“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.
Chapter 14
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.