David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“Good question.”

“I have my reasons. And I trust you — don’t ask me why. I’m betting that you want to protect your girlfriend, and you think the real story is elsewhere. Maybe I’ll even help you with that, if you’re prepared to cooperate.”

“That remains to be seen,” Blomkvist said stiffly.

“Well, a few days ago we had a data breach on our intranet, our NSANet. You know about that, don’t you?”

“More or less.”

“NSANet was created after 9/11, to improve coordination between our own intelligence services on the one hand and those in other English-speaking countries — known as the Five Eyes. It’s a closed system, with its own routers, portals and bridges, and it’s completely separate from the rest of the Internet. We administer our signals intelligence from there via satellite and fibre-optic cables and that’s also where we have our big databases and store classified analyses and reports — from Moray-rated documents, the least sensitive, all the way up to Umbra Ultra Top Secret, which even the President of the United States isn’t allowed to see. The system is run out of Texas, which by the way is idiotic. But it’s still my baby. Let me tell you, Mikael, I worked my ass off to create it. Hammered away at it day and night so that no fucker could misuse it, never mind hack it. Every single little anomaly sets alarm bells ringing, plus there’s a whole staff of independent experts monitoring the system. These days you can’t do a goddamn thing on the web without leaving footprints. At least that’s the theory. Everything is logged and analysed. You shouldn’t be able to touch a single key without it triggering a notification. But...”

“Somebody did.”

“Yes, and maybe I could have made my peace with it. There are always weak spots, we can always do better. Weak spots keep us on our toes. But it wasn’t just the fact that she managed to get in. It was how she did it. She forced our server and created an advanced bridge, and got into the intranet via one of our systems administrators. That alone was a damn masterpiece. But that wasn’t all, not by a long chalk: then the bitch turned herself into a ghost user.”

“A what?”

“A ghost. She flew around in there without anyone noticing.”

“And your alarm bells didn’t go off?”

“That damn genius introduced a Trojan unlike anything else we knew, because otherwise our system would have identified it right away. The malware then kept upgrading her status. She got more and more access and soaked up highly classified passwords and codes and started to link and match records and databases, and suddenly — bingo!”

“Bingo what?”

“She found what she was looking for, and then she stopped wanting to be invisible — now she wanted to show us what she’d found, and only then did my alarm bells go off: exactly when she wanted them to.”

“And what did she find?”

“She found our hypocrisy, Mikael, our double-dealing, and that’s why I’m sitting here with you and not on my fat ass in Maryland, sending the Marines after her. She was like a thief breaking into a house just to point out that it was already full of stolen goods, and the minute we found that out she became truly dangerous — so dangerous that some of our senior people wanted to let her off.”

“But not you.”

“Not me. I wanted to tie her to a lamp post and flay her alive. But I had no choice except to give up my pursuit, and that, Mikael, seriously pissed me off. I may look calm now, but you should have seen me... Jesus!”

“You were hopping mad.”

“Damn right I was, and that’s why I’ve had you come here at this godforsaken hour. I need to get hold of Wasp before she flees the country.”

“Why would she run?”

“Because she’s gone from one crazy thing to the next, hasn’t she?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“And what makes you think she’s your hacker in the first place?”

“That, Mikael, is what I’m going to lay on you now.”

But he got no further.

The room telephone rang and Needham picked up right away. It was reception looking for Mikael Blomkvist, and Needham handed him the receiver. He soon gathered that the journalist had been given some alarming news, so it was no surprise when the Swede muttered a confused apology and ran out of the room. But Needham would not let him get away that easily, and so he grabbed his coat and chased after him.

Blomkvist was racing down the corridor like a sprinter. Needham did not know what was going on, but if it had something to do with the Wasp/Balder story, he wanted to be there. He had some trouble keeping up — the journalist was in too much of a hurry to wait for the lift and instead hurtled down the stairs. By the time Needham reached the ground floor, panting, Blomkvist had already retrieved his mobiles and was engrossed in another conversation while he ran on towards the revolving doors and out into the street.

“What’s happening?” Needham said as the journalist ended his call and was trying to hail a taxi on the street.

“Problems!” Blomkvist said.

“I can drive you.”

“Like hell you can. You’ve been drinking.”

“At least we can take my car.”

Blomkvist slowed his pace and turned to Needham.

“What is it you want?”

“I want us to help each other.”

“You’ll have to catch your hacker on your own.”

“I no longer have the authority to catch anybody.”

“O.K., so where’s the car?”

As they ran to Needham’s rental car parked over by the Nationalmuseum, Blomkvist hurriedly explained that they were heading out to the Stockholm archipelago, towards Ingarö. He would get directions on the way and was not planning to observe any speed limits.

August screamed, and in the same instant Salander heard footsteps, rapid footsteps along the side of the house. She grabbed her pistol and jumped to her feet. She felt terrible, but ignored it.

As she rushed over to the doorway she saw a large man appear on the terrace. For a moment she thought she had a split-second advantage, but the figure did not stop to open the glass doors. He charged straight through them with his weapon drawn and shot at the boy.

Salander returned fire, or perhaps she had already done so, she did not know. She was not even conscious of the moment in which she started running towards the man. She only knew that she crashed into him with numbing force and now lay on top of him right by the round table where the boy had been sitting moments before. Without a second’s hesitation she headbutted the man.

The contact was so violent that her head rang, and she swayed as she got to her feet. The room was spinning and there was blood on her shirt. Had she been hit again? She had no time to think. Where was August? No-one at the table, only pencils and drawings, crayons, prime-number calculations. Where the hell was he? She heard a whimpering by the refrigerator and, yes, there he was, sitting and shaking, his knees drawn up to his chest. He must have had time to throw himself to the floor.

Salander was about to rush over to him when she heard new, worrying sounds from outside, voices and branches snapping. Others were approaching, there was no time to lose. They had to be away from here. In a blinding flash she visualized the surrounding terrain and raced over to August. “Come on!” she said. August did not budge. Salander picked him up in one swift movement, her face twisted in pain. Every movement hurt. But they had to get away and August must have understood that too because he wriggled out of her grasp. So she sprang over to the table, grabbed her computer and August’s coat, and made for the terrace, past the man on the floor who raised himself groggily and tried to catch hold of August’s leg as he ran alongside her.