The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series (43 page)

“Is Leo there?” Dan gasped.

For a while there was no answer. Just a silence which seemed to confirm the worst, and which also brought back the terrifying reality of the forest. He remembered the chill of Leo’s lips, the absence of any light in his eyes, the lack of response from his lungs.

“Is he there? Is he alive?”

“Wait,” the voice said.

There was a crackling in the receiver. He could hear footsteps. It took time, so much time. Then suddenly life returned and, with it, the world and its colours.

“Dan?” said a voice which could have been his own.

“Leo,” he whispered. “You’re alive.”

“I’m O.K. The cramps came back, but Stina here, she’s a nurse, she sorted me out.”

He told Dan he was lying on a sofa with two blankets over him. His voice sounded weak yet steady, and he was clearly unsure as to what he could say in front of whoever was there with him. But he did mention Django and “Minor Swing”.

“You saved my life,” Leo said.

“I think I did.”

“That’s pretty major.”

“You mean it was swing.”

“I doesn’t get more swing than that, brother.”

Dan did not answer.

“
Contra mundum
,” Leo said.

“What’s that?” Dan said.

“The two of us against the world, my friend. You and I.”

They decided to meet mid-morning at Hotel Amaranten on Kungsholmsgatan, not far from Rådhuset, where Leo was certain they would not bump into anyone he knew. Dan sent a taxi to bring him into the city, and the brothers spent those hours on Christmas Eve in a room on the fourth floor, talking and making plans with the curtains drawn. They renewed their alliance and their pact and, just before the shops closed for the holidays at 2.00 p.m., Dan bought two mobiles with prepaid S.I.M. cards, so that they would be able to communicate.

He headed to Floragatan, and when Greitz rang on the landline he repeated in grave tones that he had decided to do as she suggested. He spoke to a nurse at Stockholms Sjukhem, who said that his mother was under sedation and would not live long. He wished all of them on the ward a Happy Christmas, and asked them to kiss Viveka on the forehead for him. He said he would visit soon.

That afternoon he returned to the Amaranten and told Leo as much as he could about the file Greitz said she had compiled on insider trading deals and tax fraud carried out in his name.There was depthless rage in his brother’s eyes, a terrifying hatred, and Dan listened in silence as Leo went on about how they would take revenge on Ivar and Rakel and all the rest of them. He put a hand on Leo’s shoulder to share his pain, but his own thoughts were less about revenge and more about Greitz’s insistence on the mighty powers that stood behind her. He also remembered the car journey in the dark and the grave in the forest by the old pine tree. His whole body told him that he did not have the courage to retaliate, not right away. Perhaps – it occurred to him later – this had something to do with his background. Unlike Leo, he did not have the confidence to believe he could win against the establishment. Or perhaps it was simply that he had had his eyes opened to the ruthlessness with which this group operated.

“Absolutely, we’ll crush them,” Dan said. “But this has to be planned meticulously, don’t you think? We need evidence. We have to prepare the ground. Why don’t we look at it as an opportunity to start afresh, try something new?”

He didn’t know what he was trying to say. He was just floating an idea. But gradually it took hold and an hour later, after much discussion, they were forging plans, tentatively at first, then more and more seriously. They knew they would have to act quickly, before Greitz and her organization, whatever it was, would see that they had been duped.

On Christmas Day Leo made the first of what would be many transfers to Dan Brody’s bank account. Then he bought a ticket to Boston for the following day, in Dan’s name. But it was Leo who made the journey with Dan’s American passport and papers. Dan stayed in Leo’s apartment, where Greitz came to see him on the evening of December 26, to draw up guidelines for his new life. He played the part well, and if at times he did not look as disconsolate as he should have, Greitz seemed to interpret that as a sign that he was enjoying his new existence already. “You see your own evil in others,” as Leo said later on the telephone.

