Sunday, 10.iv Blomkvist had spent Saturday night with Berger. They lay in bed and talked through the details of the Zalachenko story. Blomkvist trusted Berger implicitly and was never for a second inhibited by the fact that she was going to be working for a rival paper. Nor had Berger any thought of taking the story with her. It was Millennium’s scoop, even though she may have felt a certain frustration that she was not going to be the editor of that particular issue. It would have been a fine ending to her years at Millennium. They also discussed the future structure of the magazine. Berger was determined to retain her shareholding in Millennium and to remain on the board, even if she had no say over the magazine’s contents. “Give me a few years at the daily and then, who knows? Maybe I’ll come back to Millennium before I retire,” she said. And as for their own complicated relationship, why should it be any different? Except that of course they would not be meeting so often. It would be as it was in the ’80s, before Millennium was founded and when they worked in separate offices. “I imagine we’ll have to book appointments with each other,” Berger said with a faint smile. On Sunday morning they said a hasty goodbye before Berger drove home to her husband, Greger Beckman. After she was gone Blomkvist called the hospital in Sahlgrenska and tried to get some information about Salander’s condition. Nobody would tell him anything, so finally he called Inspector Erlander, who took pity on him and vouchsafed that, given the circumstances, Salander’s condition was fair and the doctors were cautiously optimistic. He asked if he would be able to visit her. Erlander told him that Salander was officially under arrest and that the prosecutor would not allow any visitors, but in any case she was in no condition to be questioned. Erlander said he would call if her condition took a turn for the worse. When Blomkvist checked his mobile, he saw that he had forty-two messages and texts, almost all of them from journalists. There had been wild speculation in the media after it was revealed that Blomkvist was the one who had found Salander, and had probably saved her life. He was obviously closely connected with the development of events. He deleted all the messages from reporters and called his sister, Annika, to invite himself for Sunday lunch. Then he called Dragan Armansky, C.E.O. of Milton Security, who was at his home in Liding?. “You certainly have a way with headlines,” Armansky said. “I tried to reach you earlier this week. I got a message that you were looking for me, but I just didn’t have time—” “We’ve been doing our own investigation at Milton. And I understood from Holger Palmgren that you had some information. But it seems you were far ahead of us.” Blomkvist hesitated before he said: “Can I trust you?” “How do you mean exactly?” “Are you on Salander’s side or not? Can I believe that you want the best for her?” “I’m her friend. Although, as you know, that’s not necessarily the same thing as saying that she’s my friend.” “I understand that. But what I’m asking is whether or not you’re willing to put yourself in her corner and get into a pitched battle with her enemies.” “I’m on her side,” he said. “Can I share information with you and discuss things with you without the risk of your leaking it to the police or to anyone else?” “I can’t get involved in criminal activity,” Armansky said. “That’s not what I asked.” “You can absolutely rely on me as long as you don’t reveal that you’re engaged in any sort of criminal activity.” “Good enough. We need to meet.” “I’m coming into the city this evening. Dinner?” “I don’t have time today, but I’d be grateful if we could meet tomorrow night. You and I and perhaps a few other people might need to sit down for a chat.” “You’re welcome at Milton. Shall we say 6.00?” “One more thing … I’m seeing my sister, the lawyer Annika Giannini, later this morning. She’s considering taking on Salander as a client, but she can’t work for nothing. I can pay part of her fee out of my own pocket. Would Milton Security be willing to contribute?” “That girl is going to need a damned good criminal lawyer. Your sister might not be the best choice, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. I’ve already talked to Milton’s chief lawyer and he’s looking into it. I was thinking of Peter Althin or someone like that.” “That would be a mistake. Salander needs a totally different kind of legal support. You’ll see what I mean when we talk. But would you be willing, in principle, to help?” “I’d already decided that Milton ought to hire a lawyer for her—” “Is that a yes or a no? I know what happened to her. I know roughly what’s behind it all. And I have a strategy.” Armansky laughed. “O.K. I’ll listen to what you have to say. If I like it, I’m in.” Blomkvist kissed his sister on the cheek and immediately asked: “Are you going to be representing Lisbeth Salander?” “I’m going to have to say no. You know I’m not a criminal lawyer. Even if she’s acquitted of murder, there’s going to be a rack of other charges. She’s going to need someone with a completely different sort of clout and experience than I have.” “You’re wrong. You’re a lawyer and you’re a recognized authority in women’s rights. In my considered view you’re precisely the lawyer she needs.” “Mikael … I don’t think you really appreciate what this involves. It’s a complex criminal case, not a straightforward case of sexual harassment or of violence against a woman. If I take on her defence, it could turn out to be a disaster.” Blomkvist smiled. “You’re missing the point. If she had been charged with the murders of Dag and Mia, for example, I would have gone for the Silbersky type or another of the heavy-duty criminal lawyers. But this trial is going to be about entirely different things.” “I think you’d better explain.” They talked for almost two hours over sandwiches and coffee. By the time Mikael had finished his account, Annika had been persuaded. Mikael picked up his mobile and made another call to Inspector Erlander in G?teborg. “Hello, it’s Blomkvist again.” “I don’t have any news on Salander,” Erlander said, plainly irritated. “Which I assume is good news. But I actually have some news.” “What’s that?” “Well, she now has a lawyer named Annika Giannini. She’s with me right now, so I’ll put her on.” Blomkvist handed the mobile across the table. “My name is Annika Giannini and I’ve been taken on to represent Lisbeth Salander. I need to get in touch with my client so that she can approve me as her defence lawyer. And I need the telephone number of the prosecutor.” “As far as I know,” Erlander said, “a public defence has already been appointed.” “That’s nice to hear. Did anyone ask Lisbeth Salander her opinion?” “Quite frankly … we haven’t had the opportunity to speak with her yet. We hope to be able to do so tomorrow, if she’s well enough.” “Fine. Then I’ll tell you here and now that until Fr?ken Salander says otherwise, you may regard me as her legal representative. You may not question her unless I am present. You can say hello to her and ask her whether she accepts me as her lawyer or not. But that is all. Is that understood?” “Yes,” Erlander said with an audible sigh. He was not entirely sure what the letter of the law was on this point. “Our number one objective is to discover if she has any information as to where Ronald Niedermann might be. Is it O.K. to ask her about that … even if you’re not present?” “That’s fine … you may ask her questions relating to the police hunt for Niedermann. But you may not ask her any questions relating to any possible charges against her. Agreed?” “I think so, yes.” Inspector Erlander got up from his desk and went upstairs to tell the preliminary investigation leader, Agneta Jervas, about his conversation with Giannini. “She was obviously hired by Blomkvist. I can’t believe Salander knows anything about it.” “Giannini works in women’s rights. I heard her lecture once. She’s sharp, but completely unsuitable for this case.” “It’s up to Salander to decide.” “I might have to contest the decision in court … For the girl’s own sake she has to have a proper defence, and not some celebrity chasing headlines. Hmm. Salander has also been declared legally incompetent. I don’t know whether that affects things.” “What should we do?” Jervas thought for a moment. “This is a complete mess. I don’t know who’s going to be in charge of this case or if it’ll be transferred to Ekstr?m in Stockholm. In any event she has to have a lawyer. O.K … ask her if she wants Giannini.” When Blomkvist reached home at 5.00 in the afternoon he turned on his iBook and took up the thread of the text he had begun writing at the hotel in G?teborg. When he had worked for seven straight hours, he had identified the most glaring holes in the story. There was still much research to be done. One question he could not answer – based on the existing documentation – was who in S?po, apart from Gunnar Bj?rck, had conspired to lock Salander away in the asylum. Nor had he got to the heart of the relationship between Bj?rck and the psychiatrist Peter Teleborian. Finally he shut down the computer and went to bed. He felt as soon as he lay down that for the first time in weeks he could relax and sleep peacefully. The story was under control. No matter how many questions remained unanswered, he already had enough material to set off a landslide of headlines. Late as it was, he picked up the telephone to call Berger and update her. And then he remembered that she had left Millennium. Suddenly he found it difficult to sleep. A man carrying a brown briefcase stepped carefully down from the 7.30 p.m. train at Stockholm Central Station. He stood for a moment in the sea of travellers, getting his bearings. He had started out from Laholm just after 8.00 in the morning. He stopped in G?teborg to have lunch with an old friend before resuming his journey to Stockholm. He had not been to Stockholm for two years. In fact he had not planned to visit the capital ever again. Even though he had lived there for large parts of his working life, he always felt a little out of place in Stockholm, a feeling that had grown stronger with every visit he made since his retirement. He walked slowly through the station, bought the evening papers and two bananas at Pressbyr?n, and paused to watch two Muslim women in veils hurry past him. He had nothing against women in veils. It was nothing to him if people wanted to dress up in costume. But he was bothered by the fact that they had to dress like that in the middle of Stockholm. In his opinion, Somalia was a much better place for that sort of attire. He walked the three hundred metres to Frey’s Hotel next to the old post office on Vasagatan. That was where he had stayed on previous visits. The hotel was centrally located and clean. And it was inexpensive, which was a factor since he was paying for the journey himself. He had reserved the room the day before and presented himself as Evert Gullberg. When he got up to the room he went straight to the bathroom. He had reached the age when he had to use the toilet rather often. It was several years since he had slept through a whole night. When he had finished he took off his hat, a narrow-brimmed, dark-green English felt hat, and loosened his tie. He was one metre eighty-four tall and weighed sixty-eight kilos, which meant he was thin and wiry. He wore a hound’s-tooth jacket and dark-grey trousers. He opened the brown briefcase and unpacked two shirts, a second tie, and underwear, which he arranged in the chest of drawers. Then he hung his overcoat and jacket in the wardrobe behind the door. It was too early to go to bed. It was too late to bother going for an evening walk, something he might not enjoy in any case. He sat down in the obligatory chair in the hotel room and looked around. He switched on the T. V. and turned down the volume so that he would not have to hear it. He thought about calling reception and ordering coffee, but decided it was too late. Instead he opened the mini-bar and poured a miniature of Johnny Walker into a glass, and added very little water. He opened the evening papers and read everything that had been written that day about the search for Ronald Niedermann and the case of Lisbeth Salander. After a while he took out a leather-bound notebook and made some notes. Gullberg, formerly Senior Administrative Officer at the Security Police, was now seventy-eight years old and had been retired for thirteen years. But intelligence officers never really retire, they just slip into the shadows. After the war, when Gullberg was nineteen years old, he had joined the navy. He did his military service first as an officer cadet and was