The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium 3)

They exchanged Hotmail addresses.

Salander was lying on her back on the floor when Nurse Marianne came in.

"Hmm," she said, thereby indicating her doubts about the wisdom of this style of conduct in the intensive care unit. But it was, she accepted, her patient's only exercise space.

Salander was sweating. She had spent thirty minutes trying to do arm lifts, stretches, and sit-ups on the recommendation of her physical therapist. She had a long list of the movements she was to perform each day to strengthen the muscles in her shoulder and hip in the wake of her operation three weeks earlier. She was breathing hard and felt wretchedly out of shape. She tired easily, and her left shoulder was tight and hurt at the very least effort. But she was on the path to recovery. The headaches that had tormented her after surgery had subsided and came back only sporadically.

She realized that she was sufficiently recovered now that she could have walked out of the hospital, or at any rate hobbled out, if that had been possible, but it was not. First of all, the doctors had not yet declared her fit, and second, the door to her room was always locked and guarded by a fucking hit man from Securitas, who sat on his chair in the corridor.

She was healthy enough to be moved to a normal rehabilitation ward, but after going back and forth about this, the police and hospital administration had agreed that Salander should remain in room 18 for the time being. The room was easier to guard, there was round-the-clock staff close by, and the room was at the end of an L-shaped corridor. And in corridor 11C the staff were security-conscious after the killing of Zalachenko; they were familiar with her situation. Better not to move her to a new ward with new routines.

Her stay at Sahlgrenska was in any case going to come to an end in a few more weeks. As soon as the doctors discharged her, she would be transferred to Kronoberg prison in Stockholm to await trial. And the person who would decide when it was time for that was Dr. Jonasson.

It was ten days after the shooting in Gosseberga before Dr. Jonasson gave permission for the police to conduct their first real interview, which Giannini viewed as being to Salander's advantage. Unfortunately, Dr. Jonasson had made it difficult even for Giannini to have access to her client, and that was annoying.

After the tumult of Zalachenko's murder and Gullberg's attempted suicide, Jonasson had done an evaluation of Salander's condition. He took into account that Salander must be under a great deal of stress as the suspect for three murders plus the near fatal assault on her late father. Jonasson had no idea whether she was guilty or innocent, and as a doctor he was not the least bit interested in the answer to that question. He simply concluded that Salander was suffering from stress, that she had been shot three times, and that one bullet had entered her brain and almost killed her. She had a fever that would not abate, and she had severe headaches.

He had played it safe. Murder suspect or not, she was his patient, and his job was to make sure she got well. So he filled out a "no visitors" form that had no connection whatsoever to the one that was set in place by the prosecutor. He prescribed various medications and complete bedrest.

But Jonasson also realized that isolation was an inhumane way of punishing people; in fact, it bordered on torture. No-one felt good when they were separated from all their friends, so he decided that Salander's lawyer should serve as a proxy friend. He had a serious talk with Giannini and explained that she could have access to Salander for one hour a day. During this hour she could talk with her or just sit quietly and keep her company, but their conversations should not deal with Salander's problems or impending legal battles.

"Lisbeth Salander was shot in the head and was very seriously injured," he explained. "I think she's out of danger, but there is always a risk of bleeding or some other complication. She needs to rest, and she has to have time to heal. Only when that has happened can she begin to confront her legal problems."

Giannini understood Dr. Jonasson's reasoning. She had some general conversations with Salander and hinted at the outline of the strategy that she and Blomkvist had planned, but Salander was simply so drugged and exhausted that she would fall asleep while Giannini was speaking.

Armansky studied Malm's photographs of the men who had followed Blomkvist from the Copacabana. They were in sharp focus.

"No," he said. "Never seen them before."

Blomkvist nodded. They were in Armansky's office on Monday morning. Blomkvist had come into the building via the garage.

"The older one is Goran Martensson, who owns the Volvo. He followed me like a guilty conscience for at least a week, but it could have been longer."

"And you reckon that he's Sapo."

Blomkvist referred to Martensson's CV. Armansky hesitated.

You could take it for granted that the Security Police invariably made fools of themselves. That was the natural order of things, not for Sapo alone but probably for intelligence services all over the world. The French secret police had sent frogmen to New Zealand to blow up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, for God's sake. That had to be the most idiotic intelligence operation in the history of the world, with the possible exception of President Nixon's lunatic break-in at Watergate. With such cretinous leadership it was no wonder that scandals occurred. Their successes were never reported. But the media jumped all over the Security Police whenever anything improper or foolish came to light, and with all the wisdom of hindsight.

On the one hand, the media regarded Sapo as an excellent news source, and almost any political blunder gave rise to headlines: "Sapo suspects that . . ." A Sapo statement carried a lot of weight in a headline.

