David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“So it’s at that level?”

“Well, there are parts of this attack that just made my jaw drop, and I’ve seen a fair amount in my day. That’s why we spent a hell of a lot of time talking to hackers and insiders in this industry and asking them who is capable of something really, really big? Who are the seriously big players these days? We had to be pretty smart about how we framed our questions, so that nobody would guess what actually happened. For a long time we got nowhere. It was like shooting in the dark — like calling out into the dead of night. Nobody knew anything, or they claimed they didn’t. A few names were mentioned, but none of them felt right. For a while we chased down some Russian, a Jurij Bogdanov — an ex-druggie and thief who apparently can hack into anything he damn well likes. The security companies were already trying to recruit him when he was living on the street in St Petersburg, hot-wiring cars, weighing in at forty kilos of skin and bone. Even the people from the police and intelligence services wanted him on their side. They lost that battle, needless to say. These days Bogdanov looks clean and successful and has ballooned to sixty kilos of skin and bone, but we’re pretty sure he’s one of the crooks in your organization, Alona. That was another reason he interested us. There had to be a connection to the Spiders, because of the searches that got carried out, but then...”

“You couldn’t understand why one of their own would be giving us new leads and associations?”

“Exactly, and so we looked further. After a while another outfit cropped up in the conversations.”

“Which one?”

“They call themselves Hacker Republic. They have a big reputation out there. A bunch of talents at the top of their game and rigorous about their encryptions. And for good reason. We’re constantly trying to infiltrate these groups, and we’re not the only ones. We don’t just want to find out what they’re up to, we also want to recruit their people. These days there’s big competition for the sharpest hackers.”

“Now that we’ve all become criminals.”

“Ha, yes, maybe. Whatever, Hacker Republic has major talent. Lots of the guys we talked to backed that up. And it wasn’t just that. There were also rumours that they had something big going on, and then a hacker with the handle Bob the Dog, who we think is linked to the gang, was running searches and asking questions about one of our guys, Richard Fuller. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“A manic-depressive self-righteous prick who’s been bugging me for a while. The archetypal security risk, who gets arrogant and sloppy when he’s in a manic phase. He’s just the kind of person a bunch of hackers should be targeting, and you’d need classified information to know that. His mental-health issues aren’t exactly common knowledge — his own mother hardly knows. But I’m pretty confident that in the end they didn’t get in via Fuller. We’ve examined every file he’s received recently and there’s nothing there. We’ve scrutinized him from top to bottom. But I bet Fuller was part of Hacker Republic’s original plan and then they changed strategy. I can’t claim to have any hard evidence against them, not at all, but my gut feeling is still that these guys are behind the break-in.”

“You said the hacker was a girl.”

“Right. Once we’d homed in on this group we found out as much as possible about them. It wasn’t easy to separate rumour from myth from fact. But one thing came up so often that in the end I saw no reason to question it.”

“And what’s that?”

“Hacker Republic’s big star is someone who uses the alias Wasp.”

“Wasp?”

“I won’t bore you with technical details, but Wasp is something of a legend in certain circles, one of the reasons being her ability to turn accepted methods on their heads. Someone said you can sense Wasp’s involvement in a hacker attack the same way you can recognize Mozart in a melodic loop. Wasp has her own unmistakable style and that was the first thing one of my guys said after he’d studied the breach: this is different from anything we’ve come across; it’s got a completely new threshold of originality.”

“A genius, in short.”

“Without a doubt. So we started to search everything we could find about this Wasp, to try to crack the handle. No-one was particularly surprised when that didn’t work. This person wouldn’t leave openings. But you know what I did then?” Needham said proudly.

“Tell me.”

“I looked up what the word stood for.”

“Beyond its literal meaning, you mean?”

“Right, but not because I or anyone else thought it would get us anywhere. Like I said, if you can’t get there on the main road, you take the side roads; you never know what you might find. It turns out Wasp could mean all sorts of things. Wasp is a British fighter plane from World War Two, a comedy by Aristophanes, a famous short film from 1915, a satirical magazine from nineteenth-century San Francisco and there’s also of course White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, plus a whole lot more. But those references are all a little too sophisticated for a hacker genius; they don’t go with the culture. But you know what did fit? The superhero in Marvel Comics: Wasp is one of the founding members of the Avengers.”

“Like the movie?”

“Exactly, with Thor, Iron Man, Captain America. In the original comics she was even their leader for a while. I have to say, Wasp is a pretty badass superhero, kind of rock and roll, a rebel who wears black and yellow with insect’s wings and short black hair. She’s got attitude, the underdog who hits back and can grow or shrink. All the sources we’ve been talking to think that’s the Wasp we’re looking for. It doesn’t necessarily mean the person behind the handle is some Marvel Comics geek. That handle has been around for a while, so maybe it’s a childhood thing that stuck, or an attempt at irony. Like the fact that I named my cat Peter Pan even though I never liked that self-righteous asshole who doesn’t want to grow up. Anyway...”

“Anyway?”

“I couldn’t help noticing that this criminal network our Wasp was looking into also uses names from Marvel Comics. They sometimes call themselves the Spider Society, right?”

“Yes, but I think that’s just a game, as I see it, thumbing their noses at those of us who monitor them.”

“Sure, I get that, but even jokes can give you leads, or cover up something serious. Do you know what the Spider Society in the Marvel Comics does?”

“No.”

“They wage war against the ‘Sisterhood of the Wasp’.”

“O.K., fine, it’s an interesting detail, but I don’t understand how that could be your lead.”

“Just wait. Will you come downstairs with me to my car? I have to head to the airport quite soon.”

It was not late, but Blomkvist knew that he could not keep going much longer. He had to go home and get a few hours’ sleep and then start working again tonight or tomorrow morning. It might help too if he had a few beers on the way. The lack of sleep was pounding in his forehead and he needed to chase away a few memories and fears. Perhaps he could get Zander to join him. He looked over at his colleague.

Zander had youth and energy to spare. He was banging away at his keyboard as if he had just started work for the day, and every now and then he flicked excitedly through his notes. Yet he had been in the office since 5.00 in the morning. It was now 5.45 in the evening and he had hardly taken a break.