The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle (194 page)

She left her husband asleep and at 7:30 drove to
SMP
's office at Norrtull. She parked in the garage, took the elevator to the newsroom, and settled down in the glass cage. Before she did anything else, she called someone from maintenance.

“Peter Fredriksson has left the paper. He won't be back,” she said. “Please bring as many boxes as you need to empty his desk of personal items and have them delivered to his apartment this morning.”

She looked over towards the news desk. Holm had just arrived. He met her gaze and nodded to her.

She nodded back.

Holm was a bastard, but after their altercation a few weeks earlier he
had stopped trying to cause trouble. If he continued to show the same positive attitude, he could possibly survive as news editor. Possibly.

She should, she felt, be able to turn things around.

At 8:45 she saw Borgsjö come out of the elevator and disappear up the internal staircase to his office on the floor above.
I have to talk to him today
.

She got some coffee and spent a while on the morning memo. It looked like it was going to be a slow news day. The only item of interest was an agency report, to the effect that Lisbeth Salander had been moved to the prison in Stockholm the day before. She OK'd the story and forwarded it to Holm.

At 8:59 Borgsjö called.

“Berger, come up to my office right away.” He hung up.

He was white in the face when Berger found him at his desk. He stood up and slammed a thick wad of papers on his desk.

“What the hell is this?” he roared.

Berger's heart sank like a stone. She only had to glance at the cover to see what Borgsjö had found in the morning mail.

Fredriksson hadn't managed to do anything with her photographs. But he had sent a copy of Cortez's article and research to Borgsjö.

Calmly she sat down across from him.

“That's an article written by a reporter named Henry Cortez.
Millennium
had planned to run it in last week's issue.”

Borgsjö looked desperate.

“How dare you? I brought you into
SMP
and the first thing you do is to start digging up dirt. What kind of a media whore are you?”

Berger's eyes narrowed. She turned ice-cold. She had had enough of the word
whore
.

“Do you really think anyone is going to care about this? Do you think you can trap me with this crap? And why the hell did you send it to me anonymously?”

“That's not what happened, Magnus.”

“Then tell me what did happen.”

“The person who sent that article to you anonymously was Fredriksson. He was fired from
SMP
yesterday.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It's a long story. But I've had a copy of the article for more than two weeks, trying to figure out a way to raise the subject with you.”

“You're behind this article?”

“No, I am not. Cortez researched and wrote the article entirely on his own. I didn't know anything about it.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“As soon as my old colleagues at
Millennium
saw how you were implicated in the story, Blomkvist stopped its publication. He called me and gave me a copy, out of concern for my position. It was then stolen from me, and now it's ended up with you.
Millennium
wanted me to have a chance to talk with you before they printed it. Which they mean to do in the August issue.”

“I've never met a more unscrupulous media whore in my whole life. It defies belief.”

“Now that you've read the story, perhaps you have also considered the research behind it. Cortez has an iron-clad story. You know that.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“If you're still here when
Millennium
goes to press, that will hurt
SMP
. I've worried myself sick and tried to find a way out … but there isn't one.”

“What do you mean?”

“You'll have to go.”

“Don't be absurd. I haven't done anything illegal.”

“Magnus, don't you understand the impact of this exposé? I don't want to have to call a board meeting. It would be too embarrassing.”

“You're not going to call anything at all. You're finished at
SMP.
”

“Wrong. Only the board can sack me. Presumably you're allowed to call them in for an extraordinary meeting. I would suggest you do that for this afternoon.”

Borgsjö came around the desk and stood so close to Berger that she could feel his breath.

“Berger, you have one chance to survive this. You have to go to your damned colleagues at
Millennium
and get them to kill this story. If you do a good job I might even forget what you've done.”

Berger sighed.

“Magnus, you aren't understanding how serious this is. I have no influence whatsoever on what
Millennium
publishes. This story is going to come out no matter what I say. The only thing I care about is how it affects
SMP
. That's why you have to resign.”

Borgsjö put his hands on the back of her chair.

“Berger, your cronies at
Millennium
might change their minds if they knew that you would be fired the instant they leak this bullshit.”

He straightened up.

“I'll be at a meeting in Norrköping today.” He looked at her, furious and arrogant. “At Svea Construction.”

“I see.”

“When I'm back tomorrow you will report to me that this matter has been taken care of. Understood?”

He put on his jacket. Berger watched him with her eyes half closed.

“Maybe then you'll survive at
SMP
. Now get out of my office.”

She went back to the glass cage and sat quite still in her chair for twenty minutes. Then she picked up the phone and asked Holm to come to her office. This time he was there within a minute.

“Sit down.”

Holm raised an eyebrow and sat down.

“What did I do wrong this time?” he said sarcastically.

“Anders, this is my last day at
SMP
. I'm resigning here and now. I'm calling in the deputy chairman and as many members of the board as I can find for a meeting over lunch.”

He stared at her with undisguised shock.

“I'm going to recommend that you be made acting editor in chief.”

“What?”

“Are you OK with that?”

Holm leaned back in his chair and looked at her.

“I've never wanted to be editor in chief,” he said.

“I know that. But you're tough enough to do the job. And you'll walk over corpses to be able to publish a good story. I just wish you had more common sense.”

“So what happened?”

“I have a different style than you. You and I have always argued about what angle to take, and we'll never agree.”

“No,” he said. “We never will. But it's possible that my style is old-fashioned.”

