She had found the secret keys and cracked the document, and for a little while she was so overcome by this that she hardly managed to read. Then she began to examine the contents, and her amazement grew with every passing moment. Could this even be possible? It was more explosive than anything she had imagined, and the reason it had all been written down could only have been that someone believed the R.S.A. algorithm was impenetrable. But here it was, black on white, all that filth and dirt. The text was full of internal jargon and strange abbreviations and cryptic references, but that was not a problem for Salander since she was familiar with the subject. She had got through about four-fifths of the text when the doorbell rang.
She chose to ignore it, probably only the postman. But then she remembered Camilla’s text message and checked the camera on the landing on her computer. She stiffened.
It was not Camilla but her other bugbear, the one she had almost forgotten with everything else that was going on. Ed the fucking Ned. He looked nothing like his pictures online, but he was unmistakable all the same. He looked grumpy and determined, and Salander’s brain started ticking. How had he managed to track her down? What should she do? The best she could come up with was to send the N.S.A. file off to Blomkvist on their P.G.P. link.
Then she shut down her computer and hauled herself to her feet to open the door.
What had happened to Bublanski? Sonja Modig was at a loss to understand it. The pained expression he had been wearing in recent weeks had vanished, as if blown away. Now he smiled and hummed to himself. It’s true that there was plenty to be pleased about. The murderer had been caught. August Balder had survived despite two attempts on his life, and the details of Frans Balder’s conflict and connection with the research company Solifon were becoming clearer.
But many questions remained, and the Bublanski she knew was not one to rejoice without good reason. He was more inclined to self-doubt, even in moments of triumph. She could not imagine what had got into him. He walked around the corridors beaming. Even now, as he sat in his office reading the dull report on the questioning of Zigmund Eckerwald by the San Francisco police, there was a smile on his lips.
“Sonja, my dear. There you are!”
She decided not to comment on the unwonted enthusiasm of his greeting and went straight to the point.
“Jan Holtser is dead.”
“Oh no.”
“And with him went our last hope of learning more about the Spiders.”
“So you think he was about to open up?”
“There was a chance, at least.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He broke down completely when his daughter showed up.”
“I didn’t know. What happened?”
“He has a daughter called Olga,” Modig said. “She came from Helsinki when she heard that her father had been injured. But when I talked to her and she heard that he had tried to kill a child, she went berserk.”
“In what way?”
“She stormed in to him and said something incredibly aggressive in Russian.”
“Could you understand what she was saying?”
“Something like he could die alone and she hated him.”
“So she laid into him.”
“Yes, and afterwards she told me that she would do everything in her power to help us with the investigation.”
“And how did Holtser react?”
“That’s what I was saying. For a moment I thought we had him. He was totally destroyed, had tears in his eyes. I’m not really big on that Catholic teaching which says that our moral worth is determined just before we die. But it was almost touching to see. This man who had done so much evil was crushed.”
“My rabbi—”
“Please, Jan, don’t start with your rabbi now. Let me go on. Holtser said what a terrible person he had been, so I told him that he should as a Christian take the opportunity to confess, and tell us who he was working for, and at that moment I’m convinced he came close. He hesitated and his eyes flitted from side to side. But instead of confessing he began to talk about Stalin.”
“Stalin?”
“About how Stalin didn’t punish only the guilty but also their children and grandchildren and the entire family. I think he was trying to say that his boss was the same.”
“So he was worried about his daughter.”
“However much she may have hated him, he was. I tried to tell him that we could get the girl onto a witness protection programme, but Holtser had started to drift away. He fell unconscious and died an hour later.”
“Anything else?”
“Only that someone we’re beginning to think may be a superintelligence has vanished and that we still have no trace of Andrei Zander.”
“I know, I know.”
“We’ve at least made progress on one front,” Modig said. “You remember the man identified by Amanda on August’s drawing of the traffic light?”
“The former actor?”
“That’s right, he’s called Roger Winter. Amanda interviewed him for background information, to find out whether there was a relationship between him and the boy or Balder, and I don’t think she expected to get much out of it. But Winter seemed to be badly shaken, and before Amanda had even begun to put pressure on him he confessed to a whole catalogue of sins.”
“Really?”
“And we’re not talking innocent stories. You know, Westman and Winter have been friends since they were young men at Revolutionsteatern and they used to get together to drink in the afternoons at the apartment in Torsgatan when Hanna was out. August would sit in the next room doing his puzzles, and neither of the men paid him much attention. But on one of these occasions the boy had been given a thick maths book by his mother — it was clearly way above his level, but he still leafed through it frantically, making excited noises. Lasse became irritated and grabbed the book from the boy and threw it in the bin. It seems August went completely crazy. He had some sort of fit, and Lasse kicked him several times.”
“That’s appalling.”
“That was just the beginning. After that August became very odd, Roger said. The boy took to glaring at them with this weird look, and one day Roger found that his jeans jacket had been cut into tiny pieces, and another day someone had emptied out all the beer in the fridge and smashed all the bottles of spirits. It turned into some kind of trench warfare, and I suspect that Roger and Lasse in their alcoholic delirium began to imagine all sorts of strange things about the boy, and even became scared of him. The psychological aspect of this isn’t easy to understand. Roger said it made him feel like shit, and he never talked about it with Lasse afterwards. He didn’t want to beat the boy. But he couldn’t stop himself. It was as if he got his own childhood back, he said.”
“What on earth did he mean by that?”
“It’s not altogether clear. Apparently Roger Winter has a disabled younger brother. Throughout their childhood Roger was a constant disappointment, while his talented brother was showered with praise and distinctions, and appreciated in every possible way. I guess that bred some bitterness. Maybe Roger was subconsciously getting his own back on his brother. Or else...”
“Or else what?”
“He put it in an odd way. He said it felt as if he were trying to beat the shame out of himself.”
“That’s sick.”
“Yes. Strangest thing of all is the way he suddenly confessed everything. It was almost as if he wanted to be arrested. Amanda said he was limping and had two black eyes.”
“Peculiar.”
“Isn’t it? But there’s one other thing which surprises me even more,” Modig said.