then accepted for officer training. But instead of the usual assignment at sea that he had anticipated, he was sent to Karlskrona as a signal tracker in the navy’s intelligence service. He had no difficulty with the work, which was mostly figuring out what was going on on the other side of the Baltic. But he found it dull and uninteresting. Through the service’s language school, however, he did learn Russian and Polish. These linguistic skills were one of the reasons he was recruited by the Security Police in 1950, during the time when the impeccably mannered Georg Thulin was head of the third division of S?po. When he started, the total budget of the secret police was 2.7 million kronor for a staff of ninety-six people. When Gullberg formally retired in 1992, the budget of the Security Police was in excess of 350 million kronor, and he had no idea how many employees the Firm had. Gullberg had spent his life on his majesty’s secret service, or perhaps more accurately in the secret service of the social-democratic welfare state. Which was an irony, since he had faithfully voted for the moderates in one election after another, except for 1991 when he deliberately voted against the moderates because he believed that Carl Bildt was a realpolitik catastrophe. He had voted instead for Ingvar Carlsson. The years of “Sweden’s best government” had also confirmed his worst fears. The moderate government had come to power when the Soviet Union was collapsing, and in his opinion no government had been less prepared to meet the new political opportunities emerging in the East, or to make use of the art of espionage. On the contrary, the Bildt government had cut back the Soviet desk for financial reasons and had at the same time got themselves involved in the international mess in Bosnia and Serbia – as if Serbia could ever threaten Sweden. The result was that a fabulous opportunity to plant long-term informants in Moscow had been lost. Some day, when relations would once again worsen – which according to Gullberg was inevitable – absurd demands would be made on the Security Police and the military intelligence service; they would be expected to wave their magic wand and summon up well-placed agents out of a bottle. * Gullberg had begun at the Russia desk of the third division of the state police, and after two years in the job had undertaken his first tentative field work in 1952 and 1953 as an Air Force attaché with the rank of captain at the embassy in Moscow. Strangely enough, he was following in the footsteps of another well-known spy. Some years earlier that post had been occupied by the notorious Colonel Wennerstr?m. Back in Sweden, Gullberg had worked in Counter-Espionage, and ten years later he was one of the younger security police officers who, working under Otto Danielsson, exposed Wennerstr?m and eventually got him a life sentence for treason at L?ngholmen prison. When the Security Police was reorganized under Per Gunnar Vinge in 1964 and became the Security Division of the National Police Board, or Swedish Internal Security – S.I.S. – the major increase in personnel began. By then Gullberg had worked at the Security Police for fourteen years, and had become one of its trusted veterans. Gullberg had never used the designation “S?po” for S?kerhetspolisen, the Security Police. He used the term “S.I.S.” in official contexts, and among colleagues he would also refer to “the Company” or “the Firm,” or merely “the Division” – but never “S?po”. The reason was simple. The Firm’s most important task for many years was so-called personnel control, that is, the investigation and registration of Swedish citizens who might be suspected of harbouring communist or subversive views. Within the Firm the terms communist and traitor were synonymous. The later conventional use of the term “S?po” was actually something that the potentially subversive communist publication Clarté had coined as a pejorative name for the communist-hunters within the police force. For the life of him Gullberg could never imagine why his former boss P.G. Vinge had entitled his memoirs S?po Chief 1962–1970. It was the reorganization of 1964 that had shaped Gullberg’s future career. The designation S.I.S. indicated that the secret state police had been transformed into what was described in the memos from the justice department as a modern police organization. This involved recruiting new personnel and continual problems breaking them in. In this expanding organization “the Enemy” were presented with dramatically improved opportunities to place agents within the division. This meant in turn that internal security had to be intensified – the Security Police could no longer be a club of former officers, where everyone knew everyone else, and where the commonest qualification for a new recruit was that his father was or had been an officer. In 1963 Gullberg was transferred from Counter-Espionage to personnel control, a role that took on added significance in the wake of Wennerstr?m’s exposure as a double agent. During that period the foundation was laid for the “register of political opinions,” a list which towards the end of the ’60s amounted to around 300,000 Swedish citizens who were held to harbour undesirable political sympathies. Checking the backgrounds of Swedish citizens was one thing, but the crucial question was: how would security control within S.I.S. itself be implemented? The Wennerstr?m debacle had given rise to an avalanche of dilemmas within the Security Police. If a colonel on the defence staff could work for the Russians – he was also the government’s adviser on matters involving nuclear weapons and security policy – it followed that the Russians might have an equally senior agent within the Security Police. Who would guarantee that the top ranks and middle management at the Firm were not working for the Russians? Who, in short, was going to spy on the spies? In August 1964 Gullberg was summoned to an afternoon meeting with the assistant chief of the Security Police, Hans Wilhelm Francke. The other participants at the meeting were two individuals from the top echelon of the Firm, the assistant head of Secretariat and the head of Budget. Before the day was over, Gullberg had been appointed head of a newly created division with the working title of “the Special Section”. The first thing he did was to rename it “Special Analysis”. That held for a few minutes until the head of Budget pointed out that S.A. was not much better than S.S. The organization’s final name became “the Section for Special Analysis,” the S.S.A., and in daily parlance “the Section,” to differentiate it from “the Division” or “the Firm,” which referred to the Security Police as a whole. “The Section” was Francke’s idea. He called it “the last line of defence”. An ultra-secret unit that was given strategic positions within the Firm, but which was invisible. It was never referred to in writing, even in budget memoranda, and therefore it could not be infiltrated. Its task was to watch over national security. He had the authority to make it happen. He needed the Budget chief and the Secretariat chief to create the hidden substructure, but they were old colleagues, friends from dozens of skirmishes with the Enemy. During the first year the Section consisted of Gullberg and three hand-picked colleagues. Over the next ten years it grew to include no more than eleven people, of whom two were administrative secretaries of the old school and the remainder were professional spy hunters. It was a structure with only two ranks. Gullberg was the chief. He would ordinarily meet each member of his team every day. Efficiency was valued more highly than background. Formally, Gullberg was subordinate to a line of people in the hierarchy under the head of Secretariat of the Security Police, to whom he had to deliver monthly reports, but in practice he had been given a unique position with exceptional powers. He, and he alone, could decide to put S?po’s top bosses under the microscope. If he wanted to, he could even turn Per Gunnar Vinge’s life inside out. (Which he also did.) He could initiate his own investigations or carry out telephone tapping without having to justify his objective or even report it to a higher level. His model was the legendary James Jesus Angleton, who had a similar position in the C.I.A., and whom he came to know personally. The Section became a micro-organization within the Division – outside, above, and parallel to the rest of the Security Police. This also had geographical consequences. The Section had its offices at Kungsholmen, but for security reasons almost the whole team was moved out of police headquarters to an eleven-room apartment in ?stermalm that had been discreetly remodelled into a fortified office. It was staffed twenty-four hours a day since the faithful old retainer and secretary Eleanor Badenbrink was installed in permanent lodgings in two of its rooms closest to the entrance. Badenbrink was an implacable colleague in whom Gullberg had implicit trust. In the organization, Gullberg and his employees disappeared from public view – they were financed through a special fund, but they did not exist anywhere in the formal structure of the Security Police, which reported to the police commission or the justice department. Not even the head of S.I.S. knew about the most secret of the secret, whose task it was to handle the most sensitive of the sensitive. At the age of forty Gullberg consequently found himself in a situation where he did not have to explain his actions to any living soul and could initiate investigations of anyone he chose. It was clear to Gullberg that the Section for Special Analysis could become a politically sensitive unit and the job description was expressly vague. The written record was meagre in the extreme. In September 1964, Prime Minister Erlander signed a directive that guaranteed the setting aside of funds for the Section for Special Analysis, which was understood to be essential to the nation’s security. This was one of twelve similar matters which the assistant chief of S.I.S., Hans Wilhelm Francke, brought up during an afternoon meeting. The document was stamped top secret and filed in the special protocol of S.I.S. The signature of the Prime Minister meant that the Section was now a legally approved institution. The first year’s budget amounted to 52,000 kronor. That the budget was so low was a stroke of genius, Gullberg thought. It meant that the creation of the Section appeared to be just another routine matter. In a broader sense, the signature of the Prime Minister meant that he had sanctioned the need for a unit that would be responsible for “internal personnel control”. At the same time it could be interpreted as the Prime Minister giving his approval to the establishment of a body that would also monitor particularly sensitive individuals outside S.I.S., such as the Prime Minister himself. It was this last which created potentially acute political problems. Evert Gullberg saw that his whisky glass was empty. He was not fond of alcohol, but it had been a long day and a long journey. At this stage of life he did not think it mattered whether he decided to have one glass of whisky or two. He poured himself the miniature Glenfiddich. The most sensitive of all issues, of course, was to be that of Olof Palme.* Gullberg remembered every detail of Election Day 1976. For the first time in modern history, Sweden had voted for a conservative government. Most regrettably it was Thorbj?rn F?lldin who became Prime Minister, not G?sta Bohman, a man infinitely better qualified. But above all, Palme was defeated, and for that Gullberg could breathe a sigh of relief. Palme’s suitability as Prime Minister had been the object of more than one lunch conversation in the corridors of S.I.S. In 1969, Vinge had been dismissed from the service after he had given voice to the view, shared by many inside the Division, that Palme might be an agent of influence for the K.G.B. Vinge’s view was not even controversial in the climate prevailing inside the Firm. Unfortunately, he had openly discussed the matter with County Governor Lassinanti on a visit to Norrbotten. Lassinanti had been astonished and had informed the government chancellor, with the result that Vinge was summoned to explain himself at a one-on-one meeting. To Gullberg’s frustration, the question of Palme’s possible Russian contacts was never resolved. Despite persistent attempts to establish the truth and uncover the crucial evidence – the smoking gun – the Section had never found any proof. In Gullberg’s eyes this did not mean that Palme might be innocent, but rather that he was an especially cunning and intelligent spy who was not tempted to make the same mistakes that other Soviet spies had made. Palme continued to baffle them, year after year. In 1982 the Palme question arose again when he became Prime Minister for the second time. Then the assassin’s shots rang out on Sveav?gen and the matter became irrelevant. 