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

"Then?"

"Well, she thinks it's embarrassing and doesn't know what to do. Part of it is probably that she's very impressed by you and likes you a lot . . . as a boss, I mean. So she came to me and asked for my advice."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I said that someone had faked your address and is obviously harassing her. Or possibly both of you. I said I'd talk to you about it."

"Thank you. Could you please ask her to come to my office in ten minutes?"

In the meantime Berger composed her own email.

It has come to my attention that an employee of SMP has received a number of emails that appear to come from me. The emails contain vulgar sexual innuendos. I have also received similar emails from a sender who purports to be "centraled" at SMP. No such address exists.

I have consulted the head of the IT department, who informs me that it is very easy to fake a sender's address. I don't understand how it's done, but there are sites on the Internet where such things can be arranged. I have to draw the conclusion that some sick individual is doing this.

I want to know if any other colleagues have received strange emails. If so, I would like them to inform Fredriksson of this immediately. If these unpleasant pranks continue we will have to consider reporting them to the police.

Erika Berger, Editor in Chief

----------

She printed a copy of the email and then pressed Send so that the message went out to all employees in the company. At that moment, Eva Carlsson knocked on the door.

"Hello. Have a seat," Berger said. "Peter told me that you got an email from me."

"Well, I didn't really think it came from you."

"Thirty seconds ago you did get an email from me. I wrote it all by myself and sent it to everyone in the company."

She handed Carlsson the printout.

"OK. I get it," the girl said.

"I'm really sorry that somebody decided to target you for this ugly campaign."

"You don't have to apologize for the actions of some asshole."

"I just want to make sure that you don't have any lingering suspicions that I had anything to do with these emails."

"I never believed you sent them."

"Thanks," Berger said with a smile.

Figuerola spent the afternoon gathering information. She started by ordering passport photographs of Faulsson. Then she ran a check in the criminal records and got a hit at once.

Lars Faulsson, forty-seven years old and known by the nickname Falun, had begun his criminal career stealing cars at seventeen. In the seventies and eighties he was arrested twice and charged with breaking and entering, burglary, and receiving stolen goods. The first time, he was given a light prison sentence; the second time, he got three years. At that time he was regarded as "up and coming" in criminal circles and had been questioned as a suspect in three other burglaries, one of which was a relatively complicated and widely reported safe-cracking heist at a department store in Vasteras. When he got out of prison in 1984 he kept his nose clean--or at least he did not pull any jobs that got him arrested and convicted again. But he had retrained himself to be a locksmith (of all professions), and in 1987 he started his own company, Lars Faulsson Lock and Key Service, with an address near Norrtull in Stockholm.

Identifying the woman who had filmed Martensson and Faulsson proved to be easier than she had anticipated. She simply called Milton Security and explained that she was looking for a female employee she had met a while ago and whose name she had forgotten. She could give a good description of the woman. The switchboard told her that it sounded like Susanne Linder, and put her through. When Linder answered the phone, Figuerola apologized and said she must have dialled the wrong number.

The public registry listed eighteen Susanne Linders in Stockholm county, three of them around thirty-five years old. One lived in Norrtalje, one in Stockholm, and one in Nacka. She requisitioned their passport photographs and identified at once the woman she had followed from Bellmansgatan as the Susanne Linder who lived in Nacka.

She set out her day's work in a memo and went in to see Edklinth.

Blomkvist closed Cortez's research folder and pushed it away with distaste. Malm put down the printout of his article, which he had read four times. Cortez sat on the sofa in Eriksson's office looking guilty.

"Coffee," Eriksson said, getting up. She came back with four mugs and the coffeepot.

"This is a great sleazy story," Blomkvist said. "First-class research. Documentation to the hilt. Perfect dramaturgy with a bad guy who swindles Swedish tenants through the system--which is legal--but who is so greedy and so fucking stupid that he outsources to this company in Vietnam."

"Very well written too," Malm said. "The day after we publish this, Borgsjo is going to be persona non grata. TV is going to pick this up. He's going to be right up there with the directors of Skandia. A genuine scoop for Millennium. Well done, Henry."

