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

"Bigger than Wennerstrom," Blomkvist said. "Are you interested?"

"Are you serious? Where shall we meet?"

"How about Samir's Cauldron? Erika's going to sit in on the meeting."

"What's going on with her? Is she back at Millennium now that she's been thrown out of SMP?"

"She didn't get thrown out. She resigned because of differences of opinion with Magnus Borgsjo."

"He seems to be a real creep."

"You're not wrong there," Blomkvist said.

Clinton was listening to Verdi through his earphones. Music was pretty much the only thing left in life that could take him away from dialysis machines and the growing pain in the small of his back. He did not hum to the music. He closed his eyes and followed the notes with his right hand, which hovered and seemed to have a life of its own alongside his disintegrating body.

That is how it goes. We are born. We live. We grow old. We die. He had played his part. All that remained was the disintegration.

He felt strangely satisfied with life.

He was playing for his friend Evert Gullberg.

It was Saturday, July 9. Only four days until the trial, and the Section could set about putting this whole wretched story behind them. He had gotten the message that morning. Gullberg had been tougher than almost anyone he had known. When you fire a 9mm full-metal-jacketed bullet into your own temple, you expect to die. Yet it was three months before Gullberg's body gave up at last. That was probably due as much to chance as to the stubbornness with which the doctors had waged the battle for Gullberg's life. And it was the cancer, not the bullet, that had finally determined his end.

Gullberg's death had been painful, and that saddened Clinton. Although incapable of communicating with the outside world, he had at times been in a semi-conscious state, smiling when the hospital staff stroked his cheek or grunting when he seemed to be in pain. Sometimes he had tried to form words and even sentences, but nobody was able to understand anything he said.

He had no family, and none of his friends came to his sickbed. His last contact with life was an Eritrean night nurse by the name of Sara Kitama, who kept watch at his bedside and held his hand as he died.

Clinton realized that he would soon be following his former comrade-in-arms. No doubt about that. The likelihood of his surviving a transplant operation decreased each day. His liver and intestinal functions appeared to have declined at each examination.

He hoped to live past Christmas.

Yet he was content. He felt an almost spiritual, giddy satisfaction that his final days had involved such a sudden and surprising return to service.

It was a boon he could not have anticipated.

The last notes of Verdi faded away just as somebody opened the door to the small room in which he was resting at the Section's headquarters on Artillerigatan.

Clinton opened his eyes. It was Wadensjoo.

He had come to the conclusion that Wadensjoo was a deadweight. He was entirely unsuitable as director of the most important vanguard of Swedish national defence. He could not conceive how he and von Rottinger could ever have made such a fundamental miscalculation as to imagine that Wadensjoo was the appropriate successor.

Wadensjoo was a warrior who needed a fair wind. In a crisis he was feeble and incapable of making a decision. A timid encumbrance lacking steel in his backbone who would most likely have remained in paralysis, incapable of action, and let the Section go under.

It was this simple. Some had it. Others would always falter when it came to the crunch.

"You wanted a word?"

"Sit down," Clinton said.

Wadensjoo sat.

"I'm at a stage in my life when I can no longer waste time. I'll get straight to the point. When all this is over, I want you to resign from the management of the Section."

"You do?"

Clinton tempered his tone.

"You're a good man, Wadensjoo. But unfortunately you were completely unsuited to succeed Gullberg. You should not have been given that responsibility. Von Rottinger and I were at fault when we failed to deal properly with the succession after I got sick."

"You've never liked me."

"You're wrong about that. You were an excellent administrator when von Rottinger and I were in charge of the Section. We would have been helpless without you, and I have great admiration for your patriotism. It's your inability to make decisions that lets you down."

Wadensjoo smiled bitterly. "After this, I don't know if I even want to stay in the Section."

"Now that Gullberg and von Rottinger are gone, I've had to make the crucial decisions myself," Clinton said. "And you've obstructed every decision I've made during the past few months."

"And I maintain that the decisions you've made are absurd. It's going to end in disaster."

"That's possible. But your indecision would have guaranteed our collapse. Now at least we have a chance, and our plan seems to be working. Millennium doesn't know which way to turn. They may suspect that we're somewhere out here, but they lack documentation, and they have no way of finding it--or us. And we know at least as much as they do."

Wadensjoo looked out the window and across the rooftops.

"The only thing we still have to do is to get rid of Zalachenko's daughter," Clinton said. "If anyone starts digging around in her past and listening to what she has to say, there's no knowing what might happen. But the trial starts in a few days, and then it'll be over. This time we have to bury her so deep that she'll never come back to haunt us."

Wadensjoo shook his head.

"I don't understand your attitude," Clinton said.

"I can see that. You're sixty-eight years old. You're dying. Your decisions are not rational, and yet you seem to have bewitched Nystrom and Sandberg. They obey you as if you were God the Father."

"I am God the Father in everything that has to do with the Section. We're working according to a plan. Our decision to act has given the Section a chance. And it is with the utmost conviction that I say that the Section will never find itself in such an exposed position again. When all this is over, we're going to implement a complete overhaul of our activities."

"I see."

"Nystrom will be the new director. He's really too old, but he's the only choice we have, and he's promised to stay on for six years at least. Sandberg is too young and--as a direct result of your management policies--too inexperienced. He should have been fully trained by now."

"Clinton, don't you see what you've done? You've murdered a man. Bjorck worked for the Section for thirty-five years, and you ordered his death. Do you not understand--"

"You know quite well that it was necessary. He betrayed us, and he would never have withstood the pressure when the police closed in."

Wadensjoo stood up.

"I'm not finished."

"Then we'll have to continue later. I have a job to do while you lie here fantasizing that you're the Almighty."

"If you're so morally indignant, why don't you go to Bublanski and confess your crimes?"

"Believe me, I've considered it. But whatever you may think, I'm doing everything in my power to protect the Section."

He opened the door and met Nystrom and Sandberg on their way in.

"Hello, Fredrik," Nystrom said. "We have to talk."

"Wadensjoo was just leaving."

Nystrom waited until the door had closed. "Fredrik, I'm seriously worried."

"What's going on?"

"Sandberg and I have been thinking. Things are happening that we don't understand. This morning Salander's lawyer lodged her autobiographical statement with the prosecutor."

"What?"

Inspector Faste scrutinized Advokat Giannini as Ekstrom poured coffee from a thermos carafe. The document Ekstrom had been handed when he arrived at work that morning had taken both of them by surprise. He and Faste had read the forty pages of Salander's story and discussed the extraordinary document at length. Finally he felt compelled to ask Giannini to come

in for an informal chat.

They were sitting at the small conference table in Ekstrom's office.

"Thank you for agreeing to come in," Ekstrom said. "I have read this . . . hmm . . . account that arrived this morning, and there are a few matters I'd like to clarify."

"I'll do what I can to help," Giannini said.

"I don't know exactly where to start. Let me say from the outset that both Inspector Faste and I are profoundly astonished."