The Girl in the Spider's Web Page 3

  “Hello, everybody,” he said. “What foul weather! I’ve said it many times before, but I’m happy to repeat it: We at Serner are incredibly proud to be accompanying you on this journey, and for me personally it amounts to even more than that. It’s the commitment to magazines like Millennium which makes my job meaningful; it reminds me why I went into this profession in the first place. Micke, do you remember how we used to sit in the Opera Bar and dream about everything we were going to achieve together? And we weren’t exactly holding back on the booze, ha ha!”

  Blomkvist did not look as if he remembered. But Levin was not put off.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all nostalgic,” he said, “and there’s no reason to do so. In those days there was much more money in our industry. Just to cover some piddling little murder in the middle of nowhere we would hire a helicopter and book an entire floor at the poshest hotel, and order champagne for the after party. You know, when I was about to go off on my first overseas trip I asked Ulf Nilson, foreign correspondent at the time, what the Deutschmark exchange rate was. ‘I have no idea,’ he said, ‘I set my own exchange rate.’ Ha! We used to pad our expenses, do you remember, Micke? Maybe we were at our most creative back then. In any case, all we had to do was knock out some quick copy and we still managed to sell any number of issues. But a lot has changed since then—we all know that. We now face cut-throat competition and it’s not easy these days to make a profit in journalism, not even if you have Sweden’s best editorial team, as you do. So I thought we should talk a little bit today about the challenges of the future. Not that I imagine for one moment that I can teach you anything. I’m just going to provide you with some context for discussion. We at Serner have commissioned some surveys about your readership and the public perception of Millennium. Some of it may give you a bit of a fright. But instead of letting it get you down you should see it as a challenge, and remember, there are some totally crazy changes happening out there.”

  Levin paused for a moment and wondered if the term “totally crazy” had been a mistake, if he had tried too hard to appear relaxed and youthful and whether he had started off in too chatty and jocular a vein. As Haakon Serner would say, “It is impossible to overestimate how humourless underpaid journalists can be.” But no, he decided, I’ll fix this. I’ll get them on my side.

  —

  Blomkvist had stopped listening more or less at the point when Levin explained that they all needed to reflect on their “digital maturity,” so he did not hear them being told that the younger generation were not aware of Millennium or Mikael Blomkvist. Unfortunately that was precisely the moment at which he decided he had had enough and went out to the coffee room. So he had no idea either that Aron Ullman, the Norwegian consultant, quite openly said, “Pathetic. Is he so scared that he’s going to be forgotten?”

  In fact nothing could have worried Blomkvist less at that moment. He was angry that Levin seemed to think consumer surveys might be their salvation. It was no bloody market analysis that had created the magazine. It was passion and fire. Millennium had gotten to where it was because they had all put their faith in it, and in what felt right and important, without trying to guess which way the wind was blowing. For a time he just stood there in the pantry, wondering how long it would take before Berger came to join him.

  The answer was about two minutes. He tried to calculate how angry she was by the sound of her heels. But when she was standing next to him she only gave him a dejected smile.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “I just couldn’t bear to listen.”

  “You do realize that people feel incredibly uncomfortable when you behave like that?”

  “I do.”

  “And I assume you also understand that Serner can do nothing without our agreement. We still have control.”

  “Like hell we do. We’re their hostages, Ricky! Don’t you get it? If we don’t do as they say they’ll withdraw their support and then we’ll be sitting there with our arses hanging out,” he said, loudly and angrily. When Berger hushed him and shook her head he added sotto voce:

  “I’m sorry. I’m being a brat. But I’m going home now. I need to think.”

  “You’ve started to work extremely short hours.”

  “Well, I reckon I’m owed a fair bit of overtime.”

  “I suppose you are. Would you like company this evening?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Erika,” he said, and then he left the magazine offices and went out onto Götgatsbacken.

  —

  The storm and the freezing rain lashed against him and he swore, and for a moment considered dashing into Pocketshop to buy yet another English detective novel to escape into. Instead he turned onto Sankt Paulsgatan and as he was passing the sushi restaurant on the right-hand side his mobile rang. He was sure that it would be Berger. But it was Pernilla, his daughter, who had chosen the worst possible time to get in touch with a father who already felt bad about how little he did for her.

  “Hello, my darling,” he said.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “It’s the storm, I expect.”

  “OK, OK, I’ll be quick. I’ve been accepted into the writing course at Biskops Arnö school.”

  “So, now you want to be a writer,” he said, in a tone which was too harsh and almost sarcastic, and that was unfair in every way.

  He should have simply congratulated her and wished her luck, but Pernilla had had so many difficult years hopping between one Christian sect and another, and from one course to another without finishing anything, that he felt exhausted by yet another change of direction.

  “I don’t think I detected a whoop of joy there.”

