David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

But the strange thing was, when she finally saw her chance, she hesitated. Crucial moments went by as she broke a small twig into pieces on the rock ledge in front of them. Only then did she spring to her feet right in front of the men and, taking advantage of that brief millisecond of surprise, she fired right away, two, three times. From experience she knew that moments like these burned an indelible impression on your mind, as if not only your body and muscles are sharpened, but also your perception.

Every detail shone with a strange precision and she saw each ripple in the landscape in front of her, as if through a camera zoom. She noted the surprise and fear in the men’s eyes, the wrinkles and irregularities in their faces and clothes, and the weapons which they were waving and firing off at random, narrowly missing their targets.

But her strongest impression did not come from any of that. It came from a silhouette further up the slope which she caught out of the corner of her eye, not menacing in itself, but it made more of an impact on her than the men she had shot. The silhouette was that of her sister. Salander would have recognized her a kilometre away, even though they had not seen each other for years. The air itself was poisoned by her presence and afterwards Salander wondered if she should have shot her too.

Camilla stood there a moment too long. It was careless of her to be out on the rock slope in the first place, but presumably she could not resist the temptation of seeing her sister being executed. Salander recalled how she half squeezed the trigger and felt a holy rage beating in her chest. Yet she hesitated for a split second, and that was enough. Camilla threw herself behind a rock and a scrawny figure appeared on the terrace and started shooting. Salander jumped back onto the ledge and tumbled down the slope with August.

Now, walking away from the boxing club, thinking back to it all, Salander’s body tightened in readiness for a new battle. It struck her that perhaps she should not go home at all, but leave the country for a while. But something else drove her back to her desk; what she had seen in her mind’s eye in the shower, before reading Camilla’s texts, and which was now occupying her thoughts more and more. August’s equation:

From a mathematical point of view, there was nothing unique or extraordinary about it. But what was so remarkable was that August had started with the random number she had given him at Ingarö and taken that further to develop a considerably better elliptic curve than the one she herself had made. When the boy had not wanted to go to sleep, she had left it on the bedside table. She had not got any answer then, nor even the slightest reaction, and she had gone to bed convinced that August understood nothing about mathematical abstractions, that he was only a kind of human calculator of prime-number factorizations.

But, my God... she had been wrong. August had stayed up in the night not just drawing; he had also perfected her own mathematics. She did not even take off her boots or leather jacket, she just stomped into her apartment and opened the encrypted N.S.A. file along with her program for the elliptic curves.

Then she rang Hanna Balder.

Hanna had scarcely slept because she had not brought any of her pills with her. Yet the hotel and its surroundings still cheered her. The breathtaking mountain scenery reminded her of how cramped her own existence had become. Slowly she began to unwind, and even the deep-seated fear in her body was beginning to let go. But that could have been wishful thinking. She also felt slightly at sea in such extravagant surroundings.

There had been a time when she would sail into rooms like these with perfect self-assurance: Look at me, here I come . Now she was timid and trembling and had difficulty eating anything even though the breakfast was lavish. August sat beside her, compulsively writing out his series of numbers, and he was not eating either, but he drank unbelievable volumes of freshly pressed orange juice.

Her new mobile rang, startling her. But it had to be the woman who had sent them here. Nobody else had the number, so far as she knew, and no doubt she just wanted to know if they had arrived safely. So Hanna answered cheerfully and launched into an effusive description of how wonderful everything at the hotel was. She was brusquely interrupted:

“Where are you?”

“We’re having breakfast.”

“In that case stop now and go up to your room. August and I have work to do.”

“Work?”

“I’m going to send over some equations I want him to take a look at. Is that clear?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just show them to August, and then call me and tell me what he’s written.”

“O.K.,” Hanna said, nonplussed.

She grabbed a couple of croissants and a cinnamon bun and walked with August to the lifts.

It was only at the outset that August helped her. But it was enough. Later she would see her mistakes more clearly and make new improvements to her program. Deep in concentration she worked on for hour after hour, until the sky darkened outside and the snow began to fall again. Then suddenly — in one of those moments she would remember for ever — something strange happened to the file. It fell apart. A shock ran through her. She punched the air.

She had found the secret keys and cracked the document, and for a little while she was so overcome by this that she hardly managed to read. Then she began to examine the contents, and her amazement grew with every passing moment. Could this even be possible? It was more explosive than anything she had imagined, and the reason it had all been written down could only have been that someone believed the R.S.A. algorithm was impenetrable. But here it was, black on white, all that filth and dirt. The text was full of internal jargon and strange abbreviations and cryptic references, but that was not a problem for Salander since she was familiar with the subject. She had got through about four-fifths of the text when the doorbell rang.

She chose to ignore it, probably only the postman. But then she remembered Camilla’s text message and checked the camera on the landing on her computer. She stiffened.

It was not Camilla but her other bugbear, the one she had almost forgotten with everything else that was going on. Ed the fucking Ned. He looked nothing like his pictures online, but he was unmistakable all the same. He looked grumpy and determined, and Salander’s brain started ticking. How had he managed to track her down? What should she do? The best she could come up with was to send the N.S.A. file off to Blomkvist on their P.G.P. link.

Then she shut down her computer and hauled herself to her feet to open the door.

What had happened to Bublanski? Sonja Modig was at a loss to understand it. The pained expression he had been wearing in recent weeks had vanished, as if blown away. Now he smiled and hummed to himself. It’s true that there was plenty to be pleased about. The murderer had been caught. August Balder had survived despite two attempts on his life, and the details of Frans Balder’s conflict and connection with the research company Solifon were becoming clearer.

But many questions remained, and the Bublanski she knew was not one to rejoice without good reason. He was more inclined to self-doubt, even in moments of triumph. She could not imagine what had got into him. He walked around the corridors beaming. Even now, as he sat in his office reading the dull report on the questioning of Zigmund Eckerwald by the San Francisco police, there was a smile on his lips.