But his uncertainty would not abate. At first he could not understand why. He did not normally have a problem with this kind of situation — he had more success than most when it came to women flirting with him. This particular encounter had developed very quickly, but he was not unused to that either. So it was something about the woman herself, wasn’t it?
Not only was she young and exceptionally beautiful and should have had better things to do than chase after burned-out, middle-aged journalists. It was something in her expression, and in the way she switched between bold and shy, and the physical contact. Everything he had at first found spontaneous increasingly seemed to him to be affected.
“How lovely, and I won’t stay long. I don’t want to spoil your story,” she said.
“I’ll take full responsibility for any spoiled stories,” he said, and tried to smile back.
It was a forced smile and in that instant he caught a strange twitch in her eyes, a sudden icy chill which in a second turned into its very opposite, full of affection and warmth, like an acting exercise. He became more convinced that there was something wrong. But he had no idea what, and did not want his suspicions to show, at least not yet. What was going on? He wanted to understand.
They continued on up Bellmansgatan — not that he was thinking of taking her back to his place any longer, but he needed time to figure her out. He looked at her again. She really was gorgeous. Yet it occurred to him that it was not her beauty which had first captivated him. It was something else, something more elusive. Just then he saw Rebecka Mattson as a riddle to which he ought to have the answer.
“A nice part of town, this,” she said.
“It’s not bad.” He looked up towards the Bishops Arms.
Diagonally across from the pub, just a bit higher up by the crossroads with Tavastgatan, a scrawny, lanky man in a black cap was standing under a streetlight studying a map. A tourist. He had a brown suitcase in his other hand and white sneakers and a black leather jacket with its fur collar turned up, and under normal circumstances Blomkvist would not have given him a second glance.
But now he observed that the man’s movements were nervous and unnatural. Perhaps Blomkvist was suspicious to begin with, but the distracted way he was handling the map seemed more and more contrived. Now he raised his head and stared straight at Blomkvist and the woman, studying them for a brief second. Then he looked down at his map again, seeming ill at ease, almost trying to hide his face under the cap. The bowed, almost timid head reminded Blomkvist of something, and again he looked into his companion’s dark eyes.
His look was persistent and intense. She gazed at him with affection, but he did not reciprocate; instead he scrutinized her. Then her expression froze. Only in that moment did Blomkvist smile.
He smiled because suddenly the penny had dropped.
Chapter 22
Salander got up from the table. She did not want to pester August any longer. The boy was under enough pressure as it was and her idea had been crazy from the start.
One always expects too much of these poor savants, and what August had done was already impressive. She went out onto the terrace again and gingerly felt the area around the bullet wound, which was still aching. She heard a sound behind her, a hasty scratching on paper, so she turned and went back inside. When she saw what August had written, she smiled:
She sat down and said, without looking at him this time, “O.K.! I’m impressed. But let’s make this a little harder. Have a go at 18,206,927.”
August was hunched over the table and Salander thought it might have been unkind to throw an eight-digit figure at him right away. But if they were to stand any chance of getting what she needed they would need to go much higher than that. She was not surprised to see August begin to sway nervously back and forth. But after a few seconds he leaned forward and wrote on his paper: 9419 × 1933.
“Good. How about 971,230,541?”
August wrote: 983 × 991 × 997.
“That’s great,” Salander said, and on they went.
Outside the black, cube-like office building in Fort Meade with its reflective glass walls, not far from the big radome with its dish aerials, Casales and Needham were standing in the packed car park. Needham was twirling his car keys and looking beyond the electric fence in the direction of the surrounding woods. He should be on his way to the airport, he said, he was late already. But Casales did not want to let him leave. She had her hand on his shoulder and was shaking her head.
“That’s twisted.”
“It’s out there,” he said.
“So every one of the handles we’ve picked up for people in the Spider Society — Thanos, Enchantress, Zemo, Alkhema, Cyclone and the rest — what they have in common is that they’re all...”
“Enemies of Wasp in the original comic-book series, yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“A psychologist would have fun with it.”
“This kind of fixation must run deep.”
“I get the feeling it’s real hatred,” he said.
“You will look after yourself over there, won’t you?”
“Don’t forget I used to be in a gang.”
“That’s a long time ago, Ed, and many kilos ago too.”
“It’s not a question of weight. What is it they say? You can take the boy out of the ghetto...”
“Yes, yes.”
“You can never get rid of it. Besides, I’ll have help from the N.D.R.E. in Stockholm. They’re itching as much as I am to put that hacker out of action once and for all.”
“What if Ingram finds out?”
“That wouldn’t be good. But, as you can imagine, I’ve been preparing the ground a bit. Even exchanged a word or two with O’Connor.”
“I figured as much. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yep.”
“Shoot.”
“Ingram’s crew seems to have had full insight into the Swedish police investigation.”
“They’ve been eavesdropping on the police?”
“Either that or they have a source, maybe an ambitious soul at Säpo. If I put you together with two of my best hackers, you could do some digging.”
“Sounds risky.”
“O.K., forget it.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“Thanks, Alona. I’ll send info.”
“Have a good trip,” she said, as Needham smiled defiantly and got into his car.
Looking back, Blomkvist could not explain how he had worked it out. It might have been something in the Mattson woman’s face, something unknown and yet familiar. The perfect harmony of that face might have reminded him of its very opposite, and that together with other hunches and misgivings gave him the answer. True, he was not yet absolutely sure of it. But he had no doubt that something was very wrong.
The man now walking off with his map and brown suitcase was the very figure he had seen on the security camera in Saltsjöbaden, and that coincidence was too improbable not to be of some significance, so Blomkvist stood there for a few seconds and thought. Then he turned to the woman who called herself Rebecka Mattson and tried to sound confident:
“Your friend is heading off.”
“My friend?” she said, genuinely surprised. “What friend?”
“Him up there,” he said, pointing at the man’s skeletal back as he sauntered gawkily down Tavastgatan.
“Are you joking? I don’t know anyone in Stockholm.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I just want to get to know you, Mikael,” she said, fingering her blouse, as if she might undo a button.