  “Sorry, Pernilla. I’m not myself today.”

  “When are you ever?”

  “I’m just not sure writing is such a good idea, given how the profession is looking right now. I only want you to find something that will really work for you.”

  “I’m not going to write boring journalism, like you.”

  “Well, what are you going to write, then?”

  “I’m going to write for real.”

  “OK,” he said, without asking what she meant by that. “Do you have enough money?”

  “I’m working part-time at Wayne’s Coffee.”

  “Would you like to come to dinner tonight, so we can talk about it?”

  “Don’t have time, Pappa. It was just to let you know,” she said, and hung up. Even if he tried to see the positive side in her enthusiasm it just made his mood worse.

  He took a shortcut across Mariatorget and Hornsgatan to reach his apartment on Bellmansgatan. It felt as if he had only just left. He got a strange sense that he no longer had a job and that he was on the verge of entering a new existence where he had oceans of time instead of working his fingers to the bone. For a brief moment he considered tidying the place up. There were magazines and books and clothes everywhere. But instead he fetched two Pilsner Urquell from the fridge and sat down on the sofa in the living room to think everything through more soberly, as soberly as one can with a bit of beer in one’s body.

  What was he to do?

  He had no idea, and most worrying of all was that he was in no mood for a fight. On the contrary, he was strangely resigned, as if Millennium were slipping out of his sphere of interest. Isn’t it time to do something new? he asked himself, and he thought of Kajsa Åkerstam, a quite charming person whom he would occasionally meet for a few drinks. Åkerstam was head of Swedish Television’s Investigative Taskforce programme and she had for years been trying to recruit him. It had never mattered what she had offered or how solemnly she had guaranteed backing and total integrity. Millennium had been his home and his soul. But now…maybe he should take the chance. Perhaps a job on the “Investigative Taskforce” programme would fire him up again.

  His mobile rang and for a moment he was happy. Whether it was Berger or Pernilla, he promised himself he would be friendly and
really listen. But no, it was a withheld number and he answered guardedly.

  “Is that Mikael Blomkvist?” said a young-sounding voice.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Do you have time to talk?”

  “I might if you introduced yourself.”

  “My name is Linus Brandell.”

  “OK, Linus, how can I help?”

  “I have a story for you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I will if you can drag yourself down to the Bishops Arms across the street and meet me there.”

  Blomkvist was irritated. It wasn’t just the bossy tone. It was the intrusion on his home turf.

  “The phone will do just fine.”

  “It’s not something which should be discussed on an open line.”

  “Why do I feel so tired talking to you, Linus?”

  “Maybe you’ve had a bad day.”

  “I have had a bad day. You’re right about that.”

  “There you go. Come down to the Bishop and I’ll buy you a beer and tell you something amazing.”

  Blomkvist wanted only to snap: Stop telling me what to do! Yet without knowing why, or perhaps because he didn’t have anything better to do than sit in his attic apartment and brood over his future, he said, “I pay for my own beers. But OK, I’m coming.”

  “A wise decision.”

  “But Linus…”

  “Yes?”

  “If you get long-winded and give me a load of wild conspiracy theories to the effect that Elvis is alive and you know who shot Olof Palme, then I’m going straight home.”

  “Fair enough,” Brandell said.

  CHAPTER 3

  NOVEMBER 20

  Edwin Needham—Ed the Ned, as he was sometimes called—was not the most highly paid security technician in the United States. But he may have been the best.

  He grew up in South Boston, Dorchester, and his father had been a monumental good-for-nothing, a drunk who took on casual work in the harbour but often disappeared on binges which not infrequently landed him in jail or in hospital. These benders were the family’s best time, a sort of breathing space. When Ed’s father could be bothered to be around, he would beat his mother black-and-blue. Sometimes she would spend hours or even whole days locked inside the toilet, crying and shaking. Nobody was very surprised when she died from internal bleeding at only forty-six, or when Ed’s older sister became a crack addict, still less when the remains of the family soon afterwards stood teetering on the brink of homelessness.

  Ed’s childhood paved the way for a life of trouble and during his teenage years he belonged to a gang that called themselves “The Fuckers.” They were the terror of Dorchester and got mixed up in everything from muggings to robbing grocery stores. There was something brutal about Ed’s appearance from an early age and this was not improved by the fact that he never smiled and was missing two upper teeth. He was sturdy, tall, and fearless, and his face usually bore the traces of brawls with his father or gang fights. Most of the teachers at his school were scared to death of him. All were convinced that he would end up in jail or with a bullet in his head. But there were some adults who began to take an interest in him—no doubt because they discovered that there was more than aggression and violence in his intense blue eyes.