On the other hand, politicians of various affiliations, along with the media, were particularly diligent in condemning exposed Sapo agents if they had spied on Swedish citizens. Armansky found this entirely contradictory. He did not have anything against the existence of Sapo. Someone had to take responsibility for preventing national-Bolshevist crackpots--who had read too much Bakunin or whoever the hell these neo-Nazis read--from patching together a bomb made of fertilizer and oil and parking it in a van outside Rosenbad. Sapo was necessary, and Armansky did not think a little discreet surveillance was such a bad thing, so long as its objective was to safeguard the security of the nation.

The problem, of course, was that an organization assigned to spy on citizens must remain under strict public scrutiny. There had to be a high level of constitutional oversight. But it was almost impossible for members of Parliament to have oversight of Sapo, even when the prime minister appointed a special investigator who, on paper at least, was supposed to have access to everything. Armansky had Blomkvist's copy of Lidbom's book An Assignment, and he was reading it with gathering astonishment. If this were the United States, a dozen or so senior Sapo hands would have been arrested for obstruction of justice and forced to appear before a public committee in Congress. In Sweden, apparently, they were untouchable.

The Salander case demonstrated that something was out of joint inside the organization. But when Blomkvist came over to give him a secure mobile, Armansky's first thought was that the man was paranoid. It was only when he heard the details and studied Malm's photographs that he reluctantly admitted that Blomkvist had good reason to be suspicious. It did not bode well, but rather indicated that the conspiracy that had tried to eliminate Salander fifteen years earlier was not a thing of the past.

There were simply too many incidents for this to be coincidence. Never mind that Zalachenko had supposedly been murdered by a maniac. It had happened at the same time that both Blomkvist and Giannini were robbed of the document that was the cornerstone in the burden of proof. That was a shattering misfortune. And then the key witness, Gunnar Bjorck, had gone and hanged himself.

"Are we agreed that I pass this on to my contact?" Armansky said, gathering up Blomkvist's documentation.

"And this is a person that you say you can trust?"

"An individual of the highest moral standing."

"Inside Sapo?" Blomkvist said with u

ndisguised scepticism.

"We have to be of one mind. Both Holger and I have accepted your plan and are cooperating with you. But we can't clear this matter up all by ourselves. We have to find allies within the bureaucracy if this is not going to end in calamity."

"OK." Blomkvist nodded reluctantly. "I've never had to give out information on a story before it's published."

"But in this case you already have. You've told me, your sister, and Holger."

"True enough."

"And you did it because even you recognize that this is far more than just a scoop in your magazine. For once you're not an objective reporter, but a participant in unfolding events. And as such, you need help. You're not going to win on your own."

Blomkvist gave in. He had not, in any case, told the whole truth, either to Armansky or to his sister. He still had one or two secrets that he shared only with Salander.

He shook hands with Armansky.

CHAPTER 9

Wednesday, May 4

Three days after Berger started as acting editor in chief of SMP, current Editor in Chief Hakan Morander died at lunchtime. He had been in the glass cage all morning, while Berger and assistant editor Peter Fredriksson met the sports editors so that she could get to know her colleagues and find out how they worked. Fredriksson was forty-five years old and also relatively new to the paper. He was taciturn but pleasant, with broad experience. Berger had already decided that she would be able to depend on Fredriksson's insights when she took command of the ship. She was spending a good part of her time evaluating the people she might be able to count on and could then make part of her new regime. Fredriksson was definitely a candidate.

When they got back to the news desk they saw Morander get up and come over to the door of the glass cage. He looked startled.

Then he leaned forward, grabbed the back of a chair, and held on to it for a few seconds before he collapsed to the floor.

He was dead before the ambulance arrived.

There was a confused atmosphere in the newsroom throughout the afternoon. CEO Borgsjo arrived at 2:00 and gathered the employees for a brief memorial to Morander. He spoke of how Morander had dedicated more than a decade of his life to the newspaper, and the price that the work of a newspaperman can sometimes exact. Finally he called for a minute's silence.

Berger realized that several of her new colleagues were looking at her. The unknown quantity.

She cleared her throat, and without being invited to, without knowing what she would say, took half a step forward and spoke in a firm voice: "I knew Hakan Morander for all of three days. That's too short a time, but from even the little I managed to know of him, I can honestly say that I would have wanted very much to know him better."

She paused when she saw out of the corner of her eye that Borgsjo was staring at her. He seemed surprised that she was saying anything at all. She took another pace forward.

"Your editor in chief's untimely departure will create problems in the newsroom. I was supposed to take over from him in two months, and I was counting on having the time to learn from his experience."