The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (43 page)

“What is going to happen now?”

“I’ve ordered complete bedrest and put her physical therapy on hold—she needs therapeutic exercise because of the wounds in her shoulder and hip.”

“Understood. I’ll have to call Prosecutor Ekström in Stockholm. This will come as a bit of a surprise. What can I tell him?”

“Two days ago I was ready to approve a discharge, possibly for the end of this week. As the situation is now, it will take longer. You’ll have to prepare him for the fact that probably I won’t be in a position to make a decision in the coming week, and that it might be two weeks before you can move her to Stockholm. It depends on her rate of recovery.”

“The trial has been set for July.”

“Barring the unforeseen, she should be on her feet well before then.”

Bublanski cast a sceptical glance at the muscular woman on the other side of the table. They were drinking coffee in the outdoor area of a café on Norr Mälarstrand. It was Friday, May 20, and the warmth of summer was in the air. Inspector Monica Figuerola, her ID said, SIS. She had caught up with him just as he was leaving for home and suggested a conversation over a cup of coffee.

At first he had been surly, but she had very straightforwardly conceded that she had no authority to interview him and that he was perfectly free to tell her nothing at all if he did not want to. He asked her what her business was, and she told him that she had been assigned by her boss to form an
unofficial picture of what was true and not true in the so-called Zalachenko case, also known in some quarters as the Salander case.

“What would you like to know?” Bublanski said at last.

“Tell me what you know about Salander, Mikael Blomkvist, Gunnar Björck, and Zalachenko. How do the pieces fit together?”

They talked for more than two hours.

Edklinth thought long and hard about how to proceed. After five days of investigations, Figuerola had given him a number of indisputable indications that something was rotten within SIS. He recognized the need to move very carefully until he had enough information. He found himself, furthermore, with a constitutional dilemma: he did not have the authority to conduct secret investigations, and most assuredly not against his colleagues.

Accordingly, he had to contrive some cause that would legitimize what he was doing. If worst came to worst, he could always fall back on the fact that it was a policeman’s duty to investigate a crime—but the breach was now so sensitive from a constitutional standpoint that he would surely be fired if he took a single wrong step. So he spent the whole of Friday brooding alone in his office.

Finally he concluded that Armansky was right, no matter how improbable it might seem. There really was a conspiracy inside SIS, and a number of individuals were acting outside of, or parallel to, regular operations. Because this had been going on for many years—at least since 1976, when Zalachenko arrived in Sweden—it had to be organized and sanctioned from the top. Exactly how high the conspiracy went he had no idea.

He wrote three names on a pad:

Figuerola was of the view that the chief of Secretariat must have been calling the shots when Mårtensson in Personal Protection was supposedly moved to Counter-Espionage, although he was not in fact working there. He was too busy monitoring the movements of journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and that didn’t have anything at all to do with the operations of Counter-Espionage.

Some other names from outside SIS had to be added to the list:

Teleborian had been hired by SIS as a psychiatric consultant on specific cases in the late eighties and early nineties—on three occasions, to be exact—and Edklinth had examined the reports in the archive. The first had been extraordinary: Counter-Espionage had identified a Russian informer inside the Swedish telecom industry, and the spy’s background indicated that he might be inclined to suicide in the event that his actions were exposed. Teleborian had done a strikingly good analysis, which helped them turn the informer so that he could become a double agent. His other two reports had involved less significant evaluations: one was of an employee inside SIS who had an alcohol problem, and the second was an analysis of the bizarre sexual behaviour of an African diplomat.

Neither Teleborian nor Faulsson—especially not Faulsson—had any position inside SIS. And yet through their assignments they were connected to . . . 
to what?

The conspiracy was intimately linked to the late Alexander Zalachenko, the defected GRU agent who had apparently turned up in Sweden on Election Day in 1976. A man no-one had ever heard of before.
How was that possible?

Edklinth tried to imagine what reasonably would have happened if he had been sitting at the chief’s desk at SIS in 1976 when Zalachenko defected. What would he have done? Absolute secrecy would have been essential. The defection could only be known to a small group without risking that the information might leak back to the Russians, and . . . How small a group?

An operations department?

An unknown operations department?

If the affair had been appropriately handled, Zalachenko’s case should have ended up in Counter-Espionage. Ideally he should have come under the auspices of the military intelligence service, but they had neither the resources nor the expertise to run this sort of operational activity. So, SIS it was.

But Counter-Espionage never had him. Björck was the key; he had been one of the people who handled Zalachenko. And yet Björck never had anything to do with Counter-Espionage. Björck was a mystery. Officially he had held a post in the immigration division since the seventies, but in reality
he had scarcely been seen in the department before the nineties, when suddenly he became assistant chief.

And yet Björck was the primary source of Blomkvist’s information. How had Blomkvist been able to persuade Björck to reveal such explosive material? And to a journalist at that.

Prostitutes. Björck messed around with teenage prostitutes, and
Millennium
was going to expose him. Blomkvist must have blackmailed Björck.

Then Salander came into the picture.

The deceased lawyer Nils Bjurman worked in the immigration division at the same time as the deceased Björck. They were the ones who had taken care of Zalachenko. But what did they do with him?

Somebody must have made the decision. With a defector of such importance the order must have come from the highest level.

From the government. It must have been backed by the government. Anything else would be unthinkable
.

Edklinth felt cold shivers of apprehension. This was all conceivable in practice. It made sense.

But what happened in 1991 did not make sense. Björck had hired Teleborian to lock Salander up in a psychiatric hospital for children under the pretense that she was mentally deranged. That was a crime. That was such a monstrous crime that Edklinth felt yet more apprehensive.