On December 28, Dan was sitting at Leo’s mother’s bedside at Stockholms Sjukhem. He did not say much, and none of the staff appeared to suspect anything, which boosted his confidence. He tried to look upset yet composed, and sometimes he was genuinely moved even though he was with a person he had never met before. Viveka was emaciated and pale, bird-like. She was sleeping with her mouth open, and her breathing was weak. Someone had combed her hair and applied a little make-up, and she had been propped up on two pillows. At one point – he felt it would be expected – he stroked her shoulder and arm. She opened her eyes and looked at him critically, which made him feel uncomfortable but not worried. She was heavily sedated with morphine, it was probably safe to assume that nothing she could say would be taken seriously.

“Who are you?” she said.

Something harsh and judgemental surfaced in her delicate, pointed features.

“It’s me, Mamma. Leo.”

She appeared to be reflecting on this. She swallowed, and gathered some strength.

“You never turned out as we had hoped, Leo,” she said. “You were a disappointment to Pappa and me.”

Dan closed his eyes and remembered everything Leo had told him about his mother. It was astonishingly easy to reply – maybe precisely because the woman was a stranger.

“You were never what I’d hoped for either. You never understood me. It was
you
who let
me
down.”

She looked at him, surprised and confused.

“You let Leo down,” he said. “You let us
both
down – all of you did.”

He walked out and went back home through the city. The following day, December 29, Viveka Mannheimer died. The director of the Stockholms Sjukhem telephoned to let him know, and Dan put the announcements and the funeral arrangements into the hands of an undertaker recommended by the hospice. They could organize it however they thought best, he told them, a week or so into the new year. He himself would not be attending. When he told Ivar Ögren that he needed a long sabbatical, he got in return only coarse language and foul comments about how irresponsible he was. He did not bother to answer. On January 4, he too left the country, with Greitz’s approval.

He flew to New York and met his brother in Washington D.C. They stayed together for a week before going their separate ways.

Leo – as Dan – cautiously got to know the musicians on the Boston jazz scene. He explained he had started playing piano, but was nervous about performing in public. His Swedish accent worried him and he was homesick, until he decided to move to Toronto, where he met Marie Denver. She was a young interior designer with dreams of becoming an artist, and she was considering setting up a business together with her sister. She was not sure if she dared to take the plunge. Leo invested some capital and took a seat on the board. Not long after, the couple bought a house in Hoggs Hollow. He played the piano regularly with a small group of talented amateur musicians, all of whom were doctors.

Dan was rootless for a long time. He travelled around Europe and Asia, playing guitar and reading up on the financial markets. He found he had a burning thirst for knowledge. He felt – or rather believed – that as an outsider he would be able to apply a new kind of meta perspective to the financial markets, and in the end he decided to resume Leo’s place at Alfred Ögren, not least to find out about the dossier of evidence Rakel Greitz and Ivar Ögren had against his brother. He realized that it would not be easy to deny the allegations. When he instructed one of Stockholm’s best business lawyers, Bengt Wallin, to look into them, and was briefed on the extent and type of deals carried out in Leo’s name through Mossack Fonseca in Panama, he was strongly advised to leave it alone.

As the weeks went by, life resumed its normal course, as it tends to do. Dan and Leo bided their time, and remained in close contact. When Dan left Blomkvist in the lobby at Alfred Ögren that day, the person he called was Leo. Leo was silent for a long while, and then told Dan it was up to him to decide if the time was right to tell their story, adding that it would be hard to find a more suitable outlet than Mikael Blomkvist at
Millennium
.

Now Dan had indeed started to talk, though he hadn’t yet said anything about Leo’s new life in Canada. Standing at the window of the studio, he called Toronto once again and was deep in conversation when he was interrupted by a discreet knock at the door. Erika Berger had arrived.

Earlier that day, feeling horribly nauseous, Greitz had dragged herself back along to Hamngatan, meaning to take a taxi to go home to Karlbergsvägen and collapse in her bed. But halfway there she became angry with herself and went to her office in the west of the city instead. It was unlike her to let illness or adversity get the upper hand. She decided to keep fighting, and activated every contact and ally she could think of to find Blomkvist and Daniel Brolin – all except Steinberg, who had broken down after repeated calls from the police. She sent Benjamin off to the
Millennium
offices on Götgatan and to Blomkvist’s apartment building on Bellmansgatan. But Benjamin only encountered locked doors. In the end she gave up for the day and let him drive her home. She needed to get some rest, and also to destroy the most sensitive of Project 9’s documents, which she kept at home in a safe behind the wardrobe in her bedroom.

