“You said the hacker was a girl.”
“Right. Once we’d homed in on this group we found out as much as possible about them. It wasn’t easy to separate rumour from myth from fact. But one thing came up so often that in the end I saw no reason to question it.”
“And what’s that?”
“Hacker Republic’s big star is someone who uses the alias Wasp.”
“Wasp?”
“I won’t bore you with technical details, but Wasp is something of a legend in certain circles, one of the reasons being her ability to turn accepted methods on their heads. Someone said you can sense Wasp’s involvement in a hacker attack the same way you can recognize Mozart in a melodic loop. Wasp has her own unmistakable style and that was the first thing one of my guys said after he’d studied the breach: this is different from anything we’ve come across; it’s got a completely new threshold of originality.”
“A genius, in short.”
“Without a doubt. So we started to search everything we could find about this Wasp, to try to crack the handle. No-one was particularly surprised when that didn’t work. This person wouldn’t leave openings. But you know what I did then?” Needham said proudly.
“Tell me.”
“I looked up what the word stood for.”
“Beyond its literal meaning, you mean?”
“Right, but not because I or anyone else thought it would get us anywhere. Like I said, if you can’t get there on the main road, you take the side roads; you never know what you might find. It turns out Wasp could mean all sorts of things. Wasp is a British fighter plane from World War Two, a comedy by Aristophanes, a famous short film from 1915, a satirical magazine from nineteenth-century San Francisco and there’s also of course White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, plus a whole lot more. But those references are all a little too sophisticated for a hacker genius; they don’t go with the culture. But you know what did fit? The superhero in Marvel Comics: Wasp is one of the founding members of the Avengers.”
“Like the movie?”
“Exactly, with Thor, Iron Man, Captain America. In the original comics she was even their leader for a while. I have to say, Wasp is a pretty badass superhero, kind of rock and roll, a rebel who wears black and yellow with insect’s wings and short black hair. She’s got attitude, the underdog who hits back and can grow or shrink. All the sources we’ve been talking to think that’s the Wasp we’re looking for. It doesn’t necessarily mean the person behind the handle is some Marvel Comics geek. That handle has been around for a while, so maybe it’s a childhood thing that stuck, or an attempt at irony. Like the fact that I named my cat Peter Pan even though I never liked that self-righteous asshole who doesn’t want to grow up. Anyway...”
“Anyway?”
“I couldn’t help noticing that this criminal network our Wasp was looking into also uses names from Marvel Comics. They sometimes call themselves the Spider Society, right?”
“Yes, but I think that’s just a game, as I see it, thumbing their noses at those of us who monitor them.”
“Sure, I get that, but even jokes can give you leads, or cover up something serious. Do you know what the Spider Society in the Marvel Comics does?”
“No.”
“They wage war against the ‘Sisterhood of the Wasp’.”
“O.K., fine, it’s an interesting detail, but I don’t understand how that could be your lead.”
“Just wait. Will you come downstairs with me to my car? I have to head to the airport quite soon.”
It was not late, but Blomkvist knew that he could not keep going much longer. He had to go home and get a few hours’ sleep and then start working again tonight or tomorrow morning. It might help too if he had a few beers on the way. The lack of sleep was pounding in his forehead and he needed to chase away a few memories and fears. Perhaps he could get Zander to join him. He looked over at his colleague.
Zander had youth and energy to spare. He was banging away at his keyboard as if he had just started work for the day, and every now and then he flicked excitedly through his notes. Yet he had been in the office since 5.00 in the morning. It was now 5.45 in the evening and he had hardly taken a break.
“What do you say, Andrei? How about we get a beer and a bite to eat and discuss the story?”
At first Zander did not seem to understand. Then he raised his head and suddenly no longer looked quite so energetic. He gave a little grimace as he massaged his shoulder.
“What... well... maybe,” he said hesitantly.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Blomkvist said. “How about Folksoperan?”
Folksoperan was a bar and restaurant on Hornsgatan, not far away, which attracted journalists and the arty crowd.
“It’s just that...”
“Just that what?”
“I’ve got this portrait to do, of an art dealer working at Bukowski’s who got onto a train at Malmö Central and was never seen again. Erika thought it would fit into the mix,” Zander said.
“Jesus, the things she makes you do, that woman.”
“I honestly don’t mind. But I’m having trouble pulling it together. It feels so messy and contrived.”
“Do you want me to have a look at it?”
“I’d love that, but let me do some more work on it first. I would die of embarrassment if you saw it in its present state.”
“In that case deal with it later. But come on now, Andrei, let’s go and at least get something to eat. You can come back and work afterwards if you must,” Blomkvist said. He looked over at Zander.
That memory would stay with him for a long time. Zander was wearing a brown checked jacket and a white shirt buttoned up all the way. He looked like a film star, at any rate even more like a young Antonio Banderas than usual.
“I think I’d better stay and keep plugging away,” he said. “I have something in the fridge which I can microwave.”
Blomkvist wondered if he should pull rank, order him to come out and have a beer. Instead he said:
“O.K., we’ll see each other in the morning. How are they doing out there meanwhile? No drawing of the murderer yet?”
“Seems not.”
“We’ll have to find another solution tomorrow. Take care,” Blomkvist said, getting up and putting on his overcoat.
Salander remembered something she had read about savants a long time ago in Science magazine. It was an article by Enrico Bombieri, an expert in number theory, referring to an episode in Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat in which a pair of autistic and mentally disabled twins recite staggeringly high prime numbers to each other, as if they could see them before their eyes in some sort of inner mathematical landscape.
What these twins were able to do and what Salander now wanted to achieve were two different things. But there was still a similarity, she thought, and decided to try, however sceptical she might be. So she brought up the encrypted N.S.A. file and her program for elliptic-curve factorization. Then she turned to August. He responded by rocking back and forth.
“Prime numbers. You like prime numbers,” she said.
August did not look at her, or stop his rocking.
“I like them too. And there’s one thing I’m particularly interested in just now. It’s called factorization. Do you know what that is?”