David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“It sounds crazy.”

“Not to me.”

“But how can you afford all this?”

“I can afford it.”

“How can we...?” Hanna looked completely bewildered, as if she were not sure what to believe. Then she began to cry.

“How can we ever thank you?” she struggled to say.

“ Thank ?”

Salander repeated the word as if it were something incomprehensible. When Hanna came towards her with outstretched arms she backed away, and with her eyes fixed on the hallway floor she said:

“Pull yourself together! Get a grip on yourself and stop taking whatever it is you’re on, pills or anything else. That’s how you can thank me.”

“I will...”

“And if anyone gets it into their head that August needs to be put in some home or institution, I want you to fight back as hard and as ruthlessly as you can. Aim for their weakest point. Be a warrior.”

“A warrior?”

“Exactly. Don’t let anyone...”

Salander stopped herself. They were not perhaps the greatest words of farewell, but they would have to do. She turned and walked towards the front door. She did not get far. August started to mutter again, and this time they could make out what the boy was saying.

“Not go, not go...”

Salander had no good answer to that either. She just said, “You’ll be O.K.” and then added, as if talking to herself, “Thanks for the scream this morning.” There was silence for a moment, and Salander wondered if she should say more. But instead she turned and slipped out of the door.

Hanna called after her, “I can’t tell you what this means to me!”

But Salander heard nothing. She was already running down the steps to her car. When she reached Västerbron, Blomkvist called on the Redphone app to say that the N.S.A. had tracked her down.

”Tell them hi and that I’m on their tracks too,” she said.

Then she drove to Roger Winter’s house and scared him half to death. After that she drove back to her place and set to work with the encrypted N.S.A. file, without coming any closer to a solution.

Needham and Blomkvist had worked a long day in the hotel room at the Grand. Needham had a fantastic story for Blomkvist, who would be able to write the scoop Millennium so badly needed, but his feeling of unease did not abate. It was not just because Zander was still missing. There was something about Needham that did not add up. Why had he turned up in the first place, and why was he putting so much energy into helping out a small Swedish magazine, far from all the centres of power in the U.S.? Blomkvist had undertaken not to disclose the hacker breach, and had half promised to try to persuade Salander to talk to Needham. But that hardly seemed enough.

Needham behaved as if he was taking enormous risks. The curtains were drawn and their mobiles were lying at a safe distance. There was a feeling of paranoia in the room. Confidential documents were laid out on the bed. Blomkvist was permitted to read them, but not to quote from or copy them. And every now and then Needham interrupted his account to discuss various aspects of the right to protect journalistic sources. He was obsessively thorough about ensuring that the leak could not be traced back to him, and sometimes he listened nervously for footsteps in the corridor or looked out through a gap in the curtains to check that no-one was out there watching the hotel, and yet... Blomkvist could not help feeling that most of it was play-acting.

He became more and more convinced that Needham knew exactly what he was doing and was not even especially worried about someone listening in. It occurred to Blomkvist that Needham was playing a part which had the backing of his superiors — maybe he himself had also been given a role in this play which he did not yet understand.

Therefore he paid close attention not just to what Needham said, but also to what he did not, and he considered what he might be trying to achieve by going public. There was undoubtedly a certain amount of anger there. Some “bastards” in a department called Protection of Strategic Technologies had prevented Needham from nailing the hacker who had got into his system, just because they didn’t want to be exposed with their pants round their ankles, and that infuriated him, he said. Blomkvist had no reason not to believe him, still less to doubt that Needham genuinely did want to exterminate these people, to “crush them, grind them to pulp under my boots”.

There were other aspects of the story he was not quite so comfortable with. Occasionally it felt as if Needham was wrestling with some kind of self-censorship. From time to time Blomkvist went down to the lobby just to think, or to call Berger or Salander. Berger always answered on the first ring and, even though they were both enthusiastic about the story, Zander’s disappearance haunted their conversations.

Salander did not pick up all day, until eventually he got hold of her at 5.20. She sounded distracted, and informed him that the boy was now safe with his mother.

“And how are you ?” he said.

“O.K.”

“Not hurt?”

“Nothing new at least.”

Blomkvist took a deep breath. “Have you hacked into the N.S.A.’s intranet, Lisbeth?”

“Have you been talking to Ed the Ned?”

“No comment.”

He would say nothing, even to Salander. The protection of sources was even more important to him than loyalty to her.

“Ed isn’t so dumb after all,” she said.

“So you have.”

“Possibly.”

Blomkvist felt the urge to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing. Instead, as calmly as he could, he said:

“They’re prepared to let you off if you’ll agree to meet them and tell them how you did it.”

“Tell them from me that I’m on to them as well.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I’ve got more than they think.”

“O.K. But would you consider meeting...”

“Ed?”

How the hell did she know, Blomkvist thought. Needham had wanted to be the one to reveal himself to her.

“Ed,” he said.

“A cocky bugger.”

“Pretty cocky. But would you consider meeting him if we provide guarantees that you won’t be arrested?”

“There are no such guarantees.”

“I could get in touch with my sister Annika and ask her to represent you.”

“I’ve got better things to do,” she said, as if she did not want to talk about it any more. He could not stop himself from saying, “This story we’re working on... I’m not sure I understand all of it.”

“What’s the difficulty?” Salander said.

“First of all, I don’t understand why Camilla has surfaced after all these years.”

“I suppose she has just been biding her time.”

“How do you mean?”

“She probably always knew she would be back to get her revenge for what I did to her and Zala. But she wanted to wait until she had built up her strength on every level. Nothing is more important to Camilla than to be strong, and I suppose she suddenly saw an opportunity, a chance to kill two birds with one stone. At least that’s my guess. Why don’t you ask her next time you have a drink together?”

“Have you spoken to Holger?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“And yet she failed. You got away, thank God.”

“I made it.”