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

"It's nothing."

"Tell me."

"Some girl, Ulla something, who was also a temp, claimed that he sexually harassed her. I don't know how much was true, but the union did nothing about it and her contract wasn't extended."

Berger looked at the clock and sighed. She got up from the bed and made for the shower. Blomkvist did not move when she came out, dried herself, and dressed.

"I think I'll doze for a while," he said.

She kissed his cheek and waved as she left.

Figuerola parked seven cars behind Martensson's Volvo on Luntmakargatan, close to the corner of Olof Palmes Gata. She watched as Martensson walked to the machine to pay his parking fee. He then walked onto Sveavagen.

Figuerola decided not to pay for a ticket. She would lose him if she went to the machine and back, so she followed him. He turned left onto Kungsgatan, and went into Kungstornet. She waited three minutes before she followed him into the cafe. He was on the ground floor talking to a blond man who looked to be in very good shape. A policeman, she thought. She recognized him as the other man Malm had photographed outside the Copacabana on May Day.

She bought herself a coffee and sat at the opposite end of the cafe and opened her Dagens Nyheter. Martensson and his companion were talking in low voices. She took out her mobile and pretended to make a call, although neither of the men was paying her any attention. She took a photograph with the mobile that she knew would be only 72 dpi--low quality, but it could be used as evidence that the meeting had taken place.

After about fifteen minutes the blond man stood up and left the cafe. Figuerola cursed. Why had she not stayed outside? She would have recognized him when he came out. She wanted to leap up and follow him. But Martensson was still there, calmly nursing his coffee. She did not want to draw attention to herself by leaving so soon after his unidentified companion.

And then Martensson went to the toilet. As soon as he closed the door Figuerola was on her feet and back out on Kungsgatan. She looked up and down the block, but the blond man was gone.

She took a chance and hurried to the corner of Sveavagen. She could not see him anywhere, so she went down to the tunnelbana concourse, but it was hopeless.

She turned back towards Kungstornet, feeling stressed. Martensson had left too.

Berger swore when she got back to where she had parked her BMW the night before.

The car was still there, but during the night some bastard had punctured all four tyres. Goddamn fucking piss rats, she fumed.

She called the vehicle recovery service, told them that she did not have time to wait, and put the key in the exhaust pipe. Then she went down to Hornsgatan and hailed a taxi.

Lisbeth Salander logged on to Hacker Republic and saw that Plague was online. She pinged him.

Plague went quiet for a few seconds.

She explained what she needed to have done.

On Friday morning Jonasson was faced with an obviously irritated Inspector Faste on the other side of his desk.

"I don't understand this," Faste said. "I thought Salander had recovered. I came to Goteborg for two reasons: to interview her and to get her ready to be transferred to a cell in Stockholm, where she belongs."

"I'm sorry for your wasted journey," Jonasson said. "I'd be glad to discharge her because we certainly don't have any beds to spare here. But--"

"Could she be faking?"

Jonasson smiled politely. "I really don't think so. You see, Lisbeth Salander was shot in the head. I removed a bullet from her brain, and it was fifty-fifty whether she would survive. She did survive, and her prognosis has been exceedingly satisfactory . . . so much so that my colleagues and I were getting ready to discharge her. Then yesterday she had a setback. She complained of severe headaches and developed a fever that has been fluctuating up and down. Last night she had a temperature of 100 and vomited on two occasions. During the night the fever subsided; she was almost back down to normal and I thought the episode had passed. But when I examined her this morning her temperature had gone up to over 102. That is serious."

"So what's wrong with her?"

"I don't know, but the fact that her temperature is fluctuating indicates that it's not flu or any other viral infection. Exactly what's causing it I can't say--it could be something as simple as an allergy to her medication or to something else she's come into contact with."

He clicked on an image on his computer and turned the screen towards Faste.

"I had a cranial X-ray done. There's a darker area here, as you can see, right next to her gunshot wound. I can't determine what it is. It could be scar tissue as a product of the healing process, but it could also be a minor haemorrhage. And until we've found out what's wrong, I can't release her, no matter how urgent it may be from a police point of view."

Faste knew better than to argue with a doctor, since they were the closest things to God's representatives here on earth. Policemen possibly excepted.

"What is going to happen now?"

"I've ordered complete bedrest and put her physical therapy on hold--she needs therapeutic exercise because of the wounds in her shoulder and hip."

"Understood. I'll have to call Prosecutor Ekstrom in Stockholm. This will come as a bit of a surprise. What can I tell him?"

"Two days ago I was ready to approve a discharge, possibly for the end of this week. As the situation is now, it will take longer. You'll have to prepare him for the fact that probably I won't be in a position to make a decision in the coming week, and that it might be two weeks before you can move her to Stockholm. It depends on her rate of recovery."

"The trial has been set for July."

"Barring the unforeseen, she should be on her feet well before then."

Bublanski cast a sceptical glance at the muscular woman on the other side of the table. They were drinking coffee in the outdoor area of a cafe on Norr Malarstrand. It was Friday, May 20, and th

e warmth of summer was in the air. Inspector Monica Figuerola, her ID said, SIS. She had caught up with him just as he was leaving for home and suggested a conversation over a cup of coffee.

At first he had been surly, but she had very straightforwardly conceded that she had no authority to interview him and that he was perfectly free to tell her nothing at all if he did not want to. He asked her what her business was, and she told him that she had been assigned by her boss to form an unofficial picture of what was true and not true in the so-called Zalachenko case, also known in some quarters as the Salander case.

"What would you like to know?" Bublanski said at last.

"Tell me what you know about Salander, Mikael Blomkvist, Gunnar Bjorck, and Zalachenko. How do the pieces fit together?"

They talked for more than two hours.

Edklinth thought long and hard about how to proceed. After five days of investigations, Figuerola had given him a number of indisputable indications that something was rotten within SIS. He recognized the need to move very carefully until he had enough information. He found himself, furthermore, with a constitutional dilemma: he did not have the authority to conduct secret investigations, and most assuredly not against his colleagues.

Accordingly, he had to contrive some cause that would legitimize what he was doing. If worst came to worst, he could always fall back on the fact that it was a policeman's duty to investigate a crime--but the breach was now so sensitive from a constitutional standpoint that he would surely be fired if he took a single wrong step. So he spent the whole of Friday brooding alone in his office.

Finally he concluded that Armansky was right, no matter how improbable it might seem. There really was a conspiracy inside SIS, and a number of individuals were acting outside of, or parallel to, regular operations. Because this had been going on for many years--at least since 1976, when Zalachenko arrived in Sweden--it had to be organized and sanctioned from the top. Exactly how high the conspiracy went he had no idea.

He wrote three names on a pad:

Goran Martensson, Personal Protection. Criminal Inspector.

Gunnar Bjorck, assistant chief of immigration division. Deceased (suicide?).

Albert Shenke, chief of Secretariat, SIS.

Figuerola was of the view that the chief of Secretariat must have been calling the shots when Martensson in Personal Protection was supposedly moved to Counter-Espionage, although he was not in fact working there. He was too busy monitoring the movements of journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and that didn't have anything at all to do with the operations of Counter-Espionage.