David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“Why was he worried?”

“In the long term, because he suspected his creation could become a threat to the world, I imagine. But more immediately, because he knew things about the N.S.A.”

“What sort of things?”

“There’s one aspect I know nothing about. He had somehow stumbled upon the messier side of their industrial espionage. But there’s another aspect I do have a lot of information on. It’s no secret that the organization is working hard specifically to develop quantum computers. For the N.S.A. that would be paradise, pure and simple. An effective quantum machine would enable them to crack all encryptions, all digital security systems eventually, and after that no-one would be safe from that organization’s watchful eye.”

“A hideous thought,” Bublanski said with surprising feeling.

“But there is actually an even more frightening scenario: were such a thing to fall into the hands of major criminals,” Farah Sharif said.

“I see what you’re getting at.”

“So of course I’m keen to know what you’ve managed to get hold of from the men now under arrest.”

“Unfortunately nothing like that,” he said. “But these men are not exactly outstanding intellects. I doubt they would even pass secondary-school maths.”

“So the real computer genius got away?”

“I’m afraid so. He and a female suspect have disappeared without trace. They probably have a number of identities.”

“Worrying.”

Bublanski nodded and gazed into Farah Sharif’s dark eyes, which looked beseechingly at him. A hopeful thought stopped him from sinking back into despair.

“I’m not sure what it means,” he said.

“What?”

“We’ve had I.T. guys go through Balder’s computers. Given how security-conscious he was, it wasn’t easy. You can imagine. But we managed. We had a spot of luck, you might say, and what we soon realized was that one computer must have been stolen.

“I suspected as much,” she said. “Damn it!”

“But wait, I haven’t finished. We also understood that a number of machines had been connected to each other, and that occasionally these had been connected to a supercomputer in Tokyo.”

“That sounds feasible.”

“We can confirm that a large file, or at least something big, had recently been deleted, and we haven’t been able to restore it.”

“Are you suggesting Frans might have destroyed his own research?”

“I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. But it occurred to me while you were telling me all this.”

“Don’t you think the murderer might have deleted it?”

“You mean that he first copied it, and then removed it from his computers?”

“Yes.”

“I find that hard to believe. The man was only in the house for a very short while, he would never have had time — let alone the ability — to do anything like that.”

“O.K., that sounds reassuring, despite everything,” Sharif said doubtfully. “It’s just that...”

Bublanski waited.

“I don’t think it fits with Frans’ character. Would he really destroy the greatest thing he’d ever done? That would be like... I don’t know... chopping off his own arm, or even worse: killing a friend, destroying a life.”

“Sometimes one has to make a big sacrifice,” Bublanski said thoughtfully. “Destroy what one loves.”

“Or else there’s a copy somewhere.”

“Or else there’s a copy somewhere,” he repeated. Suddenly he did something strange: he reached out his hand.

Farah Sharif did not understand. She looked at the hand as if she were expecting him to give her something. But Bublanski decided not to let himself be discouraged.

“Do you know what my rabbi says? That the mark of a man is his contradictions. We can long to be away and at home, both at the same time. I never knew Professor Balder, and he might have thought that I was just an old fool. But I do know one thing: we can both love and fear our work, just as Balder seems to have both loved and run away from his son. To be alive, Professor Sharif, means not being completely consistent. It means venturing out in many directions all at the same time, and I wonder if your friend didn’t find himself in the throes of some sort of upheaval. Maybe he really did destroy his life’s work. Maybe he revealed himself with all his inherent contradictions towards the end, and became a true human being in the best sense of the word.”

“Do you think so?”

“We may never know. But he had changed, hadn’t he? The custody hearing declared him unfit to look after his own son. Yet that’s precisely what he did, and he even got the boy to blossom and begin to draw.”

“That’s true, Chief Inspector.”

“Call me Jan. People sometimes even call me Officer Bubble.”

“Is that because you’re so bubbly?”

“Ha, no, I don’t think so somehow. But I do know one thing for sure.”

“And what’s that?”

“That you’re...”

He got no further, but neither did he need to. Farah Sharif gave him a smile which in all its simplicity restored Bublanski’s belief in life and in God.

At 8.00 Salander got out of her bed on Fiskargatan. Once more she had not managed to get much sleep, and not only because she had been working at the encrypted N.S.A. file without getting anywhere at all. She had also been listening out for the sound of footsteps on the stairs and every now and then she checked her alarm and the surveillance camera on the landing.

She was no wiser than anyone else as to whether her sister had left the country. After her humiliation on Ingarö, it was by no means impossible that Camilla was preparing a new attack, with even greater force. The N.S.A. could also, at any moment, march into the apartment. Salander was under no illusions on either point. But this morning she dismissed all that. She went to the bathroom with resolute steps and took off her top to check her bullet wound. She thought it was finally beginning to look better, and in a mad moment she decided to take herself off to the boxing club on Hornsgatan for a session.

To drive out pain with pain.

Afterwards she was sitting exhausted in the changing room. She hardly had the energy to think. Her mobile buzzed. She ignored it. She went into the shower and let the warm water sprinkle over her. Gradually her thoughts cleared, and August’s drawing reappeared in her mind. But this time it wasn’t the illustration of the murderer which caught her attention — it was something at the bottom of the paper.

Salander had only had a very brief glimpse of the finished work at the summer house on Ingarö; at the time she had been concentrating on sending it to Bublanski and Modig. If she had given it any thought at all, then like everyone else she would have been fascinated by the detailed rendering. But now her photographic memory focused on the equation August had written at the bottom of the page, and she stepped out of the shower deep in thought. The only thing was, she could hardly hear herself think. Obinze was raising hell outside the changing room.

“Shut up,” she shouted back. “I’m thinking!”

But that did not help much. Obinze was absolutely furious, and anyone other than Salander would understand why. Obinze had been shocked at how weak and half-hearted her effort at the punchbag was, and had worried when she began to hang her head and grimace in pain. In the end he had surprised her by rushing over and rolling up the sleeve of her T-shirt, then to discover the bullet wound. He had gone completely crazy, and evidently had not calmed down even now.