David Lagercrantz: The Girl in the Spider's Web

“Hello, my darling,” he said.

“What’s that noise?”

“It’s the storm, I expect.”

“O.K., O.K., I’ll be quick. I’ve been accepted on the writing course at Biskops Arnö school.”

“So, now you want to be a writer,” he said, in a tone which was too harsh and almost sarcastic, and that was unfair in every way.

He should have simply congratulated her and wished her luck, but Pernilla had had so many difficult years hopping between one Christian sect and another, and from one course to another without finishing anything, that he felt exhausted by yet another change of direction.

“I don’t think I detected a whoop of joy there.”

“Sorry, Pernilla. I’m not myself today.”

“When are you ever?”

“I’m just not sure writing is such a good idea, given how the profession is looking right now. I only want you to find something that will really work for you.”

“I’m not going to write boring journalism like you.”

“Well, what are you going to write then?”

“I’m going to write for real.”

“O.K.,” he said, without asking what she meant by that. “Do you have enough money?”

“I’m working part-time at Wayne’s Coffee.”

“Would you like to come to dinner tonight, so we can talk about it?”

“Don’t have time, Pappa. It was just to let you know,” she said, and hung up, and even if he tried to see the positive side in her enthusiasm it just made his mood worse. He took a short cut across Mariatorget and Hornsgatan to reach his apartment on Bellmansgatan.

It felt as if he had only just left. He got a strange sense that he no longer had a job and that he was on the verge of entering a new existence where he had oceans of time instead of working his fingers to the bone. For a brief moment he considered tidying the place up. There were magazines and books and clothes everywhere. But instead he fetched two Pilsner Urquell from the fridge and sat down on the sofa in the living room to think everything through more soberly, as soberly as one can with a bit of beer in one’s body.

What was he to do?

He had no idea, and most worrying of all was that he was in no mood for a fight. On the contrary, he was strangely resigned, as if Millennium were slipping out of his sphere of interest. Isn’t it time to do something new? he asked himself, and he thought of Kajsa Åkerstam, a quite charming person whom he would occasionally meet for a few drinks. Åkerstam was head of Swedish Television’s “Investigative Taskforce” programme and she had been trying to recruit him for years. It had never mattered what she had offered, and how solemnly she had guaranteed backing and total integrity. Millennium had been his home and his soul. But now... maybe he should take the chance. Perhaps a job on “Investigative Taskforce” would fire him up again.

His mobile rang and for a moment he was happy. Whether it was Berger or Pernilla, he promised himself he would be friendly and really listen. But no, it was a withheld number and he answered guardedly.

“Is that Mikael Blomkvist?” said a young-sounding voice.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you have time to talk?”

“I might if you introduced yourself.”

“My name is Linus Brandell.”

“O.K., Linus, how can I help?”

“I have a story for you.”

“Tell me.”

“I will if you can drag yourself down to the Bishops Arms across the street and meet me there.”

Blomkvist was irritated. It wasn’t just the bossy tone. It was the intrusion on his home turf.

“The telephone will do just fine.”

“It’s not something which should be discussed on an open line.”

“Why do I feel so tired when I talk to you, Linus?”

“Maybe you’ve had a bad day.”

“I have had a bad day. You’re right about that.”

“There you go. Come down to the Bishop and I’ll buy you a beer and tell you something amazing.”

Blomkvist wanted only to snap: “Stop telling me what to do!” Yet without knowing why, or perhaps because he didn’t have anything better to do than to sit in his attic apartment and brood over his future he said, “I pay for my own beers. But O.K., I’m coming.”

“A wise decision.”

“But, Linus...”

“Yes?”

“If you get long-winded and give me a load of wild conspiracy theories to the effect that Elvis is alive and you know who shot Olof Palme, then I’m coming straight home.”

“Fair enough,” Brandell said.

Edwin Needham — Ed the Ned, as he was sometimes called — was not the most highly paid security technician in the U.S., but he may have been the best. He grew up in South Boston, Dorchester, and his father had been a monumental good-for-nothing, a drunk who took on casual work in the harbour but often disappeared on binges which not infrequently landed him in jail or in hospital. Yet these benders were the family’s best time, a sort of breathing space. When Ed’s father could be bothered to be around he would beat his mother black and blue. Sometimes she would spend hours or even whole days locked inside the toilet, crying and shaking. Nobody was very surprised when she died from internal bleeding at only forty-six, or when Ed’s older sister became a crack addict, still less when the remains of the family stood teetering on the brink of homelessness soon afterwards.

Ed’s childhood paved the way for a life of trouble, and during his teenage years he belonged to a gang who called themselves “The Fuckers”. They were the terror of Dorchester, and engaged in gang warfare, assault and robbing grocery stores. There was something brutal about Ed’s appearance from an early age and this was not improved by the fact that he never smiled and was missing two upper teeth. He was sturdy, tall and fearless, and his face usually bore the traces of brawls with his father or gang fights. Most of the teachers at his school were scared to death of him. All were convinced that he would end up in jail or with a bullet in his head. But there were some adults who began to take an interest in him — no doubt because they discovered that there was more than aggression and violence in his intense blue eyes.

Ed had an irrepressible thirst for knowledge, an energy which meant that he could devour a book with the same vigour with which he could trash the inside of a public bus. Often he was reluctant to go home at the end of the school day. He liked to stay on in what was known as the technology room, where there were a couple of computers. He would sit there for hours. A physics teacher with the Swedish-sounding name of Larson noticed how good he was with machines, and after social services got involved he was awarded a scholarship and transferred to a school with more motivated students.

He began to excel at his studies and was given more scholarships and distinctions and eventually — something of a miracle in view of the odds against him — he went on to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at M.I.T. In his doctoral thesis he explored some specific fears around new asymmetric cryptosystems like R.S.A., and he then went on to senior positions at Microsoft and Cisco before being recruited by the National Security Agency at Fort Meade in Maryland.

He did not have the ideal C.V. for the job, even leaving aside his criminal behaviour as a teenager. He had smoked a lot of grass at college and flirted with socialist or even anarchist ideals, and had been arrested twice for assault — nothing major, just bar fights. He still had a volcanic temper and everyone who knew him thought better of crossing him.

But at the N.S.A. they recognized his other qualities. Besides which it was the autumn of 2001. The American security services were so desperate for computer technicians that they hired pretty much anybody. During the ensuing years nobody questioned Needham’s loyalty — or patriotism, for that matter — and if anyone thought to do so, his advantages always outweighed his shortcomings.