  Ed had an irrepressible thirst for knowledge, an energy which meant that he could devour a book with the same vigour with which he could trash the inside of a public bus. Often he was reluctant to go home at the end of the school day. He liked to stay on in what was known as the technology room, where there were a couple of computers. He would sit there for hours. A physics teacher with the Swedish-sounding name of Larson noticed how good he was with machines, and after social services got involved he was awarded a scholarship and transferred to a school with more motivated students.

  He began to excel at his studies and was given more scholarships and distinctions and eventually—something of a miracle in view of the odds against him—he went on to study Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. In his doctoral thesis he explored some specific fears around new asymmetric cryptosystems like RSA, and then went on to senior positions at Microsoft and Cisco before being recruited by the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.

  He did not have the ideal CV for the job, even leaving aside his criminal behaviour as a teenager. He had smoked a lot of grass at college and flirted with socialist or even anarchist ideals. He had also been arrested twice for assault: bar fights. He still had a volcanic temper and everyone who knew him thought better of crossing him.

  But at the NSA they recognized his other qualities. Besides which it was the autumn of 2001, and the American security services were so desperate for computer technicians that they hired pretty much anybody. During the ensuing years, nobody questioned Needham’s loyalty—or patriotism, for that matter—and if anyone thought to do so, his advantages always outweighed his shortcomings.

  Needham was not just amazingly gifted. There was an obsessive streak to his character, a manic precision and a furious efficiency which boded well for a man in charge of building IT security at America’s most highly classified agency. Nobody was damn well going to crack his system. It was a matter of personal pride for him. At Fort Meade he quickly made himself indispensable to the point where people were constantly lining up to consult him. Not a few were terrified of him. He was often verbally abusive and had even told the head of the NSA himself, the legendary Admiral Charles O’Connor, to go to hell.

  “Use your own busy fucking head for things you might just be able to understand,” Needham had roared when the admiral had attempted to comment on his work.

  But O’Connor and everyone else let it happen. They knew that Needham screamed and yelled for the right reasons—because colleagues had been careless about security regulations, or because they were talking about things beyond their understanding. Not once did he interfere in the rest of the agency’s work, even though his level of clearance gave him access to pretty much everything, and even though in recent years the agency had found itself at the centre of a heated storm of opinion, advocates of both the right and the left seeing the NSA as the devil incarnate, Orwell’s Big Brother. As far as Needham was concerned, the organization could do whatever the hell it wanted, so long as his security systems remained rigorous and intact.

  And since he did not yet have a family he more or less lived at the office. Apart from the occasional drinking session, during which he sometimes turned alarmingly sentimental about his past, there was no suggestion that he had ever told outsiders what he was working on. In that other world he remained as silent as the grave, and if ever questioned about his profession, he stuck to a well-rehearsed cover story.

  It was not by chance, nor was it the result of intrigue or manipulation, that he had risen through the ranks and become the NSA’s most senior security chief. Needham and his team had tightened internal surveillance “so that no new whistle-blowers can pop up and punch us in the nose” and during countless sleepless nights created something which he alternately called “an unbreakable wall” or “a ferocious little bloodhound.”

  “No fucker can get in, and no fucker can dig around without permission,” he said. And he was enormously proud of that.

  He had been proud, that is, until that disastrous morning in November. The day had begun beautiful and clear. Needham, who had put on a belly over the years, came waddling over from the coffee machine in his characteristic way. Because of his seniority he completely ignored dress codes. He was wearing jeans and a red-checked lumberjack shirt, not quite buttoned at the waist, and he sighed as he settled down at his computer. He was not feeling great. His back and right knee hurt and he cursed the fact that his long-time colleague Alona Casales had managed to persuade him to come out for a run the night before. Sheer sadism on her part.

  Luckily there was nothing super-urgent to deal with. He only had to send an internal memo with some new procedures for those in charge of COST, a programme fo
r cooperation with the large IT companies—he had even changed the codenames. But he did not get far. He was just beginning to write, in his usual turgid prose:

 

  when he was interrupted by one of his alerts.

  He was not particularly worried. His warning systems were so sensitive that they reacted to the slightest divergence in the information flow. It was going to be an anomaly, a notification perhaps that someone was trying to exceed the limits of their authorization, or some minor interference.

  As it turned out, he never had time to investigate. In the next moment something so uncanny happened that for several seconds he refused to believe it. He just sat there, staring at the screen. Yet he knew exactly what was going on. A RAT had been put on the intranet, NSANet. Anywhere else he would have thought, Those fuckers, I’ll crush them. But in here, the most tightly closed and controlled place of all, which he and his team had gone over with a fine-toothed comb a million times just this last year to detect every minuscule little vulnerability, here, no, no, it was impossible, it could not be happening.

  Without realizing it he had closed his eyes, as if hoping that it would all vanish so long as he wasn’t watching. But when he looked at the screen again, the sentence he had begun was being completed. His was continuing on its own with the words: