The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4) (18 page)

“When was that?”

“Two years ago. He was utterly worn out. He wasn’t sleeping, and he went around blaming himself, yet he was incapable of dropping his research. He threw himself into it as if it were all he had left in life, and so I arranged for him to get some assistants who could take some of the load. I let him have my best students. I knew, of course, that none of them was a model of probity, but they were ambitious and gifted, and their admiration for Frans was boundless. Everything looked promising. But then …”

“His technology was stolen.”

“He had clear proof of that when the application from Truegames was submitted to the U.S. Patent Office in August last year. Every unique aspect of his technology had been duplicated and written down there – it was obvious. At first they all suspected their computers had been hacked, but I was sceptical from the start – I knew how sophisticated Frans’ encryption was. But since there was no other plausible explanation, that was the initial assumption, and for a while maybe Frans believed it himself. It was nonsense of course.”

“What are you saying?” Blomkvist burst out. “Surely the data breach was confirmed by experts.”

“Yes, by some idiot show-off at the N.D.R.E. But that was just Frans’ way of protecting his boys, or it could have been more than that. I suspect he also wanted to play detective, although heaven knows how he could be so stupid. You see …” Farah took a deep breath, “I learned all this only a few weeks ago. Frans and little August were here for dinner and I sensed at once that he had something important to tell me. It was hanging in the air. After a couple of glasses he asked me to put away my mobile and began to speak in a whisper. I have to admit that at first I was simply irritated. He was going on again about his young hacker genius.”

“Hacker genius?” Blomkvist said, trying to sound neutral.

“A girl he spoke about so much that it was doing my head in. I won’t bore you with the full story, but she’d turned up out of the blue at one of his lectures and practically lectured
him
on the concept of singularity. She impressed Frans, and he started to open up to her – it’s understandable. A mega-nerd like Frans can’t have found all that many people he could talk to at his own level, and when he realized that the girl was also a hacker he asked her to take a look at their computers. At the time they had all the equipment at the home of a guy called Linus Brandell, one of the assistants.”

All Blomkvist said was, “Linus Brandell.”

“Yes,” Farah said. “The girl came round to his place in Östermalm and just threw him out. Then she got to work on the computers. She couldn’t find any sign of a breach, but she didn’t leave it at that. She had a list of Frans’ assistants and hacked them all from Linus’ computer. It didn’t take long for her to realize that one of them had sold him out to none other than Solifon.”

“And who was it?”

“Frans didn’t want to tell me, even though I pressed him. But the girl apparently called him directly from Linus’ apartment. Frans was in San Francisco at the time, and you can imagine: betrayed by one of his own! I was expecting him to report the guy right away and raise hell. But he had a better idea. He asked the girl to pretend they really had been hacked.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He didn’t want any traces of evidence to be tidied away. He wanted to understand more about what had happened. I suppose it makes sense – for one of the world’s leading software businesses to steal and exploit his technology was obviously far more serious than if some good-for-nothing, unprincipled shit of a student had done the same. Because Solifon isn’t just one of the most respected research groups in the U.S.A., they had also been trying to recruit Frans for years. He was livid. ‘Those bastards were trying to seduce me, and they stole from me at the same time,’ he growled.”

“Let me be sure I’ve got this right.” Blomkvist said. “You’re saying he took a job at Solifon in order to find out why and how they’d stolen from him?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s just how difficult it can be to understand a person’s motivation. The salary and the freedom and the resources obviously came into it. But apart from that, yes, I imagine you’re right. He’d worked out that Solifon was involved in the theft even before this hacker girl examined his computers. She gave him the specific information and that enabled him to dig into the mess. In the end it turned out to be much more difficult than he expected, and people started getting very suspicious. It wasn’t long before he became fantastically unpopular, so he kept more and more to himself. But he did find something.”

“What?”

“This is where it all gets sensitive. I really shouldn’t be telling you.”

“Yet here we are.”

“Yet here we are. Not only because I’ve always had the utmost respect for your journalism. It occurred to me this morning that it may not have been a coincidence that Frans rang you last night rather than Säpo’s Industry Protection Group, whom he had also been in touch with. I think he was beginning to suspect a leak there. It may have been no more than paranoia – Frans displayed a variety of symptoms of persecution mania – but it was you he called, and now I hope that I can fulfil his wish.”

“I hope you can.”

“At Solifon there’s a department called ‘Y’,” Farah said. “Google X is the model, the department where they work on ‘moonshots’, as they call them, wild and far-fetched ideas, like looking for eternal life or connecting search engines to brain neurons. If any place will achieve A.G.I. or A.S.I., that’s probably it. Frans was assigned to ‘Y’. But that wasn’t as smart as it may have sounded.”

“And why not?”

“Because he had found out from his hacker girl that there was a secret group of business intelligence analysts at ‘Y’, headed up by a character called Zigmund Eckerwald, also known as Zeke.”

“And who is that?”

“The very person who had been communicating with Frans’ treacherous assistant.”

“So Eckerwald was the thief.”

“A thief of the highest order. On the face of it, the work carried out by Eckerwald’s group was perfectly legitimate. They compiled information on leading scientists and promising research projects. Every large high-tech firm has a similar operation. They want to know what’s going on and who they should be recruiting. But Frans understood that the group went beyond that. They stole – through hacker attacks, espionage, moles and bribery.”

“But then why didn’t he report them?”

“It was tricky to prove. They were careful, to be sure. But in the end Frans went to the owner, Nicolas Grant. Grant was horrified and apparently organized an internal investigation. But the investigation found nothing, either because Eckerwald had got rid of the evidence or because the investigation was just for show. It left Frans in a tight spot. Everyone turned on him. Eckerwald must have been behind it, and I’m sure he had no trouble getting the others to join in. Frans was already perceived as paranoid and became progressively isolated and frozen out. I can picture it. How he would sit there and become more and more awkward and contrary, and refuse to say a word to anyone.”

“So he had no concrete evidence, you think?”

“Well, he did at least have the proof the hacker girl had given him: that Eckerwald had stolen Frans’ technology and sold it on.”

“And he knew that for sure?”

“Without a shadow of a doubt. Besides, he had realized that Eckerwald’s group was not working alone. It had backing from outside, in all likelihood from the American intelligence services and also …”

Farah hesitated.

“Yes?”

“This is where he was a bit more cryptic, and it may be that he didn’t know all that much. But he had come across an alias, he said, for the person who was the real leader outside Solifon. ‘Thanos’.”

“Thanos?”

“That’s right. He said that this individual was greatly feared. But he didn’t want to say more than that. He needed life insurance, he claimed, for when the lawyers came after him.”

“You said you didn’t know which of his assistants sold him out. But you must have given it a great deal of thought,” Blomkvist said.

“I have, and sometimes, I don’t know … I wonder if it wasn’t all of them.”

“Why do you say that?”

“When they started working for Frans, they were young, ambitious and gifted. By the time they finished, they were fed up with life and full of anxieties. Maybe Frans worked them too hard. Or maybe there’s something else tormenting them.”

“Do you have all their names?”

“I do. They’re my boys – unfortunately, I’d have to say. First there’s Linus Brandell, I’ve already mentioned him. He’s twenty-four now, and just drifts around playing computer games and drinking too much. For a while he had a good job as a games developer at Crossfire. But he lost it when he started calling in sick and accusing his colleagues of spying on him. Then there’s Arvid Wrange, maybe you’ve heard of him. He was a promising chess player once upon a time. His father pushed him in a pretty inhuman way and in the end Arvid had enough and came to study with me. I’d hoped that he would have completed his Ph.D. long ago. But instead he props up the bars around Stureplan and seems rootless. He came into his own for a while when he was with Frans. But there was also a lot of silly competition among the boys. Arvid and Basim, the third guy, came to hate each other – at least Arvid hated Basim. Basim Malik probably doesn’t do hate. He’s a sensitive, exceedingly smart boy who was taken on by Solifon Nordic a year ago. But he ran out of steam pretty quickly. Right now he’s being treated for depression at Ersta hospital and it so happens that his mother, whom I know vaguely, rang me this morning to tell me that he’s under sedation. When he found out what had happened to Frans, he tried to slash his wrists. It’s devastating, but at the same time I do wonder: was it just grief? Or was it also guilt?”

“How is he now?”

“He’s not in any danger from a physical point of view. And then there’s Niklas Lagerstedt, and he … well, what can I say about him? He’s not like the others, at least not on the surface. He wouldn’t drink himself into oblivion or even think of harming himself. He’s a young man with moral objections to most things, including violent computer games and porn. He’s a member of the Mission Covenant Church. His wife is a paediatrician and they have a young son called Jesper. On top of all that he’s a consultant with the National Criminal Police, responsible for the computer system coming into service in the new year, which means he’s had to go through security clearance. But who knows how thorough it was.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because behind that respectable facade he’s a nasty piece of work. I happen to know that he’s embezzled parts of his father-in-law’s and his wife’s fortune. He’s a hypocrite.”

“Have the boys been questioned?”

“Säpo have talked to them, but nothing came of it. At that time it was thought that Frans was the victim of a data breach.”

“I imagine police will want to question them again now.”

“I assume so.”

“Do you happen to know if Balder did much sketching in his free time?”

“Sketching?”

“Really detailed drawings of scenes.”

“No, I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“I saw a fantastic drawing at his home, of a traffic light up here on the intersection of Hornsgatan and Ringvägen. It was flawless, a sort of snapshot in the dark.”

“How strange. Frans wasn’t usually in this part of town.”

“There’s something about that drawing that won’t let go of me,” Blomkvist said, and he realized to his surprise that Farah had taken hold of his hand. He stroked her hair. Then he stood up with a feeling that he was onto something. He said goodbye and went out onto the street.

On the way back up Zinkens väg he called Berger and asked her to type another question in
LISBETH STUFF
.

21.xi

Ove Levin was sitting in his office with a view over Slussen and Riddarfjärden, not doing much at all except Googling himself in the hope of coming across something to cheer him up. What he found himself reading was that he was sleazy and flabby and that he had betrayed his ideals. All that in a blog written by a slip of a girl at the Institute for Media Studies at Stockholm University. It made him so furious that he even forgot to write her name in the little black book he kept, of people who would never get a job in the Serner Group.

He could not be bothered to burden his brain with idiots who had no idea what it takes and would only ever write underpaid articles in obscure cultural magazines. Rather than wallow in destructive thoughts, he went into his online account and checked his portfolio. That helped a bit, at least to begin with. It was a good day on the markets. The Nasdaq and the Dow Jones had both gone up last night and the Stockholmsindex was 1.1 per cent higher too. The dollar, to which he was rather too exposed, had risen, and according to the update of a few seconds ago his portfolio was worth 12,161,389 kronor.

Not bad for a man who had once covered house fires and knife fights for the morning edition of
Expressen
. Twelve million, plus the apartment in Villastaden and the villa in Cannes. They could post whatever they wanted on their blogs. He was well provided for, and he checked the value of his portfolio again. 12,149,101. Jesus Christ, was it dropping? 12,131,737. He grimaced. There was no reason why the market should be falling, was there? The employment figures had been good, after all. He took the tumble in value almost personally and could not help thinking of
Millennium
, however insignificant it might be in the bigger picture. He found himself getting worked up again and reluctantly he remembered the openly hostile look on Erika Berger’s beautiful face at the meeting yesterday afternoon. Things had not improved this morning.

He had just about had a fit. Blomkvist had cropped up on every site, and that hurt. Not only because Levin had so gleefully registered that the younger generation hardly knew who Blomkvist was. He also hated that media logic which said that you became a star – a star journalist or a star actor or whatever the hell it might be – simply because you found yourself in some sort of trouble. He would have been happier to read about that has-been Blomkvist who wasn’t even going to keep his job at his own magazine, not if Ove Levin and Serner Media had anything to do with it. Instead they said: why Frans Balder, of all people?

Why on earth did he have to be murdered right under Blomkvist’s nose? Wasn’t that just typical? So infuriating. Even if those useless journalists out there hadn’t realized it yet, Levin knew that Balder was a big name. Not long ago Serner’s own newspaper,
Business Daily
, had produced a special supplement on Swedish scientific research which had given him a price tag: four billion kronor, though God knows how they got to that figure. Balder was a star, no doubt about it. Most importantly, he was a Garbo. He never gave interviews, and that made him all the more sought after.

How many requests had Balder received from Serner’s own journalists after all? As many as he had refused or, for that matter, simply not bothered to answer. Many of Levin’s colleagues out there thought Balder was sitting on a fantastic story. He couldn’t bear the idea that, so the newspaper reports said, Balder had wanted to talk to Blomkvist in the middle of the night. Could Blomkvist really have a scoop on top of everything else? That would be disastrous. Once more, almost obsessively, Levin went onto the
Aftonbladet
site and was met with the headline:

WHAT DID TOP SWEDISH SCIENTIST HAVE TO SAY TO MIKAEL BLOMKVIST?