“I don't know if
old-fashioned
is the right word. You're a very good newspaperman, but you behave like a bastard. That's totally unnecessary. But what we were most at odds about was that you claimed that as news editor you couldn't allow personal considerations to affect how the news was assessed.”

Berger suddenly gave Holm a sly smile. She opened her bag and took out a copy of the Borgsjö story.

“Let's test your sense of news assessment. I have a story here that came to us from a reporter at
Millennium
. This morning I'm thinking that we
should run this article as today's top story.” She tossed the folder into Holm's lap. “You're the news editor. I'd be interested to hear whether you share my assessment.”

Holm opened the folder and began to read. Even the introduction made his eyes widen. He sat up straight in his chair and stared at Berger. Then he lowered his eyes and read through the article to the end. He studied the source material for ten more minutes before he slowly put the folder aside.

“This is going to cause one hell of an uproar.”

“I know. That's why I'm leaving.
Millennium
was planning to run the story in their June issue, but Mikael Blomkvist stopped publication. He gave me the article so that I could talk with Borgsjö before they run it.”

“And?”

“Borgsjö ordered me to suppress it.”

“I see. So you're planning to run it in
SMP
out of spite?”

“Not out of spite, no. There's no other way. If
SMP
runs the story, we have a chance of getting out of this mess with our honour intact. Borgsjö has no choice but to go. But it also means that I can't stay here any longer.”

Holm sat in silence for two minutes.

“Damn it, Berger. … I didn't think you were that tough. I never thought I'd ever say this, but if you're that thick-skinned, I'm actually sorry you're leaving.”

“You could stop publication, but if both you and I OK it … Do you think you'll run the story?”

“Damn right we'll run it. It would leak anyway.”

“Exactly.”

Holm got up and stood uncertainly by her desk.

“Get to work,” said Berger.

After Holm left her office she waited five minutes before she picked up the phone and rang Eriksson.

“Hello, Malin. Is Henry there?”

“Yes, he's at his desk.”

“Could you call him into your office and put on the speakerphone? We have to have a conference.”

Cortez was there within fifteen seconds.

“What's up?”

“Henry, I did something immoral today.”

“Oh, you did?”

“I gave your story about Vitavara to the news editor here at
SMP.
”

“You
what
?”

“I told him to run the story in
SMP
tomorrow. Your byline. And you'll be paid, of course. In fact, you can name your price.”

“Erika, what the hell is going on?”

She gave him a brisk summary of what had happened during the last weeks, and how Fredriksson had almost destroyed her.

“Jesus Christ,” Cortez said.

“I know that this is your story, Henry. But I have no choice. Can you agree to this?”

Cortez was silent for a long while.

“Thanks for asking,” he said. “It's OK to run the story with my byline. If it's OK with Malin, I should say.”

“It's OK with me,” Eriksson said.

“Thank you both,” Berger said. “Can you tell Mikael? I don't suppose he's in yet.”

“I'll talk to Mikael,” Eriksson said. “But, Erika, does this mean that you're out of work from today?”

Berger laughed. “I've decided to take the rest of the year off. Believe me, a few weeks at
SMP
was enough.”

“I don't think you ought to start thinking in terms of a vacation yet,” Eriksson said.

“Why not?”

“Could you come here this afternoon?”

“What for?”

“I need help. If you want to come back to being editor in chief here, you could start tomorrow morning.”

“Malin, you're the editor in chief. Anything else is out of the question.”

“Then you could start as managing editor.” Eriksson laughed.

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, Erika, I miss you so much that I'm ready to die. One reason I took the job here was so that I'd have a chance to work with you. And now you're somewhere else.”

Berger said nothing for a minute. She had not even thought about the possibility of making a comeback at
Millennium
.

“Do you think I'd really be welcome?” she said hesitantly.

“What do you think? I bet we'd begin with a huge celebration, which I would arrange myself. And you'd be back just in time for us to publish you-know-what.”

Berger checked the clock on her desk—10:55. In a couple of hours her
whole world had been turned upside down. She realized what a longing she had to walk up the stairs at
Millennium
again.

“I have a few things to take care of here over the next few hours. Is it OK if I pop in at around 4:00?”

Linder looked Armansky directly in the eye as she told him exactly what had happened during the night. The only thing she left out was her sudden intuition that the hacking of Fredriksson's computer had something to do with Salander. She kept that to herself for two reasons. First, she thought it sounded too implausible. Second, she knew that Armansky was somehow up to his neck in the Salander affair along with Blomkvist.

Armansky listened intently. When Linder finished her account, he said: “Beckman called about an hour ago.”

“Oh?”

“He and Berger are coming in later this week to sign a contract. He wants to thank us for what Milton has done, and above all for what you have done.”

“I see. It's nice to have a satisfied client.”

“He also wants to order a safe for the house. We'll install it and finish up the alarm package before this weekend.”

“That's good.”

“He says he wants us to invoice him for your work over the weekend. That'll make it quite a sizable bill we'll be sending them.” Armansky sighed. “Susanne, you do know that Fredriksson could go to the police and get you into very deep water on a number of counts.”

She nodded.

“Mind you, he'd end up in prison so fast it would make his head spin, but he might think it was worth it.”

“I doubt he has the balls to go to the police.”

“You may be right, but what you did far exceeded instructions.”

“I know.”

“So how do you think I should react?”

“Only you can decide that.”

“How did you think I
would
react?”

“What I think has nothing to do with it. You could always fire me.”

“Hardly. I can't afford to lose a professional of your calibre.”