“What?”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you that either. I suppose I felt ashamed. But I was going down to the film festival in any case, to do a profile on the Iranian film director. You know, the one being persecuted because she made the documentary about nineteen-year-old Sara, who had been stoned, and I didn’t think it would do any harm if Serner helped us with the travel costs. In any event, Levin and I sat up all night and talked and I remained sceptical. He was absurdly boastful and came on with all this sales talk. But eventually I began to listen to him, and do you know why?”
“He was a fantastic lay?”
“Ha, no, it was his relationship to you.”
“Did he want to sleep with me, then?”
“He has boundless admiration for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, Mikael, that’s where you’re wrong. He loves his power and his money and his villa in Cannes. But more than that, it bugs him that he’s not as cool as you. If we’re talking cred, he’s poor and you’re stinking rich. Deep down he wants to be like you, I felt that right away, and, yes, I should have realized that that sort of envy can become dangerous. You do know what the campaign against you is all about, don’t you? Your uncompromising attitude makes people feel pathetic. Your very existence reminds them just how much they’ve sold out, and the more you’re acclaimed, the punier they themselves appear. When it’s like that, the only way they can fight back is by dragging you down. The bullshit gives them back a little bit of dignity — at least that’s what they imagine.”
“Thanks, Erika, but I really couldn’t care less about that campaign.”
“I know, at least I hope that’s right. But what I realized was that Levin really wanted to be in with us, and feel like one of us. He wanted some of our reputation to rub off on him and I thought that was a good incentive. If his ambition was to be cool like you, then it would be devastating for him to turn Millennium into a run-of-the-mill commercial Serner product. If he became known as the man who destroyed one of the most fabled magazines in Sweden, any cred he might still have would be scuppered for good. That’s why I really believed him when he said that both he and the group needed a prestigious magazine, and that he only wanted to help us produce the kind of journalism we believed in. Admittedly he did want to be involved in the magazine, but I put that down to vanity, that he wanted to be able to show off and say to his yuppie friends that he was our spin doctor or something. I never thought he would dare to have a go at the magazine’s soul.”
“And yet that’s precisely what he’s doing now.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“And where does that leave your fancy psychological theory?”
“I underestimated the power of opportunism. As you saw, Levin and Serner’s behaviour was exemplary before this campaign against you got going, but since then...”
“He’s been taking advantage of it.”
“No, no, somebody else has. Somebody who wanted to get at him. I realized only later that Levin didn’t have an easy time persuading the others to support him in buying a stake in the magazine. As you might imagine, not everybody at Serner suffers from a journalistic inferiority complex. Most of them are just ordinary businessmen; they despise all talk of standing up for things that matter. They were irritated by what they described as Levin’s ‘fake idealism’, and in the campaign against you they saw an opportunity to put the squeeze on him.”
“Dear, oh dear.”
“You have no idea. At first it looked O.K. We were to adapt somewhat to the market, and, as you know, I thought some of that sounded pretty good. I have, after all, spent a fair amount of time wondering how we could reach a younger readership. I really thought that Levin and I were having a productive dialogue so I didn’t worry too much about his presentation today.”
“I noticed that.”
“But that was before all hell broke loose.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The uproar when you sabotaged his presentation.”
“I didn’t sabotage anything, Erika. I just left.”
Berger lay in the bath, took a sip of her wine and then she smiled a wistful smile.
“When will you learn that you’re Mikael Blomkvist?” she said.
“I thought I was beginning to get the hang of that.”
“Apparently not, because otherwise you’d have realized that when Mikael Blomkvist walks out in the middle of a presentation about his own magazine it’s a big deal, whether Mikael Blomkvist intends it to be or not.”
“In that case I apologize for my sabotage.”
“I’m not blaming you, not any more. Now I’m the one saying sorry, as you can see. I’m the one who’s put us in this position. It probably would have gone pear-shaped anyway, whether you’d walked out or not. They were just waiting for an excuse to take a swing at us.”
“What actually happened?”
“After you disappeared we all felt deflated, and Levin, whose self-esteem had taken yet another knock, no longer gave a damn about his presentation. ‘There’s no point,’ he said. He rang his boss to report back, and he probably laid it on a bit thick. I suspect that the envy on which I had been pinning my hopes had changed into something petty and spiteful. He was back again after an hour or so and said that the group was prepared to give Millennium its full backing and use all its channels to market the magazine.”
“You didn’t like the sound of that.”
“No, and I knew before he’d even said one word about it. You could tell by the look on his face. It radiated a mixture of fear and triumph and at first he couldn’t find the right words. He was mostly waffling and said that the group wanted to have more insight into the business, plus content aimed at a younger readership, plus more celebrity news. But then...”
Berger shut her eyes, drew her hand through her wet hair, then knocked back the last of her wine.
“Yes?”
“He said that he wanted you off the editorial team.”
“He what?”
“Of course neither he nor the group could say it straight out, still less could they afford to get headlines like ‘Serner sacks Blomkvist’, so Ove put it neatly by saying that he wanted you to have a freer rein and be allowed to concentrate on what you’re best at: writing reportage. He suggested a strategic relocation to London and a generous stringer arrangement.”
“London?”
“He said that Sweden’s too small for a guy of your calibre, but you get what this is about.”
“They think they can’t push through their changes if I stay on the editorial team?”
“Something like that. Still, I don’t think any of them was surprised when Christer, Malin and I just said no, that it wasn’t even negotiable. Not to mention Andrei’s reaction.”
“What did he do?”
“I’m almost embarrassed to tell you. Andrei stood up and said that it was the most shameful thing he’d heard in his whole life. That you were one of the best things we had in this country, a source of pride for democracy and journalism, and that the whole Serner Group should hang their heads in shame. He said that you were a great man.”
“He does tend to exaggerate.”
“But he’s a good kid.”
“He really is. What did the Serner people do then?”
“Levin was prepared for it, of course. ‘You’re always welcome to buy us out,’ he said. ‘It’s just—’”
“That the price has gone up,” Blomkvist completed the sentence.
“Exactly. He claimed that whichever basis you use for valuing the business would show that any price for Serner’s interest should be at least double what it was when the group went in, given the additional value and goodwill they’ve created.”