “and I told Johannes that the prospect of Nima’s meeting with Lilian Henderson would put him in danger. There was a risk that Engelman and Zvezda Bratva would want to get rid of him, and Johannes said immediately that it was our duty to look after him and give him protection.”
“And you did?”
“Yes.”
“How did you go about it?”
“We informed Klas Berg at Must and flew him over here on a British diplomatic flight. We had him admitted to the South Wing in Årstaviken bay, where sadly …”
“What?” Lindås said.
“He was not particularly well looked after and I …” Johannes faltered.
“And you …”
“I didn’t go to see him as often as I had intended. Not only because I was so busy … it was just too painful to see him in that state.”
“So you went on being happy?”
“I suppose I did, but that didn’t last so long either.”
CHAPTER 33
28.viii
Salander lowered her head as her motorcycle crashed through the window, and when she raised it again she saw that a man in a leather waistcoat was aiming a pistol at her. She rode straight into him. The impact was so violent that she was thrown from the bike and hit the wall with her body, then landed painfully on an iron beam on the floor. She was on her feet in a second and leaped behind a metal column while her eyes registered the details of the building, the number of people and their weapons, the distances, the obstacles and, further away, the furnace she had seen in the film sequence.
A man in a white suit was standing right next to Blomkvist, wiping his face with a handkerchief, and she realised that she was already hurtling towards them, driven by an irrepressible inner force. A bullet glanced her helmet. Others whistled around her. She shot back and one of the men by the furnace crumpled and fell, which was something. But she did not really have a plan.
She just charged on ahead and saw that the man in the white suit had taken hold of the stretcher to push Blomkvist into the flames. She fired another shot, but missed, so she ran straight at the man and both of them went crashing to the floor. What happened afterwards was not at all clear.
The Girl Who Lived Twice Page 29
