Perhaps the police had arrived, and he tried to think and to rise above the pain. Was there anything he could do to frighten them more? Tell them they were surrounded? But no, that might make them shove him into the oven even faster. His throat tightened. He could barely breathe. He looked down at the leather straps across his legs. The heat of the furnace had scorched them, searing them into his skin. A savage pain cut through his throbbing calves. His skin was in shreds, and yet…maybe he could tear himself free? It would be excruciatingly painful. But there was no time to think about that now. He closed his eyes and with difficulty said:
“Holy shit, the ceiling’s coming down!”
Galinov looked up, and Blomkvist took a deep breath and yanked his legs out of the straps with a monumental bellow that cut through the air. Without even thinking, he swung the lower half of his body and kicked the man in the stomach, and then everything went skewed and blurry. The last thing he remembered before he blacked out was the sound of voices shouting:
“We need to kill him.”
|||||
MAY 14, 2008
It all came back to him the next day, on his way down to Base Camp, those words that had sounded so faint through the storm and the driving snow, the last they heard from Klara, the desperate cries:
“Don’t leave me, please!”
It was more than he could bear, and he knew then that those words would echo within him for the rest of his life. Yet beyond that he was alive, and it was intoxicating. Time and again he prayed to God that he might make it all the way down, so he could fall into Rebecka’s arms once more. He was weighed down by guilt but he also wanted to live, and he felt gratitude too, not only towards Nima Rita but also to Lindberg. Without him he would have died up there. Still, he could not bring himself to look him in the eye, and he concentrated instead on Nima. It turned out that he was not the only one; they were all worried about him.
Nima was a wreck. There was talk of taking him to hospital by helicopter, but he refused to accept any help, least of all from Lindberg and Forsell. He was a potential source of trouble, there was no denying it. What would he have to say once he regained his strength? It worried Forsell. It appeared to worry Lindberg even more, and the atmosphere grew increasingly tense. In the end Forsell decided to let it be. Things would just have to run their course. As he grew weaker and they headed down towards the safety of Base Camp, apathy replaced his will to live, and when finally he did get to take Rebecka in his arms, the feelings he had dreamed of were not there. No sense of security, no sense of achievement in having reached the summit, no yearning for her…only a heavy heart.
He barely wanted to eat and drink. He just slept, for fourteen hours, and when he woke up, he was all but mute. It was as if the whole dizzying mountain landscape had been cloaked in ash and he could not find solace anywhere, not even in Rebecka’s smile. Everything seemed dead. Only one thought filled his mind: he had to say what had happened. But he kept putting it off, and not only because of Lindberg and his anguished looks. Word had gone around camp that Nima Rita’s career as a climber was over. Would he be the one who put the final nail in that coffin? Would he be the one to reveal that the man, who in every other way had been the great hero on the mountain, had left a woman to die in the storm in order to save his, Johannes Forsell’s, life?
It was all but unthinkable. Yet that is probably what would have happened had Lindberg not approached him on the trek down from Base Camp. They were level with Namche Bazaar, not far from a ravine with a brook rippling through it. He was walking on his own. Rebecka was further ahead, looking after Charlotte Richter, who was concerned about the frostbite on her toes. Lindberg put his arm around Forsell’s shoulders and said:
“We can’t say anything about this, not ever, you get that, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Svante. I’ve got to say something. I can’t live with myself otherwise.”
“I do understand, my friend. Of course I do. But we’re in a bit of a tight spot here,” he said, and in his most obliging voice went on to tell him what the Russians had on them, at which Forsell replied that he might just wait and see, after all.
Perhaps he even saw it as a means of escape, a way out when his inner voice was telling him he had a duty to tell the truth about what happened.
* * *
|||||
The geography was not obvious. Salander had decided to avoid taking the road, assuming she had identified the right building. She had come skidding along a woodland path and was now standing by her motorcycle in the midst of a clump of blueberry bushes behind a tall fir tree, looking across a field at the building.
At first, she had detected no signs of life, and been convinced that it was all a smokescreen, a way of throwing her off the scent. The brick and stone building was long, like a stable, and showed signs of disrepair. The huge windows looked like they hadn’t been cleaned for a decade. The roof needed mending, the paint was peeling away from the short end wall, and from where she was standing she could not see any cars or motorcycles. But then she noticed smoke coming from the chimney and gave Plague instructions to start their operation.
Soon after that someone looked out the door of the building, a long-haired man wearing dark clothes. She caught only a glimpse of him, but she registered his nervous expression as he scanned the surroundings, and that was good enough for her.
She set up her IMSI-catcher and her mobile base station, and moments later another man peered out, looking very worried too. It had to be them, she was now certain of it. There were probably a number of others as well. Bound to be if they had Blomkvist in there, so she photographed the building and sent the GPS coordinates to Chief Inspector Bublanski in an encrypted message, hoping that would get the police there quickly. Then she approached the house.
Although it was windy and the sky was dark, it was a big risk: There was nowhere to hide in the open area. But she wanted to look in through the tall windows on the long side of the building, which extended all the way to the ground. She moved forward in a crouch, her weapon drawn, but the windows were tinted, she could not see a thing. Sensing danger, she began to back away. She had come too close. Turning abruptly, she checked her phone. An intercepted text:
<We need to finish him and get out of here>
Looking back on events later, it was difficult to say exactly what happened. To Salander it felt as if she had hesitated, just as she had on Tverskoy Boulevard. But Conny Andersson, who picked her up on the cameras at that very moment, got the impression instead of a fiercely determined figure racing up towards the forest.
* * *
—
Bogdanov spotted her on his screen but, unlike Andersson, he did not raise the alarm. He only looked on in grudging fascination as she disappeared among the trees. For some seconds she was invisible. Then there was the sound of an accelerating engine and he saw it on his screen: She was riding a motorcycle straight at them, at high speed. The bike bounced as it flew across the open space, and he assumed that was the last he would see of her.