1976 had been a problematic year for the Section. Within S.I.S. – among the few people who actually knew about the existence of the Section – a certain amount of criticism had surfaced. During the past ten years, sixty-five employees from within the Security Police had been dismissed from the organization on the grounds of presumed political unreliability. Most of the cases, however, were of the kind that were never going to be proven, and some very senior officers began to wonder whether the Section was not run by paranoid conspiracy theorists. Gullberg still raged to recall the case of an officer hired by S.I.S. in 1968 whom he had personally evaluated as unsuitable. He was Inspector Bergling, a lieutenant in the Swedish army who later turned out to be a colonel in the Soviet military intelligence service, the G.R.U. On four separate occasions Gullberg tried to have Bergling removed, but each time his efforts were stymied. Things did not change until 1977, when Bergling became the object of suspicion outside the Section as well. His became the worst scandal in the history of the Swedish Security Police. Criticism of the Section had increased during the first half of the seventies, and by mid-decade Gullberg had heard several proposals that the budget be reduced, and even suggestions that the operation was altogether unnecessary. The criticism meant that the Section’s future was questioned. That year the threat of terrorism was made a priority in S.I.S. In terms of espionage it was a sad chapter in their history, dealing as they were mainly with confused youths flirting with Arab or pro-Palestinian elements. The big question within the Security Police was to what extent personnel control would be given special authority to investigate foreign citizens residing in Sweden, or whether this would go on being the preserve of the Immigration Division. Out of this somewhat esoteric bureaucratic debate, a need had arisen for the Section to assign a trusted colleague to the operation who could reinforce its control, espionage in fact, against members of the Immigration Division. The job fell to a young man who had worked at S.I.S. since 1970, and whose background and political loyalty made him eminently qualified to work alongside the officers in the Section. In his free time he was a member of an organization called the Democratic Alliance, which was described by the social-democratic media as extreme right-wing. Within the Section this was no obstacle. Three others were members of the Democratic Alliance too, and the Section had in fact been instrumental in the very formation of the group. It had also contributed a small part of its funding. It was through this organization that the young man was brought to the attention of the Section and recruited. His name was Gunnar Bj?rck. It was an improbable stroke of luck that when Alexander Zalachenko walked into Norrmalm police station on Election Day 1976 and requested asylum, it was a junior officer called Gunnar Bj?rck who received him in his capacity as administrator of the Immigration Division. An agent already connected to the most secret of the secret. Bj?rck recognized Zalachenko’s importance at once and broke off the interview to install the defector in a room at the Hotel Continental. It was Gullberg whom Bj?rck notified when he sounded the alarm, and not his formal boss in the Immigration Division. The call came just as the voting booths had closed and all signs pointed to the fact that Palme was going to lose. Gullberg had just come home and was watching the election coverage on T. V. At first he was sceptical about the information that the excited young officer was telling him. Then he drove down to the Continental, not 250 metres from the hotel room where he found himself today, to assume control of the Zalachenko affair. That night Gullberg’s life underwent a radical change. The notion of secrecy took on a whole new dimension. He saw immediately the need to create a new structure around the defector. He decided to include Bj?rck in the Zalachenko unit. It was a reasonable decision, since Bj?rck already knew of Zalachenko’s existence. Better to have him on the inside than a security risk on the outside. Bj?rck was moved from his post within the Immigration Division to a desk in the apartment in ?stermalm. In the drama that followed, Gullberg chose from the beginning to inform only one person in S.I.S., namely the head of Secretariat, who already had an overview of the activities of the Section. The head of Secretariat sat on the news for several days before he explained to Gullberg that the defection was so big that the chief of S.I.S. would have to be informed, as well as the government. By that time the new chief of S.I.S. knew about the Section for Special Analysis, but he had only a vague idea of what the Section actually did. He had come on board recently to clean up the shambles of what was known as the Internal Bureau affair, and was already on his way to a higher position within the police hierarchy. The chief of S.I.S. had been told in a private conversation with the head of Secretariat that the Section was a secret unit appointed by the government. Its mandate put it outside regular operations, and no questions should be asked. Since this particular chief was a man who never asked questions that might yield unpleasant answers, he acquiesced. He accepted that there was something known only as S.S.A. and that he should have nothing more to do with the matter. Gullberg was content to accept this situation. He issued instructions that required even the chief of S.I.S. not to discuss the topic in his office without taking special precautions. It was agreed that Zalachenko would be handled by the Section for Special Analysis. The outgoing Prime Minister was certainly not to be informed. Because of the merry-go-round associated with a change of government, the incoming Prime Minister was fully occupied appointing ministers and negotiating with other conservative parties. It was not until a month after the government was formed that the chief of S.I.S., along