Ed had an irrepressible thirst for knowledge, an energy which meant that he could devour a book with the same vigour with which he could trash the inside of a public bus. Often he was reluctant to go home at the end of the school day. He liked to stay on in what was known as the technology room, where there were a couple of computers. He would sit there for hours. A physics teacher with the Swedish-sounding name of Larson noticed how good he was with machines, and after social services got involved he was awarded a scholarship and transferred to a school with more motivated students.
He began to excel at his studies and was given more scholarships and distinctions and eventually — something of a miracle in view of the odds against him — he went on to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at M.I.T. In his doctoral thesis he explored some specific fears around new asymmetric cryptosystems like R.S.A., and he then went on to senior positions at Microsoft and Cisco before being recruited by the National Security Agency at Fort Meade in Maryland.
He did not have the ideal C.V. for the job, even leaving aside his criminal behaviour as a teenager. He had smoked a lot of grass at college and flirted with socialist or even anarchist ideals, and had been arrested twice for assault — nothing major, just bar fights. He still had a volcanic temper and everyone who knew him thought better of crossing him.
But at the N.S.A. they recognized his other qualities. Besides which it was the autumn of 2001. The American security services were so desperate for computer technicians that they hired pretty much anybody. During the ensuing years nobody questioned Needham’s loyalty — or patriotism, for that matter — and if anyone thought to do so, his advantages always outweighed his shortcomings.
Needham was not just amazingly gifted. There was an obsessive streak to his character, a manic precision and a furious efficiency which boded well for a man in charge of building I.T. security at America’s most highly classified agency. Nobody was damn well going to crack his system. It was a matter of personal pride for him. At Fort Meade he quickly made himself indispensable, to the point where people were constantly lining up to consult him. Not a few were terrified of him and he was often verbally abusive. He had even told the head of the N.S.A. himself, the legendary Admiral Charles O’Connor, to go to hell.
“Use your own busy fucking head for things you might just be able to comprehend,” Needham had roared when the admiral attempted to comment on his work.
But O’Connor and everyone else let it happen. They knew that Needham screamed and yelled for the right reasons — because colleagues had been careless about security regulations, or because they were talking about things beyond their understanding. Not once did he interfere in the rest of the agency’s work, even though his level of clearance gave him access to pretty much everything, and even though in recent years the agency had found itself at the centre of a heated storm of opinion with advocates of both the right and the left seeing the N.S.A. as the devil incarnate, as Orwell’s Big Brother. As far as Needham was concerned, the organization could do whatever the hell it wanted, so long as his security systems remained rigorous and intact. And since he did not yet have a family he more or less lived at the office.
Apart from the occasional drinking session, during which he sometimes turned alarmingly sentimental about his past, there was no suggestion that he had ever told outsiders what he was working on. In that other world he remained as silent as the grave and, if ever questioned about his profession, he stuck to a well-rehearsed cover story.
It was not by chance, nor was it the result of intrigue or manipulation, that he had risen through the ranks and become the N.S.A.’s most senior security chief. Needham and his team had tightened internal surveillance “so that no new whistle-blowers can pop up and punch us on the nose” and during countless sleepless nights created something he alternately called “an unbreakable wall” or “a ferocious little bloodhound”.
“No fucker can get in, and no fucker can dig around in there without permission,” he said. And he was enormously proud of that.
He had been proud, that is, until that disastrous morning in November. The day had begun beautiful and clear. Needham, who had put on quite a belly over the years, came waddling over from the coffee machine in his characteristic way. Because of his seniority he completely ignored dress codes. He was wearing jeans and a red-checked lumberjack shirt, not quite buttoned at the waist, and he sighed as he settled down at his computer. He was not feeling great. His back and right knee hurt and he cursed the fact that his long-time colleague, Alona Casales, had managed to persuade him to come out for a run the night before. Sheer sadism on her part.
Luckily there was nothing super-urgent to deal with. He only had to send an internal memo with some new procedures for those in charge of C.O.S.T., a programme for cooperation with the large I.T. companies — he had even changed the codenames. But he did not get far. He was just beginning to write, in his usual turgid prose:
<So that no-one will be tempted to fall back into idiotic habits again, but instead to keep you all on your toes as good paranoid cyber-agents, I would just like to point out...>
when he was interrupted by one of his alerts.
He was not particularly worried. His warning systems were so sensitive that they reacted to the slightest divergence in the information flow. It was going to be an anomaly, a notification perhaps that someone was trying to exceed the limits of their authorization, or some minor interference.
As it turned out, he never had time to investigate. In the next moment something so uncanny happened that for several seconds he refused to believe it. He just sat there, staring at the screen. Yet he knew exactly what was going on. A R.A.T. had got into the NSANet intranet. Anywhere else he would have thought: Those fuckers, I’ll crush them. But in here, the most tightly closed and controlled place of all, which he and his team had gone over with a fine-toothed comb a million times just this last year to detect every minuscule little vulnerability, here, no, no, it was impossible — it could not be happening.
Without realizing it he had closed his eyes, as if hoping that it would all vanish so long as he wasn’t watching. But when he looked at the screen again, the sentence he had begun was being completed. His <I would just like to point out> was continuing on its own with the words <that you should stop with all the illegal activity. Actually it’s pretty straightforward. Those who spy on the people end up themselves being spied on by the people. There’s a fundamental democratic logic to it.>
“Jesus, Jesus,” he muttered — which was at least a sign that he was beginning to recover some of his composure.
But then the text went on: <Chill out, Ed. Why don’t you stick around for a ride? I’ve got Root> at which point he gave a loud cry. The word “Root” brought down his whole world. For about a minute, as the computer raced through the most confidential parts of the system at lightning speed, he genuinely believed that he was going to have a heart attack. He was only vaguely aware that people were beginning to gather around his desk.
There was not much of a crowd down at the Bishops Arms. The weather was not encouraging people to venture out, not even to the local pub. Blomkvist was nevertheless met by shouts and laughter, and by a hoarse voice bawling:
“Kalle Blomkvist!”