"But this thing with Erika is a real fly in the ointment," Blomkvist said.

"Why should that be a problem?" Eriksson said. "Erika isn't the villain. We have to be free to examine any chairman of the board or CEO, even if he happens to be her boss."

"It's a hell of a dilemma," Blomkvist said.

"Erika hasn't completely left Millennium," Malm said. "She owns 30 percent and sits on our board. In fact, she's chairman of the board until we can elect Harriet Vanger at the next board meeting, and that won't be until August. Plus, Erika is working at SMP and you're about to expose her boss."

Glum silence.

"So what the hell are we going to do?" Cortez said. "Do we kill the article?"

Blomkvist looked Cortez straight in the eye. "No, Henry. We're not going to kill the article. That's not the way we do things at Millennium. But this is going to take some legwork. We can't just dump it on Erika's desk as a newspaper headline."

Malm waved a finger in the air. "We're really putting Erika on the spot. She'll have to sell her share of Millennium and leave our board . . . or in the worst case, she could get fired by SMP. Either way she would have a terrible conflict of interest. Honestly, Henry, I agree with Mikael that we should publish the story, but we may have to postpone it for a month."

"Because we're facing a conflict of loyalties too," Blomkvist said.

"Should I call her?"

"No, Christer," Blomkvist said. "I'll call her and arrange to meet. Tonight."

Figuerola gave a summary of the circus that had sprung up around Blomkvist's building on Bellmansgatan. Edklinth felt the floor sway slightly beneath his chair.

"An employee of SIS goes into Blomkvist's building with an ex-safebreaker, now retrained as a locksmith."

"Correct."

"What do you think they did in the stairwell?"

"I don't know. But they were in there for forty-nine minutes. My guess is that Faulsson opened the door and Martensson spent the time in Blomkvist's apartment."

"And what did they do there?"

"It couldn't have been to plant bugs, because that takes only a minute or so. Martensson must have been looking through Blomkvist's papers or whatever else he keeps at his place."

"But Blomkvist has already been warned . . . they stole Bjorck's report from there."

"Right. He knows he's being watched, and he's watching the ones who are watching him. He's calculating."

"Calculating what?"

"I mean, he has a plan. He's gathering information and is going to expose Martensson. That's the only reasonable explanation."

"And this Linder woman?"

"Susanne Linder, former police officer."

"Police officer?"

"She graduated from the police academy and worked for six years on the Sodermalm crime team. She resigned abruptly. There's nothing in her file that says why. She was out of a job for several months before she was hired by Milton Security."

"Armansky," Edklinth said thoughtfully. "How long was she in the building?"

"Nine minutes."

>

"Doing what?"

"Since she was filming Martensson and Faulsson on the street I'm guessing that she's documenting their activities. That means that Milton Security is working with Blomkvist and has placed surveillance cameras in his apartment or in the stairwell. She probably went in to collect the film."

Edklinth sighed. The Zalachenko story was beginning to get tremendously complicated.

"Thank you. You go home. I have to think about this."

Figuerola went to the gym at St. Eriksplan.

Blomkvist used his second mobile when he punched in Berger's number at SMP. He interrupted a discussion she was having with her editors about what angle to give an article on international terrorism.

"Oh, hello, it's you . . . wait a second."

Berger put her hand over the mouthpiece.

"I think we're done," she said, and gave them one last instruction. When she was alone she said: "Hello, Mikael. Sorry not to have been in touch. I'm just so swamped here. There are a thousand things I have got to learn. How's the Salander stuff going?"

"Good. But that's not why I called. I have to see you. Tonight."

"I wish I could, but I have to be here until 8:00. And I'm dead tired. I've been at it since dawn. What's it about?"

"I'll tell you when I see you. But it's not good."

"I'll come to your place at 8:30."

"No. Not at mine. It's a long story, but my apartment is unsuitable for the time being. Let's meet at Samir's Cauldron for a beer."

"I'm driving."

"Then we'll have a light beer."

Berger was slightly annoyed when she walked into Samir's Cauldron. She was feeling guilty because she had not contacted Blomkvist even once since the day she had walked into SMP.