There were only a handful of men and women shivering out there under their umbrellas, and they seemed barely interested to see who would be emerging from the car. She cast a bored glance at the restaurant. Throngs of guests were toasting each other, laughing and chattering. A few musicians were standing on a small stage further in. And there was Kuznetsov, dragging himself outside with his piggy eyes and fat belly—what a sight! He really was a clown. She felt like getting out of the car and slapping his face. But she had to keep her composure, her regal aura, and not betray with the slightest expression her recent sense of having fallen into an abyss. They had not yet been able to locate her sister, and she was furious. She had thought it would be easy once they had cracked her address and cover. But they could find no trace of her. Not even Kira’s contacts at the GRU—not even Galinov himself—had been able to track her down. They knew that there had been sophisticated hacker attacks against Kuznetsov’s troll factories and other targets. They might be linked to her, but it was not certain how much of this could be down to Lisbeth. Whatever, it now had to stop. Kira needed peace at last.
Thunder could be heard in the distance. A police car drove by and she took out a mirror and smiled at herself, as if to bolster her courage. When she looked up she saw Kuznetsov squirming and fiddling with his bow tie and collar. The idiot was nervous and that was a good thing. She wanted him to sweat and tremble, and she didn’t want to hear any of his dreadful jokes.
“Now,” she said. Sergei got out and opened the back door.
Her bodyguards stepped out but she took her time, waiting for Sergei to open the umbrella. Then she placed one foot on the pavement and expected to hear the usual sigh, the gasp, the “Ooh!” But there was nothing, nothing other than the rain and the string instruments of the musicians in the restaurant, the hum of voices. She would be cold and aloof, she thought, and hold her head high, and she just registered Kuznetsov lighting up with anticipation and anxiety, throwing out his arms in welcome, when she felt something else too: sheer, pure terror, cutting into her.
She could sense something over her right shoulder, a little way along the front of the building, something elusive, and she glanced in that direction. A dark figure seemed to be coming directly towards her with one hand inside its jacket. She wanted to scream at her bodyguards or throw herself onto the pavement, but instead she froze in total concentration, as if realizing that right now, even the slightest movement could cost her her life. Perhaps she knew already who it was, although she could not distinguish anything beyond an outline, a shadow coming closer.
But something in the way the figure moved, the resolute stride, gave Kira a terrible premonition, and before she had time even to grasp its full impact she knew she was lost.
CHAPTER 4
August 15
Had there ever been a chance for the two of them to come together, to be anything other than enemies? Perhaps not altogether inconceivable. After all, there was a time when they shared one vital thing: their hatred of their father, Alexander Zalachenko, and their fear that he would beat their mother Agneta to death.
At the time, the sisters were living in a cubbyhole of a room in an apartment on Lundagatan in Stockholm, and when their father showed up, usually reeking of alcohol and tobacco, and dragged their mother into the bedroom to rape her, they could hear every scream, every blow and gasp. Sometimes Lisbeth and Camilla would seek comfort in an embrace, that was all they had, but at least…there was a shared terror, a common vulnerability. Then even that was taken from them.
It escalated when they were twelve. Not only the degree of violence, but its frequency. Zalachenko began to live with them on and off, and then he would beat Agneta night after night. At the same time a change also crept into the relationship between the sisters, not obvious at first, but it was betrayed by the excited gleam in Camilla’s eyes, a fresh spring in her step as she walked to greet her father at the door. And that was the tipping point.
Just as the conflict was about to become lethal, they chose different sides in the war, and after that there was no chance of a reconciliation. Not after Agneta was beaten within an inch of her life on the kitchen floor and suffered irreversible brain damage, and Lisbeth threw a Molotov cocktail at Zalachenko and watched him burn in the front seat of his Mercedes. Ever since then it had been a matter of life and death. Since then, the past had been a bomb waiting to explode, and now, years later, as Salander slipped out of the doorway on Tverskoy Boulevard, those days at Lundagatan flashed by in a series of lightning sequences.
She was in the here and now. She had identified the gap through which she would shoot and knew exactly how she would escape afterwards. But those memories of the past were more present than she realized, and she moved slowly, slowly. It was only when Camilla stepped onto the red carpet in her high heels and black dress that Lisbeth began to move faster, although she was still in a crouch and didn’t make a sound.
Laughter and string music and clinking glasses poured through the open door of the restaurant, and all the time the rain fell. A police car drove through the puddles, and she stared at it and at the row of bodyguards, wondering when they would be alert to her again. Before she fired, or after? There was no way of knowing. But so far she was OK. It was dark and misty, and all eyes were on Camilla.
She was as radiant as ever, and Kuznetsov’s eyes shone like those of the boys in the school playground so many years ago. Camilla could bring life to a standstill. It was the power she had been born with, and Salander watched as her sister glided forward. She saw Kuznetsov straighten up, open his arms in a nervous but welcoming gesture, and she saw the guests crowding into the doorway to catch a glimpse. But at that exact moment a voice was heard from the street, one that Salander had been expecting: “Там, посмотритe”—“There, look.” A guard with a boxer’s nose and fair hair had spotted her, and then there was no room for hesitation.
She laid a hand on the Beretta in its holster and felt herself pitched into the same icy cold as when she threw the petrol-filled milk carton at her father. She had time to see Camilla freeze in fear as at least three bodyguards reached for their weapons. She would have to act now, with lightning speed and with no mercy.
Yet she was paralyzed, inexplicably. All she felt was a shadow from her childhood sweep over her once more, and she realized that not only had she missed her chance, she now stood defenceless before a rank of armed enemies. And there was no way out.
* * *
—
Camilla never saw the figure hesitate. There was only her own scream, and the sudden movement of heads and bodies and of weapons being drawn. She had no doubt it was too late, her chest would be ripped open by bullets at any moment. But no assault came and she had time to run towards the entrance and take shelter behind Kuznetsov. For a few seconds all she was aware of was her own heavy breathing and the agitated movements around her.
It was a while before she realized that not only had she escaped unscathed but the situation had now shifted to her advantage. It was no longer she who was in danger of her life. It was that dark figure over there, the one whose face she had not yet seen. The figure bent its head to check something on a mobile. It had to be Lisbeth. With a thirst for blood pounding in her throat, Camilla was desperate to see the figure suffer and die, and, calmer now, she surveyed the chaotic scene.