with Gullberg, drove to Rosenbad to inform the incoming Prime Minister. Gullberg had objected to telling the government at all, but the chief of S.I.S. had stood his ground – it was constitutionally indefensible not to inform the Prime Minister. Gullberg used all his eloquence to convince the Prime Minister not to allow information about Zalachenko to pass beyond his own office – there was, he insisted, no need for the Foreign Minister, the Minister of Defence or any other member of the government to be informed. It had upset F?lldin that an important Soviet agent had sought asylum in Sweden. The Prime Minister had begun to talk about how, for the sake of fairness, he would be obliged to take up the matter at least with the leaders of the other two parties in the coalition government. Gullberg was expecting this objection and played the strongest card he had available. He explained in a low voice that, if that happened, he would be forced to tender his resignation immediately. This was a threat that made an impression on F?lldin. It was intended to convey that the Prime Minister would bear the responsibility if the story ever got out and the Russians sent a death squad to liquidate Zalachenko. And if the person responsible for Zalachenko’s safety had seen fit to resign, such a revelation would be a political disaster for the Prime Minister. F?lldin, still relatively unsure in his role, had acquiesced. He approved a directive that was immediately entered into the secret protocol, making the Section responsible for Zalachenko’s safety and debriefing. It also laid down that information about Zalachenko would not leave the Prime Minister’s office. By signing this directive, F?lldin had in practice demonstrated that he had been informed, but it also prevented him from ever discussing the matter. In short, he could forget about Zalachenko. But F?lldin had required that one person in his office, a hand-picked state secretary, should also be informed. He would function as a contact person in matters relating to the defector. Gullberg allowed himself to agree to this. He did not anticipate having any problem handling a state secretary. The chief of S.I.S. was pleased. The Zalachenko matter was now constitutionally secured, which in this case meant that the chief had covered his back. Gullberg was pleased as well. He had managed to create a quarantine, which meant that he would be able to control the flow of information. He alone controlled Zalachenko. When he got back to ?stermalm he sat at his desk and wrote down a list of the people who knew about Zalachenko: himself, Bj?rck, the operations chief of the Section Hans von Rottinger, Assistant Chief Fredrik Clinton, the Section’s secretary Eleanor Badenbrink, and two officers whose job it was to compile and analyse any intelligence information that Zalachenko might contribute. Seven individuals who over the coming years would constitute a special Section within the Section. He thought of them as the Inner Circle. Outside the Section the information was known by the chief of S.I.S., the assistant chief, and the head of Secretariat. Besides them, the Prime Minister and a state secretary. A total of twelve. Never before had a secret of this magnitude been known to such a very small group. Then Gullberg’s expression darkened. The secret was known also to a thirteenth person. Bj?rck had been accompanied at Zalachenko’s original reception by a lawyer, Nils Erik Bjurman. To include Bjurman in the special Section would be out of the question. Bjurman was not a real security policeman – he was really no more than a trainee at S.I.S. – and he did not have the requisite experience or skills. Gullberg considered various alternatives and then chose to steer Bjurman carefully out of the picture. He used the threat of imprisonment for life, for treason, if Bjurman were to breathe so much as one syllable about Zalachenko, and at the same time he offered inducements, promises of future assignments, and finally he used flattery to bolster Bjurman’s feeling of importance. He arranged for Bjurman to be hired by a well-regarded law firm, who then provided him with a steady stream of assignments to keep him busy. The only problem was that Bjurman was such a mediocre lawyer that he was hardly capable of exploiting his opportunities. He left the firm after ten years and opened his own practice, which eventually became a law office at Odenplan. Over the following years Gullberg kept Bjurman under discreet but regular surveillance. That was Bj?rck’s job. It was not until the end of the ’80s that he stopped monitoring Bjurman, at which time the Soviet Union was heading for collapse and Zalachenko had ceased to be a priority. For the Section, Zalachenko had at first been thought of as a potential breakthrough in the Palme mystery. Palme had accordingly been one of the first subjects that Gullberg discussed with him during the long debriefing. The hopes for a breakthrough, however, were soon dashed, since Zalachenko had never operated in Sweden and had little knowledge of the country. On the other hand, Zalachenko had heard the rumour of a “Red Jumper,” a highly placed Swede – or possibly other Scandinavian politician – who worked for the K.G.B. Gullberg drew up a list of names that were connected to Palme: Carl Lidbom, Pierre Schori, Sten Andersson, Marita Ulfskog, and a number of others. For the rest of his life, Gullberg would come back again and again to that list, but he never found an answer. Gullberg was suddenly a big player: he was welcomed with respect in the exclusive club of selected warriors, all known to each other, where the contacts were made through personal friendship and trust, not through official channels and bureaucratic regulations. He met Angleton, and he got to drink whisky at a discreet club in London with the chief of M.I.6. He was one of the elite. He was never going to be able to tell anyone about his triumphs, not even in posthumous memoirs. And there was the ever-present anxiety that the Enemy would notice his overseas journeys, that he might attract attention, that he might involuntarily lead the Russians to Zalachenko. In that respect Zalachenko was his worst enemy. During the first year, the defector had lived in an anonymous apartment owned by the Section. He did not exist in any register or in any public document. Those within the