David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“What should I do?”

“Stay where you are.”

“O.K.,” Balder said, more or less paralysed. But he was not where Anderberg thought he was.

When the telephone rang at 1.58, Blomkvist was still awake. But his mobile was in the pocket of his jeans on the floor and he did not manage to answer it in time. In any case the call was from a withheld number, so he swore and crawled back into bed and closed his eyes.

He could really do without another sleepless night. Ever since Berger had fallen asleep a little before midnight, he had been tossing and turning and thinking about his life. Not much of it felt right, not even his relationship to Berger. He had loved her for many years, and there was every reason to think that she felt the same way about him. But it was no longer as simple as once it had been. Perhaps Blomkvist had started to feel some sympathy for Greger. Greger Beckman was Erika’s husband, an artist, and he could not reasonably be accused of being grudging or small-minded. On the contrary, when Greger had realized that Erika would never get over Blomkvist or even be able to stop herself from tearing his clothes off every now and then, he had not lost his temper. He had made a deal:

“You can be with him — just so long as you always come back to me.” And that’s how it became.

They set up an unconventional arrangement, with Berger mostly sleeping at home with her husband in Saltsjöbaden, but sometimes here with Blomkvist at Bellmansgatan. Over the years Blomkvist had thought that it really was an ideal solution, one which many couples who lived under the dictatorship of monogamy ought to have adopted. Every time Berger said, “I love my husband more when I can also be with you,” or when at some cocktail party Beckman put his arm around him in a brotherly embrace, Blomkvist had thanked his lucky stars for the arrangement.

Yet he had lately begun to have doubts, perhaps because he had had more time to think and it had occurred to him that something that is called an agreement is not necessarily always that.

On the contrary, one party might advance their self-interest under the guise of a common decision, and in the long run it often becomes clear that someone is suffering, despite assurances to the contrary. Berger’s call to her husband that evening had evidently not been well received. Who knows? Maybe Beckman was also lying awake right now.

Blomkvist tried to put it out of his mind. For a little while he even tried daydreaming. But that did not help much, and in the end he got up, determined to do something more useful. Why not do some reading on industrial espionage or, better still, sketch out an alternative funding plan for Millennium ? He got dressed, sat down at his computer and checked his inbox.

Most of it was rubbish as usual, even if some of the emails did give him a bit of a boost. There were shouts of encouragement from Malm and Eriksson, also from Andrei Zander and Harriet Vanger in the light of the coming battle with Serner, and he answered them with more of a fighting spirit than he actually felt. After that he checked Salander’s document, without expecting to find anything there. But then he lit up. She had answered. For the first time in ages she had given a sign of life:

And what happens, Blomkvist, if we create a machine which is a little bit cleverer than we are?>

Blomkvist smiled and thought of the last time they had met, at Kaffebar on St Paulsgatan. It took a while before he noticed that her message contained two questions, the first one a friendly little jibe which perhaps regrettably contained a grain of truth. What he had written in the magazine lately had lacked intelligence and genuine newsworthiness. Like so many journalists, he had just been plugging away, occasionally trotting out clichés. But that’s how it was for the moment and he was much keener to ponder Salander’s second question, her riddle, not so much because in itself it interested him especially, but because he wanted to think of some clever response.

If we create a machine that is cleverer than we ourselves are , he thought, what happens then ? He went to the kitchen, opened a bottle of Ramlösa mineral water and sat at the kitchen table. Downstairs Fru Gerner was coughing rather painfully and in the distance, amid the hubbub of the city, an ambulance wailed away in the storm. Well, he mused, then we get a machine that can do all the clever things which we ourselves can do, plus a little bit more, for example... He laughed out loud and understood the point of the question. A machine like that could go on to produce something more intelligent than itself in turn, and then what happens?

The same would be true of the next machine and the next one and the next one, and soon the very source of it all, man himself, would be no more interesting to the latest computer than a lab rat. There would be an explosion of intelligence beyond all control, as in the Matrix films. Blomkvist smiled and went back to his computer and wrote:

After that he sat looking out through the window, in so far as one could see anything beyond the swirling snow. Every now and then he looked through the open door at Berger, who was sleeping soundly and who knew nothing about machines more intelligent than human beings, or was not the least bit concerned about that right now.

He thought he heard his mobile give a ping, and sure enough he had a new voicemail. That worried him, he was not really sure why. Apart from ex-girlfriends who call when they’re drunk and want to have sex, you generally only get bad news at night. The voice on the message sounded harried:

My name is Frans Balder. I know it’s rude to call this late. I apologize for that. But my situation has become somewhat critical, at least that’s how I see it. I’ve just discovered that you were looking for me, which is really a strange coincidence. There are a few things I’ve been wanting to tell you about for some time now, I think they might interest you. I’d be grateful if you could get in touch as soon as possible. I have a feeling that this might be a bit urgent.

Balder left a telephone number and an email address and Blomkvist jotted them down and sat still for a while, drumming his fingers on the kitchen table. Then he dialled the number.

Balder was lying in bed, agitated and scared. Yet he was feeling a little calmer now. The car coming up his drive had been the police guard arriving at long last. Two men in their forties, one tall and one quite short, both looking cocky and with the same short, trendy haircut. But they were perfectly polite and apologized for the delay in taking up their post.

“Milton Security and Gabriella Grane at the Security Police briefed us on the situation,” one said.

They were aware that a man wearing a cap and dark glasses had been snooping around the property and that they had to be on their guard. Therefore they turned down the offer of a cup of hot tea in the kitchen. They wanted to check out the house and Balder thought that sounded perfectly professional and sensible. In other respects they did not make a very positive impression, but then he did not get an overwhelmingly negative impression either. He had put their numbers into his mobile and gone back to bed to be with August, who was sleeping, curled up, his green earplugs still in place.

But of course Balder had not been able to fall asleep again. He was listening for noises out there in the storm and eventually he sat up in bed. He had to do something, or he would go mad. He checked his mobile. He had two messages from Linus Brandell, who sounded bad-tempered and defensive all at the same time. At first Balder felt like hanging up. But then he caught a couple of things which were interesting after all. Linus had spoken to Mikael Blomkvist at Millennium magazine and now Blomkvist wanted to get in touch, and at that Balder began to think. Mikael Blomkvist, he muttered.