It was 4.30 p.m. and still unbearably hot. She let Benjamin help her out of the car. She really did need him, and not only as a bodyguard. She was groggy after all the stress of the day. Her black polo neck was damp with sweat. The city swayed before her eyes. She stood straight and looked up at the sky, and for a moment her look was triumphant. She might ultimately be unmasked and humiliated, but she had fought – she was convinced of this – for something greater than herself: for science and for the future. She was determined to go down with dignity. She vowed to remain strong and proud to the end, however ill she might be.

At the building’s street entrance she asked Benjamin to hand her the orange juice he had bought for her on the way and, even though it was a little undignified, she drank straight from the bottle and felt briefly restored. They took the lift to the sixth floor, where she unlocked the front door and asked Benjamin to go in ahead and switch off the burglar alarm. She was just about to step over the threshold when she froze and looked down towards the floor below. A pale figure was climbing the stairs, a young woman who seemed to have risen from the underworld.

Salander was more presentable than she had been, even if her face was white and her eyes bloodshot, her cheeks scratched from brambles and bushes. She was walking with visible difficulty. But she had gone to the trouble of buying a T-shirt and a pair of jeans from a second-hand shop on Upplandsgatan and had stuffed her bloodstained clothes into a bin. She had also bought a mobile in a Telenor store, and dressings and disinfectant at a chemist. Standing on the pavement, she ripped off the duct tape she had found in a holiday home in the woods and used to staunch the flow of blood from her hip, and she replaced it with a new and better bandage.

For a while she had been lying semi-conscious on the forest floor. As soon as she came to, she sawed through the rope around her wrists on a jagged rock. She made her way to National Highway 77 and got a lift from a woman in an old Rover all the way to Vasastan, where she attracted a good deal of attention.

According to a witness named Kjell Ove Strömgren, she looked unwell and dangerous when she walked in “through said doorway” at Karlbergsvägen. She didn’t bother to look at herself in the mirror in the entrance hall, as she did not expect it would be edifying. She felt like shit. The dagger had probably not damaged any vital organs, but she had lost a significant amount of blood and was ready to pass out.

Greitz – or Nordin, as the misleading sign on the door said – was not at home. Salander sat on the landing one level down, and from there she texted Blomkvist. He sent back a lot of sensible advice and other crap. All she wanted to know, she texted back, was what he had found out. Finally, he gave her a summary and she nodded as she read it and closed her eyes. The pain and the dizziness were getting worse, she only just managed to resist the impulse to stretch out on the floor. For a moment it felt as if she would never be able to pull herself together again, or to do anything at all. But then she thought of Palmgren.

She remembered how he had come all the way to Flodberga in his wheelchair and she couldn’t help thinking how much he had meant to her all these years. But above all she thought about what Blomkvist had told her of his death, and it was clear that he was right: only Greitz could have killed the old man. She drew strength from that – it was up to her to avenge Palmgren. She knew she had to strike with all her might, however weak she felt, so she pulled back her shoulders and shook her head, and finally, after another ten or fifteen minutes, the rickety lift stopped on the floor above her. The door was pushed open and through the banisters she could make out a large man and a much older woman in a black polo neck. Oddly enough, Salander recognized her by the way she carried herself. It was as if the mere sight of Greitz’s ramrod spine had taken her back to her childhood.

But she did not allow herself to dwell on it. She sent a rapid message to Bublanski and Modig and walked up the stairs, not very steadily and apparently not very quietly either. Greitz spun around and looked Salander in the eye, first in surprise and then – once she had recognized her – with fear and loathing. Salander stopped on the stairs, holding the wound in her side.

“We meet again,” she said.

“You took your time.”

“And yet it seems like yesterday, don’t you think?”

Greitz ignored the question and growled: