friday, january 3

erika set her coffee cup on the table and stood by the window looking out at the view of gamla stan. it was 9:00 in the morning. all the snow had been washed away by the rain over new year’s.

“i’ve always loved this view,” she said. “an apartment like this would make me give up living in saltsj?baden.”

“you’ve got the keys. you can move over from your upper-class reserve any time you want,” blomkvist said. he closed the suitcase and put it by the front door.

berger turned and gave him a disbelieving look. “you can’t be serious, mikael,” she said. “we’re in our worst crisis and you’re packing to go and live in tjottahejti.”

“hedestad. a couple of hours by train. and it’s not for ever.”

“it might as well be ulan bator. don’t you see that it will look as if you’re slinking off with your tail between your legs?”

“that’s precisely what i am doing. besides, i have to do some gaol time too.”

christer malm was sitting on the sofa. he was uncomfortable. it was the first time since they founded millennium that he had seen berger and blomkvist in such disagreement. over all the years they had been inseparable. sometimes they had furious clashes, but their arguments were always about business matters, and they would invariably resolve all those issues before they hugged each other and went back to their corners. or to bed. last autumn had not been fun, and now it was as if a great gulf had opened up between them. malm wondered if he was watching the beginning of the end of millennium.

“i don’t have a choice,” blomkvist said. “we don’t have a choice.”

he poured himself a coffee and sat at the kitchen table. berger shook her head and sat down facing him.

“what do you think, christer?” she said.

he had been expecting the question and dreading the moment when he would have to take a stand. he was the third partner, but they all knew that it was blomkvist and berger who were millennium. the only time they asked his advice was when they could not agree.

“honestly,” malm said, “you both know perfectly well it doesn’t matter what i think.”

he shut up. he loved making pictures. he loved working with graphics. he had never considered himself an artist, but he knew he was a damned good designer. on the other hand, he was helpless at intrigue and policy decisions.

berger and blomkvist looked at each other across the table. she was cool and furious. he was thinking hard.

this isn’t an argument, malm thought. it’s a divorce.

“ok, let me present my case one last time,” blomkvist said. “this does not mean i’ve given up on millennium. we’ve spent too much time working our hearts out for that.”

“but now you won’t be at the office—christer and i will have to carry the load. can’t you see that? you’re the one marching into self-imposed exile.”

“that’s the second thing. i need a break, erika. i’m not functioning anymore. i’m burned out. a paid sabbatical in hedestad might be exactly what i need.”

“the whole thing is idiotic, mikael. you might as well take a job in a circus.”

“i know. but i’m going to get 2.4 million for sitting on my backside for a year, and i won’t be wasting my time. that’s the third thing. round one with wennerstr?m is over, and he knocked me out. round two has already started—he’s going to try to sink millennium for good because he knows that the staff here will always know what he’s been up to, for as long as the magazine exists.”

“i know what he’s doing. i’ve seen it in the monthly ad sales figures for the last six months.”

“that’s exactly why i have to get out of the office. i’m like a red rag waving at him. he’s paranoid as far as i’m concerned. as long as i’m here, he’ll just keep on coming. now we have to prepare ourselves for round three. if we’re going to have the slightest chance against wennerstr?m, we have to retreat and work out a whole new strategy. we have to find something to hammer him with. that’ll be my job this year.”

“i understand all that,” berger said. “so go ahead and take a holiday. go abroad, lie on a beach for a month. check out the love life on the costa brava. relax. go out to sandhamn and look at the waves.”

“and when i come back nothing will be different. wennerstr?m is going to crush millennium unless he is appeased by my having stood down. you know that. the only thing which might otherwise stop him is if we get something on him that we can use.”

“and you think that’s what you will find in hedestad?”

“i checked the cuttings. wennerstr?m did work at the vanger company from 1969 to 1972. he was in management and was responsible for strategic placements. he left in a hurry. why should we rule out the possibility that henrik vanger does have something on him?”

“but if what he did happened thirty years ago, it’s going to be hard to prove it today.”

“vanger promised to set out in detail what he knows. he’s obsessed with this missing girl—it seems to be the only thing he’s interested in, and if this means he has to burn wennerstr?m then i think there’s a good chance he’ll do it. we certainly can’t ignore the opportunity—he’s the first person who’s said he’s willing to go on record with evidence against wennerstr?m.”

“we couldn’t use it even if you came back with incontrovertible proof that it was wennerstr?m who strangled the girl. not after so many years. he’d massacre us in court.”