Zalachenko unit thought they had plenty of time before they had to plan his future. Not until the spring of 1978 was he given a passport in the name of Karl Axel Bodin, along with a laboriously crafted personal history – a fictitious but verifiable background in Swedish records. By that time it was already too late. Zalachenko had gone and fucked that stupid whore Agneta Sofia Salander, née Sj?lander, and he had heedlessly told her his real name – Zalachenko. Gullberg began to believe that Zalachenko was not quite right in the head. He suspected that the Russian defector wanted to be exposed. It was as if he needed a platform. How else to explain the fact that he had been so fucking stupid. There were whores, there were periods of excessive drinking, and there were incidents of violence and trouble with bouncers and others. On three occasions Zalachenko was arrested by the Swedish police for drunkenness and twice more in connection with fights in bars. Every time the Section had to intervene discreetly and bail him out, seeing to it that documents disappeared and records were altered. Gullberg assigned Bj?rck to babysit the defector almost around the clock. It was not an easy job, but there was no alternative. Everything could have gone fine. By the early ’80s Zalachenko had calmed down and begun to adapt. But he never gave up the whore Salander – and worse, he had become the father of Camilla and Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth Salander. Gullberg pronounced the name with displeasure. Ever since the girls were nine or ten, he had had a bad feeling about Lisbeth. He did not need a psychiatrist to tell him that she was not normal. Bj?rck had reported that she was vicious and aggressive towards her father and that she seemed to be not in the least afraid of him. She did not say much, but she expressed in a thousand other ways her dissatisfaction with how things stood. She was a problem in the making, but how gigantic this problem would become was something Gullberg could never have imagined in his wildest dreams. What he most feared was that the situation in the Salander family would give rise to a social welfare report that named Zalachenko. Time and again he urged the man to cut his ties and disappear from their lives. Zalachenko would give his word, and then would always break it. He had other whores. He had plenty of whores. But after a few months he was always back with the Salander woman. That bastard Zalachenko. An intelligence agent who let his cock rule any part of his life was obviously not a good intelligence agent. It was as though the man thought himself above all normal rules. If he could have screwed the whore without beating her up every time, that would have been one thing, but Zalachenko was guilty of repeated assault against his girlfriend. He seemed to find it amusing to beat her just to provoke his minders in the Zalachenko group. Gullberg had no doubt that Zalachenko was a sick bastard, but he was in no position to pick and choose among defecting G.R.U. agents. He had only one, a man very aware of his value to Gullberg. The Zalachenko unit had taken on the role of clean-up patrol in that sense. It was undeniable. Zalachenko knew that he could take liberties and that they would resolve whatever problems there might be. When it came to Agneta Sofia Salander, he exploited his hold over them to the maximum. Not that there were not warnings. When Salander was twelve, she had stabbed Zalachenko. His wounds had not been life-threatening, but he was taken to St G?ran’s hospital and the group had more of a mop-up job to do than ever. Gullberg then made it crystal clear to Zalachenko that he must never have any more dealings with the Salander family, and Zalachenko had given his promise. A promise he kept for more than six months before he turned up at Agneta Sofia Salander’s place and beat her so savagely that she ended up in a nursing home where she would be for the rest of her life. That the Salander girl would go so far as to make a Molotov cocktail Gullberg had not foreseen. That day had been utter chaos. All manner of investigations loomed, and the future of the Zalachenko unit – of the whole Section even – had hung by a thread. If Salander talked, Zalachenko’s cover was at risk, and if that were to happen a number of operations put in place across Europe over the past fifteen years might have to be dismantled. Furthermore, there was a possibility that the Section would be subjected to official scrutiny, and that had to be prevented at all costs. Gullberg had been consumed with worry. If the Section’s archives were opened, a number of practices would be revealed that were not always consistent with the dictates of the constitution, not to mention their years of investigations of Palme and other prominent Social Democrats. Just a few years after Palme’s assassination that was still a sensitive issue. Prosecution of Gullberg and several other employees of the Section would inevitably follow. Worse, as like as not, some ambitious scribbler would float the theory that the Section was behind the assassination of Palme, and that in turn would lead to even more damaging speculation and perhaps yet more insistent investigation. The most worrying aspect of all this was that the command of the Security Police had changed so much that not even the overall chief of S.I.S. now knew about the existence of the Section. All contacts with S.I.S. stopped at the desk of the new assistant chief of Secretariat, and he had been on the staff of the Section for ten years. A mood of acute panic, even fear, overtook the unit. It was in fact Bj?rck who had proposed the solution. Peter Teleborian, a psychiatrist, had become associated with S.I.S.’s department of Counter-Espionage in a quite different case. He had been key as a consultant in connection with Counter-Espionage’s surveillance of a suspected industrial spy. At a critical stage of the investigation they needed to know how the person in question might react if subjected to a great deal of stress. Teleborian had offered concrete, definite advice. In the event, S.I.S. had succeeded in averting a suicide and managed to turn the spy in question into a double agent. After Salander’s attack on Zalachenko, Bj?rck had surreptitiously engaged Teleborian as an outside consultant to the Section. The solution to the problem had