“Did you hear what song that was?”
“I heard,” Felix said.
“So someone on the outside knows.”
“I guess so.”
“What do you think’ll happen?”
“No idea.”
“Does it mean we can expect to be blackmailed now?”
Felix did not reply and bit his lip, and Kuznetsov stared blankly out at the street.
“I think we can expect something much worse than that,” Felix said.
Don’t say that, Kuznetsov thought. Don’t say that. “Why?” His voice cracked.
“Because Bogdanov just called—”
“Bogdanov?”
“Kira’s guy.”
Kira, he thought, gorgeous, odious Kira, and then he remembered: That was how it had all started, with her beautiful face twisted into a dreadful grimace, and her mouth screaming “Shoot! Kill!” and her eyes fixed on that dark figure further along the wall. Thinking back, all this seemed to be linked to the ensuing cacophony.
“What did Bogdanov say?” he said.
“That he knows who hacked us.”
Electrical, he thought. How the hell could I have said “electrical”?
“So we’ve been hacked?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But that was supposed to be impossible. Impossible, you fucking idiot.”
“No, but this person—”
“What about this bloody person?”
“She’s highly skilled.”
“So it’s a she?”
“And she doesn’t seem to be after any money.”
“What is she after, then?”
“Revenge,” Felix said. Kuznetsov’s whole body shook and he punched Felix on the chin.
Then he walked away and drank himself into a stupor on champagne and vodka.
* * *
—
Salander was calm as she let herself into her hotel room. She poured herself a glass of whisky and drained it in one, and took some nuts from a bowl on the coffee table. Then she took her time to pack, and there was nothing rushed or nervous about her movements.
Only once she had zipped up her bag, ready to go, did she notice that her body was unnaturally tense. Her eyes were casting around for something to smash to pieces—a vase, a painting, the crystal chandelier in the ceiling—but in the end she just went into the bathroom and stared into the mirror, studying every feature in her face. She saw nothing.
In her mind she was back on Tverskoy Boulevard, her hand reaching for her weapon, and the same hand then being withdrawn. She remembered what made it feel easy, and what made it so difficult, and realized that, for the first time all summer, she had no idea what to do. She was…well, what was she…? Lost, most likely, and she didn’t even get a boost from picking up her mobile and finding out where Camilla lived.
From a Google satellite map she could see a large stone house surrounded by terraces, gardens, pools and statues. She tried to imagine it all burning, just like her father in his Mercedes on Lundagatan, but it made her feel no better. What had seemed like a perfect plan was one big mess, and she realized that her hesitation, both now and all those years ago, was deadly dangerous and a handicap to her. She reached for more whisky.
When she had paid her hotel bill online, she picked up her bag and left, and only once she was several blocks away did she take the pistol, wipe it clean, and throw it into a drain. She took a taxi, booked a flight to Copenhagen for early the following morning using one of her fake passports, and checked in to the Sheraton next to Sheremetyevo airport.
In the early hours of the morning she saw that Blomkvist had sent her a text. He was worried, he told her, and that reminded her of the film sequence from Fiskargatan. She decided to sneak into his computer via her usual back door. She couldn’t have said why. Maybe she just needed to turn her thoughts to something other than the images that kept repeating in her mind, and she sat down at the desk.
After a while she found some encrypted documents, and assumed they must be important to him. Yet it seemed as though he wanted her to be able to read them. In the files he had created for her, he had left clues and leads which only she could understand, and having skipped around on his server for half an hour or so, she immersed herself in a long article he’d written about the stock market crash and troll factories. He had managed to unearth a fair amount, but not as much as she had, and after ploughing twice through the article she added something towards the end and inserted a link to various documents and e-mails. By this time she was so tired that she failed to notice she had misspelled Kuznetsov’s name, and had also failed to stick to Blomkvist’s usual writing style. But she made sure to log out and lay back on the bed without taking off either her suit or her shoes.
When she fell asleep, she dreamed that her father was standing in a sea of fire, telling her that she had become weak and would not stand a chance against Camilla.
CHAPTER 5
August 16
Blomkvist woke at six on Sunday morning. It must be the heat, he thought. The air was close, as before a storm, and his sheets and pillows were soaked with sweat. His head was pounding and briefly he wondered if he was falling sick, until the events of the evening before came back to him. He remembered sitting up late and having a few drinks, and he cursed as the morning light now seeped under the curtains. Pulling the covers over his head, he tried to go back to sleep.
But then he made the mistake of checking his mobile to see if Salander had answered his text message. Of course she had not. He began to brood over her again, which was no way to relax, and in the end he sat up in bed.
There was a jumble of books on the bedside table which he had started but never finished, and for a while he contemplated staying in bed and reading, or perhaps working on his article. Instead he went into the kitchen and made himself a cappuccino, then fetched the morning papers and buried himself in the news. Half an hour later he had answered a number of e-mails and had puttered around in his apartment, tidying a little as he went.
At half past nine he got a text message from Sofie Melker, his young colleague who had just moved into the neighbourhood with her husband and two sons. Sofie wanted to discuss an idea for a story, and he didn’t feel like it at all. But he was fond of Sofie so he suggested meeting at Kaffebar on St. Paulsgatan in half an hour. He got a thumbs-up in reply. He did not like emojis; language seemed to him perfectly adequate. But he did not want to seem old-fashioned and decided to send some cheerful little image in response.