MYSTERY CALL JUST BEFORE THE MURDER

The article was illustrated by a double-column photograph of Mikael Blomkvist which did not show any flab at all. Those bastard editors had gone and chosen the most flattering photograph they could find, and that made him angrier still.
I have to do something about this
, he thought. But what? How could he put a stop to Blomkvist without barging in like some old East German censor and making everything worse? He looked out towards Riddarfjärden and an idea came to him.
Borg
, he thought.
My enemy’s enemy can be my best friend
.

“Sanna,” he shouted.

“Yes, Ove?”

Sanna Lind was his young secretary.

“Book a lunch at once with William Borg at Sturehof. If he says he has something else on, tell him this is more important. He can even have a raise,” he said, and thought: why not? If he’s prepared to help me in this mess then it’s only fair he gets something out of it.

Hanna Balder was standing in the living room at Torsgatan looking in despair at August, who had yet again dug out paper and crayons. She had been told that she had to discourage him, and she did not like doing it. Not that she questioned the psychologist’s advice and expertise, but she had her doubts. August had seen his father murdered and if he wanted to draw, why stop him? Even if it did not seem be doing him much good.

His body trembled when he started drawing and his eyes shone with an intense, tormented light. The pattern of squares spreading out and multiplying in mirrors was a strange theme, given what had happened. But what did she know? Maybe it was the same as with his series of numbers. Even though she did not understand it in the slightest, it presumably meant something to him, and perhaps – who knows? – those squares were his own way of coming to terms with events. Shouldn’t she just ignore the instructions? After all, who would find out? She had read somewhere that a mother should rely on her intuition. Gut feeling is often a better tool than all the psychological theories in the world. She decided to let August draw.

But suddenly the boy’s back stiffened like a bow, and Hanna could not help thinking back to what the psychologist had said. She took a hesitant step forward and looked down at the paper. She gave a start, and felt very uncomfortable. At first she could not make sense of it.

She saw the same pattern of squares repeating themselves in two surrounding mirrors and it was extremely skilfully done. But there was something else there as well, a shadow which grew out of the squares, like a demon, a phantom, and it frightened the living daylights out of her. She started to think of films about children who become possessed. She snatched the drawing from the boy and crumpled it up without fully understanding why. Then she shut her eyes and expected to hear that heart-rending toneless cry again.

But she heard no cry, just a muttering which sounded almost like words – impossible because the boy did not speak. Instead Hanna prepared herself for a violent outburst, with August thrashing back and forth over the living-room floor. But there was no attack either, only a calm and composed determination as August took hold of a new piece of paper and started to draw the same squares again. Hanna had no choice but to carry him to his room. Afterwards she would describe what happened as pure horror.

August kicked and screamed and lashed out, and Hanna only just managed to keep hold of him. For a long time she lay in the bed with her arms knotted around him, wishing that she could go to pieces herself. She briefly considered waking Lasse and asking him to give August one of those tranquillizing suppositories they now had, but then discarded that idea. Lasse would be bound to be in a foul mood and she hated to give a child tranquillizers, however much Valium she took herself. There had to be some other way.

She was falling apart, desperately considering one option after the other. She thought of her mother in Katrineholm, of her agent Mia, of the nice woman who rang last night, Gabriella Grane, and then of the psychologist again, Einar Fors-something, who had brought August to her. She had not particularly liked him. On the other hand he had offered to look after August for a while, and this was all his fault in the first place.

He was the one who said August should not draw, so he should be sorting out this mess. In the end she let go of her son and dug out the psychologist’s card to call him. August immediately made a break for the living room to start drawing his damn squares again.

Einar Forsberg did not have a great deal of experience. He was forty-eight years old and with his deep-set blue eyes, brand-new Dior glasses and brown corduroy jacket he could easily be taken for an intellectual. But anyone who had ever disagreed with him would know that there was something stiff and dogmatic about his way of thinking and he often concealed his lack of knowledge behind dogma and cocksure pronouncements.

It had only been two years since he qualified as a psychologist. Before that he was a gym teacher from Tyresö, and if you had asked his old pupils about him they would all have roared: “Silence, cattle! Be quiet, oh my beasts!” Forsberg had loved to shout those words, only half joking, when he wanted order in the classroom, and even though he had hardly been anyone’s favourite teacher he had kept his boys in line. It was this ability which persuaded him that he could put his skills to better use elsewhere.