Somebody
must have made that decision. It simply could not have been the government. Ingvar Carlsson had been prime minister at the time, and then Carl Bildt.
*
But no politician would dare to be involved in such a decision, which contradicted all law and justice and which would result in a disastrous scandal if it were ever discovered.

If the government was involved, then Sweden wasn’t one iota better than any dictatorship in the entire world.

It was impossible.

And what about the events of April 12? Zalachenko was conveniently murdered at Sahlgrenska hospital by a mentally ill fanatic at the same time as a burglary was committed at Blomkvist’s apartment and Advokat Giannini was mugged. In both latter instances, copies of Björck’s strange report dating from 1991 were stolen. Armansky had contributed this information, but it was completely off the record. No police report was ever filed.

And at the same time, Björck—a person with whom Edklinth wished he could have had a serious talk—hangs himself.

Edklinth didn’t believe in coincidence on such a grand scale. Inspector Bublanski didn’t believe in it either. Neither did Blomkvist. Edklinth took up his felt pen once more:

Who the hell was Evert Gullberg?

He considered calling up the chief of SIS but restrained himself for the simple reason that he did not know how far up in the organization the conspiracy reached. He didn’t know whom to trust.

For a moment he considered turning to the regular police. Jan Bublanski was the leader of the investigation concerning Ronald Niedermann, and obviously he would be interested in any related information. But from a purely political standpoint, it was out of the question.

He felt a great weight on his shoulders.

There was only one constitutionally correct option left, which might provide some protection if he ended up in hot water. He would have to turn to the chief to secure political support for what he was working on.

It was just before 4:00 on Friday afternoon. He picked up the phone and called the minister of justice, whom he had known for many years and had dealings with at numerous departmental meetings. He got him on the line within five minutes.

“Hello, Torsten. It’s been a long time. What’s the problem?”

“To tell you the truth, I think I’m calling to check how much credibility I have with you.”

“Credibility? That’s a peculiar question. As far as I’m concerned you have
absolute
credibility. What makes you ask such a dramatic question?”

“It’s prompted by a dramatic and extraordinary request. I need to have a meeting with you and the prime minister, and it’s urgent.”

“Whoa!”

“If you’ll forgive me, I’d rather explain when we can talk in private. Something so remarkable came across my desk that I believe both you and the prime minister need to be informed.”

“Does it have anything to do with terrorists and threat assessments?”

“No. It’s more serious than that. I’m putting my reputation and career on the line by calling you with this request.”

“I see. That’s why you asked about your credibility. How soon do you need the meeting with the PM?”

“This evening if possible.”

“Now you’ve got me worried.”

“Unfortunately, there’s good reason for you to be worried.”

“How long will the meeting take?”

“Probably an hour.”

“Let me call you back.”

The minister of justice called back ten minutes later and said that the prime minister would meet with Edklinth at his residence at 9:30 that evening. Edklinth’s palms were sweating when he put down the phone.
By tomorrow morning my career could be over
.

He called Figuerola.

“Hello, Monica. At 9:00 tonight you have to report for duty. You’d better dress nicely.”

“I always dress nicely,” Figuerola said.

The prime minister gave the director of Constitutional Protection a long, wary look. Edklinth had a sense that cogs were whirring at high speed behind the PM’s glasses.

The PM shifted his gaze to Figuerola, who hadn’t said a word during the presentation. He saw an unusually tall and muscular woman looking back at him with a polite, expectant expression. Then he turned to the minister of justice, who had paled over the course of the presentation.

Then the PM took a deep breath, removed his glasses, and stared for a moment into the distance.

“I think we need a little more coffee,” he said.

“Yes, please,” Figuerola said.

Edklinth nodded and the minister of justice poured coffee from a thermos carafe.

“Let me be absolutely certain I understood you correctly,” the prime minister said. “You suspect that there’s a conspiracy within the Security Police that is acting outside its constitutional mandate, and that over the years this conspiracy has committed what could be categorized as serious criminal acts.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re coming to me because you don’t trust the leadership of the Security Police?”

“No, not exactly,” Edklinth said. “I decided to turn directly to you because this sort of activity is unconstitutional. But I don’t know the objective of the conspiracy, or whether I’ve misinterpreted something. For all I know, the activity may be legitimate and sanctioned by the government. Then I risk proceeding on faulty information, thereby compromising some secret operation.”

The prime minister looked at the minister of justice. Both understood that Edklinth was hedging his bets.

“I’ve never heard of anything like this. Do you know anything about it?”

“Absolutely not,” the minister of justice said. “There’s nothing in any report I’ve seen from the Security Police that could have a bearing on this matter.”

“Blomkvist thinks there’s a faction within Säpo. He refers to it as the Zalachenko club,” Edklinth said.

“I’d never even heard that Sweden had taken in and protected a Russian defector of such importance,” the PM said. “He defected during the Fälldin administration, you say?”

“I don’t believe Fälldin would have covered up something like this,” the minister of justice said. “This kind of defection would have been given the highest priority, and would have been passed over to the next administration.”

Edklinth cleared his throat. “Fälldin’s conservative government was succeeded by Olof Palme’s. It’s no secret that some of my predecessors at SIS had a certain opinion of Palme—”

“You’re suggesting that somebody forgot to inform the social democratic government?”

Edklinth nodded. “Let’s remember that Fälldin was in power for two separate mandates. Each time, the coalition government collapsed. First he handed over to Ola Ullsten, who had a minority government in 1979. The government collapsed again when the moderates jumped ship, and Fälldin governed together with the People’s Party. I’m guessing that the government secretariat was in turmoil during those transition periods. It’s also possible that knowledge of Zalachenko was confined to so small a circle that Prime Minister Fälldin had no real oversight, so he never had anything to hand over to Palme.”