Holtser thought of Olga — how would she have felt about him? Wasn’t this journalist just the kind of educated man she liked, someone who fights injustice, takes the side of beggars and outcasts? He thought about that, and about other things in his own life. After that he made the sign of the cross, the Russian cross, where one way leads to heaven and the other to hell, and then he glanced over at Kira. She was lovelier than ever.
Her eyes burned with light. She was sitting on a stool by the bed wearing an elegant blue dress — which had largely escaped the bloodstains — and said something in Swedish to Zander, something which sounded soft and tender. Then she took him by the hand. He gripped hers in return. He had nowhere else to turn for comfort. The wind howled outside in the alley. Kira nodded and smiled at Holtser. Snowflakes fell on the window ledge.
Afterwards they were sitting together in a Land Rover on the way out to Ingarö. Holtser felt empty, and was not happy with the way things were going. But there was no getting away from the fact that his own mistake had led them there, so he sat quietly, listening to Kira. She was strangely excited and spoke with searing hatred of the woman they were about to confront. Holtser did not think it was a good sign, and if he could have brought himself to do so he would have urged her to turn back and get the hell out of the country.
But he said nothing as the snow fell and they drove on in the darkness. Kira’s sparkling, cold eyes frightened him, but he pushed away the thought. He had to give her credit at least — she had been amazingly quick to put two and two together.
Not only had she worked out who had hurtled in to save the boy on Sveavägen. She had also guessed who would know where the boy and the woman had disappeared to, and the person she came up with was none other than Mikael Blomkvist. They were baffled by her reasoning. Why would a reputable Swedish journalist harbour a person who appeared from nowhere and abducted a child from a crime scene? But the more they examined the theory, the more it held together. Not only did the woman — whose name was Lisbeth Salander — have close ties to the reporter, but something also happened at the Millennium offices.
After the murder in Saltsjöbaden, Bogdanov had hacked into Blomkvist’s computer to try to find out why Balder had summoned him to his home in the middle of the night. Getting access to his email had been easy enough. But that had now stopped. When was the last time it had been impossible for Bogdanov to read someone’s emails? Never, so far as Holtser was aware. Blomkvist had suddenly become much more careful — right after the woman and the boy disappeared from Sveavägen.
That in itself was no guarantee that the journalist knew where they now were. But as time went on there were more indications that the theory might be right, and in any case Kira did not seem to need cast-iron evidence. She wanted to go for Blomkvist. Or, if not him, then someone else at the magazine. More than anything she was obsessive in her determination to track down the woman and the child.
Maybe Holtser could not understand the subtleties of Kira’s motives. But it was for his benefit that they were going to do away with the boy. Kira chose to take significant risks for Holtser, and he was grateful, he really was, even though now in the car he felt uneasy.
He tried to draw strength from thinking about Olga. Whatever happened, she must not wake up and see a drawing of her father on all the front pages. He tried to reassure himself that the hardest part was behind them. Assuming Zander had given them the right location, the job should be straightforward. They were three heavily armed men, four if you counted Bogdanov, who spent most of the time staring at his computer as usual.
The team consisted of Holtser, Bogdanov, Orlov and Dennis Wilton, a gangster who had been a member of Svavelsjö M.C. but who now worked for Kira. Four men against one woman who was probably asleep, and was also protecting a child. It shouldn’t be a problem, not at all. But Kira was almost manic:
“Don’t underestimate Salander!”
She said it so many times that even Bogdanov, who always agreed with everything she said, began to get irritated. Of course Holtser had seen how fit and fast and fearless the woman had been on Sveavägen. But the way Kira described her, she must be some kind of superwoman. It was ridiculous. Holtser had never met a woman who could remotely be a match for him — or even for Orlov — in combat. Still, he promised to be careful. First he would go up and check out the terrain and prepare a strategy. They would not be drawn into a trap. He stressed this many times over, and when finally they arrived at an inlet next to a rocky slope and a jetty, he took command. He told the others to get ready in the shelter of the car while he went ahead to identify the house.
Holtser liked early mornings. He liked the silence and the feeling of transition in the air. Now he was leaning forward as he walked, and listening. It was reassuringly dark — no lights were on. He left the jetty behind him and came to a wooden fence with a rickety gate, right next to an overgrown prickly bush. He opened the gate and started to climb up the steep wooden steps holding the handrail on the right, and soon he was able to make out the house above.
It lay hidden behind pine trees and aspens and was only a dark outline, with a terrace on the south side. On the terrace were some glass doors which they would have no trouble breaking through. At first sight he saw no serious difficulty. He was moving almost soundlessly and for a moment he considered finishing off the job himself. Maybe it was even his moral responsibility, and it should be no more difficult than other jobs he had done. On the contrary.
There were no policemen this time, no guards, nor any sign of an alarm system. True, he did not have his assault rifle with him, but then there was no need for it. The rifle was excessive, the result of Kira’s heated imagination. He had his pistol, his Remington, and that was more than enough. Suddenly — without his usual careful planning — he started moving along the side of the house, up to the terrace and the glass doors.
Then he stiffened, without at first knowing why — it could have been a sound, a movement, a danger he had only half sensed. He looked up at the rectangular window above him, but from his position he could not see into it. He kept still, now less and less sure of himself. Could it be the wrong house?
He resolved to get closer and peer in, and then... he was transfixed in the darkness. He was being observed. Those eyes which once before had looked at him were now staring glassily in his direction. That was when he should have reacted. He should have sprinted around to the terrace, gone straight in and shot the boy. But again he hesitated. He could not bring himself to draw his weapon. Faced with that look, he was lost.
The boy let out a shrill scream which seemed to set the window vibrating, and only then did Holtser tear himself out of his paralysis and race up onto the terrace. Without a moment’s reflection he hurtled straight through the glass doors and fired with what he thought was great precision, but he never found out whether he hit his target.
An explosive shadow-like figure came at him with such speed that he hardly had time to brace himself. He knew that he fired another shot and that someone shot back. In the next instant he slammed onto the floor with his full weight, a young woman tumbling over him with a rage in her eyes that was beyond anything he had ever seen. He reacted instinctively and tried to shoot again. But the woman was like a wild animal. She threw her head back and... Crack!