been very simple. Karl Axel Bodin would disappear into rehabilitative custody. Agneta Sofia Salander would necessarily disappear into an institution for long-term care. All the police reports on the case were collected up at S.I.S. and transferred by way of the assistant head of Secretariat to the Section. Teleborian was assistant head physician at St Stefan’s psychiatric clinic for children in Uppsala. All that was needed was a legal psychiatric report, which Bj?rck and Teleborian drafted together, and then a brief and, as it turned out, uncontested decision in a district court. It was a question only of how the case was presented. The constitution had nothing to do with it. It was, after all, a matter of national security. Besides, it was surely pretty obvious that Salander was insane. A few years in an institution would do her nothing but good. Gullberg had approved the operation. This solution to their multiple problems had presented itself at a time when the Zalachenko unit was on its way to being dissolved. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist and Zalachenko’s usefulness was definitively on the wane. The unit had procured a generous severance package from Security Police funds. They had arranged for him to have the best rehabilitative care, and after six months they had put him on a flight to Spain. From that moment on, they had made it clear to him that Zalachenko and the Section were going their separate ways. It had been one of Gullberg’s last responsibilities. One week later he had reached retirement age and handed over to his chosen successor, Fredrik Clinton. Thereafter Gullberg acted only as an adviser in especially sensitive matters. He had stayed in Stockholm for another three years and worked almost daily at the Section, but the number of his assignments decreased, and gradually he disengaged himself. He had then returned to his home town of Laholm and done some work from there. At first he had travelled frequently to Stockholm, but he made these journeys less and less often, and eventually not at all. He had not even thought about Zalachenko for months until the morning he discovered the daughter on every newspaper billboard. Gullberg followed the story in a state of awful confusion. It was no accident, of course, that Bjurman had been Salander’s guardian; on the other hand he could not see why the old Zalachenko story should surface. Salander was obviously deranged, so it was no surprise that she had killed these people, but that Zalachenko might have any connection to the affair had not dawned on him. The daughter would sooner or later be captured and that would be the end of it. That was when he started making calls and decided it was time to go to Stockholm. The Section was faced with its worst crisis since the day he had created it. Zalachenko dragged himself to the toilet. Now that he had crutches, he could move around his room. On Sunday he forced himself through short, sharp training sessions. The pain in his jaw was still excruciating and he could manage only liquid food, but he could get out of his bed and begin to make himself mobile. Having lived so long with a prosthesis he was used enough to crutches. He practised moving noiselessly on them, manoeuvring back and forth around his bed. Every time his right foot touched the floor, a terrible pain shot up his leg. He gritted his teeth. He thought about the fact that his daughter was very close by. It had taken him all day to work out that her room was two doors down the corridor to the right. The night nurse had been gone ten minutes, everything was quiet, it was 2.00 in the morning. Zalachenko laboriously got up and fumbled for his crutches. He listened at the door, but heard nothing. He pulled open the door and went into the corridor. He heard faint music from the nurses’ station. He made his way to the end of the corridor, pushed open the door, and looked into the empty landing where the lifts were. Going back down the corridor, he stopped at the door to his daughter’s room and rested there on his crutches for half a minute, listening. * Salander opened her eyes when she heard a scraping sound. It was as though someone was dragging something along the corridor. For a moment there was only silence, and she wondered if she were imagining things. Then she heard the same sound again, moving away. Her uneasiness grew. Zalachenko was out there somewhere. She felt fettered to her bed. Her skin itched under the neck brace. She felt an intense desire to move, to get up. Gradually she succeeded in sitting up. That was all she could manage. She sank back on to the pillow. She ran her hand over the neck brace and located the fastenings that held it in place. She opened them and dropped the brace to the floor. Immediately it was easier to breathe. What she wanted more than anything was a weapon, and to have the strength to get up and finish the job once and for all. With difficulty she propped herself up, switched on the night light and looked around the room. She could see nothing that would serve her purpose. Then her eyes fell on a nurses’ table by the wall three metres from her bed. Someone had left a pencil there. She waited until the night nurse had been and gone, which tonight she seemed to be doing about every half hour. Presumably the reduced frequency of the nurse’s visits meant that the doctors had decided her condition had improved; over the weekend the nurses had checked on her at least once every fifteen minutes. For herself, she could hardly notice any difference. When she was alone she gathered her strength, sat up, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She had electrodes taped to her body to record her pulse and breathing, but the wires stretched in the direction of the pencil. She put her weight on her feet and stood up. Suddenly she swayed, off balance. For a second she felt as though she would faint, but she steadied herself against the bedhead and concentrated her gaze on the table in front of her. She took small, wobbly steps, reached out and grabbed the pencil. Then she retreated slowly to the bed. She was exhausted. After a while she managed to pull the sheet and blanket up to her chin. She studied the pencil. It was a plain wooden pencil, newly sharpened. It would make a passable weapon – for stabbing a face or an eye. She laid it next to her hip and fell asleep.