He had been working at Oden’s Medical Centre for Children and Adolescents for one year. Oden’s was an emergency service which took in children and young people whose parents could not cope. Not even Forsberg – who had always been a staunch defender of whatever workplace he was at – believed that the centre functioned especially well. It was all crisis management and not enough long-term work. Children would come in after traumatic experiences at home and the psychologists were far too busy trying to manage breakdowns and aggressive behaviour to be able to devote themselves to resolving underlying causes. Even so, Forsberg thought he was doing some good, especially when he used his old classroom authority to quieten hysterical children, or when he handled crisis situations out in the field.

He liked to work with policemen and he loved the tension in the air after dramatic events. He had been excited and expectant as he drove out to the house in Saltsjöbaden in the course of his night duty. There was a touch of Hollywood about the situation, he thought. A Swedish scientist had been murdered, his eight-year-old son had been at the house, and he, Forsberg, had been sent to try to get the boy to open up. He straightened his hair and his glasses several times in the rear-view mirror.

He wanted to make a stylish impression, but once he arrived he was not much of a success. He could not make the boy out. Still, he felt acknowledged and important. The detectives asked him how they should go about questioning the child and – even though he did not have a clue – his answer was received with respect. That gave his ego a little boost and he did his best to be helpful. He found out that the boy suffered from infantile autism and had never spoken or been receptive to the world around him.

“There’s nothing we can do for the time being,” he said. “His mental faculties are too weak. As a psychologist I have to put his need for care first.” The policemen listened to him with serious expressions and let him drive the boy home to his mother – who was another little bonus in the whole story.

She was the actress Hanna Balder. He had had the hots for her ever since he saw her in “The Mutineers” and he remembered her hips and her long legs, and even though she was now a bit older she was still attractive. Besides, her current partner was clearly a bastard. Forsberg did his best to appear knowledgeable and charming in a low-key way; within moments he got an opportunity to be authoritative, and that made him proud.

With a wild expression on his face the son began to draw black and white blocks, or squares, and Forsberg pronounced that this was unhealthy. It was precisely the kind of destructive compulsive behaviour that autistic children slip into, and he insisted that August stop immediately. This was not received with as much gratitude as he had hoped for. Still, it had made him feel decisive and manly, and while he was at it he almost paid Hanna a compliment for her performance in “The Mutineers”. But then he decided that it was probably not the right time. Maybe that had been a mistake.

Now it was 1.00 in the afternoon, and he was back home at his terraced house in Vällingby. He was in the bathroom with his electric toothbrush, feeling exhausted, when his mobile rang. At first he was irritated – but then he smiled. It was none other than Hanna Balder.

“Forsberg,” he answered in an urbane voice.

“Hello,” she said. “August, August …”

She sounded desperate and angry.

“Tell me, what’s the problem?”

“All he wants to do is draw his chessboard squares. But you’re saying he isn’t allowed to.”

“No, no, it’s compulsive. But please, just stay calm.”

“How the hell am I supposed to stay calm?”

“The boy needs you to be composed.”

“But I can’t be. He’s yelling and lashing out at everything. You said you could help.”

“Well, yes,” he said, hesitant at first. Then he brightened, as if he had won some sort of victory. “Absolutely, of course. I’ll see to it that he gets a place with us at Oden’s.”

“Wouldn’t that be letting him down?”

“On the contrary, you’re just taking account of his needs. I’ll see to it personally that you can visit us as often as you like.”

“Maybe that’s the best solution.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Will you come right away?”

“I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” he said. First he had to smarten himself up a bit.Then he added: “Did I tell you that I loved you in ‘The Mutineers’?”

It was no surprise to Levin that William Borg was already at the table at Sturehof, nor that he ordered the most expensive items on the menu, sole
meunière
and a glass of Pouilly-Fumé. Journalists generally made the most of it when he invited them to lunch. But it did surprise – and annoy – him that Borg had taken the initiative, as if he were the one with the money and the power. Why had he mentioned that raise? He should have kept Borg on tenterhooks, let him sit there and sweat instead.

“A little bird whispered in my ear that you’re having difficulties with
Millennium
,” Borg said, and Levin thought,
I’d give my right arm to wipe that self-righteous smirk off his face
.