David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“But aren’t you worried that she could be back at any moment?”

“It has occurred to me.”

“O.K., good. And you do know that Camilla and I did nothing more than walk a short way down Hornsgatan?”

Salander did not answer.

“I know you, Mikael,” was all she said. “And now that you’ve met Ed, I guess I’ll have to protect myself from him too.”

Blomkvist smiled to himself.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re probably right. Let’s not trust him any more than we absolutely have to. I don’t want to become his useful idiot.”

“Doesn’t sound like a role for you, Mikael.”

“No, and that’s why I’d love to know what you discovered when you accessed their intranet.”

“A whole load of compromising shit.”

“About Eckerwald and the Spiders’ relationship with the N.S.A.?”

“That and a bit more besides.”

“Which you were planning to tell me about.”

“I might do, if you behave yourself,” she said with a teasing tone, and that only made him feel happy.

Then he chuckled, because at that moment he realized precisely what Ed Needham was trying to do.

It hit him so forcefully that he had a hard time keeping up his act when he returned to the hotel room, and he went on working with the American until 10.00 that night.

Vladimir Orlov’s apartment on Mårten Trotzigs gränd was neat and tidy. The bed was made and the sheets were clean. The laundry basket in the bathroom was empty. Yet there were signs that something was not quite right. Neighbours reported that some removal men had been there, and a close inspection revealed bloodstains on the floor and on the wall above the headboard. The blood was compared to traces of saliva in Zander’s apartment and a match confirmed.

But the men now in custody — the two who were still capable of communicating — claimed to have no knowledge of bloodstains or of Zander, so Bublanski and his team concentrated on getting more information on the woman who had been seen with him. By now the media had published columns and columns not only about the drama on Ingarö but also about Andrei Zander’s disappearance. Both evening newspapers and Svenska Morgon-Posten and Metro had carried prominent photographs of the journalist, and there was already speculation that he might have been murdered. Usually that would jog people’s memories and prompt them to remember anything suspicious, but now it was almost the exact opposite.

Such witness accounts as came in and were thought to be credible were peculiarly vague, and everyone who came forward — except for Mikael Blomkvist and the baker from Skansen — took it upon themselves to remark that they did not suppose the woman guilty of any crime. She had apparently made an overwhelmingly good impression on everyone who had encountered her. A bartender called Sören Karlsten, who had served the woman and Zander in Papagallo on Götgatan, even went on and on boasting that he was such a good judge of character and claimed to be absolutely certain that this woman “would never hurt a soul”.

“She was class personified.”

She was just about everything personified, if one were to believe the witnesses, and from what Bublanski could see it would be virtually impossible to produce an identikit picture of her. The witness accounts all depicted her in different terms, as if they were projecting their image of an ideal woman onto her, and so far they had no photographs from any surveillance camera. It was almost laughable. Blomkvist said that the woman was without a shadow of doubt Camilla Salander, twin sister of Lisbeth. But go back in the records for many years and there was no trace of her. It was as if she had ceased to exist. If Camilla Salander were still alive, then it was under a new identity.

Bublanski especially did not like it that there had been two unexplained deaths in the foster family she had left behind. The police investigations at the time were deficient, full of loose threads and question marks which had never been followed up.

Bublanski had read the reports, ashamed that out of some bizarre respect for the family’s tragedy his colleagues had even failed to get to the bottom of the glaring problem that both the father and the daughter had emptied their bank accounts just before their deaths, or that in the very week that he had been found hanged the father had started a letter to her which began:

“Camilla, why is it so important to you to destroy my life?”

This person who seemed to have enchanted all the witnesses was shrouded in ominous darkness.

It was now 8.00 in the morning and there were a hundred other things Bublanski should have been attending to, so he reacted with both irritation and guilt when he heard that he had a visitor. She was a woman who had been interviewed by Modig but who now insisted on meeting him. Afterwards he wondered if he had been especially receptive just then, maybe because all he was expecting was further problems. The woman in the doorway had a regal bearing but was not tall. She had dark, intense eyes which gave her a slightly melancholy look. She was dressed in a grey coat and a red dress that looked a bit like a sari.

“My name is Farah Sharif,” she said. “I’m a professor of computer sciences, and I was a close friend of Frans Balder.”

“Yes, of course,” Bublanski said, suddenly embarrassed. “Take a seat, please. My apologies for the mess.”

“I’ve seen much worse.”

“Is that so? Well. To what do I owe this honour?”

“I was far too naive when I spoke to your colleague.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I have more information now. I’ve had a long conversation with Professor Warburton.”

“That’s right. He’s been looking for me too. But it’s been so chaotic I haven’t had time to call him back.”

“Steven is a professor of cybernetics at Stanford and a leading researcher in the field of technological singularity. These days he works at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, whose aim is to ensure that Artificial Intelligence is a positive help to mankind rather than the opposite.”

“Well, that sounds good,” Bublanski said. He felt uncomfortable whenever this topic came up.

“Steven lives somewhat in a world of his own. He found out what happened to Frans only yesterday, and that’s why he didn’t call sooner. But he told me that he had spoken to Frans as recently as Monday.”

“What did they talk about?”

“His research. You know, Frans had been so secretive ever since he went off to the States. I was close to him, but not even I knew anything about what he was doing. I was arrogant enough to think I understood some of it at least, but now it turns out I was wrong.”

“In what way?”

“Frans had not only taken his old A.I. program a step further, he had also developed fresh algorithms and new topographical material for quantum computers.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Quantum computers are computers based on quantum mechanics. They are many thousand times faster in certain areas than conventional computers. The great advantage with quantum computers is that the fundamental constituent quantum bits — qubits — can superposition themselves.”

“You’ll have to take me slowly through that.”

“Not only can they take the binary positions one or zero as do traditional computers, they can also be both zero and one at the same time. At present quantum computers are much too specialized and cumbersome. But Frans — how can I best explain this to you? — would appear to have found ways to make them easier, more flexible and self-learning. He was onto something great — at least potentially. But as well as feeling pride in his breakthrough, he was also very worried — and that was obviously the reason he called Steven Warburton.”