“the thought had crossed my mind, but it’s no good: he was plugging away at the stockholm school of economics and had no connection with the vanger companies at the time she disappeared.” blomkvist paused. “erika, i’m not going to leave millennium, but it’s important for it to look as if i have. you and christer have to go on running the magazine. if you can…if you have a chance to…arrange a cease-fire with wennerstr?m, then do it. you can’t do that if i’m still on the editorial board.”

“ok, but it’s a rotten situation, and i think you’re grasping at straws going to hedestad.”

“have you a better idea?”

berger shrugged. “we ought to start chasing down sources right now. build up the story from the beginning. and do it right this time.”

“ricky—that story is dead as a doornail.”

dejected, berger rested her head on her hands. when she spoke, at first she did not want to meet blomkvist’s eyes.

“i’m so fucking angry with you. not because the story you wrote was baseless—i was in on it as much as you were. and not because you’re leaving your job as publisher—that’s a smart decision in this situation. i can go along with making it look like a schism or a power struggle between you and me—i understand the logic when it’s a matter of making wennerstr?m believe i’m a harmless bimbo and you’re the real threat.” she paused and now looked him resolutely in the eye. “but i think you’re making a mistake. wennerstr?m isn’t going to fall for it. he’s going to keep on destroying millennium. the only difference is that starting from today, i have to fight him alone, and you know that you’re needed more than ever on the editorial board. ok, i’d love to wage war against wennerstr?m, but what makes me so cross is that you’re abandoning ship all of a sudden. you’re leaving me in the lurch when things are absolutely at their worst ever.”

blomkvist reached across and stroked her hair.

“you’re not alone. you’ve got christer and the rest of the staff behind you.”

“not janne dahlman. by the way, i think you made a mistake hiring him. he’s competent, but he does more harm than good. i don’t trust him. he went around looking gleeful about your troubles all autumn. i don’t know if he hopes he can take over your role or whether it’s just personal chemistry between him and the rest of the staff.”

“i’m afraid you’re right,” blomkvist said.

“so what should i do? fire him?”

“erika, you’re editor in chief and the senior shareholder of millennium. if you have to, fire him.”

“we’ve never fired anyone, micke. and now you’re dumping this decision on me too. it’s no fun any more going to the office in the morning.”

at that point malm surprised them by standing up.

“if you’re going to catch that train we’ve got to get moving.” berger began to protest, but he held up a hand. “wait, erika, you asked me what i thought. well, i think the situation is shitty. but if things are the way mikael says—that he’s about to hit the wall—then he really does have to leave for his own sake. we owe him that much.”

they stared at malm in astonishment and he gave blomkvist an embarrassed look.

“you both know that it’s you two who are millennium. i’m a partner and you’ve always been fair with me and i love the magazine and all that, but you could easily replace me with some other art director. but since you asked for my opinion, there you have it. as far as dahlman is concerned, i agree with you. and if you want to fire him, erika, then i’ll do it for you. as long as we have a credible reason. obviously it’s extremely unfortunate that mikael’s leaving right now, but i don’t think we have a choice. mikael, i’ll drive you to the station. erika and i will hold the fort until you get back.”

“what i’m afraid of is that mikael won’t ever come back,” berger said quietly.

armansky woke up salander when he called her at 1:30 in the afternoon.

“what’s this about?” she said, drunk with sleep. her mouth tasted like tar.

“mikael blomkvist. i just talked to our client, the lawyer, frode.”

“so?”

“he called to say that we can drop the investigation of wennerstr?m.”

“drop it? but i’ve just started working on it.”

“frode isn’t interested any more.”

“just like that?”

“he’s the one who decides.”

“we agreed on a fee.”

“how much time have you put in?”

salander thought about it. “three full days.”

“we agreed on a ceiling of forty thousand kronor. i’ll write an invoice for ten thousand; you’ll get half, which is acceptable for three days of time wasted. he’ll have to pay because he’s the one who initiated the whole thing.”

“what should i do with the material i’ve gathered?”

“is there anything dramatic?”

“no.”

“frode didn’t ask for a report. put it on the shelf in case he comes back. otherwise you can shred it. i’ll have a new job for you next week.”

salander sat for a while holding the telephone after armansky hung up. she went to her work corner in the living room and looked at the notes she had pinned up on the wall and the papers she had stacked on the desk. what she had managed to collect was mostly press cuttings and articles downloaded from the internet. she took the papers and dropped them in a desk drawer.

she frowned. blomkvist’s strange behaviour in the courtroom had presented an interesting challenge, and salander did not like aborting an assignment once she had started. people always have secrets. it’s just a matter of finding out what they are.