“The simple answer is revenge. Your friend could tell you a bit about its destructive force.”
“Lisbeth,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Where is she?”
“Where indeed? That’s precisely what we’re wondering.”
There was another pause, long enough for Blomkvist to fear that the man would show just how blind and mad he still was. Instead the figure stepped forward, and the first thing Blomkvist noticed was the white linen suit, the same the man had been wearing the evening before. To his horror Blomkvist could imagine his own blood staining the jacket.
Then he saw the face. It was harmonious and clean-cut, with slightly asymmetrical eyes and a pale scar running down the right cheek. The man had thick grey hair with snow-white streaks. He was tall, slim and fine-limbed. In a different context he could have been taken for an eccentric intellectual, a kind of Tom Wolfe character. But right now, there was something icily unpleasant about him, and an unnatural slowness in his movements.
“I don’t suppose you’re alone,” Blomkvist said.
“There are a few thugs here too, young men who for some unfathomable reason don’t want to show their faces. And we have a camera up there.” The man pointed at the ceiling.
“So you’re going to film me?”
“Don’t you worry about that, Mikael,” the man said, inexplicably switching to Swedish. “Just see this as something entirely between you and me, a kind of intimacy.”
Blomkvist’s body was shaking more and more. “You speak Swedish,” he said, terrified.
It was as if the man’s ability to go from one language to another confirmed the impression of him as the very devil.
“I’m a linguist, Mikael.”
“Really?”
“I am indeed. But you and I are going to travel beyond language.”
He unfolded a black cloth he had been holding in his right hand and set out some shiny objects on the steel table next to him.
“What do you mean by that?” Blomkvist was growing increasingly desperate as he twisted on the stretcher and stared into the hissing fire and the reflection of his own contorted face just visible in the metal frame of the furnace.
“There are plenty of splendid words for most things in life,” the man went on. “Especially for love, I’m sure you’d agree. You must have read Keats and Byron and all that as a young man, and I’d say they did a pretty good job of capturing love. But infinite pain, Mikael, is beyond words. No-one has been able to describe it, not even the greatest artists, and that is where we are heading, Mikael. To the wordless.”
* * *
—
Jurij Bogdanov was sitting in the backseat of a black Mercedes driving north towards Märsta, and showing Kira the film sequence. She was watching it through narrowed eyes and Bogdanov could not wait to see the excitement that never failed to light up her face when she saw her enemies suffer.
But there was no sign of it, only an expression of long-suffering impatience, and that did not bode well. He did not trust Galinov and was convinced that it had all gone too far. Nothing good would come of going after Blomkvist. There were too many impassioned emotions involved, and he did not like Kira’s determined look.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
“Are you going to send it to her?”
“First I have to secure the link. But honestly, Kira…” He hesitated. He knew she would not like it and avoided her eyes.
“You ought to stay away from that place,” he went on. “We should fly you home now, at once.”
“I’m not flying anywhere until she’s dead.”
“I think…” he began.
…that she won’t let herself be captured so easily, is what he wanted to say. That you’re underestimating her. But he said no more. He must not allow a word or a look to betray the fact that he actually admired Salander, or Wasp, as he had come to know her. There were good hackers, there were geniuses and then there was Wasp. That is how he saw it, and instead of speaking he bent forward and pulled out a blue metal box.
“What’s that?” she said.
“A noisebox. A Faraday cage. For your mobile. We mustn’t leave any tracks.”
Kira looked out of the window and put her phone in the box. Then they sat in silence, looking fixedly ahead at the driver and the passing landscape until Kira demanded to see more of what was going on within the industrial building at Morgonsala, so Bogdanov showed her.
They were images he could have done without.
* * *
—
Salander was just passing Norrviken when the signal on her Google Glass disappeared, and she swore and hit the handlebar with her right hand. She had been expecting it, though, and slowed down until she spotted a small patch of woodland by a roadside rest area with a wooden bench and a table. She settled there with her laptop and hoped she would now reap the rewards from all those hours spent charting Camilla’s circle of helpers that summer.
The operation would have been impossible without the services of members of Svavelsjö M.C., and even though Salander assumed they only had prepaid mobiles with them, she still wanted to believe that one or another of them would have made a small mistake along the way. She tried again to check the men who had been to see Kira at Strandvägen: Marko, Jorma, Conny, Krille and Miro. Once again she drew a blank, in spite of the fact that she had hacked their operator and could access the base stations. She slammed her fist on the wooden table in fury and was ready to give up and look for another solution when suddenly she remembered Peter Kovic.
Of everyone in the club, Kovic had the worst criminal record, and was said to have a problem with alcohol and women, and discipline. She had not seen him anywhere near Strandvägen, but he was one of the men who had been at Fiskargatan that summer, so she tried his mobile as well. A short time later she exclaimed in triumph. Early that morning, Kovic had followed the same route as Camilla was now travelling, only he had carried on further north towards Uppsala, past Storvreta and Björklinge. She was just about to have a closer look when her phone rang.
At first she had no intention of answering, but it was Erika Berger from Millennium. All she could hear was Erika yelling and the only words she could make out were:
“He’s burning…he’s burning!”
She began to grasp what was happening.
“They’ve shoved him into a huge furnace. He’s screaming, he’s in excruciating pain, and they say…they’ve written—”